Please stop raining. Just for an hour. Please?

I have this nice afternoon to myself and I just want to go drill holes in pieces of plywood as planned - but I figure I shouldn't do that if it would mean letting the powercord for the drill go straggling through a puddle. But I can't glue and nail until I drill! And I can't assemble until I glue and nail! And I can't start using until I assemble! 

Grumble, grumble, grumble. 

Please? I don't think I can take any more hot tea and being productive with a notebook. I spent two hours on that. It was a good, useful two hours. I have an outline that will take me at least twenty pages into my post New Year's project - that's pretty good. Now I want to go make something a little more physical and then I'll get back to the notebook. Really. I will. I promise. Ok, universe? I will. Really. 

Just ... stop ... raining ... ! 

Or ... could it be that the universe is trying to tell me which project to prioritize? Sigh. 

Cake in a mug

This is too cool not to share: cake in a mug (from Wired). I may have to request that the break-room staff start stocking eggs & flour.....

My first official launch!

When I switched into my new job role, I also took over a couple of projects from other people. 

And one of those projects recently launched! There's even an offical product blog post about it: search for my name with the name of my company and it should come up. 

It's pretty cool to see my name online in a non-social-networking kind of way, I have to say. In this case, I came late to the project, so I can't take credit for a lot of the design work - but I handled the launch, made sure it happened, enforced various small decisions...and it's out there in the world!

Euphoria

I've never gotten chills listening to a politician's speech  before - but last night I did. I've never said I'd be OK with it if my taxes go up because maybe, just maybe, this time I'll get value for money - but this time I voted in line with that hope.

I know that no new president, even an inspirational president, can make all the kinds of difference our nation needs right now. No single person can have that kind of impact. But a single person can, absolutely can, inspire a whole lot of other people. Just look at how many people voted - if Obama can mobilize all that energy on an ongoing basis, just think what might be possible. 

As my friend T suggested last night, maybe the US flag can stop being a Republican symbol and instead become American. It's a small thing, just a symbol, but I'd like that. A lot. I'd like to start saying "I'm from the US," when I travel, and being proud of it, instead of vaguely ashamed. 

Here's to grace in the White House. It's been way too long. 

Fingers crossed

I thought politics was a heated subject in California, but wow, in New York it's even crazier. Waiters remind you to vote when they hand you your bill. Airline attendants say "did you vote?" when you check in for a flight. And everywhere on the streets are guys selling buttons, and stickers, and flags. I talked for a few minutes with one guy - an artist selling canvasses on a SoHo street - who said he'd stopped painting Obama because it was getting "so overdone." Bars are having election-night parties and I really, really wonder how many people are going to call in "sick" all over NY tomorrow because they stayed up "drinking till Obama's president." 

In this election there are three results I care about: president; prop 8, because I'm married so I'm in favor of more people getting to get married, and against restricting people's options for who to get married to; and that crazy one about teenage abortions, which I really hope gets shot down because if you are a teenager, and you want an abortion, and you don't want to tell your parents about it, there is probably a very good reason, and the end result of parental notification requirements is likely to be teenagers looking up how to perform abortions on themselves on the internet, which will result in emergency room visits, etc. etc. etc. 

Can you tell from the writing style that I'm on the edge of my seat here? The only way I'm getting myself not to just watch TV straight through from now until whenever is that I've got my War & Peace class to attend. 

The more I learn, the liberal-er I get....

Over the next couple years...design!

... if the economy continues to tank, I swear I am going to try at least half the projects listed in Geeks Getting By: Zero-Cost Gadget Upgrades for the Next Great Depression.

Combined with the fabulousness of Ponoko and the Sketchup-Inkscape pipeline plugin from FlightsOfIdeas.com, this could keep me busy for a long, long time. 

Once I get some projects up on Ponoko I'll post links here. I've got a couple halfway completed so far, to the detriment of the hours I'm working, my efforts to read War & Peace, and the amount of sleep I'm getting - the only reason they're not already up is that they don't currently fill Ponoko's full sheets of material, and to keep shipping & materials costs down, I want to change that. So I'm waiting to order till I get a few more pieces going.  

The only downside to all this is that the name I dreamed up for my design-making alter ego is already taken: Marq Design (or DesignMarq), RIP. Back to the brainstorming table. 

Back to school

Last week, on a whim, I signed up for a class on Tolstoy's War & Peace. Last night I showed up at Stanford, 10 minutes late, having missed the first class, and behind on the reading. 

Sounds like college, right? But the feeling's totally different: there's no negative or positive externality that can result from anything about my involvement in this class. If I never show up again, the only impact is that I don't hear the lectures. If I show up every time, do all the reading, and learn the history, the only reward is that I did it. 

I'm not sure if this is more weird or more cool.