the insignificant ramblings of a disturbed graphic designer
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Seattle
We went to Seattle last weekend to attend the wedding of our friends Patty and Rich, who met in Seattle but actually live in the Bay Area now. We stayed with our friends Chris and Jana, who used to live in the Bay Area but have since relocated to Seattle (Wedgwood, actually). Are you confused yet?
The wedding was an opportunity for Velma to see some old college friends she doesn’t get to see very often. Rich was one of Velma’s best friends in college, and they were part of the swing dancing scene in St. Louis, and later in the Bay Area.
Velma and I used to work in the same building as Jana, and Chris and Jana asked us to be the photographers for their wedding a few years back, in a park in the South Bay. They’ve since relocated to Seattle (Wedgwood), and were kind enough to put us up and show us around a bit too (I haven’t been to Seattle in over a decade). Not to mention picking us up and dropping us off at the airport! Friends can be awesome, can’t they?
We spent most of our time in the Fremont District and Queen Anne, and Jana and Velma spent a solid chunk of time in World Spice downtown, behind Pike Place.
Here are a few of the places/things I enjoyed in/around Seattle:
Eat Local A cool organic café and grocery on Queen Anne Avenue N. They use local ingredients and make small batches that are perfect for couples or individuals to pick up on their way home. They also brew Stumptown Coffee.
Nikki McClure Nikki McClure makes extraordinarily beautiful papercut illustrations in a woodcut-like style. You may have seen her calendars or notecards, or recognize her work from books or magazines. We came across a whole bunch of her work (including a few framed originals, which are fascinating to look at up close) in the above-mentioned Eat Local shop, since she illustrated all their product labels.
Destee Nation Shirt Company Chris took us to his favorite T-shirt shop. I really liked several of the designs, but since my travel bags were pretty stuffed and I didn’t want to spend much money on this trip, I decided I’d wait and maybe purchase from their website later.
Revival Ink I saw this artist’s tees and hoodies at a boutique in Queen Anne and at the Fremont Sunday Market too. I liked two or three of the prints a lot, and would’ve bought one of the hoodies, but while they’re a more earth-friendly 70% bamboo and 30% organic cotton, they have those terribly cheap zippers that seem to jam within a month of use.
Chocolopolis Another of Chris’s faves, this shop features some exquisite artisan chocolates from around the world, and has free samples out all day.
Hollywood Schoolhouse This is where the wedding was held, a lovely but slightly quirky historical building. The 1912 brick structure hosts lots of weddings and banquets, and has some interesting decorations.
Gas Works Park This 19-acre park is on the site of a former coal-powered gas and oil plant, acquired by the city in the ’60s and opened to the public in 1975. Right on Lake Union, in the middle of Seattle, the park features stunning vistas of downtown and the lakeside portions of the city (Velma, Jana, and Chris pictured above, enjoying the view).
Lenin Since we were only a block away, we simply had to stop and see the 16-foot bronze statue of Lenin in the Fremont. Olya had told me about this (appropriately enough) a couple years ago; I hadn’t seen it when I visited Seattle my first time. If you have a spare quarter-million bucks, you can buy Comrade Lenin for your yard. He’s for sale.
The Fremont Troll The other thing I hadn’t seen last time was the famous Troll. Somehow Holly and I entirely missed the Fremont neighborhood, although we squeezed in practically everything else in our three-day vacation about a decade ago.
World Spice Merchants This popular spot behind Pike Place Market occupied Velma and Jana so long I had to walk around outside because the strong smells were becoming too much for my allergies. Most interesting to me was the Mongolian tea brick, actual bricks of tea which in the past were broken up to use as currency.
Posted by espd at 7:58 PM |
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Thursday, July 24, 2008
Ringo & His All-Starr Band bring on the hits from the 1970s and '80s
When I told my friend Scott that I was going to see Ringo Starr, he actually asked, "Is he still alive?" And he was serious.
*rolls eyes*
Velma is a huge Beatles fan (actually she's little, not huge, but she likes the Beatles a lot), so for her birthday last month I got her tickets to see Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, who were performing last night at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga.
I'm not a huge Ringo fan, but I like the Beatles a lot, and I was interested to see the show for two reasons: 1) I grew up a couple miles from the Mountain Winery but I've never been to a concert there in all these years, and 2) I was interested to see who was in Ringo's All-Starr Band (not to mention that it would be my first time seeing a Beatle).
The beauty and uniqueness of Ringo's touring band is in the stars he gets. You wouldn't ordinarily see these guys together on stage unless it was at a rare one-off benefit concert or something. But the real brilliance is that they don't just play Beatles songs and Ringo solo material. Each member of the band gets one or two chances at center stage, to trot out a couple of their hits from the 1970s or '80s, with these other exceptional musicians backing him up.
And they are definitely hits. You'd probably know each one from the decades of radio play they've gotten, even if you didn't recognize the song titles, or the names of the guys responsible for them.
At first I didn't recognize Hamish Stuart, Colin Hay, or Gary Wright on sight or by name, but when each took center stage and began the songs they're famous for, it was obvious.
