Design: revisited

The Oatmeal, obviously.

Because he says it better than I ever could.

Design to death

from here.

Sometimes, I am sick to death of design.  In general.  Making aesthetic and functional choices, walking the line between budgets, beauty, and g@#^ d$%^@#%^ storage/function/bizarre need of the client, every single day.

I watch HGTV and I think, HA! This isn't real - in real life, the designer never gets to just waltz in, explain to the clients what they're about to do, and then just do it...that stuff is TV only.  In real life, most clients second guess  every paint swatch, decide they've changed their colour scheme, decides they've halved their budget, decides they don't even want to share a house with the person with whom they were planning a master bedroom makeover... the list goes on.  People don't always value designers (to cover the spectrum of us), because they think it has to be easy, but they often don't see the delicate balancing act of considerations.

I love what I do.  I love having a job where those things all matter, and I love having the kind of brain that gets a kick out of making it all fit together AND telling a story aesthetically.

But it takes a toll on you to constantly weight your work on such a completely subjective scale.  It doesn't matter whether you are the most avant garde, or the most traditional - someone hates your work.  It doesn't matter how "good" you get - someone hates your work. Sometimes I wish I had just become an engineer.  Because at least then there is an answer (most of the time), and it is possible to be just plain-old right.

I've struggled for a long time to not allow what other people think to be the basis against which I judge myself, and my work.  But part of what I do is not for me:  I am not a "pure" designer, sitting up in some lofty tower designing only for the betterment of mankind.  I design for clients.  Real people.  People who need to like what I produce.  So at what point does what I personally think cease to matter?  I would like to believe that my work can have integrity, that I only produce things I am proud of.  And at the end of the line, you came to me because something about what I do worked for you.  Whether that meant the price was right, or you really liked my previous designs, you picked me.  There are millions of other people who can do what I do, literally.  And while I really really REALLY want your business, and I want you to love what I've produced for you.... that's not enough for me, as a person.

And sometimes, when you let me do what I do, you'll realize that you love the result.

On foot, and underfoot

Found here.  Tokyo people - street crossing by Simone Marchetti.

I used to drive everywhere.  My next-door neighbor and I, who were close friends in highschool and did all the same afterschool activities, used to drive into school separately, only to park right next to eachother.

But now I've been a pedestrian (only) in several different international cities as an inhabitant, not a tourist, and I can safely say I would avoid driving for the rest of my life, if possible.  Since we still live in the burbs, and many of my hobbies involve moving used furniture or large homemade letterpresses around, this doesn't look like a goal attainable anytime soon, but I can dream.

What does affect me, every day right now, is the general vehicular attitude towards pedestrians in general, and also the stupid thing other pedestrians do when they're not paying attention.  For example, I am super careful never to cause a car to slow down when they have the right of way - if I go early at a crosswalk, it is because I can clearly see no one is coming, or I understand the light pattern enough that I am sure I will be able to cross safely.  This morning, I was able to cross the street before my signal, because I was paying attention and had the right timing. 

The three numbskulls behind me, however, succeeded in blocking the cars in the left turn lane (who had an advanced green) because they were too late to follow me and decided to anyway.

Le sigh.  In DC every morning, cars try to run stagnant yellows/early reds at major pedestrian crossing intersections.  Sometimes these vehicles are even city buses.  And every time, the herd of pedestrians at the crosswalk comes out at their signal, and leaves the idiot driver stranded in the intersection.  Horns blare and tempers fray, and it makes everyone's morning just a little worse.

And don't even get me started on cyclists.

Bad Apple

A little while ago, good friend of mine and I went to the Georgetown Apple store during our lunch break.  My friend was super excited to finally get her baby back - a 17.5" Mac Book Pro, with all her files on.  There had been a problem with some faulty chips, but they were going to replace them, plus the m/otherboard, for free.  Great!

