I just want to know who the designer is that decided to use this font. Actually, I want to know who the Art Director is. Who approved this font?! PAPYRUS?! REALLY?

In case some of you are asking yourself why I’m freaking out over this horrible font choice, I’ll let you in on why this is such an atrocity to me. Ever hear of a cute little font called Comic Sans? Yeah. You’re probably recalling the number of times you used this font in school – I remember a classmate of mine using it on a Biology report once. Well at some point, someone petitioned to put a stop to the inappropriate usage of this font, and with good reason. People were using the font for everything, including some of the most serious topics. Papyrus is the new Comic Sans. No graphic designer likes to be told to use either of these fonts – and somehow it’s a request we get from many many clients and even people that we work with (like pm’s or sales people). I remember doing a website for a law firm a few years ago and I went with Century Schoolbook for the main font. I got an email back from the client asking me to use Papyrus because it was his wife’s favorite font. Now every time I see either Papyrus or Comic Sans anywhere, I die a little inside.

I launched a site yesterday (woohoo!). And one of my legacy projects is finally going to be finished tomorrow. Hopefully I can keep the momentum up. We need to get rid of a few projects that have been going on for way too long. My newer projects seem to be going rather smoothly, so hopefully I can get those out fast too. Two of my newer clients are Johnny Was, a designer apparel company, and Star Trac, a huge fitness equiment manufacturer. Both companies are pretty huge, so it’s a little exciting to have my name on their sites.

My new year’s resolution this year is to be happy and not go on living life in self imposed misery. I feel like I spend too much time dwelling on the things that go wrong, when actually I have a lot going on for me lately. I need to just roll with the punches, honestly. My other resolution is to find someone who’s on equal ground with me and not live vicariously through them. I need to find someone that can take care of me but isn’t afraid to let me take care of them. Someone that I don’t have to support emotionally or even monetarily with nothing in return – and vise versa. I need to find someone to be with and still be able to stay true to myself. In my past relationships I’ve completely immersed myself in my partner’s life – I practically move in with them… their friends become my friends, as do their hobbies, and then by the end of it all, I have nothing for myself. So hopefully that changes this year.

And Urban Watch & Co, the project I’ve been most proud of has finally launched. There’s still a few problems I need to address on the site though, so for now we’ll call it a soft-launch. This site will be really nice if you are looking for a great Christmas gift for a loved one; it’s located at www.urbanwatchco.com. I really owe a lot to Stela for helping me launch this damned thing… we really work well as a team, I think. I did all the frontend development and graphics, and she did all the backend development. This is the site that I really unloaded my entire arsenal of skills on… I learned a lot of javascript, and I also learned a lot about aspdotnetstorefront and xml packages. This is the second site that I’ve done from start to finish with Golden State… sadly my first site is still waiting to launch. I did manage to launch another website, Kaikea Entertainment, a couple months ago – it was the last site that I started and the first that I launched. Hopefully I can get Cornzapoppin and StockNod out in the next two weeks, and then I can start from a flesh slate. I already have some great clients lined up for 2009, some of which are:

• Johnny Was, a really big fashion design brand.
• Blue Fang Games, a company that makes video games for PC.
• Jamie Fontz, an all-american model.

And now for some non-work related stuff:

I watched Twilight tonight… I’m curious to see if the books are any better, so I bought the first two volumes. Quite honestly, I didn’t really enjoy the movie that much although the story had lots of potential. The dialogue was almost unbearable to sit through… they completely overdid the awkwardness and stuttering between words, in my opinion. I understand that both the main characters are awkward, especially with each other, and that each conversation is supposed to be really intense, but I wish they could get through one sentence without sounding like they forgot that there’s an entire range of emotions that don’t include angst and discomfort. For heaven’s sake, they didn’t even sound as if they really liked each other. So I’m going to start reading the books and see If I like it any better than the movie.

Which brings me to my next topic… I’ve been trying to make more time for my own hobbies lately, especially after my recent break up with Rick. I’m in need of some serious “me” time; I mean, I haven’t been single in almost three years. This means more reading, more anime, and more designing at my own leisure. Let’s see how long this lasts.

In any case, I’m back on the horse now. I didn’t expect to be, but I hung out with a friend/ex-coworker of mine last night… we had some drinks and well, one thing led to another. We went to see Role Models, which is a really funny movie, and then to a bar. We wound up at a Courtyard Marriott around 2:30 AM, and then got breakfast at IHOP around 6:30 AM. I got home around 8:00 this morning. I don’t know where we go from here, but I’m going to see him again later today.