I was particularly psyched to see Edgar Winter and Billy Squier, who both completely rocked. I can't believe Edgar Winter's still rollicking through his über-hit "Frankenstein" after all these years, and still playing four or five different instruments during the song! That guy's gotta be about 104 by now.
Ringo is smart enough to know his roadshow has more appeal with the addition of these other marquee-name musicians. I mean, Ringo was a Beatle, yeah, but he's not the greatest singer of all time. As Velma put it, "I couldn't really listen to a whole show of Ringo singing."
But we both enjoyed the show a great deal. Even most of Ringo's stuff was enjoyable. And when we got bored we'd just scan the crowd to try to find anyone younger than us who wasn't there with their parents.
Posted by espd at 7:26 PM |
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Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Velma's birthday weekend
We went to the coast for Velma's birthday last weekend. Velma turned 30 on Friday, so she took a Redwood Day* and we went for a hike in Butano State Park, down the coast near Pescadero.
We had booked our friends' families' beach house (pictured above) for the weekend to celebrate both our birthdays (mine's next week), and invited a handful of friends to join us. The weather on the coast was foggy, but a couple miles inland at Butano it was warm and clear, so we had a nice long walk on Friday and I took a lot of photos.
Velma and I had dinner at Duarte's Tavern (pronounced, for some reason, as "doo-artz") in Pescadero, where Velma had crab's legs and I had red snapper and chips/fries. The fries were rally good and the snapper was not bad, although what I really enjoyed was the half-and-half soup (not on the menu, you have to ask for it). It's half artichoke and half green chili, and it's a stupendous concoction.
We bought some supplies (locally made, natch) at the store across the street (downtown Pescadero consisting of two whole cross-streets) and headed back to the beach house.
The rest of the foggy weekend was spent catching up with friends we don't see very often, talking and joking, relaxing, reading books, taking lots of pictures outdoors, exploring tidepools, watching the surf and quail babies, and doing a somewhat difficult 500-piece puzzle (pictured on the table above) which Velma bought at Muir Woods the week before.
* Save the Redwoods League, where Velma works, gives employees two extra vacation days each year to go out and spend time in the redwoods.
Posted by espd at 6:14 PM |
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Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Orson escaped
Orson went out in the back yard Monday morning as usual, but when Velma came home and we went to call him in from the back door, he didn't come. This is strange, since he usually comes running as soon as he hears us open the door.
We looked around the yard and he was nowhere to be found. The gate was ever so slightly ajar, so we figured he must have squeezed out.
We started looking around the apartments and houses in the alley near our yard, but he didn't come no matter how many times we called. We looked over fences, went into the yards of the neighbors we know, and then started making larger circles in our search.
I kept expecting to hear the tinkling little bell on his collar any minute, but as it got later and later, and he didn't come running up meowing, I started to get worried.
Velma had a thing to go to in the evening after dinner, but I was getting too worried to eat, so after she left I grabbed my flashlight and started walking around the block calling and whistling for him. Orson usually comes to my whistle.
He's been out all day! I kept thinking, How far could he have gone in that time?
But he's not that bold. He wouldn't have gone too far. Or would he? Did another cat come along? Maybe Orson went running along with him, only to get lost somewhere blocks away where he's never been.
Wild conspiracy theories started whirling around in my head as I passed a telephone poll with a "LOST CAT" poster on it. Is there a cat thief in our neighborhood? Did someone see Orson in the yard and grab him? He's friendly enough to strangers that he probably wouldn't put up a fight (damn him). Did a nasty landlord catnap him? But no, the two bricks that keep the gate closed from the inside weren't moved, and a thief wouldn't have been able to replace them from outside the gate.
I came home and made dinner, hoping Orson would show up at the back door now that it had gotten dark. Maybe he'd gone exploring and then got lost or freaked out by a noise or something and has been hiding out quietly all afternoon somewhere nearby...I hoped.
Damn cat. A year and a half ago I was verging on taking him back to the SFSPCA, but today I actually like him, now that he's calmed down and become more like a normal cat.
What if we've lost him?
I thought about Luna, who was hit by a speeding car on my supposedly quiet street in Mountain View. I thought about Bandit, the kitten I had when I was a little kid. One of the first times she went out in the back yard, she got scared and hid in the center of a bush after dark, even while my dad and I were walking all around nearby, calling for her, looking with flashlights. What if Orson's so freaked out that he won't come even if he hears us calling him? I'll never spot him in all the nooks and crannies in this city!
I went out again after eating dinner and walked around for over an hour, several blocks in every direction, making a wide loop of the neighborhood around our house. I even went down Mission and Ceasar Chavez, looking in parking lots and under cars, the whole time dreading that I'd spot him dead in the street.
Damn cat.
Velma got home around 11pm and we went out in the alley again, and around the block one more time. No jingly bell. No meow. No Orson.
Velma went to bed. I stayed up an hour or so longer, looked out the back door hoping he'd come back. No Orson.
I took a shower and got ready for bed, looking out the door one more time. No Orson.
Velma had put one of his blankets and a bowl of water outside the back door. We'd left the bedroom window open in case we'd hear him meowing in the middle of the night. I hoped he'd come back in the night.
Velma woke up early as usual, and went to check on him.
