NatalieDee was right...

nataliedee.com

I've been sewing like a fiend. It's excellent. Launched a temporary website until a more comprehensive one can be built. This has been in the works for a long time, and now it's actually coming to fruition. It's one thing to dream of something and have big plans, it's entirely another to take the baby steps required to get there.

These past couple weeks have been monumental. Let's just quickly go over the high points:

• Got to spend a whole day w/a friend who makes me smile and laugh and think and everything a friend should do. Even went to a street fair. Plus, we got to meet another friend's ex-g/f. Interesting stuff.
  
  
• Had one of my shirts featured on a t-shirt website. (YES!) t-shirt island... scroll down a few days and you'll see it. Cool site this guy's got.
  
  
• Met Daniel Vosovic (yes, THE Daniel V. from Project Runway season 2) and he gave me some really positive feedback about the shirt I was wearing (which I made the night before) and generally gave me some really solid career advice.
  
  
• I launched the first incarnation of my website. 3 people who I love very much told me they're proud of me - and they meant it. That's a feeling beyond words.
  
  
• I started a new day job. It's been 2 days and I mildly despise only one person who works there. One! It's awesome!
  
  
• Made dinner at home more than I ate out or ordered in.
  
  
• Got to hang out with a friend from Miami who is a really incredible person and I'm thankful to know him. He & his b/f are having a little bit of a tough time and I hope everything works out because this man deserves to be loved.
  
  
• In a month I get to take a road trip (in an actual car, no bus this time!)to DC and see Kristie. That day can't come soon enough.

I miss my boy

I do. I miss him terribly. I thought he'd be in my life for years and years. When people break up there's always way more left behind than memories.

I miss my Dukester every day.

New Shirt!

XL band t-shirt before reincarnation... Fun, sleeveless tunic w/a kickass kangaroo pocket after reincarnation. Looks great over jeans or leggings. If you're confident enough, looks great by itself.

Shirts. Really Fun Shirts.

So, you want your very own reincarnated t-shirt (see the post below)? Use that handy dandy *Email me* link over there on the right of the page and drop me a line. In the near future I'll post pics of various styles for inspiration. All shirts are done by hand (my hands!) and none are exactly the same. Rather like snowflakes, except shirts don't disappear at the first sign of the Spring thaw.

Here's how it works:

• A brand spanking new t-shirt reincarnated as your very own is $35


• Your favorite t-shirt reworked into something fabulous is $25

They're fun, they're cool, they're one-of-a-kind. They're basically just like you, but in shirt form.

1 Weekend, 4 New Shirts

There must have been a surge in creative energy in the Brooklyn area atmosphere this weekend. I reworked 4 shirts, patched a pair of jeans, repaired a shirt for a friend, wrote like mad, went out with friends, brunched, went to a street fair, wrote my name in the sand w/my toes (went to the beach... twice!) and generally had a really, really excellent time. There's nothing like getting to see people you love and getting to spend some quality alone time in the same couple of days. It gives you time to be inspired and time to put that inspiration to work.

Here's one of the shirts. I bought it from a booth at the street fair today. It was an XL t-shirt, now it's a sweet little me-sized shirt w/a pleated ruffle at the hem.



I think I'll wear it tomorrow. The screenprint image is the poster from an old movie called Three Bad Sisters. It says "What they did to men was nothing compared to what they did to each other" over an illustration of a catfight. The women in the drawing are dressed in typical 50s style dresses. The clothing is conservative and demure, which totally belies their nastiness. So deliciously awesome. Kitsch and sex on the same shirt - yum.

Much to look forward to

I'm the kind of person who needs to have something to look forward to. I like to anticipate. I enjoy the rush when thinking about the next bigger and better thing. Lucky for me I've got lots to look forward to in the next months.

I got that new job. I start the 26th. That means one more week at the coffee shop. I'm really going to miss seeing the people I work with everyday. Not all of them, of course, but I've made a handful of friends there and they're great people. I hope to hang out with them after I've gone.

A friend from Miami (one of the 3) is coming into town next week and we're going to an event to benefit The Trevor Project. I'm really excited about it. He's adorable and funny and it'll be great to see him and find out how he's been since I've gone, and we get to go to this night of fabulousness for such a wonderful cause.

