I'M BLOGGING!!! omg lol wtf!!!

ok i have been all but m.i.a. on the internets for like 3 weeks, popping in long enough to check emails and take care of a couple of worky things here and there, and of course to play my turns on facebook scrabble and twitter like a mofo.

(in keeping with that mofo comment, tonight i went to the twittergrader website where they gave me a 99.3% (which i believe is a solid A, and means i get to stay up late tonight AND have ice cream for dinner!). and if you scroll down there's what they call a "tweet cloud" which is just made up of the words you twitter the most or most recently or something. i was laughing my ass off because number one it is very apparent that i'm a bit of a swearer and also a TON of my twitters are directed at jenn aka @swirlogirl.

oh shit i had a open parenthesis there. better close it.

)

there. i feel better.

ok so here's all kinds of updates on what i've been up to! number one, i started a temporary freelance gig onsite for 3 months down in mission viejo. this means wearing pants to work is actually a requirement for now, until this summer when i'm work from homegirl again. it's been good! i've been getting really solid in my indesign skillzzzz and that's been nice. the people are cool and the drive isn't as bad as i thought it'd be, and i feel fortunate that this particular gig came along because freelancing has been terrible slow lately.

so there's that - i also recently discovered the massive importance of having more than one method of backing up your work on the computer. especially if everything you do is on the computer. a couple of weeks ago, i was working late on some tee designs, and my dog comes walking up only wanting to say hi... but in the process he got tangled up in the power cords for my laptop and external hard drive and pretty much threw my external hd on the ground. rendering it useless. josh took the hard drive in to work so some of the computery guys there could try and recover all my files - they're trying a few more things before we have to send it to an actual data recovery place that's gonna cost buku bucks to get my stuff off of the drive... this is basically all my artwork that i've done over the past year and a half or so. and loads of photos. and hi-res scans of paintings that i've since sold.

basically everything i've ever done. i'm still kind of freaking out about it, but i've had the past two weeks to calm the eff down so i'll just share that if all the art is gone i'll start fresh and make more art, and that you could learn from my mistake and back things up 2 or 3 times. going forward i'll be saving everything to dvds and uploading to an online backup service. this will never happen to me again - i hope it never happens to you, either!

there has been good news - number one, i got featured on a blog! you can check it out here, she asked me a bunch of questions all interview style!

also, our dog has lost weight! it was only 3 or 4 pounds, but when the dog weighs 47 and drops to 43 that's losing almost 10% of his weight! i won't say he was tubby, but boy was getting tubby. jimmy's been discovering the joys of full-speed sprints chasing birds at huntington beach dog beach, and it's really been helping. i've been trying to help him drop the extra weight for MONTHS and nothing's worked!

what else, what else... if you're not doing anything tomorrow hearts and laserbeams will be at the de portola boutique in mission viejo! mention you heard about it on my blog when you visit my table and get $5 off your $25 dollar purchase!

i'm working my way through the jungle by upton sinclair for an upcoming hearts and laserbeams book report and that shit is DEPRESSING. are there any highschool reading list books from back in the day that aren't about people getting screwed over or dying? honestly, i wanna know if there's such a thing as an american classic novel that falls in the humor genre. and shakespeare doesn't count because even his comedies are tragedies. THE END!!!

ps if you can think of a funny high school reading book i will send you a free bookmark! first responder only, cuz listen up i don't have a ton of stamps!

who wants to see something new!!!

this here is a photo of the huzzz josh cutting open one of those heineken minikegs with his dremel tool. lookit those sparks fly! there was a rattley noise coming from inside the empty keg so he wanted to see what was inside - i predicted an even smaller keg of beer! unfortunately getting inside this thing is hard work and we don't have access to a chain saw so the project was abandoned.

and that's not the only show and tell i've got for today!



check out our dog jimmy the greek on a brand new coaster set! 50% of the price of these coaster sets will benefit the humane society, cuz we're huge fans of helpin out the homeless animals!