No Orson.
She left for work, and I fell asleep again, thinking about how to make "Lost Cat" poster.
I awoke when I heard the front door open. Velma had gotten all the way downtown and turned around to come home again, worried about Orson. She went straight to the back door to check again, I heard her open it and call, "Here kitty..."
Then I heard her voice raise a couple octaves and call again, practically with panic, "Here kitty!" and I sat up in bed. I heard her going out the back yard into the alley, and her voice got more distant, but I could tell she was saying something. I just couldn't hear what she was saying.
A minute later she came back in and I heard the back door shut, and next I heard the jingly little bell I'd been afraid I'd never hear again, as she set Orson down on the kitchen floor and he pranced off to his water dish.
She found the little white furry bastard meowing from the neighbors' yard, right across the alley from our back yard. He was trapped in their yard (although not really, since there's a big cat-sized gap under their gate door), and we have no idea where he'd spent all night. Or the day before, for that matter. Maybe he was just a couple backyards away and couldn't hear us calling. Maybe he'd been exploring under some house (he was covered in dust and dirt) and couldn't hear us. Maybe he was lost the whole time and just finally found his way back home in the morning. We have no idea. I'm just glad he's back.
Posted by espd at 2:09 PM |
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Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Restaurant review: The Groves
I posted this to Yelp but they don't allow links, some I'm posting it here too.
The Groves 12990 Avenue of the Giants Myers Flat, CA 95554 707-943-9930 5pm to 9pm
Surrounded on all sides by Humboldt Redwoods State Park, Myers Flat is a minuscule town that one wouldn't ordinarily think rates a restaurant as good as The Groves. Yet here it is, right on the Avenue of Giants, just off Highway 101.
We're very familiar with the local fare, as we take brief jaunts to the redwoods once or twice a year from San Francisco. So it's with plenty of local experience that I can say that The Groves is extraordinary. We were in the area for two and a half days, and we went back our second night for dinner because it was so good the first time (and let's face it — there's very little else that compares, locally).
I gave The Groves 4 stars because it didn't disappoint, on two separate occasions. I was skeptical at first when some bread arrived with the menus that was far too sweet and fluffy for dipping in the olive oil it was served with. I was also puzzled by the slightly schizophrenic decor that's certainly nice and upscale enough, but had a few puzzling touches that made me wonder whether I was seeing a bit of the building's original use show through.
The staff was professional and friendly, our food was prepared quickly and served hot, and the water kept flowing. We were offered wine from the associated Riverbend Cellars next door, and we tried a glass each of their 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon and the 2003 Merlot.
The halibut was quite good, I've only had better at restaurants right on the coast, and the braised and roasted duck was excellent — very flavorful and not at all gamey. We finished with splendid deserts (mousse and homemade chocolate mint ice cream) served in portions worthy of chocolate lovers.
The following day we had The Groves' hamburger and one of their single-serving wood-fired pizzas. The pizza's size was just right after a day of hiking around in the redwoods, not too small as they often are in many California cuisine establishments. Even with the thin crust (my preference anyway), the meal was filling on a day that I was certainly hungry, and the wood-fired pizza and its adornments were extremely flavorful and the crust extra-crispy, just as I like it. The burger was fresh and excellent too, and the fries were great, no ketchup necessary, which I can't say often of restaurant fries.
For those unfamiliar with the Redwoods Region, Myers Flat is located just off Highway 101, a short drive (~10 miles) north of Garberville (which is about 200 miles north of San Francisco and about 70 miles south of Eureka).
Velma and I got our Hitchin' rings tattooed on. It was my first tattoo, and Velma's third (if you don't already know, I'm not tellin').
She's going to change one of hers, partly because it didn't scab and heal right and it looks kinda unfinished, and partly because she wants to mark some personal changes.
When she asked my opinion of her sketch, it led to a discussion we'd had years ago but she'd forgotten. I hate most tattoos. I think most of them are terrible. I think the artwork is often terrible, I think the skill of many tattoo artists is questionable, I think a lot (most, actually) of the things people choose to permanently put on their skin are bog-awful looking and barely better than cartoons.
It's just my opinion and I realize that people can put any damn thing they want on themselves. I simply have a different design and art aesthetic than most people, and when it comes to tattoos it's the same way. Why would I want a dagger, or a "Mom," or a rose or something so pat and predictable?
I mean, be original people. A tattoo is an intensely personal statement, I don't even know how anyone can pick a design out of a book, somebody else's design.
Even if I did go with some totally standard tattoo design like a skull, I certainly wouldn't render it in the cartoony style that most tattoos are done in. And why does everything need to be outlined in black? Lemme give you a hint: If a tattoo artist's book consists of mostly black-outlined artwork filled in with colors, don't have anything to do with it.
And wtf? Why does everybody think words etched on your skin have to be done in old-style Germanic letters?
You may roll your eyes, but if I get other tattoos at some point, one will almost definitely be word-related. But I can guarantee it won't be in an old-style Germanic typeface or some ridiculous script.
Here are some good (and some bad) type-related tattoos, in a book titled Body Type.
Updated April 2008: Added ACLU and Save the Redwoods League, which I had forgotten.
