i'm a quirky bird

Ok, so maybe I’m being a little melodramatic. But still, I’m just now writing again as I’ve dragged myself out of the funky black hole I’ve been living in for the last few months. Things have been impossible these last months, and in all facets of my life. So here’s the spill.

Quirky Bird was going through some growing pains throughout the fall…training a new programmer, changing our process to streamline, trying to get websites up before Christmas. It’s always a completely insane time of year for us, and this year we had more clients than ever trying to go live. Then, in December, business came to a screeching halt – which isn’t unusual, it’s just that we didn’t have the clients in the queue that we normally do. It was hard and scary and stressful. And painful.

In mid January, we found out that my grandmother (who is a huge part of the reason why I am who I am today) is terminal with congestive heart failure. My brother and I flew out for several days to hold her, talk with her, love her. I was so beyond heartbreak, I knew it’s probably the last time I’ll see her. Half of her heart isn’t working. But she lives on. That’s how hardcore we are. I’ll have a separate post on that visit eventually, I’m not ready to go there just yet.

Knowing I’d be on a plane a ton, I figured I should get a book. It had been ages since I’ve had time and energy enough to read, I didn’t even know where to start. Then I remembered my sister-in-law had just read the Twilight series and could have had about a litter of tiny werewolves she loved it so much. So I figured why not, right? Yeah. Um, I almost finished it on my way to Houston. Bought the second book in the airport on my way home and finished it the next day. Then threw myself into the final two books to avoid living in the real world with my real problems and real pain. And because I’d been avoiding dealing over that week, I crashed and burned when the books were gone. It was ugly and gnarly and horrible, and I realized that I needed some help.

That’s when I threw my back out.

No idea how, but about 4 of my ribs got knocked out of alignment. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sleep without feeling like I was getting nailed in the back. Went to the ER where the stellar young doctor who was in a major hurry told me I had a sprain and gave me some vicodin and motrin. Classic. Thank goodness for Chiropractors, mine set me straight and within a few days I was back in action. I’ll tell you – I’m not a crier, I didn’t even cry when I gave birth to either kid (thanks to my anesthesiologist)…but I cried like a little bitty baby just trying to walk or even lay still with my back out.

Though all of this, Jeff (my husband) had started a new job riding an ambulance. His schedule was this – Call the night before and we’ll tell you if you have to work. It was like that for about a month and a half and the stress of taking care of the kids, dealing with the impending loss of my grandmother, and running my company were taking it’s toll. I was slipping away. The week that my back was out was the end of his whack schedule and then he started his set schedule. He was gone that week from Tuesday to Friday from about 7am to about 10pm. By Friday I was a terrific mess. We had no groceries, no clean clothes, the house was a disaster zone, and I couldn’t do anything about it because my back was on the fritz. This was most definitely my lowest of lows.

I called the doctor on Monday and they were able to see me same day. She put me on an anti-depressant/anti-anxiety prescription and told me to cut back on the booze (that I had been using to medicate myself). I started them on a Saturday and was a zombie for about 5 days. Seriously – I was a total drooling doorknob.  It’s been two weeks now, and I’m just starting to feel normal again. I’m still not back to feeling totally like me, but it’s getting better. I’m functioning now, living life instead of just existing. It’s like living in a fishbowl – being depressed. Like everyone can see me but I can’t see anybody. Like being locked in your own mind. And I thought I was ok. I almost didn’t go to the doctor, thinking I was just over reacting. I’m so glad I went, even if it meant that I had a few weeks of a drug induced state of dumbness.

Now the last hurdle – we’re moving to a smaller place to try to downsize our finances. We don’t want to be stuck like we were when we ran out of clients. We want to get to a place where we know that what Jeff makes totally covers us so we can save our cheese for a rainy day. Problem is – we have no idea where we’re moving. And we have to move in 3 weeks. Wish us sanity through this move, it’s hopefully going to be kicking off a new chapter for us that’s us in the upswing instead of hurtling down the rabbit hole.