there's all kinds of new stuff in the shop today, including mousepads, coaster sets, stationery and personalized easter plates!



order your easter plates soon soon soon, cuz it takes a little time to get em made up - unfortunately there's not quite time to get them if you're international, but U.S. orders can be placed until march 22 with guarunteed easter delivery!

argyle for everyone!

so last spring i had started this dog sweater, and for whatever reason about 20 minutes away from finishing it i put it in the closet and forgot about it for almost a year!!! wtf! busted it out again this week at stitch n bitch and i totally finished that shit! i think it turned out pretty awesome and jimmy doesn't totally hate wearing it. (he know he gets all kinds of special attention from other people when he wears clothes so he's pretty tolerant)

if you didn't know, jimmy the greek has a celebrity page on facebook and you definitely should become a fan - write a note to him on the wall, he ALWAYS answers his fan mail!

also, have you heard about the sketchbook project? it's a great show being put on by the art house cooperative, and the travellin show starts today! artists from all over (including me and my sister!) all drew in a CRAPLOAD of sketchbooks and mailed em in. these fine folks are takin the show on the road and will be exhibiting the sketchbooks at nine different places - if you're east coast you may be able to see em in person! check out the show dates here!

AND if you're not east coast, you can see a live broadcast of the first show tonight! i believe it takes place from 7-10pm eastern time, so look sharp!

heads up, long beach dog owners!

i feel like such a numbskull! josh and i are super on top of all things jimmy - we never miss getting him his shots, we always get him the special shampoo for his supersensitive skin, we make sure he's well-taken care of when we're outta town...

how did we forget to get him a dog license!?!

we planned to do it right when we brought jimmy home a few years ago, and for whatever reason that is the one thing that completely slipped our minds!

was reminded this morning on my way into rite aid, when i saw the cover of the long beach press telegram. according to the headline, the city of long beach is cracking down on unlicensed dogs, and have started going door to door to check up on people!

jimmy's license application is all printed out and on its way down to the mailbox, you should get your license app in too! you can find out all the info you need at the long beach animal care services website!

cute as hell...

you may or may not know, but my sister danielle has a radio show on her college's online station on tuesdays, 4-530pm.

now that i'm work-from-home girl, i get to listen to it again, hooray! she always plays a fun mix of stuff and almost always plays tenacious d when i ask her to, and for that she gets 20 gold stars.

so yesterday i tuned in, and it was the most adorable thing ever - every time, and i mean EVERY time the music stopped and danielle started talking again, our dog jimmy would run into the room with his tail wagging, looking for her.

it got to the point where he started looking in all of josh's hiding spots he uses when they're playing hide and seek - is danielle hiding in the shower? is she behind the door? where the eff is she, i can hear her i know she's somewhere!!!

it was awesome. the end. tune in next week when i find out if their call-in phone line still works, signalling the return of prank calls to the show hooray!

i'm almost sad it's friday!

so the new job starts monday - while i'm super excited about it, it has been so much fun being a fulltime hearts and laserbeams employee this week. i got so much accomplished that's been on the back burner for ages, including:

- did 7 (almost 8! maybe 8 by the end of the weekend) new paintings. 2 for an upcoming halloween show in echo park, 5 (or 6) for a robot series i've been wanting to do for freaking forever. i'm hoping to be able to wrangle a solo show sometime in the future with these robots...

- updated the shop and the etsy store with like 70something things that should've been listed a longass time ago

- learned more about and started to perfect my screen burning technique for screenprinting by burning a total of 7 screens (4 of which need to be cleaned out cuz they stank! thanks to everyone who offered their tips and tricks, i'm really starting to get it!)

- designed four new tees

- screenprinted some tees

- hung out with brian who was in town on business!