Velma and I used to support nonprofits with our blood, sweat, and tears. We first met in a large building full of nonprofits, where we both worked. When you work for an NGO, especially a relatively small, local one, you don't make a lot of money. Sometimes you make very little money (I was making below-poverty-level wages there for a while).
But you don't do it for the money. You do it for the "second paycheck." That's what they sometimes call the feeling you get maybe it's pride, maybe it's joy when you get to do work every day that's all about trying to make the world a better place. It's truly a wonderful and fulfilling way of life, if you can hack it.
These days, Velma probably gets that feeling a lot more often than I do (she works for Save the Redwoods League). I mean, I like my work, and I chose CNET Networks partly because I didn't want to work at an advertising agency or someplace where I'd only be selling more useless crap to more people. But while I believe my work's worthwhile, it's definitely not saving the planet.
Getting paid decent wages, however, does have its up-sides. Velma and I are finally in a position these days to save money for our future, and we're even able to give donations to a bunch of organizations we like. Even if we don't get out to Arastradero Preserve to plant native grasses anymore (our own garden gets most of that weekend love), we were happy to be able to support the work of several groups this year with monetary donations.
If any of these organizations sound worthy to you, please consider a gift.
I did some work for Amnesty International a long time ago, and I also donated to them a long time ago, but a new donation was long overdue. Most people know a little about Amnesty, but did you know how broad their focus really is, and how many worthwhile campaigns they have?
Mario Savio, on the steps of Sproul Hall, said, "There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all." When the law won't fix the problem, Earth First!ers put their bodies on the line to stop the destruction. Some of the Earth First!ers I've met were the bravest, most noble people I've ever known. In the old days I used to donate stamps to North Coast Earth First! but this year I finally decided to subscribe to the Earth First! Journal.
Earthjustice began as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund and has provided legal assistance on environmental issues for almost 40 years, representing citizens groups, nonprofits, scientists, and others. "Environmental litigation has been key to preserving threatened natural resources and protecting people's environmental rights. Lawsuits have protected millions of acres of wilderness and hundreds of endangered species. They have helped improve air and water quality and have forced polluting companies to clean up their discharges." Plus I love their slogan: "Because the earth needs a good lawyer."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is sort of the equivalent of Earthjustice but for the Internet. EFF uses advocacy and lawsuits to preserve free speech rights in the context of today's digital age. Among its many activities, EFF has participated in lawsuits in support of the college students who published information about the major security flaws in Diebold Election Systems, and against corporate and government infringement of the First Amendment rights of individuals, artists, journalists, bloggers, and others.
The Environmental Protection Information Center has fought for the North Coast in the courts for years. Headwaters Grove probably wouldn't be standing today if it hadn't been for organizations like EPIC.
I've been watching KQED TV since I was a tot and listening since I was in my teens and 20s, and for the past decade or so it's been on almost constantly when I'm at home. I've learned so much from KQED radio that I can confidently say it's made me a better person.
“On the Media” is one of the best shows on radio, if you ask me. The media critics at this show keep a careful eye on world media, and fill in the listeners each week with healthy doses of wit and wisdom. I listen every week, even if I miss the air-time and have to download their podcast later. This year I was happy to contribute directly to WNYC where the show is produced.
Pachamama Alliance works with the Achuar, an indigenous group living in the Amazon basin of Ecuador, to develop a sustainability and economic plan that will protect and manage the two million acres of their tropical rainforest territory.
Planned Parenthood is a vital resource in a country that's incredibly backward about sexuality and where most people are hopelessly un- and misinformed about health and reproductive issues. They provide health and sexuality info to teens, women, and men, contraception, HIV/STD tests, pregnancy tests, and much more. We are proud to support the work of Planned Parenthood.
Velma may work there, but that doesn't stop us from giving them money. Save the Redwoods League was founded 90 years ago to acquire and protect what's left of the redwoods. You probably think there are a lot of redwoods left. If it hadn't been for SRL's work over the last 90 years, there wouldn't be any. Most of the redwoods in state and federal parks were originally bought by SRL and transferred to public ownership.
“This American Life” is the other show I can never miss. A few years ago I learned that Chris Ware had done an animation for a live performance of “This American Life,” and I'd seen a snippet of it online. It was awesome. This year I learned that it's actually available as a DVD/book as a premium for donating to the Chicago station that produces “This American Life” (see the “Lost Buildings DVD” description).
Velma's been interested in this little local org for a while, and she's considering volunteering with them. Urban Sprouts works with San Francisco school gardens "to help youth actively engage in school, eat better and exercise more, and connect with the environment and each other."
Wikipedia is truly one of the world's greatest resources, and truly one of the world's greatest ideas. I use it almost every day, and even though the slogan is "free knowledge for everyone," this year I decided we should pay for the privilege with a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation.
Posted by espd at 5:31 AM |
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Thursday, August 23, 2007
Red-headed creatures
I've been a fan of Robert A. Heinlein since grade school and I've mentioned here and in other venues how much I've been influenced by his characters, how much I've learned from his books.
I recently found a magazine that published two of his poems, which had never been published before, shortly after his death in 1988.
