i'm a quirky bird

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.

So I’ve come to discover I’m a Hitchcock enthusiast.

There’s something about Hitchcock movies that is just so intruiging. I find myself watching them with my mouth agape, just soaking it all in. The cinimatography speaks volumes and no one has to say a word. So many times through them, I wish I could take snapshots to save in my brain forever of the imagery they show. They make me want to draw.

I think it started with The Birds. I had seen Psycho, but didn’t really get it. At 16, it seemed so anticlimactic compared to the slasher flicks of my time. Then, I saw The Birds. Something about that scene where she’s sitting outside, waiting to get the little girl from school. She pulls out a cigarette and looks over her shoulder, there are a few crows. Takes a few drags, then there are a dozen crows. She gets nervous. Stands up and the jungle gym is, quite literally covered in crows. She panics. You get the point.

We watched Vertigo a few months ago. I swear when the nun came up the stairwell, I almost screamed.

Last night Jeff had EMT class, so I browsed netflix instant play for a little something to watch. Saw the cover for Dial M and had to watch it. It’s my favorite yet. The premise is that the husband wants to murder his wife. He devises a plan but something goes wrong. And we’re the only ones, beside him, that know what happened. And we want him to fail. Every time he gets away with something, we curse him. It’s super intense without any screaming, slasher, bloody knive, sex charged mess. It’s just good, clean, thriller. At it’s best. By the master.

So out of curiosity, I recorded Earth 2100 last week. Finally got around to watching it and…well wow. It was very powerful and the art was amazing. It tells the story of a fictional future through expert accounts as well as (and most interestingly) through a graphic novel. There were some obvious fear tactics involved (a mob attacking a gas clerk that ran out of fuel, borders collapsing and soldiers opening fire on droves of people trying to come in to the US, that sort of thing) – not that in the situation that they were painting those things wouldn’t have happened, but it was super intense to watch. Here’s the first act:

I enjoyed it, I learned a lot, and again – the art was amazing.

Here are Part 1 and Part 2 on hulu. You’ll need ABC’s plugin to watch, but if the teaser got you interested, watch it.

We’re back from my brother’s wedding yesterday, drove out there on my birthday. 29 on the 29th. I think it was destined to be a sketchy day for that reason alone. It seems like it would be good luck…but alas. The day blew. I *did* however get to have dinner with my entire immediate family, which happens like once a decade. That part of the day happened to be fantastic.

Next year, it’ll be legendary. The big 3-0. One year left of being in my 20’s…how the heck did THAT happen?

Anyway, Happy Birthday, self. Enjoy your last year as a kid!

…That Pandora would let you Thumbs UP UP something? Like extra umph up. Holler if you hear me.

And – if you don’t know what pandora is…CLICK THIS. Seriously. It’ll change your life.

Daniel and I have a running joke…we’re like kids playing video games sometimes when it comes to work. We just want to spend 5 more minutes on it – until we’ve been sucked in to some ridiculous black hole of who even knows what for 6 hours. And we look up and realize that we haven’t peed in 3 hours. That there are 4 coffee mugs littering the desk. And it’s dark out.

That was SO me yesterday trying to style this blog. And I didn’t even finish. I mean, not even close really. Go me.

I’m such a right brain, I’m lucky I can talk. I can make it look pretty but this coding stuff is for the birds. Or the Daniel-birds at least, the Staci-birds just wants to make it look pretty. Although, it does sting to be grossely incompetent to build a website in anything but granny jones’ html. pth.

I always feel hungover after a holiday weekend.

Sunday was a fun day – I went and picked up a few books all by my lonesome. Had a huge stack at barnes and noble, but no chairs. Seriously B&N. get some freaking chairs. I ended up sitting on a tiny bench in the kids section listening to what had to be the most annoying gum-chewer on the planet. But, I digress.

I picked up a CSS reference book (Thanks for the reference, Daniel), which has been vital in assisting in the design of this blog. Obviously I have a lot to learn still.

I picked up Hand Job by Michael Perry – and no, get your mind out of the gutter – it’s about typography. And it’s amazing. and inspiring. I doodled all afternoon when I got home because of it. Inspiration is magical like that.

I also grabbed The Web Designer’s Idea Book. It’s full of great catagorized web page pages by color, theme, type, etc. I saw some sites I knew on entry and immediately I started wondering if one of my sites was in there…but of course there wasn’t. I mean, duh. Most of them weren’t search engine friendly, but that’s a gripe for another time.

but god bless the hangover, three day weekends are the bomb dot com.

So here we go. Another blog out there on the web. I have our blog for quirky bird, where we talk about projects and business related topics. Then I have our family blog where we share photos and stories and videos with our friends and family. But I really wanted a place to talk about me. My art. Growing as an artist and a businesswoman. Just to share a little bit of me. So, like I said, here we go. Hold on to your butts.