- sewed some new scarves

- knit 2 earflap hats for me and the boy

- started xmas shopping

- bought supplies for new purses that i'm super excited to start making this weekend

- did a buttload of laundry

- washed all our windows

- spent lots of time at the dog park

- watched oprah a bunch

- laughed at how dumb tyra is on her talk show

so yes! happy weekending, i'm hoping i can stay productive in my last couple days of housewifeness, and i'll regale you with tales of the new jobby job soon!

margarita-cha-cha-cha!

last night was fun - josh and i decided to take jimmy for a walk. thinking ahead of time, hey it'll be a lark to take him on the long walk down to ocean blvd and along it a bit before circling back, and maybe we should stop at the grocery store on the way back for some margarita mix.

so i just mapquested our whole trip last night and it ended up being a 3.5 mile hike. i just didn't think we'd actually walked that far. i do know we saw lights on at my sisters upstairs apartment, and yelled up to it for like 3 minutes telling her what a chump she is with no answer. tried calling her cell and she wasn't even home. way to waste electricity, chump!

and the margaritas were delicious and saturday night live STILL isn't any good. the end!

hoppy easter, yuk yuk yuk!

hope y'all are havin a lovely easter!

today's been fun - started out playing a few rounds of our new family feud computer game, which could possibly get a little addicting... and then, and this is what you came here for, josh and i loaded jimmy up in the car and headed to 2nd street for the annual easter dog parade!

it was so awesome - we weren't sure how our dog would react cuz he tends to get overly excited around other dogs. he was really super good, though, just chillin out, happy to be walkin around and getting petted by bazillions of people and smellin tons of butts. i think they have another one for halloween, so we'll probably try and come up with some kind of outlandish costume for him for that... there's some stiff competition, you know? people go ALL OUT for this shit!

anyways, check out the pics and hope you and yours are havin a great day!

also, this weekend's theme seems to have been let's do new stuff that's there to do in long beach - josh and i went kayaking in the long beach marina yesterday and it was AMAZING. saw a bunch of moon jellies, a stingray and some sea slugs. so glad it's almost summer and they're open all the time because i really think i'm gonna wanna go lots more.

procrastination nation...

i was doing so good for a while, updating almost regularly again... here's what's been up:

number one, get your butt to the movies and see yourself some reno 911 miami the movie. AMAZING. seriously, all of a sudden there's all kinds of movies i'm really interested in seeing after not caring about going to the movies at all for the past few months. this weekend black snake moan comes out, there's blades of glory with will ferrell on the horizon... what else. something else was coming out that i was into. it sure as hell wasn't the hills have eyes 2, which i saw a billboard for on the freeway while on the way home today...

number b, i got rear-ended on the freeway on the way home from work yesterday and it just makes me so mad the way it all happened. traffic was stop and go, the car in front of me stopped, i stopped, the guy behind me didn't stop fast enough. and then in the hullabaloo of where we were at on the freeway and trying to get over to the shoulder and traffic and bullshit the guy gets ahead of me, motions like he's going to pull onto the shoulder - i figure he's gonna wait until after the mess of mergey lanes we were at, so i go to the other side of that and he's just gone. so hit and run, hooray for that. upside is i'm totally okay, the car's just got lots of bad scrapes on the back bumper. fixes for another time, you know what i'm sayin?

thirdly, america's next top model starts again tomorrow night and i would be lying if i said i wasn't excited. i just dig seeing the artsy fartsy photos they come up with. i think my favorite from last season was the bullfighting pics annnnd i think there was one where they were dressed up like animals? or is that another season i'm thinking about... whatever, i'm ready with my big fatty bowl of poopcorn!

the vet told us yesterday that jimmy's gettin a little tubby, so that boy's on a bit of a diet to get him back in line.

the website's comin along awesome, sometime this week i'll be puttin more up in the shop and hopefully this weekend i can finish that up so i can concentrate on makin new things, aka getting going on that painting jenn won in january...

i'm currently supposed to be working on a logo/business card thing but man i keep getting sidetracked and HOW IS IT ALMOST 11 ALREADY! back to work with me. later!