If only I had read this a few years ago.
"The Witch's Daughters" by Robert A. Heinlein, 1946
Have no truck with the daughters of Lilith. Pay no mind to the red-headed creatures. Man, be warned by their sharp, white teeth; Consider their skulls, and their other queer features.
They're not of our tribe, with their flame-colored hair; They're no sib to us, with their pale, white skins; There's no soul behind those wild green eyes Man, when you meet one — walk widdershins!
When they die, they pop, like burst soap bubble (Eight hundred years is their usual span.) Loving such beings leads only to trouble. By Heaven, be warned, you rash young man!
— —
Oh man, I married one of those "red-headed creatures."
Velma has, by now, learned to avoid rolling her eyes when she sees me squirrel away some random slip of paper, or pile of magazines, of worse yet, box of seemingly useless junk. When I do this I still see her give me a sideways glance and a slight shake of the head, like she's given up trying to dissuade me. I usually respond with an indignant-yet-guilty "What?! I'm gonna use this some day, it's gonna come in handy."
She hates that I'm a packrat. Velma's one of those get-rid-of-it kinds of gals. And this occasionally leads to some interesting confrontations.
There are a few reasons why I'm a packrat (and maybe some underlying reasons I'm not even aware of).
Parental influence My dad wasn't a packrat, but he did have the prerequisite amount of old dad stuff in the garage and the attic that I was always fascinated with. My mom, on the other hand, is definitely a packrat. She's still got some of my toys from when I was little, and lots of old newspapers and magazines from the Kennedy era, and that's barely scratching the surface of the boxes and boxes of stuff squirreled away into every nook and cranny of her house.
My dad actually was actually more like Velma. He got rid of stuff pretty regularly, to the point where his large house eventually had rooms entirely devoid of contents. He kept some momentos and such, thankfully, like photo albums and some family quilts and such.
When I was growing up I kept lots of stuff too. I had bags of seashells and interesting rocks, boxes of Legos and other toys, books stacked all over my room, papers and pens and scissors and tape and cut-up magazines and all kinds of projects strewn about three rooms at a time.
My dad was always trying to get me to clean these up. I was always trying to convince him I was working on all of them at the same time, and that it was pointless to clean them up because I'd just have to get them out again to work on them, and it's not like we ever had any people come over anyway. Well, okay, once in a while we had visitors, and I did clean up my stuff on those occasions. Well, most of it.
And he was always telling me to clean up my room. Typical parent, huh? Fortunately for me, I had two big closets in my room, so I could throw all kinds of stuff into those. Typical kid, huh? Worked pretty well until one day I left my closet door open and he saw all the stuff in there and from then on he was perpetually on my case to clean out my closets too.
Purge regret One day in my teens I got fed up and finally went down to the garage, retrieved a big garbage can, and spent the entire afternoon in my closet filling the garbage can to the brim. I threw out magazines I'd had since the third grade, stuffed animals I hadn't looked at in years, books, toys, posters...stuff I can't even remember today.
I'd had enough of my dad hassling me to clean those closets, and the only way I could fight back was to give in and throw it all away in a flurry.
Many years later, long after I'd moved out and lived on my own, my dad sold his house and moved to a retirement community. I still had a lot of stuff stored in his attic and Velma and I went to sort through it, to throw some of it away and to see what was worth keeping. Looking through those boxes of kids books, toys, school projects and even stuff from my college years, the memories flooded back to me, from my early childhood all the way through age 21 or so. And as I uncovered box after box of memories, I remembered that day when I'd thrown out a garbage can full of memories, undoubtedly some of them I'd now never recall, and probably some irreplaceable items from my past. I felt sorrow knowing that I'd thrown away a vintage Raggedy Anne and Andy doll set that had been my mother's, and in my adolescent ignorance I hadn't known either its market value or its family worth. Today I still feel the pang of regret when I think of it, and I wonder what else I threw away all those years ago, over half my life ago, things that I'll never remember.
Fascination with history In school I never seemed that overly interested in history, but somewhere along the line I seemed to have picked up an appreciation for, if not history, historical artifacts. I like old papers and books, vintage magazines fascinate me, and rummaging through a really good antique store or a box of 60-year-old postcards can keep me occupied for hours.
I've recently realized that I'm getting old enough that looking back at my own personal historical artifacts is pretty fascinating too. To see pictures of my friends from the neighborhood, to look at the drawings I made as a child and see the beginnings of my predilection for graphic design. Even to revisit designs I made early in my career (and give thanks that I've improved).
Velma indulges me during these walks down memory lane, she even smiles a bit while she shakes her head. I may not be winning her over, but today she even brought me some old books from a garage sale.
Occasionally my packrat tendencies pay off, and even she has to admit it. A week or so ago, I was hesitant to throw away a mesh bag with a zipper, even though we couldn't think of any use for it. I know she had to try hard not to roll her eyes when I said I was going to put it in the basement because "I might think of something useful to use it for."
Just a few days later, when I was putting a handful of bungie cords back in the car where they normally end up uncoiling like unruly snakes, I realized they would all fit nicely into that mesh bag, and even Velma had to admit it was fortunate I hadn't thrown the bag away.
