It's been busy…

With Grandma in the hospital and too many freelance jobs, I haven't had much time to blog during March. Here are some quick blips:

We recently took a survey for work called the "DISC" survey. Mostly it deals with communication and offers suggestion to management for dealing with my personality type. The questions were a little crazy though:


You can probably guess what I had to choose. Sigh.

Also, things were busy at work for me a bit back and when things get busy so do my Spaces. Who needs multiple monitors when my iMac can give me six! I keep my mail and internet in the lower left. Time management apps like Slife, iCal and Basecamp are in upper left. Illustrator/Photoshop/Flash etc get the middle two spaces. My finder windows (usually I have two windows open, the server on the top and my local files on the bottom) and Cyberduck are in the upper right. Finally I use the lower right for Word/Excel/Powerpoint. On the day I took this screenshot I had Dreamweaver open too, so I had to stick that in my Finder space.

If an interesting monster can't have an interesting hairdo…

Photos of my new haircut as requested by Grandma, of course it looked much better when Marie styled it. I should probably get a brush instead of using a comb to blow-dry my hair. Yeah, I should do that.

If an interesting monster can't have an interesting hairdo…

Photos of my new haircut as requested by Grandma, of course it looked much better when Marie styled it. I should probably get a brush instead of using a comb to blow-dry my hair. Yeah, I should do that.

Visit from the Kids

We had Nora and Michael over recently for a Sunday afternoon. We played Star Wars Battlefront because Michael pestered and Nora said she "wouldn't mind". It turned out to be a very amusing situation. Nora spent the whole level running away from the bad guys because she was scared of getting killed. I think she killed one guy on accident. Michael was pretty cocky and ran around the level getting blown to pieces by tanks and robots and killing his own teammates.

Donal tried to train them, which I found to be adorable and hilarious. Some snippets of his attempted training of Michael:
"Turn left, no OTHER left, look out! There's a robot! Shoot him shoot him… no the ROBOT!! You just killed your own guy… yes you did, see that dead Rebel soldier on the ground there? Yeah, see any bad guys around? No… now get to their command post, no not that way, look on the map! It's the red dot there! The GLOWING RED DOT! Run run! That's a tank! Look out you just threw a thermal detonator! Yes you did, that's what that glowing ball was that you threw at your guys!"

And for Nora:
"Ok, you can move down the ramp now. Nope you're doing great! No that's back to your command post. You are actually supposed to attack the bad guys… or you could run and hide yes, that's a possibility. No you're doing great! You haven't died yet… ok… well that was bad… but you've only died once now."



While Nora and Donal played Star Wars and read a book (disrespectively), Michael and I staged an epic battle between Native Americans and the U.S. Army.

Christmas Decoration…

My aunt and uncle gave us a beautiful créche for our wedding. It graced one of our bookshelves for the Christmas season. Donal added to Fontanini's pieces with one of his own………

Guggenheim Grotto

Donal and I took Nora to her first rock concert. Just kidding, it was just a small concert at a local venue in downtown Ann Arbor.

Nora was very new to the whole rock concert thing. She had a great time bopping and mouthing along (much better than the kid behind us who sang along with every song…outloud) and getting excited at each song that she recognized. The band was an awesome duo out of Ireland called "The Guggenheim Grotto". They were very good with the crowd, joking with each other and having us sing and clap with them.

At the end of the show they walked off the stage and we were all standing and clapping. Nora asked why everyone was still clapping and screaming, I informed her of the concept of an "Encore". She was astonished and said "You mean they'll play more songs??" "Only if we keep screaming and clapping". Within seconds she was jumping up and down shouting "MORE MORE MOOOOOOOOORE" with the best of us. Of course the guys came back out and Nora turned to me in awe… "It worked!"

After the show we went to check out the merchandise. Nora was thrilled to buy a tank top. She was even more thrilled when I told her they would probably sign it. Sure enough we turned around and there were Mick and Kevin! Mick is the one on the right. I headed over and told them theirs was my sister's first rock concert. Mick apologized and said "don't worry they get better." Nora was bouncing up and down and asked him to sign her shirt. They both signed it and Mick put a big smiley face on it. Then as we were thanking them one last time Donal and I shook their hands and Nora did the same. To her surprise and delight Mick took her hand and pulled her in for a nice smooch on the cheek! She turned pink and said "ooooohhhh bye!!!!!" She skipped to the car and talked about the concert (and Mick) the whole way home. We were happy to have been able to give her such a memorable experience!

Silence Spoken Here

Finally! The post everyone has been waiting for! The news everyone wants!

Did Lindsey survive her first ever Silent Retreat?

Yes. I am actually capable of keeping my mouth shut. Granted, I spent most of the 7 hour car rides there and back with it open, but honestly who can blame me for that?