So we catch the bus to Georgetown, and are both excited to be out of the office at lunch.  We stroll into the store, and one of the greeters sends us back to the "genius bar" - I find Apple so damn pretentious sometimes - and we are greeted by a surly college-aged kid, who has possibly realized that working at the Apple store over the holidays was an unwise decision.

My friend explains her computer is ready, he checks her name on the list, and explains that they have a different first name associated with the repair.  My friend clarifies that the computer was purchased by her mother, and that that would be her mother's name.  Kid replies: well do you have any ID with that name on you?  Now, logically, since she has just said this is her mother's name, A) if she did, would it be right to hand her the computer? And B) nobody carries their parents IDs around - but most of us can forge a signature on demand.


After he decides he can accept her word (and own ID) that yes, it is her computer, he trundles off to the back to get it.  He brings it out to us at the counter, pushes it towards her asking her to turn it on and check to make sure its ok, and then pulls out the invoice, which says Balance Due $982.16 at the bottom.  He then says, "there appears to be a thing here."  When we look at him blankly, he clarifies: "there appears to be a thing associated with the repair." My friend exceedingly politely points to instructions on the invoice that indicate she is not to be changed for the repair.  Kid is very flustered, tells us he has to speak to a manager, and snatches up the computer and walks away.  My friend has not even have the chance yet to verify the computer works, and this kid brings it with him like she's going to steal it?  And then he keeps leaving it in random places around the store, so we feel obligated to watch him to make sure noone else decides they'd like to steal it.

After 10 minutes of this nonsense, he brings back the computer, plus the old invoice with a receipt stapled to the back.  Again gives her the computer, and the invoice, and asks her to sign at the bottom.  This makes me very nervous, as the invoice still says $982.16 at the bottom, so I flip it over to check out what it says on the random receipt.  And the receipt on the back has a large voided item for the repair, but the balance due is still $10.

So we ask him about it.  Our conversation:

Us: What is this receipt?  Why is there still a balance due?
Him: Don't worry about it.
Us: Umm, no really what is this $10 about?
Him, now angry:  I said, don't worry about it.  It's for me.

At this point, my friend has still not managed to turn on the computer, but she has signed the invoice, so he snatches it away and puts it into a filing cabinet into the wall.  We stare at eachother, a bit stunned, and watch this guy just saunter away.  At which point we flag down the nearest staffmember and ask if they have a form we can fill out to give customer satisfaction feedback.

That produced immediate effect, but only on the two staffmembers who had been near us but not helping us...to their credit, they jumped on the fact that we were clearly unhappy and did their best to offer anything they could think of to deter us from sending the manager negative feedback.

But the piece de resistance: Chris becomes aware of the hubub, and comes over to have an additional conversation with my friend.  You would think this would be to make an effort to apologize.  You would be wrong.

Chris:  The $10 on the receipt is because I am only allowed to void 99% of a line item cost.  So I had the $10 leftover.
My friend:  Thank you - but you didn't have to be quite so rude about it before.
Chris: I wasn't being rude.
My friend: You definitely were.
Chris (the rest of this conversation is approximate, but he truly uttered these exact words):  Well whatever, I don't care.  We're worth like billions of dollars.

At which point he walked away, and my friend penned a brilliant letter of complaint to his manager that wasn't nearly as harsh as the one I would have written.

I have no words/typing of random letters to explain the indignant noises both of us were making on the bus back to our office, but we must have a sounded like a pair of drunk hippos.

But if you ever go to the Apple store in Georgetown, try to steer clear of Chris, because he will do his best to ruin your day.  Or at least your lunch break.

DC is full of special people

So I have continued to be rubbish with the blogging.  I've been sick, completely failing at working out, had a friend's bachelorette this weekend, and my wedding is in a month.  But here we go again:

One of the joyous tasks I had on my plate this week was to apply for an alcohol license in DC, so that we could serve alcohol at the wedding.

To do this, I not only needed to fill out a long form, and submit all of this documentation from the Carnegie, AND pay them $300 dollars!!


BUT

I also needed to get a police clearance.  From both DC and Fairfax county.

