Oh Mower How I Hate Thee

Today was the first day this spring that I had to mow the grass. Ummm, make that mow the weeds. The heat, bugs, THE HILL, cigarette butts in the yard all combine for a rather miserable afternoon.

I have never really been a fan of mowing, but I have convinced myself that it is good for me to get out and get some exercise. I'm starting a counterargument in my head about how I can get out of mowing this summer....Who am I kidding though. I am way too cheap to actually pay someone to mow the grass for me. The fall can't get here soon enough.

Seeing the Sites

Saturday we spent time at Ellis Island. We rode the ferry from the New Jersey side to Ellis Island. Due to the chilly weather, we skipped Liberty Island. I could have spent a day at Ellis Island. I knew that my Fouts ancestors didn't come through Ellis Island, but it would have been fun to have time to look for other ancestors in the registry. Exhibits of artifacts brought my the immgrants were fascinating.

The great hall--seen here--has been immortalized in several films, including The Godfather.
The exterior of the building at Ellis Island.
The Statue of Liberty from Ellis Island.
After riding the ferry to the New York side, we walked through lower Manhattan. Below is the interior of Trinity Church--the oldest church in the city. The choir was practicing for Easter Sunday services.
Alexander Hamilton is buried at Trinity.
Friday, we walked through the south part of Central Park. Fans of Sex and the City, Big Daddy or countless other shows and movies will recognize this photo of the park. According to our tour guide, this is the only straight path in the park. The other paths all curve.
We also stopped for a moment at this memorial to John Lennon in the Strawberry Fields area of the park.

This is the Dakota where Lennon was killed. Yoko Ono still lives on the seventh floor; until recently she owned the entire floor, but has sold some square footage of late. It is just visible at the top of the photograph; it's the floor with the black wrought iron fence.

The boathouse at Central Park. Another Sex and the City reference: Carrie fell in the water here; the scene with her and Big.

Friday afternoon we had lots of free time in the Times Square-Fifth Avenue area. I chose to sit and soak up the sun in Bryant Park. The 50 degree weather was tolerable--with a coat of course--in the sun

This is one of several pools that lead from Fifth Avenue to Rockfellar Center. When we were here on Wednesday, none of the Easter Lilies were planted. But on Friday, the area was adorned in its Easter best.
Skaters were enjoying one of the last days to play on the ice.
A view of the Brooklyn Bridge from the ferry.

Traveling (Woes)

Thankfully, our flights to and from NYC were on time with no problems. However, finding our hotel was an adventure. We were staying at a Sheraton in Iselin, New Jersey.

We left NYC around 4:00 on Wednesday afternoon in the rain in the hands of our trusty-bus driver, Dave. (Despite what I'm about to tell you, he really was a great guy.) Around 6pm, we got in the vicinity of the hotel. Our tour guide had been instructed to call for directions, which she did. According to the first person she talked to, we had gone too far on the NJ Turnpike and needed to turn around and take exit 131A. We turned around. We took exit 131. We called back. Take 131A. We went to 131A. A Hilton, but no Sheraton. We pulled into a large cemetery to turn around. Imagine backing a tour bus from a narrow, barely one-lane cemetery drive onto a two-lane road at dusk in the rain. We used a student's iphone to access MapQuest, "no information available" was our response. We headed back to the NJ Turnpike, talking to the hotel, again. Thinking we had gone the wrong way when we exited, we attempted to go across the NJ Turnpike the other way. Oops. It just dumped us back on to the highway. We went up several exits and turned around. We went back to the area around the Hilton and called again. This time, someone stayed on the phone with us for 10 minutes while we were directed to the hotel. Once we got the hotel in our sights, it still took 10 minutes of looping around to make a left turn to get there. So, four hours later, we got off of the bus. It's like this Sheraton was in the Bermuda triangle of New Jersey.

Night two . . . we got lost again. Some gave the driver different directions. We were told to turn at the 4th light, turns out it was the 3rd light.

Night three. . . we made it to the hotel with no miss-turns on the FIRST try!

Beyond this inability to find the hotel, Dave was a great driver. He was patient with lolly-gagging students when double-parked in the city dropping us off. Whenever we were exhausted from walking around, Dave's big golden bus arrived like a chariot to offer rest to our weary feet and legs. Having someone drive us around in the chaos that is NYC traffic was fantastic.

Broadway Shows

I was quite excited about seeing musicals on Broadway. We saw Mary Poppins, The Phantom of the Opera, and Legally Blonde. I was least excited at the prospect of Mary Poppins and most excited about Phantom.

Sometimes feelings are all wrong. . . it turns out Mary Poppins was my favorite of the three shows. The technical aspects of the show were amazing. Sets and a flying Mary Poppins are all benefits of a Disney show. While our seats were quite high in the balcony, this view afforded a great view of the staging. It's been years since I've watched the Disney movie Mary Poppins; "Chim-Chim Cheree" and "Supercalifragilisticxpialidous" were the only songs I really recalled. How could I forget "Just a Spoonful of Sugar" and my favorite, "Practically Perfect." It's like Mary and I are long-lost practically perfect soul sisters. I loved Mary's long fitted jackets; she must, too, as she donned one in black, blue, red, and purple.

The Phantom of the Opera was disappointing, many of the Phantom's songs were unintelligible. I think my reaction to the show might have been different had we seen Phantom before Mary Poppins.

