Hi guys I hope this brighten your day a little. THEY ARE SO CUTE.

When the going gets tough...

The 'tough' get going.  Is that how it goes?  I think it finally makes sense to me now.  The 'tough' is referring to the people who keep trudging along no matter what.

Maybe the thousand pages of Gone with the Wind were worth the read last month.  While Scarlett had her issues, she was independent and didn't let anyone or anything stop her.

I'm tired and I'm scared.  I know I need to be patient and give things time to grow.  I know I need to give myself credit for the hundreds of hours I have put into this new endeavor.  I know that I need to exude confidence, but inside, there is a little bit of fear.  I think it is weighing me down.

The fear is a greater hurdle than all of the increased time management to ensure my home remains a haven.

That's big.

I wish I didn't feel so alone.

A

My Mechanical Child

This is my car, some of you have met her already. I love her. It's odd really. My other car, who is now dead and gone, was so hated by me. Well, she was appreciated, but definitely not beloved. In fact I think there was a type of sabotage on my part where she was concerned, like I wanted her to die because she was not the car I wanted in the first place. I had wanted, that's right, a blue Saab. But everyone said "Don't do it." that it was an irresponsible choice, and I would certainly regret it. So I didn't. My Corolla and I tolerated each other for four years. I'm quite sure she knew she wasn't loved. Maybe that explains all her bad behavior. Anyway, this time around, I tried to talk myself out of a Saab, I looked at all the Honda Civics I could find with more than 110,000 miles on them. But again, the blue Saab hatchback was calling my name. One friend did tell me straight up it was a terrible idea, that if I wanted a Saab I should wait til I could spend the money to get a new one. But the reality of the situation is that if I had money I would never buy a Saab. Yuck, I don't like new Saab's. I realized then that I only ever wanted this quirky, old Swedish-ish hatchback. And now was my opportunity. It was the right car at the right time for the right price.  And so she is mine.

She whistles at me every morning when I walk out to her, and so I say hello. She is like a darling little pet. Recently however we have been having some issues with the alarm system. As in, it goes off...a lot. To the point where if she doesn't whistle at me when I hit the lock button, I know there will be trouble later, and sometimes even if she does. I just tell her to be a good girl and hope for the best. Car alarms are special little things. Each car has a different one, and different things make different cars go off. Which in my car's case is everything. I was out on the Potomac last week sitting on the rocks, my car parked way back out on the road. I was talking to a friend and all of a sudden I shushed him, I thought I heard a familiar sound. Sure enough it was my car's alarm, she's loud.

Oh dear. 

I was laying in my bed last night, relaxing after a long beautiful day in the country side. All of a sudden she blew. I threw on clothes and ran down the stairs out the the car. I tried to push the auto lock/unlock buttons, didn't work. I actually got in the car and started it, nothing. I put it in and out of gear, no luck. I was freaking out, my neighbors were going to start throwing eggs at us, it was SOOO loud. I didn't know what else to do but to start driving. So I'm driving down the city block, my car alarm blaring, and I see a cop pulling up behind me, then the lights go on. Great! I pull over roll down the window and try to yell over the alarm. "Sorry! I can't get her to stop!!" Meanwhile he's calling in my plate number. I think after he saw my disheveled hair and mismatched pj's and coat he smiled and said not to worry, that he just wanted to make sure the car wasn't being stolen. Of course another cop car pulled up right behind him. So the two cops have me surrounded, lights going, my car won't stop screaming, and they are just laughing at me. Finally I got out of the car and got her to whistle at me, which immediately shut her up of course.

Seriously, I think this is my current equivalent of having a child. That was a crazy ruckus to be making at midnight. And yet, in the end I just sighed, sternly told her I had better not have to come back out that night, patted her on the hood, and went back to bed.

She just needs some TLC in the form of yanking out the electric wires hooked up to the alarm system, and she'll be all better.

For Posterity

Ok I had this awesome Title that was all star Warsie, that went on about "About a month ago near a lake far far away" but blogger didn't like the format.  So this is what you guys get.

Alright AMPLE as The voice of reason in this family I feel obligated to post something.

last night Jackson was caught in the basement watching TV between the hours of 0000 and 0400 for the second time in a week.  Apparently the Jones family has finally produced an insomniac.  I have to be at work in 4 minutes so I don't have time for a real post, But sheesh someone had to do another one.


Honus

Opinions

I know, this was like, so four weeks ago, but I didn't post four weeks ago. Let's catch up.

 Chief Justice Roberts gave the deciding vote for the Supreme Court stating that Obama's health care plan as it stood was not constitutional under the context of commerce law, meaning that you can't tell people to buy insurance anymore than you can tell them to buy broccoli. However under tax law, the majority states that it is legal. This means that as long as the government offers a punitive tax to be paid in place of buying health insurance, then it is legal as far as the government is accountable to current tax law.  The only part of the law that the Supreme Court rescinded was the governments power to force each state to set up a program to utilize the additional funds, in the most simplistic terms, as a measure to protect states rights.

There is a lot of controversy about this right now, and so many different ways to look at it.

A tax professionals opinion about what it means.

Happy with Roberts

Not so sure about Roberts

SO, here is the way both candidates for the presidency have addressed the health care bill on their web-sites. Again I think the Republicans could do better in making their case. In fact any type of case would be helpful. Bama, as usual, all smoke and mirrors, convincing smoke and mirrors.

Mitt-Face

Obama-Face

All of this is of course just fodder for the mind.  It's good to think about what you think, don't you think?

Em-Face

COLOURLovers

In my recent adventures of creating my logo, I happened upon COLOURLovers.

Go explore, it is awesome!  They have thousands and thousands of color palettes to peruse and enjoy.  You can create designs and become inspired.  It took me some research to figure out what the numbers meant for each color.  So, I want to share what I learned with you.

Let's take Ocean Five for an example.

The first color is a copycat of Martha Stewart's Rainforest.

                                                 (I made this example in Photoshop :o) )

There are two numbers underneath the Hex and the RGB (Red, Green, Blue).

If you want to have this palette in a project you are making, you can go to any application like Photoshop, Word, etc...and input the color by changing the numbers.  It's that easy!

So there were lots of other tricks I learned, but the most important thing, is that when you find a color you love.  You can write down these numbers (either HEX of RGB, both will get you the same result), save them, and make your project uniform in any software that you are using.  Heck.  I bet you could write them down and take them to a paint store and they would be able to create it for you.

The palette I chose for my logo and website was entitled Starry Night featuring Vincent VanGogh's colors.  I love it.  Here is the mock-up I used for all of my photoshop work.  (another trick I learned)

And the result, my awesome business cards and company logo!!

So, now you are informed about one way to embrace COLOURLovers.  I have only tapped the surface.

A