So that’s my big, fat, long, depressing excuse for where I’ve been. If you made it this far, I hope I haven’t scared the crap out of you…and thanks for reading. And – don’t worry about me. I know everything is going to be ok, I’m an incessant optimist and happy-go-lucky gal and I feel that coming back. A great friend of mine likened me being depressed to superman getting diarrhea (which is quite possibly the most hilarious thing I’ve ever heard). Being happy all the time is sort of my superpower! Thank goodness for my beautiful friends that have helped me through all of this with their shoulders to cry on and bottomless tequila shots.

Uh huh. That’s right. I’m going to watch Twilight for the 2344365652nd time tonight. I read all 4 books in 8 days (I said don’t judge) and watched the movie twice. I haven’t seen New Moon yet, since I got into the series in between it coming out in the theaters and the dvd release, but I heard it’s way better than Twilight. I was pretty bummed at the detours the movie took, and somehow the whole thing missed the intensity that the book had, but I still enjoyed it. To see them come to life brought a whole new aspect to the story.

They’re coming out with a graphic novel, which I was pumped about…until I saw some of the art. It’s totally anime. blech. Such a huge waste.

In any event, I’m totally making out with Edward in my dreams tonight. Don’t be jealous.

It’s hopefully only temporary, but I thought this freebie was just my style and, well, since it actually WORKS, I figured it was a step up. The last template was my sorry, sad attempt at coding. At least I learned something – stick to design.

I have a whole big post I’m working on to explain where the hells I’ve been for the last couple of months, will post that as soon as I have a little more time than I have right now. It’s my heart being poured out a bit, writing it is exhausting. But – it’s coming, so keep your pants on.

Years ago when Jeff and I got married, we were living in Florida in his Grandparent’s winter home while Jeff was getting his degree. When we moved in to the Florida house, I went through all of the rooms and closets and took stock of what was left there by GB (Jeff’s grandmother) and Daddy Ray (his grandfather).

Deep in one of the closets, I came across what would become one of my greatest treasures. I saw a dusty old tin and pulled it down. It was heavy, and I was anxious about what was inside…pictures? papers? Old letters? I pulled the lid off and saw a sea of buttons. Hundreds of them. I sat for hours and dug through them. I found GB’s sewing kit. I found her old scissors. I found a handkerchief she used to practice stitches on. She must have trimmed the buttons off of every piece of clothing that she discarded, and I was amazed.

I never knew GB, she died before I met Jeff…but finding her tin of buttons was like finding a little piece of her, hidden in a dusty tin in an old closet. I gave her sewing kit and handkerchief to my Mother-in-Law, who nursed her when she was so sick, and she let me keep this…my lovely treasure.

I’m not sure what it is about the buttons that is so captivating. As I sat with them to take pictures for this post, my daughters and I poured over them, talking about the ones we loved, the ones that were silly or kooky…the ones that were bright and brilliant. I’ve used the buttons to make things for myself, for my children. I’ve used them for web projects. But I mostly use them to feel connected to a woman that I never knew, but that shaped who my family is.

Another installment of our WTF series to help you understand wtf all this web jargon is all about.

Gravatar is a company that has coined the phrase of the same name. Gravatar means a Globally recognized avatar. You’ll notice in our comments that if a person posts it shows a geometric picture to represent you. Let me explain how to personalize this for use on this and any blog on the web using gravatars (that would be most of them).

Step 1: go to www.gravatar.com

Step 2: If you have a wordpress log in, log in right there on the home page. If you don’t and you want one (you don’t have to have a blog, you can just get an account), go to www.wordpress.com and sign up for one (just opt out of the blog). If you don’t want a wordpress account, just click the ‘get a gravatar’ button and follow the steps.

Step 3: once you have an account, you can update it with your photo and profile info.

See how easy that was? Test it out here in our comments, and be sure to link us back to your own website if you have one.