The retreat was… incredible. The location… perfect. The monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani are in a word, adorable. Check out their website, although I warn you, it's not very well designed. We prayed the Liturgy of the Hours with them 7 times a day, chanting the Psalms in alternating sides. They had a sign in the elevator: "Retreatants, when singing with the monks, a bit lower on the Volume and pick up the pace a bit." I think the monks have perfected the talent of singing without opening their mouths, it was sometimes very difficult to tell which side was singing and therefore when to join in yourself. I finally found a monk with a beard that wiggled when he sang, and I used him for the rest of the weekend as my test monk.

I spent a lot of time hiking around their awesome woods and fields. I even sketched a bit! They had an awesome pair of statues up in a little glade representing the Apostles sleeping in the garden and about 50 feet up the path was a beautiful statue of Jesus praying in agony. Very beautiful and moving. The atmosphere of the place is very conducive to prayer and I've been keeping the spirit of the retreat in my morning prayer times (that I've resurrected! hoorah!) I can't wait to go back.

The Abbey:


The Agony in the Garden:

"Her Uncle is in trade and lives in Cheapside…"

Yes, Donal and I live in Cheapside. Well, not exactly, but that's going to be my new name for the apartment complex known as "Aspen Chase". Such an elegant name. It's vaguely sketchy and very affordable. The latter feature outweighs the former in value, hence our occupancy. For the worry-warts amongst my readers (Mother…) don't be frightened for us, we keep a baseball bat by the door. Seriously it looks like this.

Just kidding, it's not that bad. There aren't skulls all over the ground.

Our apartment itself is actually pretty adorable. It was very exciting to paint the place. I picked out swatches (Donal's only input was "no purple") and paint. We got a nice dark red, a happy yellow, an warm almond tan and… a light blue?

Well, we decided to risk it and save money and get one can of Mis-Tint paint. Mis tints are wonderful because they're still nice paint, just not exactly the color that Mrs. Jane McSizemorehan had in mind for the front foyer by the swimming pool. At Lowe's, under their lights, the blob on the top of the paint can matched my blue swatch perfectly. I mean Pantone Coated, TruMatch, RGB, HSV, CMYK… perfect. Imagine my surprise then when I put my brush to the wall and found the color to be… well… not entirely blue. In fact, I would say there was a lot of yellow in there. So much in fact that the color could safely be called Green. And not really a subtle, soft Green. This was neon green. The living room glowed. My mother expressed doubts. Lauren raised eyebrows. Nora said "Oooohhhh… this looks… nice…?" Maryn said "Maybe it will dry darker?" I said "Blue????" You'll be relieved to know that the addition of dark shelves and furniture has significantly mellowed the green walls. I must admit I'm quite fond of our Five Buck "Blue". With our dark brown IKEA shelves and tables the living room really does look like Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream.

Perhaps if I can ever figure out our digital camera, or get batteries for it, I'll put some pictures up.

I'm back for good

This is just a quick post to say that I'll be back to blogging. "You're calling to say you're calling?"

I feel awful for leaving my reader(s) in the lurch since August, and I now feel like I have plenty of material in life to blog about. I think if an excuse were to be made for my silence, it would be that I came back home and the majority of my readers were near me or married to me (ok, that's just one reader). I now have two sisters in Spain and a brother in the Coast Guard, so this blog will return to its original purpose of informing those I love about my life. That said, I apologize if I still allow long lapses between posts. I'm sure I'll be better about it once we get the Inter-tubes at the Apartment.

Ah yes, the Apartment and its environs will be a steady source of blog material. Much like cow can be always counted upon to poop. Sorry, you do remember this is Lindsey's blog, and the mention of poop is not exactly an unlikely occurrence.

Until next post… "arrivederci Charlie."

I return to rant

It's been a while since I posted, I blame it on getting married. That necessarily occupied a lot of my time since March. By the way, I absolutely love being married, it's way better than being engaged!

Anyways: on to Fonts. Many of you (if anyone still reads this) know that I strongly dislike that most overused of fonts Copperplate. In preparing a post for my work's blog I came across this wretchedly terrible monstrosity of a misguided site.

Peruse it a bit, and then you discover that he actually created and maintains more regularly THIS site, even more terrifyingly awful.

Several of my favorite things on this site include the following:
1. "Freddie created 116 fonts over his lifetime…but only one lives on forever, Copperplate" Hang on! Has he seriously never seen ITC Berkeley? Or Goudy Old Style? And he thinks that Copperplate is the end-all be-all of fonts?

2. "Only REAL Designers use CGB" Um…buddy…no. Real designers actually try to find a font that actually fits the design they are creating. I have to say that Copperplate rarely fits that description.

3. The "Courtesty Redesign" Section is amazing. He redoes logos and signs and everything into Copperplate! Wretched! Hideous! Horrendous! Seriously, the Bank of America one hurts my eyes.

4. "One font rises above the noise and clatter of common man transcending space and time." I wonder if he realizes that this is exactly why it doesn't rise above the clutter, it IS the clutter. It's EVERYWHERE!!! The mere fact that he has 15 categories for sightings says it all.

Right. I think you will all be able to form your own opinion about this site and the gentleman's sanity. Personally I'm fighting back the urge to post all over that mother.