80 posts from 2007

Thank you notes are a simple, yet often overlooked way to indicate your appreciation of someone thinking of you. I was raised to write thank you notes. Not an email. Not an ecard. The actual snail mail, paper version, with one's own handwriting gracing the inside. There is a great debate on the 'younger' generation and thank you notes. They feel an email or phone call is enough, or not even needed at all, whereas older folks think a card in the mail is the absolute minimal requirement.

Personally, I write thank you notes for a lot of reasons. If I've had an especially nice time with a friend, I'll send a thank you note. If my boss has taken extra time with me on something, I'll send a thank you note. When people get me a gift, I send a thank you note.

Note: I don't send notes for every single gift, but the ones that I know were gifts meant for me. Someone at the office buying a box of Stover chocolates, prewrapped, no card, who gives everyone the same thing .... they are more likely not to get a thank you note, but will get an email or phone call. Vendors sending me xmas stuff: email thank you. Long lost relatives sending me cookie mix or something to that effect: thank you note. 

The bottom line is this: Everybody likes to be thanked. It's not hard to go out of one's way to send a note of gratitude for gifts that in all actuality: These people did not have to get for you. It takes less then 5 minutes to send of a thank you. Honestly, don't you like to be thanked in a meaningful way?

Some simple things to remember:
    Email thank yous are no substitute for the written word.
    Say specifically what the gift was.
    Say something nice about it.
    Send it within 2 weeks.
    The main purpose of a thank you note is to make the people who gave you a gift feel good about giving.

Think of it this way: It's much easier to say thank you too much than to not say thank you at all, when you consider the results. You make another person feel good, and you are preventing yourself from being perceived as an ungrateful swine.

I made mine, and they are being printed up as we speak, and I should get them just in time to send them out within the appropriate deadline in accordance with ettiquette. Here's the front:

So remember what mama bee tells you: Write your thank you notes!!!!

My kid's bday present came today and I gave it to him, 8 days ahead of time. THIS is why I can't buy presents early. Now I will have nothing to give him on his bday. Oh well. He'll live. :)

I just couldn't wait though. I got him one of these: 

It's not the iPhone, it's the iPod touch. It's so cool, I want one.

I don't know why almost my entire family has to be born in the months of November and December, but it wears me out completely, especially with the added expense/time/drama/stress of the holidays. By the time my kid's bday (the last of the lot) rolls around, I am ready to go back to a boring life of lamenting over my own self-imposed drama. When is it going to go back to being ALL ABOUT ME?

In November there were a handful of bdays around thanksgiving. We got thru those okay. Tomorrow is my nephew's fifth bday. I'm not going to the Annual Infestation of The Three-Footers (aka the kid's bday party which consists of about 30 5 year olds) because I'm working. My kid has to go though, because he has no excuse. I told him to get a job, then he'll have an excuse. And money too. Win-win. ;)

My brother set the tone for bday presents for our respective kids long ago. I had this big 'anti-gun' stance, but one year he sent one of those huge Rubbermaid tubs full of Nerf dart guns and squirt guns and all sorts of things of that nature. So I like to buy the loudest, most obnoxious presents for my nephew. The ones with no "off" button are best. Turnabout is fair play.

Then comes NYE and NYD, and then vacation por moi. Thank gawd. I'm the only designer working this week and my life is inundated with stupid questions about all sorts of crap. It wouldn't be so bad but I have to spend all my time researching the background behind the question before I can give an answer, because none of it is about my projects.

Then comes my kid's bday on the Day of the Epiphany, and then we are DONE. Til June. :) The 13th. I think it highly appropriate for the designated black sheep of the family to have the only birthday outside of a 3 month span in the winter. :) I was born a rebel!

Juno was an awesome movie, on so many levels. My kid was the one that picked it out, without me saying a word. :) I thought there might be awkward moments, you know... with all that sex stuff, but it was handled tastefully, at least from my perspective.

I think kids today have way more intelligent movies about adolescence. I loved Pretty in Pink, Breakfast Club, etc., but the dialogue in this was just ... well ... on a level of sophistication that would have been lost on many teens of the 80's. And in a down to earth kind of way that didn't shove it in your face. And parts of it were touching. I tried hard not to cry at the sappy moments, so's not to embarrass the kid. There were about 8 girls his age sitting right in front of us. They kept turning around and looking at him so I didn't want to embarrass him. I was as quiet as pie.

Great soundtrack: simple quirky stuff. Kimya Dawson did some stuff, the main actors sang a Moldy Peaches tune.... Good stuff.

On a side note: is embarrass really spelled with 2 R's? All this time I thought my spell check was wrong, not me....

I want to show y'all what my santa on vox got me this year.