July 12th is the premier of season 3 of Project Runway. Wednesday nights will, once again, be filled with obsession and fashion and drama. Speaking of PR, Daniel Vosovic will be at the Trevor Project event. So totally cool.

July 22nd I get to see Kristie & Tim. Party time! Road trip! My best girl and her new house and her old birthday having self! It'll be a recharge for my soul, that's for sure.

Sometime in the next week or so I'm going to the beach. Drove out to Fire Island last night for a few hours and had a blast. Going to go back in the daytime. Soooo great to get out of the city and see the stars last night. So bright. It's easy to forget they're all up there.

Life is good. Next time I start bitching about stupid nothings, please feel free to remind me that I have it pretty damn good.

It's my life

explodingdog.com

I love this drawing. I like to think it's me. Little, stick figure, bald headed me. It's a beautiful day in the city today and I'd like to be out in it. Instead, I'm working my last Friday in the dungeon of the coffee place. My last Friday in a windowless, dark room filled with stagnant air and mold spores. It smells intensely like coffee, which seems to any coffee lover to be a good thing, but I assure, it is not. Everyone in my life who sees me after work thinks I smell like heaven, but they don't inhale it all day long. Jules wants to nuzzle up to me and sniff me. MT says you could put me in the shower, clothes and all, and coffee would drip from me. I'm just glad I've got only one more week left.

Creative Inspiration

You know how I set up my sewing desk a couple weeks ago? Well, it's been fantastic having it all built and ready whenever I feel the creative impulse overtake my being. Which, by a great stroke of luck, has been happening a lot lately. Feeling inspired and all that.

Last night I reincarnated a t-shirt. It was so much fun I pinched myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. It was huge and now it's this hot little, sleeveless tunic with cool straps, funky stitching and gathered shoulder seams. Once I get my camera up and running again I'll post a pic. It was super fun to work on because it was so large to start, so there was lots of fabric to play with. Plus, it's a leftover from MT's old band (I know a lot of MTs. This particular MT is a kickass musician, funny man and all around awesome individual.). He designed the silkscreen on the back and it's a very sweet image. It's nice to rework a piece that has meaning. The band was a big part of him for a long time and there's something special about giving new life to something that would have otherwise sat in a closet forever. He saw it today and got a kick out of it, which felt nice. Told me he saw someone in a mall once wearing one of the t-shirts and it was a surreal and very cool feeling. I can only imagine that's what it will feel like someday when I see someone walking down the street wearing a dress I made.

I need a new obsession

Or, according to Huey Lewis, I need a new drug. One that won't make me sick.

What I mean to say is that I need something else to pass my time at work besides browsing profiles on MySpace. Do you guys ever do this? Kristie sent me this really fantastic book that I'm reading, but I can't really read it at work because the break between phone calls isn't long enough to read a full page. It's frustrating to be reading something totally enthralling and then have to stop short because someone wants to order a pound of Jamaican Blue Mountain even though it's $49.99/lb and they want to have it ground - what? If you're ordering $50 coffee I'd hope you own a grinder. Sheesh.

Digression... anyway, instead of reading my book and getting irritated all day I read news stories and then after I've exhausted the NY Times and the Washington Post and CNN I flip on over to MySpace. I check to see who from my HS has signed up. It reaffirms to me that nothing in Pittsburgh changes much. I look at the funny messages my friends send me. I even look at the "cool new people" profiles if their pictures are strange enough. I play a little game with myself every day. It's called Weirdest MySpace Dude Of The Day. For the purposes of this game, the dude can be male or female. WMDOTD must have numerous misspellings in addition to crazy ass pictures, preferrably including visible beer cans and horribly posed muscle shots.

A week and a half of MySpace filled days left and then I'm in Candyland.

My life is surreal.

I'm going to be the bane (or boon) of dentists everywhere!

