Waving At Opportunity As It Passes Me By

Well, I've covered how I'm slackin' on my health. Now it's time to talk about how I'm slackin' in my professional life.

I'll bring y'all up to speed, in case you don't already know. About three years ago, the company I work for decided to turn me into a consultant, rather than an employee. I guess they didn't want to pay payroll taxes anymore, and I was the only remaining employee that wasn't related to the boss. And so, I became the owner of a brand-new graphic/web design business, working as an independent contractor. Otherwise, my job is identical to what it was before.

Since I am now owner of a business, it would naturally follow that I would proceed to get myself some more clients or at least do something that gets me some extra coin in my pocketses. Yup... One would think that. In the three years that Bell Designs has been in business, I have not made a single extra cent. It's from a lack of trying, y'see. And a healthy dose of self-doubt. No fewer than six friends and acquaintances have had babies in the past three years, and I haven't so much as offered to make baby announcements for them... from a design I had already made.

Would you use a baby announcement like this? I did (names changed to protect our identities... from people who already know our names.)

But enough navel-gazing. Here's what I can do about it. I read about CrowdSpring earlier this year, a site where one can go if they need something graphical or webical made. Using my powers of deductive reasoning, I figured - correctly - that a site where one goes to find graphic designers will also be looking for people to do the graphic designing, and so I've been checking in on the job requests and have put together a few things.

So far, no bites, but I did put together a bib design for a big-time baby clothes company that, for some reason, I couldn't get to upload to the site. So now I have something to put on a bib or onesie or something on my own. I'm leaning towards putting it up on CafePress. Here's what it looks like. I'll thank you to not steal the idea.

Looking at this now, I'm thinking that it could use a little more work. But, I've scouted out the pea-themed bibs on CafePress, and it looks better than pretty much everything already there. Also, there seems to be a lot of hate for peas in this world. This design would be the only pro-pea bib in the bunch. I'm looking at a monopoly here!

Now I just need to put it out there. After I fix it up a little.

Fingertips 2: Electric Boogaloo

* Operation Avoid Getting A McRib was a success! I finally caved in and went to McDonalds today, only to discover that the Limited Time had come to an end. I heard that one of the ingredients in the McRib is also used in yoga mats, so I consider that a bullet dodged.

* I've said it before, and it's been said by many others, but here it is again. If it's before Thanksgiving, I do not want to see Christmas decorations. I flat out declined M's request to drive by a neighbor's house that had already been decorated and lit last night. I don't know why, for sure, why it bothers me, but it does. No Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving, kthxbye.

* I almost didn't post anything tonight. Way too tired to write much on the various topics I have in mind. Finally decided to just go to the short thoughts well again, as that is better than nothing.

* Went to my nephew's piano recital with PG today. I give PG's behavior a B+, overall. She managed to stay distracted for a while by the sketch book I gave her to draw in and the comics I gave her to read. But eventually she started getting squirmy and asking when it would be over. Quietly, thus only getting docked down to a B+. She also showed interest in the actual recital for a while, which was nice of her.

* Made pancakes with mint M&Ms in them this morning. Sometimes you have to experiment to know what you like, don't like, or find yourself indifferent about. For me, mint M&M pancakes fall into the third category.

* I've had a graphic design business for about three years now, and I still have just the one client. I may elaborate on this topic later, most likely when I have the energy for it.

* My mom departed this world for the Great Beyond 18 years ago today. Things would have been very different if that hadn't happened. For one thing, my kid would have a different name.

* I'm having problems again remembering if conversations I've had or things that have happened actually happened or if I dreamed them. Must remember to ask M if she suggested seeing Gone With The Wind or if I dreamed that. It would be easier to figure out if Gone With The Wind wasn't, in fact, going to be showing at a local theater next month.

* Is this enough to make a decent-sized post? Is is? Super. Time for bed.

Almost Time To Walk!

First off, I hope this doesn't end up being overkill for those of you who have already gotten the e-mails.

So, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this here already, but M and I started up an Autism Walk team for this year's Baltimore Walk Now For Autism. We did our first Walk back in '06, and, impressed by all of the teams with their custom t-shirts, we decided to start up our own team for the '07 walk. This was a couple months before we knew that PG was a-comin'. So we got distracted and the '07 team ended up just being an unofficial team of M, PG, and me in our regular old shirts and our measly $100 contribution. You can see pictures of that at picasaweb.google.com/trackrick/AutismWalk2007.

But we got on the ball this year, and we've been raising money for our official team, in dribs and drabs, for the past few months!

While we're doing this for autism research in general, we're doing it specifically for my nephews Todd and Jason, both of whom are autistic. Since they like playing the MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) City of Heroes (and who, really, can blame them) and have their own Supergroup on there, called simply "Todd Jason," with an official slogan of simply "Fight!," we decided that would be a good concept for our team, and thus "Todd and Jason's Supergroup" came into being. I was tasked with designing the t-shirts.

After a few months of putting it off, partially because of the laziness that comes with having a project that's not due for a few months and partially because of doubts that I could actually make something good, I finally designed something. I think it could be a lot better, but everyone else thinks it's awesome, so I went with it. Here it is:



I just ordered shirts for M, PG and me, so we'll find out within the next week or so how the design looks on a shirt!

This year's walk is on October 4. If you would like to donate to the cause, you can do so at M's and my personal page at www.walknowforautism.org/baltimore/personal/mdsbell. Our goal is $1,000, and we're not quite there yet!

We Now Return You To Our Regularly Scheduled Program

I think I've taken a long enough break. Back to the action!

School has finally ended! I got my Master Certificate in Digital Multimedia and Web Design, and I'm ready to get a high-paying job to pay off the ridiculously high cost of going to school!

If you're interested in seeing my final Flash project, get ye to www.rickhome.com/flash. The History link just goes to the regular flavor HTML version of the section that's been there for years. I just put it there to keep the other link from being lonely. Also, my original intent was to have a link to most of, if not all of, the usual RickHome sections, but time proved to a luxury I did not have. So I only got as far as making a link to the History section and a link to a special Flash version of Picture Pages (with pictures taken from the Picasa albums, not the usual pictures that have been on the old Picture Pages all these years) before stopping.

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So. That freelance gig that I mentioned in my last post? Yeah... didn't happen. They found someone else who would do it for free. I would have done it for free too, but they didn't ask me! Oh well.

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I just found out the other day that they made a sequel to A Christmas Story! And it sucked hard!

Leonard Maltin was being interviewed on the radio, talking about Christmas movies, and he said that they were all ready to make a movie out of My Summer Story, with Peter "Ralphie" Billingsly and Darren "Dad" McGavin, and everybody, right after they had finished filming A Christmas Story. But the studio passed on it. And then Christmas Story became a big holiday classic, so the studio eventually decided that a sequel would be a good idea after all. Unfortunately, everybody who appeared in A Christmas Story either had grown up or were unavailable by that time. So the dad became Charles Grodin, Raphie became McCauley Culkin's brother, and the little brother (I can't get uuuuuupp!) became an even younger Culkin. And word on the streets is that it was a disaster.

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I met a baby the other day that looks like Buddy Hackett. It's interesting how having a baby of your own can color your perception of other babies. F'r'instance, there's a baby I knew a few years back that I thought was pretty cute at the time. But now, looking at pictures, I think the baby had a freakishly large head and was a bit creepy to look at. Probably looks good now, though. I haven't seen the child in question for a long time.

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There were two streaks going this NFL season: New England's undefeated streak and Miami's unvictorious streak. Two weeks after almost beating New England and ending their streak, the Baltimore Ravens became the first team to lose to Miami this season, thus ending that streak. This pretty much sums up the roller coaster ride the Ravens have put us on this year.

The Ravens should have won the New England game. Stupid refs.

Finally, A Finale

Today is the last day of NaBloPoMo, and I, for one, am most relieved. So much so that I may delay PoMoOftMo until January, just so I can take a break. In fact, now that I think about it, that's not a bad idea at all.