See, Kristine decided to do a secret santa among her friends on vox this year and considering about half or so are in my hood as well, I signed up too. If we didn't know the person we ended up with, we were supposed to go find out about them thru their vox, etc. and get them something to reflect what we've learned about them. I got someone I didn't know, so I hope I got them something they'll enjoy. We'll see. I read that she's not opening any gifts until her girlfriend comes back, so it might be another week or so until I find out if she likes it. Cross your fingers!

Anyway... my santa was KELLY! and this wonderfully tasty box of goodies showed up on xmas eve. I can't tell you what a nice surprise it was and how delicious the coffee is. I am on my second cup of one of the samples, and it's damn tasty. Much needed the day after xmas. :)

And we ate much of the goodies yesterday while watching Harry Potter 5. Which seemed quite appropriate considering Kelly's such an HP fan.

Considering my son is 13 and in full 'teen mode', I can say his admission is a Christmas miracle! (I know his handwriting is terrible, but it's all spelled correctly and he's got a writing disability, so the gift tag* is a gift in and of itself.)

Wee Hoo!

It's currently snowing this xmas afternoon, and I've cleaned up all the breakfast dishes (grandparents come for breakfast and presents), finished my last mimosa of the morning, the kid is playing with his new amp and guitar pedals so I'm sitting down to share that mostest favoritest part of today. :)

Now it's time for a nap if I can get the kid to turn the amp down a bit....

* He gave me a rice cooker. To cook rice. For the Kid Who Loves Rice. Genius eh? ;)

Now that I'm dressed...

It's almost Winter Solstice peoples!!!

I am so freaking GRATEFUL that the days will start getting longer again and the sun will be on it's way back to creating some warmth on this side of the globe. No more darkness at 4pm-ish.

In the words of the late great John Denver, sunshine on my shoulders makes me high.

At any rate, just wanted to wish y'all a merry christmas. I'll be out of service for a while with the obligatory xmas parties and events and then the holidays and such. While I'm not really looking forward to said parties, I am so very very grateful that I'm not sitting in that deep pit of depression that I was in last year. Broken hearts take a while to heal, and mine is finally well on its way to recovery. Slow and hard is how I'd describe this one. I wouldn't trade all the gifts in the world for that feeling of relief and contentment, which has been hard-earned.

So the holidays this year are humbling for me. It reminds me so much of where I've been and every single tear I've suffered through in order to get here. And it gives me a bit of hope that maybe someday I'll get back to being happy.

And to y'all that aren't into xmas, happy winter solstice. Bring on the sun now, thank you very much!

Sitting at your desk butt nekkid, answering emails.

:)

The story goes, I got my hair cut the other day. 5 inches were cut off of my hair. FIVE. That's the diameter of a CD. Over the summer I had 3 inches cut off. I had some pretty long hair, considering.

I didn't even go to the hoity-toity-price-is-a-king's-ransom regular place either. Miranda will be upset with me. But it takes a couple of weeks to get in to see her, and I just wanted it done. Like everything else right now, I'm just DONE. I've no patience left for stupid people, work deadlines... and no patience for hair appointments apparently. So I just walked into the local place by the local grocery store and told them to cut it off.

Her name was Joy and she was the sweetest young twenty-something I've met in a long time. Most of them have attitudes, hate their lives, or hate you for having a different and therefore better life, etc.

But not Joy. She was quite the chatterbox, but it was actually fun listening to her babble about what life entails for her. It was like I had a nice little snapshot of Joy's Life. Like looking into someone's living room window as you're driving by on a lonely winter's night, and seeing that it's a little like yours.

Needless to say, I'm having haircut remorse now. Like maybe I should have thought about it a bit more before I had her cut 5 inches off. When I showed her where I wanted her to cut she said "that's like 5 inches! Are you sure?!?" Of course I'm sure. This is what I do: cut it short, grow it out, cut it short, grow it out. It's my thing. It hits my shoulders still, so it's not completely short.

Oh well, it will grow. It's not like I'm trying to impress anyone right now. I've given up relationships until the kid is done growing. Maybe the shorter hair will keep the complete idiot-boys away from me completely. I get annoyed with the random one here or there, following me around, pretending to casually be in the same space as me. I want them as far away from me as possible. At least English stalker boy doesn't call me anymore. I'm sure I could carve that fact in stone if I just showed him my hair... 

It's 9:30pm and I've officially been working for about 14 hours, give or take the hour or so when I had 5 inches of hair cut off my head (no I'm not kidding. I'll post about that tomorrow.).

I did database crap today. Take a drill that doesn't quite work right, and stick it on my temple. Then try and drive it into the side of my head, knowing it doesn't work right. That would be my experience for today. I've a physical aversion to paperwork and mindless crap like databases. My gawd I think I want to delete it all just to see what my art director will do. heehee. goodgawd I'm beyond done...

I'm done.

Well... I'm not 'done' done, but I am done. Me. Myself. Done.

Off to get a glass of merlot and watch Harry Potter's Phoenix movie.