My new job entails getting all the packaging made for these tasty treats plus a whole host of other candies. I grew up loving Bazooka gum, so this is pretty awesome. I'm hoping I can get some Garbage Pail (I said Patch earlier, and clearly that was a mark of my exhaustion) Kids cards out of this gig. I get to use my printing background, I get a good salary, excellent benefits, silly silly silly work hours (the Creative Director doesn't like to stay past 4:30, so everyone hunkers down and gets their shit done so it's the rarity that anyone's in the office past 4:30), and I can take one train from my house to the office - and it's an express train! If you take public transportation in any city you'll know how much of a perk that is... especially here in New York.

Random: I had dinner made for me last night. It was delicious. I didn't have to lift a finger and the company was grand.

Now if only I could get this headache to go away. Maybe I need a Ring Pop. Mmm... Ring Pop. Kristie can't have any, though. She's got cavities. Ouchie.

Argh

courtesy of marriedtothesea.com

Been let down. Been hurt. Feel like crap. But, on the horizon - a new job to look forward to.

Good things...

finally came to me. Which is a damn good thing, because I've been waiting and waiting and waiting...

I got a job, folks. I GOT A JOB!

Florida, oh Florida. You make me sad.

I saw this online today: WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- A 6-year-old Florida boy who was accidentally left behind by his family after they celebrated his birthday at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant will temporarily remain in state custody.

As I said in an email to a dear friend, um WHAT?

His response made me laugh so hard I thought I'd shoot coffee out of my nose. He said:

Does Chuck E. Cheese sell liquor? Do they have a shoes/shirt policy? Last time I was in Florida, I witnessed a 300lb. mother at a Winn-Dixie (or was it a Piggly-Wiggly... Either way FUCKING RETARDED) beat the ever-living shit out of her roughly 8 year old son with her jelly shoe. Yes, her JELLY SHOE. The shopping cart was filled with Pop-Tarts and Diet Pepsi. These are the same people that go sport fishing with handguns.

I'm dying. DY-ING.

Update

Interview is Friday at 2:30. I'm happy about it, but I'm not betting the farm yet.

The Job Search Is Killing Me

Remember this? Yeah, so when I said back in late January that I thought I'd get an offer from that bang-up interview... I was obviously mistaken. Here's the interesting part - I got an email from the HR Director tonight asking if I was still available and if I'd come in to meet with them about a different position. Well, a reincarnation of the position I interviewed for, but with redefined priorities. Turns out they never filled the other position and they've reorganized a little bit and now have a new focus for the role they need to fill. I emailed back, said I'm interested and that my schedule can be reworked any time this week to come in and meet with them. We'll see if they call. I know I've said it time and time again, but this time I can't afford to get my hopes up. I really can't do it. I'm looking forward to the interview and that's about as far as I can let myself go right now.

Il pleut

If I get to bed soon enough I'll be lulled to sleep by the rain. I love sleeping in rainstorms. If it continues through morning I'll have yet another commute into the city with soggy shoes. Meh.

Random cool fact: ancient Egyptians used honey as a salve for wounds because honey inhibits growth of bacteria and has anti-bacterial properties for existing bacteria. Thanks, Discovery Channel, for one more thing to put in my "random factoids and useless information" vault. Maybe if I dab a little of the sweet stuff on my belly ring it'll heal faster.

Excellent weekend development: I built the new sewing desk I picked up at IKEA and arranged my studio in a somewhat useable manor. I've got quite a way to go yet, but for now it's a working studio. I spent a lot of time on my machine this weekend. Last night - 4 hours. This morning - 3 more. It feels great. Like I'm breathing again. It's been a few months since I've created anything and for any artist that's like having a part of your soul left behind. It's good to feel whole again.

PSA: Because You Stink

To the tiny Chinese woman on the train this morning: there is no earthly need for you to press and rub yourself against me when there is another pole right across the car with far more room than the one I'm hanging onto for dear life along with 5 other New Yorkers. If it had been absolutely necessary for you to hold the same pole as me (which it wasn't) there certainly was no need for you grab hold so far up the pole that the stench emanating from your armpit could be recognized halfway down the train. Really, people in Queens could smell you. Bravo on the "making your mark on the world" attitude, though. Kudos to you and your sweat stink. Good job. Be warned, there are several high school football teams who are going to be wanting their locker room smell back soon. You'll have to kindly remove it from your skin.