I Shall Not Want

This is totally how Beth prayed when she was a little girl and she really really wanted something:

Dear Father God, Thank you for being such a nice God, and being so generous to me. Thank you for letting me have plenty to eat, especially rice because I love rice. God, if you let my flight not be canceled on Christmas Eve so I can go home and spend Christmas Day with my family and friends and people who love me I promise to give up Facebook for the whole month of January. Maybe February too. And I promise to stop biting my nails, and to always signal when changing lanes. Thank you again for being so good to me, and I also promise to call home more often.

Amen.

Hoping to Find My Feet

It has snowed in Seattle, time to celebrate!

Before I could even dial the emergency number for my work, my boss phoned me to suggest that I stay home. What a dear sweet man! Safety first! As long as I send an email saying I am "working from home" I won't have to take a sick day to cover it.

I have yet to attempt to drive in the snow because I feel that my California upbringing lacked the chapter on "Using Credit Cards to Scrape Windows, Farting as a Defrosting Mechanism, and Other Useful Snow Tips." On Sunday I attempted to drive up a very slight incline on a very slightly slushy road and slid backwards maybe 20 feet and it left me a little shaken.

One thing, I need to start having kitty litter on hand at all times, because if you get stuck apparently:
1. Do not spin your wheels. This will only dig you in deeper.
2. Turn your wheels from side to side a few times to push snow out of the way.
3. Use a light touch on the gas, to ease your car out.
4. Pour sand, kitty litter, gravel or salt in the path of the wheels, to help get traction.

I personally believe this KOMO5 news report was generated specifically so that employees could send the link to their bosses and say "See? I better stay home!"

It says "Traffic was completely stopped at times on parts of State Route 520 on the Eastside as snow covered the highway, and some drivers abandoned their cars and began to walk down the freeway." First of all, that's like the number one thing that WikiHow says NOT to do in inclement weather, since your car provides shelter and is much easier to find than your small frozen body. Secondly, most of 520 is a two lane highway, and a lot of it encompasses a bridge that floats on Lake Washington. You put just two abandoned cars there, and pretty much no one is going anywhere, unless they're driving a Duck. Lastly, between the credit crunch and the possibility of the Big 3 shutting down, I don't know where those people think they're going to get a new car if anything happens to their good old Hybrid Roadblock LX.

Lucky for me, I live 5 blocks from 3 different price levels of groceries, so I'll be fine. The neighborhood record store, used book store and indie theater are also sounding attractive. I am wondering if Pike Place will be a mess today. Or there's always the monorail to the mall.

Nicole sent me this song which she randomly found and thought might be appropriate, maybe as a snow shoveling soundtrack.

Also from Nicole:
Is "working from home" what you kids call it now? Puts a new spin on "business time."

I eat filet mignon and I'm nice and young

Best believe I'm number one
~ ~ ~

Once every 12-18 months or so, Wieden + Kennedy starts a new school year with twelve talented people from all over the world who are brought to Portland as a sort of artist-in-residency-meets-postdoctoral advertising boot camp. My understanding of the very mysterious and prestigious little “experimental school” is that you function as interns but collaborate on everything as a group, and get to work on actual W+K clients as well as special projects.

I would love to attend the program. I would love to soak in that creative whirlpool for a period of time and let it wash over me.

In order to be considered, I have to apply to the program by sending in something that fits into a 9x12 envelope. The brief specifically is “surprise the shit out of us!” but I know from looking at the last round of submissions that made the cut last year that one thing that tied them all together, aside from creativity, was wit. I can’t just send crazy creative shit. I need to prove I’m clever-ish.

The concept I like so far is:
“I like 40% of my ideas, and follow through o 20% of those. I hope by attending WK12 I can improve those numbers.”

The execution therefore will consist of 100 ideas, 60 of which are creatively and humorously bad, 40 of which are worthwhile, and 8 of which I will need to actually execute.

Bad ideas so far (and this should be easy, but it’s not):
Honey mustard cupcakes
Homeless chow

Ideas I liked but never executed:
Breakfastar Galactica made of waffles with sausage landing bays
Pencil skirt actually made of pencils

Ideas both liked and executed
Sending the mayor of Los Angeles elephant origami to ask him to send Billy the Elephant to a nature sancturary
Watercolor portrait cards of all my friends that hold matching earrings
Gun cookies, which we made for Andre for his birthday in March
My portfolio will maybe function as one “executed idea”

Idea leads
Something to sell ads through non-traditional outlets
Rock opera about the Smurfs
Finger puppets that are regular puppets that hang from your fingers by strings
Crafty stuffs: tea cozies, arigumi and felting and embroidery.

Or maybe it should be 100 ideas for what to send to WK12?

!!!!

Where are all my ideas?! I have more. Where are they?

The benefit of working in a collaborative environment is that the sum is greater than the parts. Being in class and working with a partner has always made my ideas better. But in this I am completely alone.

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m scared and excited, but mostly scared. Being timid is part of my personality too. I can’t really be someone I’m not, but I do need to be the best version of myself. Generating ideas for idea’s sake is exhilarating, but with a deadline like this it is only nerve-wracking.

Anyways, I do need to put pen to paper. When Andy flies out on Sunday I guess I’ll have the apartment to myself for the first time ever. I have to finish Twilight book one and make some presents, but mostly I need to actually work on this.

~ ~ ~

Yes, I am aware that this post makes no sense.

Solo

This blog makes me sad because it was supposed to be joint, but clearly it’s just mine now. I sort of give up on sharing a blog with someone. It always ends badly.

Another reason why it ends badly:
andy: this is still my favorite youtube video of all time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3mw49mk_x0
me: You love the 70s
andy: sure. why not