josie

WOW that's freakin' uncanny. I didn't really believe you guys....

To try to be a good gf I got d4rk the smelliest cheese I could find once. I don't remember what it was anymore, but I went to a special place with all kinds of good/rare cheeses and said "give me your stinkiest cheese". The guy smiled and happily obliged. Well, d4rk loved it. And it actually did taste good when I tried a bit- very mild compared to the smell. But god. I brought it on myself... even in plastic baggie and tupperware, the entire fridge reeked of that singular odor only a fine stinky cheese can bestow. Everything. Everything from the veggies to the beer had a tinge of "butt death wrapped in trench foot accented with a light sprinkling of three day old vomit". Never did that again. He loves limburger... not allowed to come near me for 4-6 hours post consumption.

Eh, to each their own. I don't eat it plain. But I do love it in the right ratio in the right dish. I could see the texture being a no-go for some. Shout out to lactaid pills for making cheese fries and mac n cheese a reality for me again.

As someone who cannot eat cheese but still wishes to eat cheese and does anyways and suffers for it... smoked gouda. Get some ricotta in a ziti bake with about 8 metric tonnes of mozzarella and parmesan and you can't go wrong.

Now you know how I have felt every day this summer with construction workers banging away... heh... every... single... day.... How many mornings i've slept in a little bit only to find a worker staring in my 2nd story window... and I don't wear much when I sleep... This prep for this procedure sucks so hardcore. Nausea, passing out, weak... god. Misery. And I just knowwww they're not going to have any answers after it. All of it for nothing.

Ughh they found a huge cyst in my throat years ago when they went in to remove my adenoids... essentially had a big ol' hole back there just full of... gunk. Removal took awhile. Haven't had a bad cold since. I'm on liquid diet right now prepping for cameras all up in my body too. I'm so freakin' weak. I keep passing out. And the worst part hasn't even started yet... God I hate being human.

D'aw. I haven't done anything particularly cool photo-wise in a while. I've got some videos but those are a pain to upload. but seriously... donuts effing rock. I will never willingly delete them from my diet. I have all these awesome apple cider donuts I brought from an orchard in my hometown and I cannot eat them tomorrow or Thursday because of a GI procedure that requires I eat no solid food whatsoever.... They're going to be taunting me. Jo... eat us... ignore the directions... put down your disgusting medicine.... eeaaattt ussss we're delicioussssss

She does constantly go on about loving donuts and how happy she'd be if she could just eat donuts every day... her bag is shaped like a donut, she has a donut patterned phone case and shoes, after a competition she'll eat like a 24 pack of donuts. So... probably. Self induced torture I guess. I write this as I'm eating an apple cider donut....

THEY'RE INSANE AND TAKE FOREVER AND WE ONLY HAVE ONE BATHROOM FOR THE ENTIRE BUILDING AND IT'S AWFUL There's a difference between passion and haranguing. You share your love of cycling and illustrate it well- you make others want to do it. I was doing that with aerials until I was like, well, this is a board of mostly dudes who'll never do it and really don't care... People like my coworker rub their hobbies in people's faces with an air of superiority that tarnishes whatever sport they're lording over others. I can't help it. If someone orders a pizza in or brings in food, she'll go on and on about how she can't have it because it'll screw up her training.. she'll pick off a pinch of pizza crust. I'll just sit there and eat it in front of her. Wouldn't normally, but she's such a jerk about things...

Yeah- one of the ladies I do aerials with is a body builder, her boyfriend is too. Being around her is somethin' else. She's up at 4, runs an hour on the treadmill, does a full workout, goes to work, lifts on her lunch break, finishes work, trains all night. Has food and protein powders and shakes rationed out down to the minute, she even freakin' schedules her bowel movements. It's pretty incredible. She's a hell of an aerialist on top of it all. Really strong, flexible. I couldn't do it. People like that make me feel like a total schlub! I was having one of my stomach attacks at the studio and I made some gripe like "you'd think for all the hell I go through I'd at least be skinnier" and she goes "well you could be. You just don't care enough to try hard." Go suck an egg, lady. Probably can't eat it anyways if it's not scheduled "egg eating time" on your schedule. Bleh.

haha I know a few female body builders (and male, as well). I respect it and envy certain asspects... but I'm getting to where I like what I have. I'm hard bodied where I want to be but soft enough that the cat still thinks I'm comfy. Still jealous of some of my fellow aerialists who are just naturally thin and gorgeous but... just not in my genes. I don't look at the scale. Not really being able to afford more than rice and cereal also helps... d4rk's probably just happy I'm getting a butt again since I started teaching bungee aka a billion squats in an hour.