Legally Blonde was a fun, fast comedy. As a fan of the movie, the musical is just as fun. The girl playing Elle had a voice that was a bit nasal at moments, but Orfeh, (yes, just one name) who played Paulette, the hairdresser, had a fantastic voice. I still find myself humming along to "Ohmigod You Guys" (you can listen to it if you click the link above and look for it--but do so with caution, you'll be humming along) and a song called "Ireland" was added by Paulette's character--it was a cute tune about how listening to soothing Celtic music takes her to Ireland.

Our seats for all three shows were in the upper balcony (last 2 rows for 2 shows), but they weren't that bad. You could see the entire stage and a lot of the technical aspects. When I drag Dave back to see The Lion King, we'll get better tickets.

New York, New York

Last week for the last part of my Spring Break, I traveled as the administrator on duty with a group of 23 theater students to the Big Apple. There were three moms and a teacher along as chaperones, so the trip was really quite well supervised. The kids were good, and we all had a great trip. I don't really know where to begin with all that I saw while I was there. Do I divide by days or theme? While I contemplate that, I can say that I'm ready to go back to NYC. I've always wanted to go; Dave has had no desire to accompany me, so this trip was just perfect. And, I gushed each night about how Dave really must see NYC--if nothing else for the architecture--that he has said he's willing to go with me. (Now, we just have to find the time and the money.)

I've decided to go with the thematic approach; I'll try to cover everything over the next few days: Broadway Shows, Traveling (Woes), Seeing the Sites, Shopping, Dining.

Daveation is Growing

When I posted about NationStates a couple weeks ago, my new nation was pretty small and the issues for the country were pretty tame. I have gotten a few other people hooked on this game with that post. Miranda started The Republic of FlipFlopGirl . Letha started The Empire of Hellnet . And Lesa started The Free Land of Lesatania.

My how things have changed for Daveation. See the description of Daveation below:

The Grand Duchy of Daveation is a very large, devout nation, remarkable for its complete absence of social welfare. Its hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical population of 81 million are ruled by a mostly-benevolent dictator, who grants the populace the freedom to live their own lives but watches carefully for anyone to slip up.

The medium-sized, corrupt government is mainly concerned with Law & Order, although Religion & Spirituality and Defence are secondary priorities. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 14%. A healthy private sector is led by the Uranium Mining industry, followed by Retail and Book Publishing.

Motorists' locations are constantly tracked by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, heavy industry must go to expensive lengths to dispose of waste and avoid even more costly cleanup costs, married couples must call each other "darling" or risk a fine, and record sales of 'child-whacking sticks' have been recorded. Crime is moderate. Daveation's national animal is the Geiko geeko, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its currency is the gold dubloon.

Daveation is ranked 1st in the region and 4,768th in the world for Most Corrupt Governments.

The Life of a Design Director

OK, so this week I confirmed what I had always thought about design directors. They are too busy attending meetings, sending e-mails, or typing up spreadsheets to actually design anything. Week one at my new job has been a bit of an adjustment.


Highlights for the week include:

-Ordering a temporary logo for the lobby till the office renovation gets underway. Evidently some of the guys in the shop were a bit too eager about starting the demolition. There hasn't been a logo in the lobby for three months now.

-Telling the president that we need to keep our detailer for another month. She was going to be laid off today, and her position transfered to Austin. We are going to need the help.

-Going from working on one modeling platform to four. I only know two of them really well, the other two are works in progress.

-Coordinating the transfer of all detailing files created by the Dallas office to a new modeling format and sending them to Austin. These files are three plus years worth of work. This is the reason I asked for the additional month for the detailer. This involves thousands of files and probably the same amount of hours to complete.

-Less stress! WoooHooo! The workload is much more manageable at Imagecraft...for now. I'd bet that I will be eating my words before long.

-The video card for my computer evidently doesn't support the correct aspect ratio for my monitor. So circles appear as slightly oval, and squares are rectangular. This is a bit of a problem when you design things for a living.

Getting Back to My Roots

Well sort of. As many of you already know, today is my last day working at Derse. A couple weeks ago I was offered the design director position at Imagecraft Exhibits. This is the same place where I started working as an exhibit designer almost eight years ago. I have worked at Derse for almost three years and gained some valuable experience. But after receiving this offer, I thought it was best for my career to make the move "back home".

Job changes are typically very stressful. But for some reason, I haven't been stressed at all about the decision to change companies. Maybe it's because the transition will be an easy one since I know just about everyone who works for Imagecraft. Maybe it is because we aren't relocating anywhere this time. Who knows...All I know at this point is this job will be what I make it since I will now be the one calling the shots.

If you ever need a trades show booth designed, just give me a call.

Miranda's School Pictures

Miranda wanted to share her annual school pictures with everyone. There are a few missing years, but it was funny to me to see how she has changed over the years....all for the better of course.

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2007

Fly Fish Texas Festival

Saturday, Miranda and I took a little road trip to Athens, Texas. The Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center is located there and every year they have a fly fishing festival called Flyfish Texas. There are rod vendors pushing their latest creations, kayak dealers trying to get you to try out a boat, seminars, demonstrations, fishing in the ponds for kids, and many other activities. We sat through a few seminars on saltwater flyfishing, fishing for trout in Colorado, and flyfishing for carp. Some were more informative than others, but we learned quite a bit.

I got to cast the new TFO Axiom rods, and was drooling after I tried out a couple different rod weights. I have never been able to cast a whole flyline (100'+) as easily as I can with those. There will definitely be one on my Christmas list next year.

Miranda was content to keep me company and read her book. She is a good sport. We both found the Freshwater Fisheries aquariums and displays very interesting. There are some BIG fish swimming around in that place. I highly recommend a visit to the Center if you are in the area. Sorry, no pictures this time - we forgot the camera.