Today, while sorting through a box of old papers I'd been meaning to get around to since Bill Clinton was in office, I came across a business card with a note written on the back: " 'Break it Down' by Lydia Davis ? short on NPR's 'This American Life'." As far as I could tell, this business card was around ten years old. I didn't remember that story or person's name, but obviously it had made an impression on me or I wouldn't have scrawled it down to try to look it up again later.
I'd been to "This American Life"'s website many times over the years and it was never all that useful if you were looking for a specific episode, so I didn't hold much hope that this slip of paper would go anywhere but in the recycling bin.
But I looked it up again and lo and behold, they've recently redesigned their site and added more functionality. I did a quick search and quickly came up with the show in question, Episode #88, originally aired in 1998. And I could even listen to an audio stream.
Overall it's a good episode, but it's Act 6 that tips the scales. That's the part called "Break it Down" which had caused me to scrawl a note on a business card all those years ago, and the act's a perfect example of why "This American Life" is one of the best things on the radio and why I try to listen to it every single week.
I'd forgotten this episode and this act completely in the ensuing years since I'd written that note. But I'm glad I squirreled it away and that it eventually found its way from my desk to a pile of papers to a box. And that I kept it in that packrat way I do, and that I found it again today, and that I looked it up and found it and listened to it again.
And now, I can finally throw that business card in the recycling bin.
Velma and I have been thinking of moving for a while, and she recently started looking into whether we could afford to buy a small starter home or condo or something. Alas, it looks like it'll be a year or two...or three...or four...before we can afford it.
But we wanted to move anyway. Velma's pretty sensitive to the street noise that comes from living on our busy street, and if we close the windows at night it's really too warm inside. I can sleep through pretty much anything, but it wakes her up if we leave the windows open all night. And our south-facing huge wall of windows heats the place up just way too much all day long, so we have to cool it off at night somehow.
There are other factors: A less sketchy neighborhood would allow Velma to feel safer on her walks to and from BART, for example. And having some actual greenery around would be nice.
So, after two and a half years of living in my cool loft that I like so much, we're saying goodbye to it and moving to a funky place about a mile away in Bernal Heights. It's got crooked floors and a strange (but large) kitchen, but we'll make it work somehow. Finally our odd assortment of chairs will fit in somewhere!
The move and new address will come sometime in the next month; we're supposed to sign the lease in a day or two.
Posted by espd at 6:19 PM |
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Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Is Orson as smart as Nora?
Velma got a book from the library on clicker training your cat. She started a couple days ago on the training, and despite one setback that left her punctured and incredibly bloody, she's had a bit of success.
My guess is it's going to be slow going with our somewhat dumb vampire cat, but we'll see. I'm staying out of the clicker training for now. But I'm hoping Velma can eventually teach Orson to play chopsticks...or turn out the lights...
Posted by espd at 5:18 PM |
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Saturday, November 04, 2006
Gettin' hitched, part 1: branding your wedding
After Velma and I decided to get hitched, I started thinking about some of the cool things we'd get to make as part of the process, like invitations. I also harkened back to a post I'd seen a year ago on a blog by a designer whose work I admire, Jason Santa Maria, who had made a website for his wedding and had posted similarly about "branding" his wedding and the associated collateral material he'd made.
I googled it to find the post again, and was duly re-inspired. Jason's an excellent designer with an extremely good sense of how typography works on the web and in print. He's responsible, among other things, for last year's excellent redesign of A List Apart.
Over the ensuing months, I had lots of ideas about what we could do, and kept notes in the little Moleskine notebook I carry everywhere.
From the very beginning we called it a "hitchin'." I'll get into the choice of wording a little more in a later post about the whole process of deciding to get married, but suffice it to say: it wasn't odd to us at all to call it "Mark & Velma's Hitchin' Party," since we'd already been asking each other for months if we really wanted to get hitched.
The save-the-date
Being the excellent event planner that she is, Velma had worked back from our October 7 hitchin' day to select a date to send out the save-the-date announcement.
Usually for a design project I have at least a few days to sketch ideas and browse through some magazines or something for inspiration. But it turned out that I had about a day to plan and execute the save-the-date design, and Velma starts getting antsy (read: annoying) when I let a deadline slide by much.
So, since I had a reasonably good idea of the design style I wanted to project (a little quirky, a little pop-art, and somewhat organic in texture), I just threw something together in about an hour and a half.
The save-the-date postcard was never actually a printed postcard, since we emailed it to everyone, and called the small handful of people who we couldn't email. This has several benefits, such as: postage savings (none), faster delivery, cheaper to produce (free), and the ability to use a totally custom design.
So, while it was never actually physically printed, the postcard intentionally looked like a printed piece. I used real paper for a textured background, and made the type look like it was actually printed on the paper. The stamps look real, down to the authentic postmark, but in reality every single item on the card was composited in Photoshop. I thought it'd be clever to use the "I love you" stamp, and then threw in a twist by using a postmark from Estonia instead of a U.S. one.
The save-the-date not only introduced the M&V circle monogram I used as the mainstay of the brand, but was for some people the first time they heard we'd decided to get hitched!
