Hair Cuts and Women of Ninja Warrior

So here is what happened today. Ross has a job interview on Tuesday, and we realized that the flowing locks that comprised his current hair cut were not totally "employment friendly." So today I ate a Heavenly Hash egg, watched an episode of Women of Ninja Warrior and bolstered up enough confidence to hack away at the hair I love so dearly. I felt like Delilah. But hopefully the shorter hair will give Ross the edge he needs to not only acquire full time employment, but perhaps get benefits as well... first, your before:

and then the process...

and the after...

I think it looks pretty good. :)

I promise I will post something relevant to my design work soon. But today... this. <3

where's my free tar ball?

greetings, Cage Free Fans, from beautiful san destin, florida! forget what you've heard, nobody's giving away free tar balls.  apparently these cats are all over cleaning up the beaches, what with the tourism and all.  too bad the Louisiana marshes aren't a money-making machine like these beaches, or they'd be squeaky clean too.  kinda says a lot about the gulf coast hierarchy, doesn't it?
alright! enough with the soap box.  
vacation with my family is always a treat.  i was afraid my job search might not allow me to go on this trip, but thankfully, i'm still unemployed and my schedule was wide open. 
our trips to the beach actually consist of very little time on the beach.  sure, we'll go sit in the blinding sun for a couple hours, mostly out of guilt.  said blinding sun caused me to purchase these bad boys:

yes, they fit over my actual glasses.  yes, they're polarized.  yeah, i bought them at a grocery store.  and yeah, they are awesome.  i feel like i could weld in these.  or pilot a space ship.  or at the very least, kick some folks around in the matrix.

we really come down to san destin for the golf and the putt-putt.  boy do we love some putt- putt golf.  there's nothing like sinking a hole-in-one after you bounce it off a brick wall, around a water hazard and through a dog leg.  the other side of that coin:  there are few feelings worse than losing to your mother on a putt-putt golf course.  it was one of the darkest days of my life.  
onwards and upwards, right? today on our customary trip to the beach, i saw not one, but two pigeons trudging through the sand.  what?? 

crazy, right? but it brought up a great memory.  mom reminded me about mine and brooks' first trip to the beach.  it was in october, and we were wearing mud boots and jackets.  we added credit to the gulf coast's nickname, the Redneck Riviera, when we mistook sea gulls for chickens.  that kind of memory is what i want to preserve. so, i sketched this one out today:

its a rough sketch, but its a start.  and i feel really good about this one.

on a similar note, i'm also working on  sketches for a piece about the helmet my mother made me wear in coach pitch baseball.  in my mom's opinion, there were two kinds of kids who played little league: her kids and kids with lice.  so i had my very own red helmet, complete with a face shield.  

she didn't really make me wear it in the outfield, but that certainly makes for a better story.

so that's what i've got going on right now at the beach.

but more importantly! check out this bad ass dessert we had today at Mitchell's Fish Market.

it's called a Shark Fin and it's the most incredible dessert on this planet.  it's what a drumstick wants to be when it grows up. this alone is worth the trip.

it's basically a huge ice cream pie. it has an oreo crust, several inches of vanilla ice cream with a chocolate swirl, then a thin layer of peanut butter and chocolate, followed by several more inches of ice cream. all of which is covered in peanuts and whipped cream.

our waiter told us that people who don't finish the whole thing have it turned into a milkshake. the whole family went glassy eyed as we envisioned our very own shark fin milkshake. unfortunately we finished the whole thing before that dream could become a reality.

further posts as events warrant.  for now, i gotta get out there and destroy some folks at putt-putt. word up.

This Computer Is No More: It has ceased to be

Expired and gone to meet its maker, it is time to bid farewell to our beloved 4 year old iMac. It is strange for a computer of ours to suffer such a fate. Negligence (possibly on my part) to plug it back in to the surge protector instead of the wall the last time we moved it caused it to suffer a logic board fried harder than the extra crispy chicken at Popeye's.

Wow, after reading that again... it's totally my fault...

Regardless of blame, it is now time to consider a hefty purchase I didn't plan on making for a while. This also means that I am without the design programs that assist me in practically every aspect of my work. (Does this mean I'll have to revert to sketching and creating things by hand?) This kind of withdrawal has gotten me thinking about our old machines. My family has been proud Mac owners since the mid-eighties when my dad brought home the best computer ever: The Apple II GS.

I adored this computer. It was the most fascinating thing I had ever seen. We had a desk specially built in our kitchen at our old house for the computer. As a toddler, I would stand right under my dad's elbow between his desk chair and the wall watch him play "Kings Quest" in all its 8-bit glory. If he would turn around suddenly, it was common for me to take an elbow to the forehead. "Jesus Christ, Allison, what are you doing hiding there?!" (Eerily, only a few months into our relationship, a similar incident occurred while I was watching Ross play a video game)

This is where I also learned to curse.

The II GS remained a functioning computer well into high school for me. While we didn't use it for word processing or the internet (although it was totally capable of doing both) it was still the central game playing hub of our household. I remember being in 4th grade and using the external CD player to amplify The Lion King soundtrack as loud as I could through the Bose quality external speakers. Hakuna Matata, indeed. The old girl finally joined the choir invisible in 2004. If I had known only a year later we would lose all the floppy disks with the games we had loved so much, I probably would have brought them to higher ground.

In 1997, McGehee introduced an experimental laptop program that became mandatory by the time I hit high school. Never having had a Window's powered computer (like the one designated by school as the proper equipment), I was not really motivated to get one, and my father, who had quite a lot of stock in Apple, was not so keen on purchasing one. Enter the Clamshell iBook. #2 in my greatest computer loves of all time. While it was impossible for me to "join the network" at school, I relish in the fact that the computer I bought served me for 4 years of high school and then served my sister, Julia for 4 more years after that. And I never had to make a visit to Mrs. Nesser or Dan-Dan the Computer Man.

Omgee... what a sweet machine. Here is where I had my first tryst with Photoshop. Who knew then that such a fruitful relationship would proceed?

When it came time for college, I was thrilled to receive a 17" iMac. It could burn CDs and play DVDs (even though all you could get at Wal-Mart in Oxford was VHS). This is still the computer I use today. It has the entire contents of my life for the past 8 years... And it is backed up accordingly. Its such an elegant machine, and the sculptural arm that can swing in every direction made it ideal for late night movies in the dorm. The display is huge. Although its age has really caught up with it for detailed design work, its great for internet and word processing. Not to mention its just damn cool to look at.

When Joanna and I came home for summer after my first year of college, we brought both of our desktops home with us. At that point, Julia was living at home having just graduated, and my dad was doing a lot of work out of the house. We took a count one day, and we had 7 working computers in the house that were all used for one reason or another. These computers ranged in birth dates from 1986 to 2003.

As for the future? Well I got my eye on that 27" iMac desktop. Now all I need is to get some corporate sponsorship...