The DC police station... is full of people who are not my people.  By any stretch of the imagination.  I had to fill out this form on one floor, go down to another floor to pay the $6 fee (cash only, mind you) (in a room full of people waiting to have their court hearings), then go back up again to pick up the form that said I had a clean record.  I'm convinced they only make you go downstairs to pay is to give them enough time to stamp your form.


In the Fairfax police station, in contrast, the police officers behind the counter seemed to think I couldn't possibly be in the right place, and kept asking if what I needed.  Brandon is of the opinion that this is so they could continue to check me out, which is interesting because not only was Brandon there standing next to me, but I could have sworn I said I needed the clearance for the alcohol permit for my wedding.

Having collected these two precious sheets of paper, I got ready for the big one.  I got up early, bc the DC office where you get these permits actually opens before my office does, and headed to U Street.  Where I witnessed an interesting handoff in the window of the Starbucks I was waiting in.  Come on, 8am people?  Some of us just needed some coffee, take your shady deals elsewhere.  Particularly so because 3 minutes later, a policeman walked in.

Got to the builing, which houses a ton of DC regulatory boards and other city government functions, just as it was opening to the public.  I put my purse on the xray machine, and made pleasant conversation with the two ladies running the security check in.  A little Asian gentleman clutching an envelope also got into the elevator with me, also going to the fourth floor.  It took him 10 minutes to end up in the same reception area I found in 30 seconds though, so by that point the line for him was probably an hour long.

When I walked in, I was the first customer, and a very helpful lady behind the desk started going through my paperwork.  She finished reviewing everything I had brought, looked up and smiled.  "High five for having everything you need!"  I guess that doesn't happen to her much, and my guess is people are not too pleasant to her either.

She typed all my stuff into the computer, charged me the $300 its going to take to serve liquor and not just beer and wine, and casually mentioned that had I not gotten my paperwork in that day, I couldn't have gotten my license for another 2 weeks because the board was going to recess.  Veeeeeeery lucky.

I was out of that office in 15 minutes.  When I came back to pick my permit up the following week at lunchtime (after being complimented on both my top and my purse by the ladies of the security desk) I had my permit, all names spelled correctly, in less than 2.  So way to go alcohol permitting board.

After all that nonsense, I am finished.  And I can serve booze at the wedding!  Success :)

cannot breathe

I am trapped in my metro seat by a man who probably weighs 400 lbs, smells like old socks, and breathes like Darth Vader.

To his credit, he is turned sideways, projecting a long way into the aisle, to give me as much room as possible...which is something, I guess.

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Wedding Drama: Uninvited guests: Update!

photo from here

Sigh. Men are silly.

Turns out that our rogue guest has actually been dating the girl for over a year, and didn't think to let Brandon know about it.  But if you've been seeing someone for that long, why would you put "probably" on the RSVP card next to their name?

(again, if you're not sure if they can make it, DON'T RSVP UNTIL YOU KNOW FOR SURE.  That's actually exactly how its supposed to work, none of this maybe bizness.)

Anyway, shes coming, and we're fine with it.  And hopefully our guest learned a little something about etiquette.

This is what it looks like when a Dalmatian wants you to wake up.

Last week, I babysat for my boss' dog.

5:30 AM.  I am not at my best.

 He is a slightly neurotic animal, to put it mildly.  Dalmatians have all kinds of quirks from centuries of inbreeding, so it is only partly his fault.  He is a cute little guy, and it is obvious his owners lavish him with care and attention, because they love him a whole lot.

What this means for those of us who aren't his loving parents, however, is that we have a big empty shoe to fill.  When he was giving me the instructions, my boss mentioned that he wasn't sure where the dog would choose to sleep, as he typically sleeps in the master bed but might prefer to sleep with me rather than in his customary location.  When I went up to bed the first night I was there, there was no question:  the dog was in bed before me, just waiting.  I have never had a dog who not only wanted to sleep in bed with me, but wanted to sleep in a location as if he was another person, up against my back

Oh and also, super cute, he wanted to get up at 5:30.  Charming.

