Go team Venture!

Last month was very stressful. I don't really have any specific definable reason (other than my pregnant wife, obviously), I was just having an off month. My work suffered. I looked at all my projects from my job last month and said to myself, "Self: You are better than this. You're just not trying hard enough."
This month has been significantly better. Of the 7 layouts I've already done, only two of them were "meh." The rest left me with a sense of self-satisfaction and pride in my own talents that I haven't felt in quite some time. One of them in particular I was proud of, because for the first time I created everything purely from scratch. Usually I'll use stock photography and vectors and build off of them, but this one was purely my own original content. I was pretty pleased with myself for that one, considering I've fallen into a bad habit of not using original content. My job has spoiled me in that fashion. On top of all that, we went and did a photo shoot and I took many pictures that turned out darn good.

In other news, I got my hair cut yesterday. I had been growing it out slightly, because, according to Liz, I didn't have an adult hair cut. Unfortunately I'm quite apathetic, so the hair has been growing since about July, with one trim in the interem from Liz.

In still other news, holy crap Christmas is not that far away. I hope nobody expects anything, because babies are expensive.

Good day.

NEWSFLASH!

Nathan and Liz have given up swearing for Lent. How will this shocking story unfold?! More at 11.

So uh, yeah, anyway. That's interesting and stuff. We have a swear jar plastic cup. It had $2.50 before Ash Wednesday was over. Now it has like... $4.00 or so. So we're improving! It would be more challenging if we were going with "things you can't say in front of grandma," but our cut off is like... crap, and screw. Mostly it's the big ones we're avoiding.

In other news, I'm really excited about this thing we're doing at work. We're being challenged to make a movie poster that retells a classic fairytale. Basically it's just something to excite the creative neurons. The first thing that I thought was to make Little Red Riding Hood as a werewolf movie. It will be called Red. I have a billion ideas for it already. I'll have to post it when it's done. "This Summer... You'll see Red." I win at life.

Also, I'm doing one cover design this month. Because the author specifically requested to work with me based on this book cover, so that will be exciting. The book is medieval in nature, so it should be crazy easy to give her something she'll like that is similar to that one.

Also also, Liz's dad's book entered cover design this month. He apparently submitted an idea for the design. It is hilariously bad. Liz described it to me, but I had no idea just how bad it is. I wish I had grabbed the picture, because the words won't effectively describe it. Basically it's a monster in a business meeting, holding what looks like a giant Nintendo DS, and one the screens is a stick drawing of a monster burning a man. And his book is about... well, basically it's how he would run things if he were in charge. I think it needs the subtitle "Ravings of a Madman."

I really have nothing else exciting to talk about. Other than Liz has a job now. It sounds horrible, but a paycheck is a paycheck. Hopefully we'll be able to keep Sallie Mae at bay for a few months now.

***ETA***

Mallory so generously sent me the picture of Liz's dad's book. Here it is:


She also reminded me that I designed a book cover for her. I HOEP U LIEK IT!!11

A back story: Mallory told me to give her a cat. So I drew her this cat. His name is Opie, because he's wall-eyed and reminds me of the character from Family Guy. Yeah, it's not really that funny.

After having watched much of the special features on Season 1 and 2 of Robot Chicken, I've decided that I have a new dream job. That new dream job is to work with/for Seth Green. He seems like he would be the coolest boss in the universe, and just getting to work with him would be kick ass.

So, does anybody know if Seth Green is hiring a Graphic Designer? :D

I finally uploaded some of my book covers to my deviantart. Do feel free to check them out and tell me what you think. It's sort of a best of/cross section of all the work I've done at tate in the last year. I have something to the tune of 100 book covers, and most of them are a bunch of craptacular devotionals and "inspirational true stories." It's funny that almost all of my favorite work is fiction books. Go fig.

You know what's truly awesome about my phone? The fact that I can set any .mp3 as my ringtone. Therefore my current ringtone is "Where, Oh Werewolf?" From MST3k. And if my family calls it's Blind Guardian's cover of "Mr. Sandman."

What else is neat is .mp3 editing software, so I was able to get exactly the part of those songs that I wanted instead of the less catchy beginning parts.

What else is new? Oh yeah, flu. It sucks hardcore. Everyone in my office has been being obliterated by this. In fact, half my department was gone on Monday. That's when it finally caught me. I started feeling yucky about 2 hours before quitting time, and then I woke up on Monday with a massive headache, a sore throat, and bad case of the retches.

I still feel like hell today, but I managed to drag my sorry body into the office, despite its complaints against me.

Final proofs are, in theory, going to be printed tomorrow, which means I will see for the first time one of my book cover designs on an actual book. I still need to upload all of those things to a) my portfolio, b) deviantart, and c) facebook so I can show the world just how awesome I am. And, y'know, make use of that $75 a year website I has. Which I had an inkling to make a massive overhaul to, but we'll see how lazy I'm not. Which is not at all (oh, decipher the double negative!).

I also have a few book recommendations! Check out STIFF: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. As the title implies, it's about dead bodies and all the fascinating stuff that happens to them when they get donated to science. And other things that used to happen to them, such as medical cannibalism (Yum!).

For The fiction fellow or fellowette (fellowina? It's not as cool without the alliteration...) out there who doesn't mind a bit of racy content and language, check out I Just Want My Pants Back, by David J. Rosen. Like any story worth telling, it's about a girl. I can't really do it justice describing it, you'll just have to read the back cover.

Our cats are weird and adorable. And annoying.