Today will be the first Pandora Friday here at the ol' blog. It's like an iTunes Friday, except that I'll be using Pandora instead. It's an internet radio thing, wherein you request a song or group, and it plays it, then plays something similar, and then something similar to that, and so on. If you like the songs it picks for you, you can give it a thumbs-up, and it will continue along the line of reasoning that got you to the song. If you don't like it, you can give it a thumbs-down, which will stop the trend and make it play something different. Or you can just let it play without doing anything, which I guess is like a thumbs-up, only less emphatic.

So I'll have the list of songs that play at the bottom of this post, with thumbs-up and thumbs-down noted, when applicable.

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PrettyGirl was taking a hiatus from clapping this week, but she started doing it again this morning. She thinks it's so cool that she can make her hands do that. For a while, M and I were making a big deal of it when she clapped, to encourage her to keep doing it because it's so cute, but it looks like the clapping itself is reward enough for PG. So that's less effort for us to keep getting the Clapping PG Show!

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I'm probably jinxing things by mentioning it, but PG has started sleeping through the night again. Such a good girl!

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I may be jinxing this too, but it looks like I'm about to get my first paying freelance gig. M's friend's boyfriend is running for judge, and I've been asked to design some campaign materials. No details have been worked out yet. I'll keep y'all posted!

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We took our Christmas card picture this evening. It turned out pretty well, though there's an outside chance there will be reshoots tomorrow. Hope we don't forget anybody when we send the cards out!

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M went up to the attic this evening, before I got home, to bring down some Christmas stuff so she could decorate around the area where the aforementioned pictures were to be taken. While up there, she saw the damage that the local squirrels have been wreaking up there lately. Parts of our insulation have been stripped down to the bare wood floor. There are probably a few well insulated squirrel nests in the area this winter. It would appear that one of those nests might actually be right there in the attic. A pile of ripped up insulation was moving suspiciously while M was up there. PG was napping, so she refrained from screaming. That's the kind of sacrifice she makes for her daughter, and I, for one, appreciate it.

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Here comes the Pandora playlist, compiled while I was at work today. The starting point is The Rolling Stones - no specific song from them. Let's see what happens!

1. "One Hit" - The Rolling Stones
2. "About A Girl" - Nirvana (Thumbs up)
3. "Rock You Like A Hurricane" - The Scorpions
4. "Refugee" - Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers (Thumbs up)
5. "Enter Sandman" - Tommy Victor, Nuno Bettencourt, Joey Vera & Scott Travis (lousy cover of the Metallica song - Thumbs down)
6. "Shades of Grey" - Billy Joel (Thumbs down)
7. "Something Better Beginning" - The Kinks
8. "Let's Spend The Night Together" - The Rolling Stones
9. "Wait" - The Beatles
10. "Deliver Me" - Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
11. "Jet Airliner" - Steve Miller Band (Thumbs up)
12. "Time Is On My Side" - The Rolling Stones (Thumbs up)
13. "Sweet Jane" - Lou Reed (Thumbs down)
14. "Bad Case of Lovin' You" - Robert Palmer (Thumbs up)
15. "Wild Thing" - The Troggs
16. "Needles and Pins" - Searchers
17. "She Loves You" - The Beatles (Thumbs up)
18. "Spirit In The Sky" - Norman Greenbaum
19. "Rebel Rebel" - David Bowie (Thumbs up)
20. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - U2 (Thumbs up)
21. "You Really Got Me" - Van Halen (Thumbs up)
22. "If I Needed Someone" - The Beatles (Thumbs up)
23. "Daily Records" - The Who
24. "Such A Shame" - The Kinks
25. "Gonna Get Ya" - Pete Townshend (Thumbs down)
26. "Listen To Her Heart" - Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
27. "Funk #49" - Joe Walsh
28. "Please" - The Zakary Thaks
29. "Go Your Own Way" - Fleetwood Mac (Thumbs up)
30. "The Same Old You" - Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
31. "Woodstock" - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young