The second night, Brandon came to help me, because he had a day off the next day and could afford the extra  travel time in the morning.  We walked the dog, we went to whole foods and bought fresh scallops to sear for a salad (with fresh greens courtesy of my boss' garden), we made dinner, and we snuggle up on the sofa.  The dog of course snuggled right up next to us - apparently, snuggling on the sofa is something he does.  The real trouble came when we decided it was bedtime.

We walk up the stairs to the guest bedroom, and once again, the dog is in bed before I can get there.  Only this time, there were two of us looking to sleep in the bed with the dog, and we are talking about a guest futon, a decently hefty lady, a 6'1 dude with real shoulders, and a 70lb Dalmatian.  Not to mention, he did not want to sleep at the foot of the bed, at our feet, he literally wanted pride of place in the bed.  This did not work out well, as you can imagine.  I think Brandon and I got 3 hours of sleep total that night, together.

Sigh.  He is a cute little guy though.

What?  Why wont you just play with me?

Dear Penn Camera: I will never have you develop my film again

Just got back from picking up some developed black and white film from Penn Camera.  Rolls of random film (and they were RANDOM) I had found during our move, rolls that could have been 6 years old or from last summer.  And it turns out they were both.

So I was extremely excited to see the photos.  I had no idea what they could have been, was well aware most of them would be duds, but excited nonetheless.  And when I got there, I had to wait a while because silly people were actually buying camera stuff at the store, and then I finally was helped and they wanted 89 DOLLARS to develop my five rolls of film and ok whatever, I know black and white film is unusual and therefore more annoying maybe to process but geez.  I didn't even ask you to cut the film strips!  saving you at least 15 minutes of effort!

And I controlled myself all the way back to my office where I promptly tore into the photos.  AND THEY WERE SO POORLY DEVELOPED!  If I wanted that much dust and crap on my negs I would have developed them myself in my goddamn basement you stupid clowns, I wouldn't have shelled out equiv of new shoes for them!?!!!?!?!?  grrrrrrrr and I KNOW that it wasn't just a dirty lens because the dust and hairs move in every frame!  What ever happened to professional pride?  Come on guys! and to be honest I am most disappointed because they did the prints for me after I came back from my fellowship in Spain and they were beautiful, just gorgeously developed, and I know they can do better.  sigh.

well.

after all that, there is one photo I must share with you, because to my mind it is just so perfect, and almost saved the idiots who botched my film.

All of my loves, together in one frame, at the beach.  How perfectly delightful.

Ok.  I will try and move on now.  I have pinned this photo to my wall at work, and I will look at it whenever I feel the murderous rages coming back on.

Miss Manners would not approve

I have finally finished printing the wedding invitations.  And it feels AWESOME (except for the part where I printed 60 info cards with a grammatical error on them.  oops. But I am not reprinting! Unless my mother notices it (before reading this Mom or it doesn't count.)) .  But before I tell you about them, and show you pretty pictures of them, you get to hear about my charming experience trying to address the envelopes.

I addressed the save the dates in this fashion:

Mr and Mrs. John & Jane SoandSo

for two reasons.  

1. I am not comfortable with Mrs. John SoandSo.  I am not and will not ever be the female appendage of my male counterpart, and I will always choose to use both people's first names.  They can call themselves Mrs. John SoandSo all they want, and I won't judge anyone, but I am not going to thrust it on anyone.  My mom still gets birthday cards from my grandmother addressed to Mrs. DadsName, and my mom  has only been married to him for 30 years now.  I am really not looking forward to trying to explain this to people, and am touchy on the subject.

2. almost everything is do is wordy and verbose and unnecessary, so why would I miss the opportunity to use both a tiny and between names and a fancy ampersand?  I only get to send out so much correspondence in my life people, and I want to use as many characters as possible!