On the work front, I have been really busy lately. I’m always busy, but things are really starting to get down to the wire. Last Thursday I stayed at work until 11:30 because some lady came that night and wanted a bunch of work done by the next morning. It was freaking brutal. And all my other projects seem to be launching at the same time, so it’s a lot of work. I’m gonna be glad once I push those sites out though; then I can start from a clean slate. I’m starting to get into javascript these days. I always knew it, but I just never used it a lot because my focus was really just graphics and html/css. But lately, I’ve just been tired of waiting for the developers to do things for me when I can do it faster with javascript… or to be more accurate: jQuery.

Anyway, I need to get up and run some errands – one being that I have to go pick up my belongings from Rick’s place today. Fun. Then I think I’ll go get a manicure.

Work is good, I’m on salary now, and my benefits kick in September 1st, so I’m pretty stoked about that. I’ve been getting a lot of projects lately – actually, i’m super busy at the moment.

It’s 9:00 AM right now and I should already be out the door but I’m still in bed, half dressed, and feeling too lazy to get up and take a shower. I’ll probably get in the office around 11:00, but it’s all good. I usually stay pretty late anyway. This company is wicked cool about hours, so that’s a huge relief. I’ve never been an early bird. I think the only time I ever come in on time or early is when I’m at Rick’s. He usually gets up at 7:30 so that means I pretty much have to get up too. Since he’s five minutes from my office, I get in around 8:30, which is pretty early compared to everyone else.

Anyway, I thought I’d leave you guys with some eyecandy – these are some of the designs I’ve been working on lately:

I’ve been seeing someone new. I used to work with him at my first firm and he quit the week after I got there, but we’ve kept in touch. He’s an awesome designer, so I’ve learned a lot from him. We’re just having fun right now; I wouldn’t exactly call him my boyfriend just yet. He currently lives in Chino Hills, which is about an 45 minutes away from me but he’s going to be moving to Newport Beach next week so he’ll be closer. The drive to Chino Hills isn’t that bad though – it’s much easier than my drive to and from San Diego when I was with Joe, and a hell of a lot closer than Okinawa. Newport Beach is around the corner from me.

Anyway, I got a haircut and I also went red again. I sort of wish it was redder, but my stylist said I should go a little more conservative since I have to be a professional and the cut is already sort of dramatic. Conveniently, the salon is located next door to us in the same little plaza that my work is in. I also got some clip-in extensions in case I ever go anywhere nice and want to have long hair. Here are some pics:

view more photos of my hair in my album!

I look so different with long hair. I mean, my hair was long before, but I got 22″ extensions and they’re like movie-star perfect. I like my hair short though, its so much easier to maintain. Most days I can just wake up, scrunch, and go.

Work has been great; I’m building out the Cornzapoppin site, and it’s looking good so far. I’m excited to be wrapping that project up finally.

I’ll be hanging out with Agiri and Toya today, so hopefully Agiri or I will have some pictures to share later.

I have been working at Golden State Communications for a couple weeks now, as a Designer and Project Manager and my impression of this Orange County web firm has been pretty great so far. The atmosphere is wicked laid back and the people are really nice, and they all have great senses of humor. We have some interesting clients, and I keep pretty busy during the week. We have this ping-pong table in the office and most of us spend a lot of time playing against each other. I personally suck at this game – but I get better as the days go by. One day I’ll finally destroy everyone at ping-pong!

Edit:// See photos from the Cornzapoppin Photoshoot!

My sister, Quynh, is back from Albania. She was in the Peace Corps and was there for two years, but now she’s back with my brother’s family in Texas. Apparently my other sister Marlene is there too, visiting. I wasn’t invited because I’m awesome. Actually, I’m going there in July for a huge family reunion, and then again for a much longer time to meet Brandon’s family, so my siblings know I can’t spare anymore vacation time for an impromptu visit to welcome Quynh back to civilization. She will be staying with me in June, anyway. She says she wants to visit me at work to make sure I’m actually working and not just goofin’ off. Heh.

As for the dailies – Honestly I’ve just been working all week. Since I’m making a steady income again, of course I’ve been shopping a lot during the weekend. I bought a really cute wallet from DSW, and some shirts from ANGL. And I got off my parent’s phone plan since they refuse to activate the internet. I need to receive emails on my phone for work and stuff, so I switched to Helio, and I got the Mysto phone, which is really slick. It should be arriving tomorrow. I’m keeping my old number so everyone should still be able to reach me. I’ve also seen a bunch of movies lately – Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Iron Man, What Happens in Vegas, and Chronicles of Narnia II. All of them were great flicks – this seems to be the season for the silver screen, because there have been some really cool movies out the past few weeks.