The website
This was going to be my favorite part, but also the most time-consuming. I'd originally planned to create the entire site as a Movable Type blog so Velma and I could both administer posts, and so visitors could comment right on the site. However, it was already going to be a massive undertaking to just design and build the entire site in a little over two weeks, plus I wanted to do it as an entirely CSS-based layout. So I shelved the MT blog idea and decided I could revisit it when it was all done to see if I had time to convert the static pages into dynamic MT templates. It turned out I didn't.
After the save-the-date postcard's somewhat rushed beginnings, this would be the first item to have a full-blown design, and it would serve as a visual touchstone for the rest of the collateral items to follow, such as the all-important invitations. So, as with any design project, I needed to do some sketches, consider typefaces and styles and colors, and seek inspiration from other people's designs. I also needed to collect and create visual assets like the M&V monogram, the type-based logo and its shield, the green wallpaper pattern background, and the little print-inspired flourishes.
At the same time, Velma was outlining and writing most of the content. When she handed it over to me it was about 85% done. I reorganized a few things to make them work better in a website environment, edited some things and injected a little more strange humor here and there, and started styling some of it for coding it into xHTML. I usually begin in xPad or TextEdit, inserting a few tags here and there, mostly for styling the fonts, and inserting HREFs if I have URIs already or by looking them up in the browser on the fly.
I iterated a few designs before I settled on one that I really liked. And it was a good thing, because I was beginning to run short on time. Luckily, I'd decided to take a week off from work because I was seriously exhausted from the pace at work during the Webshots redesign process, so I had a week I could dedicate to designing, building, and testing the website.
I chose a lively color scheme of bright greens and light yellow to invoke our nature-inspired theme and to emphasize our somewhat nontraditional take on the concept of a wedding. I counterbalanced that with black and red as more traditional print and ink colors, and chose old-style wood type fonts to give a somewhat retro old-timey feel. I used Georgia for all the HTML text, which is a gorgeous serif font even on the web (most serif fonts are atrocious on screen), and I used several gothics and slab serif fonts to invoke a feel of artisan printing techniques. Last but not least, the tiny flourishes and the minute lines and dashed lines are in orange, as a nod to my bride's hair color and to throw in a fall color for our autumn wedding. The orange thread we used to stitch the invitations later was not just a coincidence.
After finalizing a design template that would be generally unchanged for most pages, I created some header variations for the content area in the center. Some of the pages needed simple headers and some needed headers with sub-headers. I used HTML text for the headers in keeping with good web-standards techniques, and spruced them up by bookending them with graphic flourishes.
After the basic page template was designed in Photoshop, I created the Photos, For Out-of-Towners, and Gifts pages next, since their content would vary most from the other pages, which are largely just text pages with nice styles and spacing applied. I knew I wanted to make something special for the Photos page, but that it had to be pretty fast and easy to implement, and needed to be updatable later with wedding and honeymoon photos. I liked what Jason did on his site but I didn't want to mess about in Flash and didn't know what he'd used.
I decided to experiment with Lightbox, a fairly new and very cool JavaScript library that seemed like it would be fairly pretty easy to implement. I hoped, anyway. Turned out it was easy, and I had our photo gallery up and running in an afternoon once I started building out the xHTML pages.
I spent most of the weekdays on my week off building the xHTML framework for all the pages and the CSS to make it all look good. I use Dreamweaver to do all this stuff, since it just goes about a million times faster than hand coding used to. During the process of making a fairly complex three-column CSS-based layout without tables, I relied heavily on Dan Cederholm's excellent book Bulletproof Web Design, which I can't endorse highly enough.
Most astonishingly, I was able to build a site for the first time that validates for xHTML 1.0 Strict instead of just Transitional. I rather surprised myself by being able to do it.
Later I'd enlist the help of Jason Ables, who gave me his handy little PHP script for the RSVP page. And while I spent an hour or two looking into Perl- and PHP-based scripts to create an interactive poll for our Surname Survey page, I simply ran out of time and had to use a simple "email us your suggestion" link.
I spent a lot of time and effort on the website, and I'm very happy with how it came out. Being the perfectionist that I am, there are of course a few minor things I would have done differently or better, given more time, but all in all it came out about 98% perfect, which is more than I can say about almost any client project. So I'm very pleased with it.
The site was recognized by a number of CSS galleries, sites that serve to inspire other designers and to showcase exemplary use of design and web-standards coding.
The invitations
I'm a pro at doing invitations, I've been designing them for all kinds of events and parties for over 15 years. But this was actually the first time I'd designed a wedding invitation. Designers love to show off how clever they are when making their own wedding invites, and I'm no different in this regard.
Given more time and money I would have made them exceptionally elaborate, with letterpress printing, tipped-in sheets, and other fancy printing techniques. But it was actually more important to make them by hand for two reasons: I wanted to show the personal care and effort we were making with each one. Also, it was important to us to plan and execute a wedding that was fun but not incredibly expensive. It would be against our principles to spend $50,000 so frivolously when you can have a wonderful, memorable time for a fraction of that cost.