So for the full-on invitation, I did some checking on the infallible internets.  And apparently, what I was doing on the save the dates is "wrong" for 2 reasons:

1.  HEAVEN FORBID we separate the man's first name from his last name.  If we did that, he might forget his last name or something!  Which is another reason you need to take his name when you get married, because he needs more reminders. (Ugh I am sorry, I am snarky today.  My stance on this subject is not, you are a fool if you change your name it, is YOU do whatever YOU want, because you want it and not because someone else says you have to. )

2.  Apparently using "and" and "and" is redundant.  Really?  I didn't need you to tell me that - I have eyes, and I can see they are in fact the same word.

So I decided to turn to the ultimate wedding authority: the Kn*t.  Hah.  And what do you know?  They say I can use Mr and Mrs. John & Jane SoandSo if I want! (They do acknowledge it is a bit verbose.  Deal with it, I am verbose.)  And people, if the Kn*t has jumped on a bandwagon and off some stuffy high horse, I think it should be fine.

Now if only I could get over the grammatical mistake....

Oh wait, one more gem...

fml.

Awesome.  Just what I needed to cap off a stupendous week.

Take me out of the oven, I am done.

sometimes, its the kind of week where a bird poops in your tofu.

Seeya next week, I've checked out.

He loves me, he loves me not...stupid internets

Sometimes I feel like I don't spend enough time on the internet to actually have a blog.  Which is to say I spend plenty of time on the internet, but not doing what the cool kids are doing, apparently.

I am the kind of person who phones up my fiance and says, "hey I just found a hysterical video of two people who do a fake first dance to Baby Got Back!  And its choreographed and everything!" And he says, "Yeah babe.  That video came out 6 years ago."

Oh.

Sometimes I wonder what I actually did at college.  Distressingly, the answer seems to be worked my ass off.

I resent the implication that I need to join Twitter to keep up with you folks.  Whatever happened to emailing me?  Bah.  (cue mental image of Dr. Evil doing the macarena.  "I'm with it!  Dakka dakka dakka...)  I suppose to keep up with all you fresh young things I should go get my Twitter name now, just in case someone else decides they want to be Missallocation (see what I did there?  I crack myself up.)  Sigh.

But I did buy the plates to print my wedding invitations today :)  And so far, without having printed any of them, I really love them.  We shall see.

There is a hell on earth.

Bridal shows: to be avoided like the plague. As Lisa so aptly stated, "you've already made too many decisions for this to be helpful...so why are we here??" Apparently, just to pick up a Men's Warehouse coupon.

I need to cease being sucked in by the lure of free stuff. The dress is literally the only time in my life i have ever won anything, and now I am going to get spam phonecalls for the rest of my life.

Hrmph. I guess I did also get some magazines out of it, one of which had a very lovely photo of the exact combo of flowers I was hoping to use (but was still wondering if it would look good.) So not a total fail, but I would still call us getting the last parking spot our biggest success of the day.

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Apparently I have some griping to do

Just a little teaser

Every so often I have this feeling of vague disquiet, that something is wrong that I should be able to put my finger on but just can't.  Last night this feeling started up, and it still hasn't gone away, and I am wondering what it is that my subconscious thinks I should be angsty over.

I did have a dream last night that one of my best friends from middle school/high school, who I haven't spoken to (sadly) since high school, met me in some shop, and told me my skin was red and blotchy.  In the dream I responded, "but nowadays its always red and blotchy."  Should this make me concerned?

I know one of the reasons I am a bit nervous - just signed up for a fitness class, and I feel like it could easily mean I will be sore for the whole month of February.  But my sister will be there to tell me if I am being a real wimp, so that's encouraging.  Nothing like a little sibling rivalry to make sure I don't cheat on exercising.

I also (finally) submitted the design for the save the dates to have the letterpress plate made.  I am still hopeful that my homemade one will work - you can be sure there will be at least one if not several posts on that subject, once I have the supplies to give it a try.