:P I hear ya. I tried crossfit for a hot second a few years ago. First time doing it, I worked so hard (there is NO pacing yourself mentality) that I was throwing up and they were all acting like this was a badge of honor. Tried it for another month or so (was going with a friend) and decided it was just putting me through more pain than it was worth. It was very cult-like and competitive. I found myself going for jogs or climbing or anything as an excuse to skip it... I know a few people who compete in big Crossfit competitions and most of them have had major surgery/rebuilds. Popping knees and ACLs and tearing quads just... really shouldn't be that common, guys. Former high school teacher I know got into it and she just had her double knee replacement last week... you can't tell me that her sudden love of crossfit style lifting didn't contribute to that! No care. Just numbers. I watch them do chinups and shoulder stuff that I teach now and cringe. Lotta unsafe practices, but you try telling them that... And yeah. Kale... nope. I've got guns and abs but a bit of pudge because I like beer and chocolate and that's ok. I do it my way, they do it theirs.

haha I am also not a yoga person. I know, a woman in her 20s who doesn't like yoga?!?! Weird. I always end up yanking a neck muscle or something dumb. I do a bit here and there because I have to with aerials, but man... not my cuppa tea. That and the culture surrounding it... and I know it's not always the case, but I seem to be surrounded by nearly militant vegans hollering about how they don't need material things while they do downward dog in their $98 lululemon yoga pants and $70 lululemon fashion sports bra on their $150 Manduka mat after sipping their $8 gluten free asparagus water from Whole Foods or whatever... Push Past Your (credit card) Limits... I do aerial yoga at our studio sometimes. So, yoga poses and strength training but using a hammock. It kicks your a$$. And you get to hang upside down- your spine decompresses and it's soooo nice. We also teach Vinyasa Flow and Hoop Yoga- literally yoga using a hula hoop. I'm teaching a class at the same time or I'd try it.

I cannot wait to dig into this. The Vietnam in HD series is very good, but Ken Burns always does an incredible job. I think the CNN decade series is supposed to be dropping the 90s soon too. Doc heaven. And yeah- you're right... every time I watch any doc, it truly is incredible how cyclical everything is.

I normally do under promise. Constantly. It's pretty much my ethos. It was just miscommunication. They said "we loved it so much we want you to do more" and I signed on assuming that meant more of the stuff I'm good at/did for them already. After I'd signed on they told me what they wanted...which was all foreign territory. Had I had time, I could've figured it out and done it. As it stands, I got an email this morning essentially firing me. Mixed feelings. On one hand, I have a lot of other work I put off to do this that I can now work on. Tomorrow and Thursday will be spent prepping and doing a nasty medical procedure. Takes a lot off my mind, but I also feel like an absolute worthless failure piece of sh!t now. Officially the first time I've ever been kicked off a project or done poorly. Never failed a test (ok, one math test in 10th grade, still haunts me), never failed a project, never did badly at my old job.... so this is new and terrible and just reinforces the mean part of my brain screaming "and this is why you're broke, you suck, you're not a real designer by any stretch of the imagination".

Best of luck to you. It's just... all you can do is go forward. It sure is frustrating. And my head is just a cloud of all the crap people tell you; "Fake it till you make it" "Learn on the fly" my father telling me that's the basis of most of his job, "we have a problem, can you fix it?" "Yes!" no matter what, make it work. So now I feel like a fraud AND a failure... I realize it's not really my fault- it's a miscommunication, but if only I had more training/had some innate sense that made me amazing at everything, I wouldn't be letting these people down. I really feel terrible. This was my chance to really nail down some work of this type, expand my resume, actually get a job and make money... I know I can do it, but not on this timeframe or necessarily in this sanitized style. You're right. I think I know how to do the rest of it, which they said is the more time consuming part they most need my help with anyways. But man. Guess I have yet another feather I need to hunt down to put in my cap. I didn't know what I didn't know. Now i know what I don't know, and I can fill in the gaps moving forward. Just a painful/cruddy way to learn. But aren't most lessons learned through failure?

