Raise it, brotha!

So, today I woke up and I was feeling pretty crappy.
I did not want to go to work at all. I got in the
car and stopped for gas (which will make anyone
feel much worse these days). I headed off, and I looked
in the car next to me, and this black dude is just
breakin it on down. I kinda giggled until he started
raisin' the roof. It was hilarious. And I figured,
if some guy can just raise the roof confidently,
about 5-7 years after he really should be, then life
can't be that crappy, right?

So anyway, thanks to everyone for the well wishes. It does
help to know I have such great friends.
I think maybe when I start to get down, I'm gonna raise the roof.

Oh, and this is for Tara and her boobies.

I was surprised that I still know all the words.

Zimmy

I had to make the quick and sad decision to put
my baby Zim to sleep last night. It was the hardest decision
I've had to make in my entire life. He was perfectly fine yesterday,
and he went from okay to being in complete pain in the span
of about 2 hours. I miss him so
much already, he was my best friend and my baby.
And everyone always said what a cool cat he was. He was so
laid back and sweet. I honestly don't know what I'm
going to do without him.




I love you Poopy Butt Zimmerbee, and I miss you.

Don't be scared

I have been practicing with the liquify tool in photoshop.
I 've been very discreet with my use, but I wanted to do something
fun and a little exagerrated. They are kinda creepy, and some
are better than others depending on the quality of the original
picture. You'll be able to tell because the eyes

look more cartoonish than others.

And Moose, if you read this, stop being gay and have
Ken take a good picture of you like I asked!

These are side by side comparisons. I think it's cooler to see
what I started with. Click on the pictures to get a better view.

Libby

Alexis

Monica

Laura

Here are some of me. I don't have the comparisons,
but you know what I look like.






So there you have it. I still have a lot of room for improvement.
My lines aren't exactly perfect. But they were a lot of fun.
And I'm sure I will do more in the future.

Movin up y'all

It has been an exciting couple of weeks for me at my work.
I have gone from taking pictures in a warehouse with
a makeshift backdrop and a glorified heat lamp that I found,
to a full on photography set up. It has taken over a year
to convince my bosses of how much time and money they will
save on investing in a good set up. And I have finally gotten
what I needed. It was a good 5,000 dollar investment on
their part, but I'm positive that they will make the money
back in no time at all with the little time it is taking
me to get product through.

I wrote a huge thing about my job, and what I do. And how crappy
my setup used to be. But it was incredibly boring. So here's the
short of it.

This was the setup when I first started working here.


After that I was forced to find what I needed to be able to take pictures of clothing. So I setup in the warehouse and took pictures out there for a good 3 or 4 months. We moved to a new office where there was more room. I setup in my office and used my walls as a background. But there were so many shadows.
This is an image from when I was doing that.


The background is supposed to be completely white, so I had to go in photoshop and cut the background out. It doesn't seem like a huge task, but when you have 50 to 100 images to do a day, it was extremely time consuming. The product was coming in faster than I could get to it. So they had to hire people just to help me with backgrounds. All this time I am trying to explain to my bosses that it's not me that's slowing down the process time, it's the lack of professional equipment. But they didn't believe me until they brought Overstock's creative partners to meet with us. Overstock was completely surprised that we were able to move so much product through with my tiny setup. I got to go to Overstock and see how they were doing things there, and about a month later I have this.





It doesn't seem like much, but holy crap it is such a huge improvement from what I had.

And now my images look like this.


I am freaking out, because I don't have to cutout the backgrounds anymore. I just have to make sure the colors are exact and I am done. *shimmies*

And so rack of clothes like this one right herewould normally take me about a month to finish is now taking me about a week.

I just wanted to share this with someone cause it's just the coolest thing ever.
And that rack pictured above is what I'm supposed to be working on right now, and instead I'm blogging. So, off to work I go

It's true!

I really don't know why I am posting this on my blog.
Maybe because I find it hilarious, and I'm sure I'm
the only one. Maybe I know if I don't have some sort
of record I will forget. I think it's both.

Anyway, I had a dream last night about Mr. Ben Folds.
I was just chillin at a huge concert, but for some reason
the audience wasn't really paying attention. And also,
for unknown reasons I am sitting next to Ben on his
piano bench. He is showing me a new song he is working on.
He's playing the melody and writing down notes on a paper.
He sings some of the lines, but I only remember one.
The line was 'I like Jesus dead beats.' Yeah, I dunno.

So, I'm listening and he's kind of looking to me for approval.
He says 'Well, what do you think?'
And I kinda give him this duh look. I tell him, 'Of course I like it."
I say, "Let me explain something to you -
If you were to climb up on your piano, pop a squat,
and take a giant shit on it...I would be swooning.'

I wake up after this dream, and I'm cracking up.
Because I know, that if I were ever actually in the
position to tell Ben Folds this, I wouldn't even hesitate.

So there ya go.

Here is the man improv-ing a whole song off of some dude yelling
in the audience. There is some NSFW (not safe for work) or
NSFK (not safe for kiddies) language.

Anti

So, I talked to the Beebler today. He and I have been arguing back and forth on myspace about our high school reunion. The conversations go like this.

Me - So, you are going to the reunion. I am making you go.

Bboy - Nope

Me - Yeah, you have to go. Stop being so freakin' stubborn.

Bboy - I refuse to go.

Me - But I will be there, and that should be enough to want to go.

Bboy - I am absolutely not going.

Me - Why are you so anti?

Now we all know Bboy, he's stubborn, and anti-social. This came as no surprise to me he was not giving in. But, when I talked to him today, I figured that he was the only one who didn't want to go. But I guess it turns out that really no one is going. At least the people that I was really excited to see. Which was the homies. And none of the boys want to go. So I'm pretty bummed out right now. I miss the boys so much, and I know I haven't really done my part to keep in touch, and everyone has these wonderful crazy, busy lives. But, man I was really looking forward to seeing them. *sigh*

Boston's B-day

I'm beating my sister at posting this stuff. But it was
Boston's birthday on the 30th. So I just wanted to
share pics of those little cuties.

I was greeted at the door by this smiling face

Here's the birthday boy.

I made him pretend to blow out the candles cause I missed it. At least I didn't make him re-light them.

Weston enjoyed Boston's gift from me better than he did.


Olivia decided to add some finishing touches to the macaroni salad.


Booth wishes this was in his size.

The kiddies have inherited the 'I can't keep a straight face' gene from the Ahlstrom side.


This is what Weston does when I ask him what he's he is eating.

Auntie Teisha likes to encourage the funny faces.

Finally, the many faces of Olivia Sue







I can't figure out where she get's it from.