So this morning as I’m sipping my coffee, reading over my favorite blogs, I check in on a site that I love that’s full of designer portfolios. Most of them are web designers. So many are enviable, they’re at the front of the trends…really they’re setting the trends. It’s inspirational and, as you can imagine – brings a few tinges of inadequacy. Reminds of this funny shirt I saw, but of course didn’t bookmark. It basically says the point of being a graphic artist is to make all the other graphic artists jealous. We must have gigantic egos.

Anyway, as I’m perusing (drooling over) these portfolio sites, I start to realize a few things.

Most weren’t very user friendly

There’s a big trend in design to have a one page portfolio. I really don’t get this, I want people to be able really get to know us and our work through our website, and how could I do that if you only had one page of information to look through?

The ones that did have multiple pages, the navigation was hidden somewhere in the design…either in a font that’s way too small, way up in the top right corner of the page or worked into the design in a way that I didn’t really know I could or was supposed to click if I did happen to see it.

Almost none were search engine friendly

There was minimal text on the pages, and with only having a one page site, google doesn’t like that so much. The more content you have, the more there is to log. Obviously, within reason – and a blog does help this – but just having one page with maybe 500 words total for your entire site is search engine suicide.

Style and function are two different things

I truly believe that you can have both, but function has to win if there’s a time when you have to choose. Who cares if your site looks like an amazing piece of art if A) nobody can find it and B) if they do happen to stumble on it, they have no idea where the heck they’re supposed to go? It’s a mystery to me.

At the end of the day…

It’s really an interesting emotion to look at something and envy the look, but then try to use it, or look at it like google would and realize there’s a major miss. All style, no substance. Hopefully we’ve married the two with quirky bird, because that was definitely the idea.

So I’ve been slammed all summer with work. Taking too much on as usual. All of June/July was spent moving everyone off our server. All of August was spent redesigning our site. Now, we’re into our busy season – the OMG-I-have-to-be-live-by-xmas season. So, the next few months around here are going to be bananas to say the least. And now that I’m finished complaining, here are the goods.

I’ve posted a few new pieces of art in the doodles on the right, here they are in full size:

We were driving home and I saw this utility pipe cap sticking out of the ground. It was bright yellow and had big twist handles on the front and I immediately loved it. Came home and sketched it out.

This one I did a while ago while watching Doc Hollywood (don’t laugh). As he’s walking down main street, he asks someone how they are and they said, Well I couldn’t be happier if I was twins. I spent the rest of the movie drawing.

Inspiration is the hardest part of art I’ve found. The idea has to come from somewhere, the rest is just practice. Another really difficult thing – drawing mirror images. Notice how light my pencil marks are, I’m totally gunshy to get in there and commit to the design for fear I’ll want to change something. Graphics are so much easier, I don’t ever really have to commit to anything. Does that make me an art-commitment-aphob? I’m working on that.

I have more to share that I made, but it’ll have to wait. They’re gifts and the recipients might be watching! Must.keep.on.dl. This is very hard for me you understand.

Enjoy your holiday weekend (if you’re in the US), meet you back here next week for the post-holiday hangover once again.

I am an idiot in the mornings.

I wake up every morning and make coffee, like many (most?) people who read this blog. Every morning. Every single morning. Yet, despite all of this practice, I still manage to goof it about every other time. How can you goof up coffee? Well, let me tell you.

Step 1 – grind the beans
Step 2 – take filter and pot to sink to clean and fill
Step 3 – fill up tank, replace coffee pot and lid
Step 4 – dump beans into filter (the problem step)
Step 5 – turn pot on and go brush your hair for heaven’s sake.

Wake up and dump the freaking beans into the filter.

So many days, I shuffle back over to the coffee pot, salivating, ready for my morning joe. Pour the coffee and very, very hot steamy water comes out. Awesome. Repeat steps 3-5 and try not to swear too loudly, there are kids in the room.

Lesson: There has to be order to the chaos.