So I turned to long experience with designing great-looking collateral materials for nonprofits who never have any budget for printing. I've become somewhat of an expert at this, and I called on all that experience to create a design that was totally professional looking but also totally unique. To top it off, we assembled the entire thing ourselves and probably made and mailed them all for less than $300.
I used a ream of paper I'd had left over from a client project about eight years ago. I used another ream of paper we'd picked up at a surplus store for about $2 (retails usually for about $30). I bought a matching ream of cover stock for the CD inserts and the RSVP postcards, and a box of envelopes.
Velma carved the block designs for the front leaf pattern from oak leaves she'd collected. Velma and I did the block printing in one evening, and by morning they were all dry. I designed the cards in Adobe Illustrator and intentionally made them fit two-up on a normal sheet of letter paper, so we could print everything in-house. The only exception was the RSVP cards, since I couldn't get the heavy card stock to feed through the printer. Instead, I took those to Kinko's and they were copied and cut in about ten minutes.
I hand-cut and folded all the other pieces and then our friend April assembled them while Velma sewed the orange stitch in the spine using her sewing machine.
We stuffed the 70 or so invites ourselves and Velma hand-addressed them, and affixed the special stamps I'd ordered from Stamps.com a few weeks earlier. The stamps turned out to be the most costly part of the whole invite, probably around $150 or so — one on the outer envelope and one on the RSVP postcard inside. The rest of the invite's printing cost nothing since we did it all in-house. Needless to say, the design was free : )
I'm extremely happy with the way they came out. They're very distinctive and definitely match our personalities, and they were a collaborative effort through and through (even if Velma felt for a while like I was hogging all the work).
The rings
I don't know where Velma came up with the idea of getting tattoo rings, but I liked the idea instantly. I've been considering a tattoo for a couple years now, and I was pretty close to getting one last winter, but never really got around to it. Actually, until two years ago, I'd never really considered it at all. I didn't dislike tattoos, but was never that interested in them either. At least not having one permanently on me.
But that's one of the reasons I liked the idea of tattooed wedding rings. Its permanence. After all, it would be a strong statement of our commitment to say to each other that we'd permanently wear our wedding rings.
We made sketches of patterns over several weeks, trying to come up with a design that would be personally meaningful and also simple enough to do in such a small space. We played around mostly with ways to try to entwine the letters M and V, but never came up with one we were both enthusiastic about.
Nearing the hitchin' date and needing to decide on something, I took a black felt tip pen out of my drawer and sketched a simple leaf on my finger — just three lines — and showed it to Velma. We had our ring design. The leaf is a significant symbol for both of us as environmentalists and lovers of nature, and the design also happened to be aligned with the design of the invitations and website too.
The other benefits, by the way, are that you never have to worry about losing your ring, and tattoos are a lot cheaper than diamonds ; )
The favors
I had all sorts of ideas for wedding favors I wanted to make, and was probably being way too ambitious considering we didn't have months and months to plan and execute them all, and some of them would've taken a considerable amount of time (like mini photo books).
We were running low on time, and the Sharpie website didn't have anything saying how long it took to fill and ship orders, so we decided to just get the MMs, which we could get with time to spare.
We'd made a huge playlist of awesome songs to play on an amplified iPod at the park, and I wanted to make DVDs with several hundred songs for everyone, but Velma was concerned that some people would want a normal audio CD to play in their cars. That, and the fact that we had less than a week to go at this point, limited us to a playlist of 22 songs on about 75 audio and MP3 CDs we burned over the next few days.
I made two special insert cards that showed which was an audio CD and which was an MP3 CD, and had the song titles and artists on the back. For any guest who didn't get one, we have some extras and I can mail you one, or you can stream Volume 1, a bunch of extra songs we played during the day that didn't fit on the CDs, using this handy little player I found. And if you're savvy enough, I bet you can figger out how to download the ones you like.
The photo & recipe book
This part's yet to come, so I'll update the post when it's actually finished : )
Update: Regarding the oak-leaf motif used throughout the design of our Hitchin' website and invitations:
I recently learned (from a post by J.K. Rowling, interestingly) that the Oak is the Celtic tree associated with the birthdays of both Velma and myself (June 10 through July 7). I'd like to say that I'd pre-planned this symbolism in the design stage, but I didn't. The use of oak leaves was connected to our selection of the Oak Grove picnic area in Huddart Park, and was symbolic to our overall love of nature and fondness for oaks in particular.
But the Celtic birthday association is a pleasant bonus.
tags: hitchin', Velma, personal, friends, music, design, web design
The wedding was an opportunity for Velma to see some old college friends she doesn’t get to see very often. Rich was one of Velma’s best friends in college, and they were part of the swing dancing scene in St. Louis, and later in the Bay Area.
Eat Local
Aaron
Alexis
Anne
Anya
April
Ari
Bo
Brian
Bryan
Chris
Dave & Terri
Dave H.
Debby
Drue
Fibu
Four Waters
Fwegan (aka Ynnej)
Holly
Hilary
Internet Rockstar
Jason
Jen
Jesse
Jessica
Kansinee
Karl
Laura
Leah
Marc
Martin
Matt
Mike
MJ
Morgan
OkayDave
Olya