New Thing #51: Why Won't You Print!???

At work, I am responsible for creating a lot of the visual design work for the Christian Principles team. For the upcoming fundraising banquet, I designed something with Adobe InDesign. It was pretty challenging for me because I've never worked with the Adobe design platforms before but it was super fun. I'm glad that the program is going to be part of my repertoire after a few more months of experimenting with its different capabilities.

New Thing #50: Ink Blot

I took the Rorschach Test. This is the test using inkblots on paper and the person taking the test tells the examiner what each blot looks like. There are 10 blots (some in black & white and some in color) and my own personal reactions to each picture. Feel free to comment with your own answers.

It looks like a star-shaped guitar.

It looks like two women with their pony-tails hanging straight up and down, reclining against something (away from each other) and looking at each other in the face.
It looks like two red lizards crawling up an upside-down butterfly and a man with a green head and blue tunic and they are going to meet at the top. Will they have to fight to stay on top?
It looks like a crab rearing up with it's red and yellow claws. The crab looks like it's going to crash down.
It looks like two red sea horses smoking blue pipes under the Eiffel Tower with blue and yellow splotches of color around them.

It looks like a big, smooshed bug with a stinger at the end at small pinchers at the top .

It looks like two people facing each other with red shawls over their faces and unfortunately, they are both bleeding from the knees. Ewww.
It looks like two women fighting over a basket with a red butterfly between them and a red rabbit behind each of them.
It looks like a scary face with drooping ears at the top and eye holes in the center: like a bear skull that's placed on a table facing me. It reminds me of some of the movie masks that people wore in "primal" movies dealing with rituals.

It looks like a butterfly caught on an updraft and soaring upwards.

New Thing #49: Ole Friend

Completely out of the blue, I called a friend who lived a few houses down from me and who I've known since middle school. She had sent me a text message for my birthday and I just now decided it would be awesome to talk to her again. Her name is Catherine and she told me she's now living in Vancouver. I invited her over for dinner and I cooked fajitas and she brought over a 6-pack of Rolling Rock. We had a delightful time catching up over the past couple of years. Last time we really hung out was like 3-4 years ago! I think we will be hanging out from time-to-time since we've always gotten along so well together.

New Thing #48: Butch Cassidy

I honored the late Paul Newman. He was a generous philanthropist and awesome actor! I went and bought a bottle of his salad dressing and now I'm going to be more interested in buying his products because they are going to continue "Newman's Own" which gives all it's proceeds (following taxes) to charity. It has earned $200 million dollars already! The non-profit's mission statement is: "Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good." Plus, they taste really good and he uses healthy ingredients. Screw Hidden Valley!

New Thing #47: Prime-time Debate

What with the scary $700 billion government bail-out, I wanted to see what the presidential candidates said about the financial crisis. So, I tuned in for the entire presidential debate at Ole Miss. 30 minutes were devoted to the financial crisis, 30 minutes were on foreign policy ( which is what the debate was supposed to be on but no one really cares because what's going on in our own country right now). My mom and I talked about it for hours that day and we watched Anderson Cooper's round-table analysis following the debate.

New Thing #46: Dinner and a Movie

I have always wanted to throw a "Location-themed" dinner party. For instance, someone could make enchiladas and we could sit down and watch a movie like "Y Tu Mama Tambien." Today, I threw an England-inspired dinner party. I served corned beef and cabbage to my friend Vanessa and we watched the movie "Miss Potter" about the author Beatrix Potter. It was a delightful evening!

New Thing #45: Customer Complaint

After struggling for an hour with a product I got for a Christmas present, I took it back to the store and got a new one. Then I took THAT product home and that one was also faulty. So, I took that one back and got in-store credit. I then went home and I was so dissatisfied about how a product worked, that I wrote a formal complaint to the manufacturer.

"I was very disappointed with the "Quilting Basting Gun." I recieved it as a present for Christmas this year and it has taken me this long to get my quilt done. I took out the gun, loaded it and tried to baste my quilt together. On the very first try, it broke and a piece of red plastic fell out of the top when I shook it. I followed the instructions exactly--especially STEP 3, which was emphasized in the instructions. I took it to JoAnn's Fabrics and they swapped it for a new model. I thought the one I had was defective model but sure enough, when I brought the new Basting Gun home, it also continued to misfire and got jammed CONSTANTLY. I was incredibly dissatisfied with this product. I will never be buying anything from DRITZ that is sold at JoAnn's and I am going to look at your products to make sure that I never buy any of your junk again. On another note, I think the product is crappy because you made it with cheap, Chinese materials and now charge Americans $25.95 for a piece of junk that probably cost you about $5.00. You are terrible business people to ship your work overseas and I hope you go bankrupt."

9/29/08 Note: The company wrote me a nice e-mail back apologizing and asking if there was anything else they could do to make my experience better. Because I already returned the product, it's not like they needed to do anything but I was glad that they wrote back.