I’ve found that for me to be successful, I have to have a process. It applies to life, business, and even such mundane things as making coffee. Instead of WTF do I keep doing this?! I have to figure out How do I stop myself from doing this? The answer? Reverse steps 3 and 4. It’s that simple, as is adjusting to most things in life. The hard part – Remembering the steps before you’ve had your coffee.

If the title of this post applies to you, keep reading.

I was one of you.

A few years ago, everyone started blogging. It was primitive, usually personal to a level that I didn’t really care to spend time reading. Design was primitive as well. None of it was really very appealing. It seemed like a lot of technological hoodoo. I was almost completely disinterested.

Then information started trickling through to me that I was interested in. Blogs were becoming beautiful, full of information that I was eager to absorb. I would bookmark them, high on them, and then would never remember to go back.

This orange button started showing up on blogs that I would stumble across. “RSS…WTF is that?” Great, I had just started to get the hang of this and then I found that there was something else I knew nothing about. I googled articles on RSS and was still pretty much lost on what I was supposed to do with them.

WTF is RSS?

RSS is a simple string of information that your blog generates as a way to easily transmit your blog posts out into the internet. You can access this string through a URL. This is what mine looks like:

http://imaquirkybird.com/?feed=rss2

To follow a blog using an RSS feed, you have to sign up for a feed reader – then ’subscribe’ to the blog by saving the RSS link that the blog generated in your reader. The RSS reader will then be automatically alerted and updated with any new posts from that blog.

Reading Feeds

I started off with Google Feed Reader. If you use igoogle, this would be a good option for you – it will post your feeds on your igoogle home page. My problem with Google Feed Reader was that I couldn’t remember to check it. So, it was a bust for me.

A few months ago, I found Feedly – a Firefox plugin. If you don’t use Firefox as your browser, you should. It’s the A-number-1-must-have if you use the internet. Seriously, go right now and get it here: the best browser ever.

Feedly is cool because:

It’s easy to remember to read

I’m a bit of a mad scientist, remembering is not something that comes easily for me. So a top quality in a feed reader is something that’s a little in my face. With the feedly reader plug in, there is an adorable little green rss button next to my url bar. I see it a bazillion times a day. When I have free time, I click it and it takes me to my feedly dashboard.

It’s easy to save sites I want to follow

a) open feedly
b) click add source
c) paste url of feed into the field
d) save

There is also a mini toolbar on your pages that will save an article in your reader, post it to your twitter, or email it to someone with one click. Easy Sneazy.

It’s easy to read

Feedly uses a magazine style layout, so you can see all of your favorites one one page like one big blog. You can create categories for things like friends, living, cooking, etc. Many already exist with some blog suggestions to get you started, you can add/delete feeds as you like.

It’s user friendly

Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m a usability freak. If it doesn’t have an easy to use interface, I’m never going to use it. You’ll be happy to know I use feedly almost every day.

Did I mention it’s easy?

Because it is. Real easy. So easy I can do it – and I was an RSS resister.

I’m a believer

So having found a reader that works for me, I’m officially a believer. One of my favorite pastimes on my computer is reading through the variety of blogs I’ve found to help inspire me, educate me, and entertain me. It’s not as scary as you might think, you just have to have the understanding of what it is and how it works and a tool that helps you manage the feeds you want to read.

Hello, Beautiful people. I greet you from underneath the pile of work, sick kids, and heat in which I exist right now.

You’ll notice I haven’t posted, mostly because I’m insane with work and haven’t had time to do…well…very much besides eat sleep and work. However, because I love you, here is a fun post for you.

I received what had to be the most hilarious birthday gift featuring one of my recent obsessions from one of my favorite people in the world:

That’s right. Mustache napkins. She made them. I worship her.

Oh, and I’m blonde. Didn’t see that coming, did you?

Forgive me for not dolling up for this mustache-tastic photoshoot. It’s hot here. Real hot. No AC. That means makeup lasts about 27 minutes before it’s all over my desk. Hopefully you can still read from the assult on your retinas.