On A Practical Wedding today there was a wedding grad post about a woman who clearly knew what she was doing, I mean her style was so spot-on, so unique - it was one of those weddings I aspire to have design-wise (except in my style, and not hers, if that makes any sense.)  And yet this woman admitted to having some serious second and third guessing about her decisions and I wonder - is that why I feel slightly uneasy?  Because slowly but surely, after 12 months of engagement, the decisions are starting to trickle in. 

I have actually committed to a save the date design, and I have been rejecting stationary designs since about February of last year.  Although in a way I have not committed, as I haven't sent them yet.  But still.  The fact that I am starting to buy things, that I have signed all the major contracts... maybe this is why the self-doubt.

God I can't wait to just get married and be done.  Fast forward button please?

Feminism, and other topics guaranteed to start a fight at a dinner party

Last week at work, I had a tremendous opportunity, to attend a meeting for my project with the local planning permission board with several other members of my firm, including a partner and the ceo.

When I was called in and asked if I was available to attend the meeting, my supervisor made it clear, though he had plenty of other false reasons he could have used, that I was being asked to attend to be the token female.  I put this down to slight awkwardness on his part, and tried not to be offended - title ix or not, this was going to be an important opportunity for me, and I was going to make the most of it.

When he then announced to the team that I had gone, he again mentioned that the reason I had gone was because I was female, and the rest of the team that had to go was male.  I have definitely heard of sexism being an issue in my field - there is still a large divide between percentage of women graduating from accredited schools (just over 50%) versus women practicing (something like 35%) versus women who are principals (something like 20%).  I understand there are factors involved that women are removing themselves from the field, not being forced out, but still - I am not sure how I feel about the whole thing.

Should I be appreciative that my supervisor did not try and sugar coat things for me?  The truth is that I am at least competent, or there was no way they would have risked me at such an important meeting, and I did benefit hugely from the trip.  But is that really all I am worth?

What a horrid week

This is what I feel like right now:  cranky and a bit rained on.

Sometimes, its just one of those.

This week, I can check off my to-do list:

• being an hour late for work
• being late getting back from lunch
• going out of the way to purchase supplies needed at work, then leaving those same supplies on the floor of my apartment instead of bringing them in to the office, where they were counting on having them
• spending $50 on lightbulbs for the office
• locking myself out of my house, with my elderly dogs locked inside
• throwing a fit over having to listen to college basketball
• being unreasonably upet over the timing of a bath
• NOT WORKING OUT A SINGLE TIME.  seriously wtf I am going to die.
• getting the addresses wrong on two of my Christmas cards
• staying 2 hours late at work with the rest of my team to trim off the bottom of our title sheets, which had the name of the building misspelled.  I didn't misspell it, but it was still frustrating.

I am pretty much done, my brain is melted.  We are supposed to see Harry Potter tonight and go out to eat, and thank god because I don't believe I could rustle up even scrambled eggs on toast tonight.

blech.  

Already tired of waiting

the rutabaga got tired waiting for us to eat him, and decided to start a new life of his own.  we ate him anyway.

Sometimes we drive through little old neighborhoods on our way to somewhere, and this feeling starts to creep in until it has invaded every aspect of my conciousness: I MUST own a home.

I imagine my experience is similar to that of someone consumed by baby mania, a combination of hope, fear, and feelings of complete inadequacy.

I am a project-oriented person, its what gets me through the patches in my life. In London I realized one of my big dissatisfactions with the day to day was the lack of having a project to work on, because it wasn't practical.

In our tiny apartment, I look around and know that I have run out of spaces to put things, and that I have run out of patience with the things not to my satisfaction. I want more than 1 room to exist in, so that if someone plays loud annoying video games, I don't have to walk around my own living room in headphones. I can't wait until the day that when something goes wrong, I don't think to myself, "well that is going to come out of the deposit." I want to be able to redo a bathroom, paint walls a colour other than white, buy real furniture, and to not have the weight of moving in another 9 months pressing down.

But there is no avoiding the fact that we are pretty broke, and it doesn't really matter how much I want this. In this area, it will be a hell of a long time before we have enough for a down payment with a sensible mortgage.

But I would really like my own space please.

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