I gave it my best try, but I guess I asked enough questions that my glaring inexperience was sniffed out. They're pulling back the copy/text formatting stuff to in-house. I'm still going to be replacing flat graphic elements with work I made for them in the previous weeks. I'm still kind of lost, but at least I can follow a tutorial or two to learn how to do it myself. I did tell them this wasn't my wheelhouse. But they were in a rush and just ignored me until I asked a ton of questions. Apparently I did too good of a job with my files on the previous job that they assumed I knew how to use a different program. I have worked in it before, but very sparingly. I told them that early on, didn't seem to phase them. This is clinical medical stuff, there's really no room for pushing things around like in a magazine. Everything is uniform in size and spacing and it's a puzzle to solve, and I don't know the rules. They brought me in initially to make it less spartan and clinical... Most of the creative team is on vacation which is why they said "hey, this freelancer did a great job on job 1, let's keep her around to knock out job 2" because all designers design... I really feel the failure today. It's all the sort of thing that were I in the physical office with them, the director would walk over, point/click/show me stuff for 5 minutes, and I'd be rolling along. But on my own with only email and rushed phone communication, I'm just floundering.

Always be sure you know what you're agreeing to before you sign. Never assume. And if you're dumb like me and find yourself overwhelmed, tutorials tutorials tutorials. I guess this is how you learn though... Seriously though. Did a ton of easy work for a rush job. They ask for more work, I stupidly assume it's the same kind of easy work... sign all the docs... THEN they tell me they need tons of work (by thursday) and it's stuff I have never done in my life. Gigs of it. I keep asking loads of questions that I'm sure are like "baby learning to crawl" level questions to them and I feel so insurmountably stupid right now. And terrified. And awful. They needed me to help them out, not sit down and baby me along... I am so incredibly in over my head right now. Designers reaaallly don't know the difference between a graphic designer and an illustrator, do they? It's like asking a painter to put down their brush and go sculpt something out of marble real quick. Related, yeah, some painters are also sculptors, but generally lightyears apart in practice...

Joining the other girls here- Congrats man, that's awesome.

I love this show. I've been following Lisa Hanawalt's art since she was making weird ass stuff for Vice a decade ago. It has loads of wonderfully sh!tty puns, never lets anyone off the hook, and is infinitely quotable. Never found another show that takes me from snort laughing to ugly crying so often or frequently. It's a good emotional purge every once in a while. Def one of those "it's a cartoon but not for kids" shows.

Thanks NS! It wasn't bad. I drove 6 hours but ended it with tiramisu and I can hear the cicadas. They sound different here than in Buffalo, and I've missed them a lot. Sure hope 28 is kind, 27 wasn't the most stellar of my shuffles around the sun. But there's hockey today, so, onward! I'm sure d4rk would refer to me as one occasionally...

This sounds really amazing.

mhm. I like a good Sazerac. I'm open to suggestions. My greatest shame is that when we were all in New Orleans at the Commander's Palace for an incredible dinner, they started us off with their classic Sazerac. I'd been looking forward to this for a long time. The night before, however, I had an allergic reaction to a pilsner and spent the evening hurling and missed a plantation tour and most of the next day. By the time we got to dinner, I was still really shaky. I sipped that whole damn Saz out of principle, but I didn't enjoy a drop. Every sip was a battle to keep everything together. The entire dinner was amazing, and I could barely face it. So... I need to go back. And do it right.

:w00t:

boooooooooo The culinary dessert treat known as buckeyes sure is delicious though... dunno about the actual nut. All I know is I have had to draw the O with buckeyes/leaves a million times and every time it looks like pot leaves and balls. Also... I am still not really sure why this thread exists... :mellow: