Whew!

I am back at work! Well teaching, back in the classroom! I know that sounds crazy, but I just plain had too much time off from school, since May 15, 2007! Again, I know, poor me. Off since May 15 and collecting a paycheck all the while. hey! I do not make the ruled. I was eligible to take a sabbatical and I did. I was just unprepared for just exactly how much time I was going to be off.

I did a lot though, and it did kind of go by fast until this last month when I was just chomping at the bit to get back to the classroom.

And now I am back and it feels damn good!

Wasting time and helping the hungry.

Last week I posted the Trash Bin Basketball. . .nothing more than a diversion. Benefits no one!

Today, I bring to you a diversion that HELPS the hungry of the world. Sure, your productivity is down but your karma goes way up! AND you may even learn a thing or two.

Free Rice will donate 20 grains of rice through the United Nations to help the hungry throughout the world for each word you correctly identify. Do it as often as you like…they will donate the rice

Put your mailbox on a diet!

Here is a new way to eliminate all those unwanted catalogs you receive. Catalog Choice is a free service that lets you decline those catalogs that fill your mailbox and end up in the trash anyway. And it lets you avoid the phone system hell that you will encounter if you try calling to cancel a catalog.

Eliminating the catalogs BEFORE you receive them is another way to improve our lives, and conserve our planet's natural resources. Forget about recycling the catalog, just never receive it!

BRAVO to the merchants who have set up a merchant account 
and are honoring your requests. The fewer catalogs they have to produce will save them money and all of us resources. Some of these are Lands' End, L.L. Bean and even Pottery Barn!

As of today, 5,375,684 catalogs have been opted out of by 437,876 people. That number is going to grow as they were just featured on the TODAY show this morning. I know I am going to collect my catalogs for a month and then opt out of most. You need to enter the customer number from the catalog to opt out, so you need the catalog to do so.

Less productivity!

Trash Can Basketball

Careful now! This is addicting! And before you think to just kick back and throw, there are fans that blow at various speeds that you need to account for in your game!

Global Warming - Made Easy 2 Understand!

Nothing more to say.

We ALL should have a dream.

Reading the words of Martin Luther King today drew me to this one line.

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

Let us all hope so.

Eating healthy

I like to think I eat pretty healthy. I cook a lot of my meals. I am known to do a whole bunch of cooking on the weekends so I have stuff to eat during the week. And thanks to mom, I aint afraid to freeze stuff!

I heard a while ago, one of the easiest ways to eat healthier is to just shop the outside perimeter of your grocery store. Why? THAT IS WHERE THE FRESH STUFF IS! And sure enough, the above is a basic layout of my grocery store. And sure enough, I do a lot of shopping in the perimeter. When I venture into the aisles I find lots of packaged stuff loaded with sodium! That does not mean I do not go there, but I try to as little as possible.

Take note next time you are in your favorite grocery!

Spring?

Well, the paperwhites I got for Chistmas make me think so. But here in Chicago it is in the low 20's today and spring is actually a couple months away!

I also put some tulips in the pot with the paperwhites which are coming up too. So I should have fresh flowers for the next few weeks.

1,000,000,000

That is 1 billion. The next time you hear a politician use the word “billion” in a casual manner, think about whether you want the “politicians” spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

• A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
• A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
• A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
• A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
• A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in your brain, take a look at New Orleans. Amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is asking Congress for $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number, what does it mean?

If you are one of 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, child), you each get $516,528, OR
If you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your would get $1,329,787, OR
If you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.

Here are a few things we are taxed on: land, wage, bed in which you lay, tractor, mule, cow, goat, pants, coat, ties, shirts, work, dirt, tobacco, drink, booze, beers, bills, gas, notes, cash, grave, even the plot!

Then there is inheritance TAX, Accounts Receivable Tax, Building Permit Tax, CDL License Tax, Cigarette Tax, Corporate Income Tax, Dog License Tax, Federal Income Tax, Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA), Fishing License Tax, Food License Tax, Fuel Perm it Tax, Gasoline Tax, Hunting License Tax, Inheritance Tax, Inventory Tax, IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax), IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax), Liquor Tax, Luxury Tax, Marriage License Tax, Medicare Tax, Property Tax, Real Estate Tax, Service charge taxes, Social Security Tax, Road Usage Tax (Truckers), Sales Taxes, Recreational Vehicle Tax, School Tax, State Income Tax, State Unemployment Tax (SUTA), Telephone Federal Excise Tax, Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax, Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax, Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax, Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax, Telephone State and Local Tax, Telephone Usage Charge Tax, Utility Tax, Vehicle License Registration Tax, Vehicle Sales Tax, Watercraft Registration Tax, Well Permit Tax, Workers Compensation Tax.

Some facts:
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.
We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

Immortalized in chocolate!

On February 12, 2007, I turned myself into an M&M!

For Christmas I received personalized M&Ms complete with my name and a wonderful memory of WWs.

Here is the story!

I had a part time job in a news stand/bookstore when I was 16. I even had to take a lie detector test but that is another story! On the counter next to the register was a candy display. Now there are two sides to this counter. One side for the customers IN FRONT of the counter. We typically filled the display from the back. If not careful some of the candy would be upside down from the customers point of view. I would make sure when filling the candy that all the packages were facing the right way to read. Which leads us to WWs.

Imagine if you will an upside down MM is a WW. Hence the monogrammed MMs having my name one side of some and WWs on the other side of others!

As for the immortalized. . .it is only in this picture that they live on!

Ni Hao

That is hello in Mandarin! Why you ask? Because I am going to China in May!

The AIGA XCD Center for Cross-Cultural Design along with Package and Design Magazine of China, has prepared a tour that will go deep into the heart of China's flourishing design scene. China’s creative spirit is transforming it from the world’s manufacturer to an economy of national brand development and ideation. It is a must-see for any globally savvy designer. And in this global market, who doesn't want to be globally savvy!

Oops!

No one got hurt! Well, some inanimate things did!

Jacob Lawrence

"The Shoemaker," by Jacob Lawrence, gouache and watercolor on paper, 22 5/8 by 30 7/8 inches, 1945

Someone told me they were recently at the Whitney in New York. Which got me of thinking the last time I was at the Whitney I saw an amazing show of jacob Lawrence. So here is one of his images.

From the Whitney's website: Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) is one of the most prominent and revered American artists of the 20th century. One of Lawrence's most renowned works is his sixty-panel Migration Series, portraying the flight of more than six million African Americans from the impoverished communities in the rural South to the industrial cities of the North. The panels depict themes of migration including movement, family, labor, segregation, struggle, and hope. An American epic told through vivid patterns and colors, the Migration Series is a masterpiece of narrative painting, the first work produced on this subject. Capturing racial ruptures of the day, Lawrence chronicles the quest of people in search of greater economic and social justice.

Dreams

I just came across a postcard of this painting I bought at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and it got me to thinking ho much I really love this painting. The color, energy, and life in it! Which then got me thinking of the movie Dreams.

Flixster - Share Movies

Van Gogh's painting Wheat Field with Crows is an important element in the fifth dream in Akira Kurosawa's "Dreams." This fifth dream a brilliantly-colored vignette featuring director Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh. An art student (a character wearing Kurosawa's trademark hat who provides the POV for the rest of the film) finds himself inside the vibrant and sometimes chaotic world inside Van Gogh's artwork, where he meets the artist in a field and converses with him. The student loses track of the artist (who is missing an ear and nearing the end of his life) and travels through other works trying to find him.

Sound come to life!

This is a post from joshspear.com from today by Jeremy Elder.

As creator and all-around genius behind UK design shop Universal Everything, Matt Pyke serves up some of the most eye-catching and jaw-dropping digital design on the planet. His client list includes heavy hitters like Apple, Adidas, MTV, Coke, Nokia, Nike and a little shindig called the 2012 London Summer Olympics.

The anticipation for his latest project is keeping me up at night: Advanced Beauty is a series of “sound sculptures” curated by Universal Everything with sound design by frequent collaborator Freeform, the music project led by Matt's brother, Simon Pyke. Each segment is visually and sonically unique and directed by groundbreaking designers from around the world – including visionaries like Marc Kremers, Karsten Schmidt, Thomas Traum, Alex Peverett, Tom Scholefield, Paul Simpson, and Jonathan Garin.

If the awe-inspiring trailer and lushly color-filled first segment by New York-based designer and SpearTalks Alum Mate Steinforth are any indication, then we're in for a total breakthrough when Advanced Beauty finally drops in Spring 2008. I think it’s pretty safe to say right now: Advanced Beauty will be the shit.

Foot Fact!

A friend from Michigan told me this crazy sounding fact, and then I did it and damn if it aint right!

Your foot is the same length as the distance from your elbow to your wrist! I know it looks huge but if you put your foot along your arm putting your heel at your elbow, your big toe will reach your wrist!

So now you know what big feet mean. . .longer sleeves!

Infineight