Call It What You Want

Well, back to work today after the trip to Tampa. Wasn't able to post during Christmas because the internet connection at the hotel we were staying at was pretty spotty. So here is a quick recap on the trip. For a better description, go to Priyam's blog, she has a better blog by blog.

Needless to say, my grandmother LOVED Priyam, and I think my parents are coming around quite a bit for her as well. So, overall it was a success. It was a nice trip, very warm, but we didn't really do too much. The trip was more about spending time with my grandmother after losing my grandfather just about a year ago. You could tell she was quite sad, but us being there was a huge boost.

Anyway, back to work, trying to figure out something to do for New Years Eve. Going to take off Friday as well because I have one more day to take off. What should I do?

In other news, I REALLY want an IPhone so I can put music on my phone. Android just is too complicated putting free music on it. Plus the apps for the IPhone are pretty awesome as well. We'll see.

Shipping Down to Tampa

Well today Priyam and I head down to Tampa Bay (Bradenton to be precise) to meet up with the rents and my grandma. Wish me luck. I'm not sure whether I'll write on my blog everyday we're there, but I know Chinky will. Just click on the link to the right for her blog.

We'll be taking a red eye flight tonight. I haven't taken one of those in FOREVER. We'll see how it goes. 

Bright Moments ALWAYS come back vivid

Well, the weekend was nice. Friday night and Saturday were hectic with Priyam getting ready for a christmas party which she was very worried about because she wanted it to be perfect, the apartment to not  look like pigs lived there and to have food that everyone enjoyed. Needless to say, it went great and everyone enjoyed it. They watched Love Actually (one of my favorites) but I declined to join because I always get emotional at the end when Colin Firth proposes to that Portuguese chick. Whoever did the musical score for that movie is pretty brilliant too I might add.

On Sunday, It was my day. HAHAHA. Priyam gave me the day because she realized how horrible getting ready for her party was, so I was allowed to go to Sherlock Holmes in the morning along with Hastings and some other places. Quite enjoyable.

Thursday we head to Tampa Bay to see the folks and my grandmother. Its going to be super warm there, and it will be difficult to figure out exactly what to wear.

Life in Marvelous Times

I have another Photoshop work for you. Hope you like it. Click on the picture for the larger image

I wanted do something a little bit more artistic, taking some inspiration from the Endo Period of Japan.

Enjoy

High and Low Notes

I've been listen to a bunch of music via Spotify at work to make the day go faster while designing email blasts, and Foster the People is a band that I've been particularly enjoying. Something about the beat or whatever makes me work better and faster. Who knows. But I thought I would share it on my blog, so enjoy.

Other than that, part 2 of Bag of Bones is tonight, which means we'll miss our How I Met Your Mother and *cough Gossip Girl cough*. Last night was excellent, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought i would for a made for TV movie. The cinematography was a bit strange at times, making it seem like it was a commercial for some medication with Pierce Brosnan running through a field, but overall it was good.

ALSO, as I have noticed I haven't added to to my people I love to hate list in a while, so here it goes:

Today's victim is: Manchester United and its fans

Now I've been meaning to add them for a long time, I just have never gotten around to it. Where do I begin. Well, I must first say that I'm not a huge fan of any of the EPL teams. I really like Liverpool and I enjoy watching Manchester City on TV, but wouldn't call myself a supporter. But the biggest thing is I root for however Manchester Utd is playing and hope they beat them. Why? Because they've won enough in the last few years thank you. Also, they have a team that is overconfident and way too cocky. If they tie or lose to anyone (Premier League or otherwise) the next day you'll see in the papers that Sir Alex Ferguson complained about the ref or Patrice Evra felt players were being racist towards him or Rio Ferdinand saying that the other team only won because they played dirty. Honestly, its because they're overrated. I look at their squad and see 2 or 3 genuine superstars and they scrape by with wins on most occasions. And its come back to haunt them with getting dumped out the of Champions League to the lads of FC Basle (not only did they knock out these idiots but they're Swiss! two thumbs up!) and were beaten in the League Cup to Crystal Palace. 

But really I think the main reason I dislike them this much is there bandwagon fans. People from around the world love Utd. Why? Because they win so much. I guarantee if this team were in the bottom half of the table and were not major players in any competition, most of their fans would jump ship. YET, those very same fans will profess the love for the club and make fun of EVERYONE else who doesn't like the team. Its an absolute disgrace. So, to all of you who consider yourselves Red Devils, you've been listed. 

Aspirations

So today Priyam and I had a nice day staying at home, relaxing.

We're watching Bag of Bones right now, at TV movie based on the Stephen King. The main character, played by excellent actor Pierce Brosnan, is about a famous writer who is haunted by ghosts or something (not really sure yet, only seen an hour or so of the 4 hour thing (over two nights). Its pretty good thus far, we'll see. 

But it makes me want to start writing again. I started writing a story called Alternative Continuum but I stopped for no apparent reason. Even Priyamtopher liked my writing (and wanted to be my editor, for obvious reasons ;-) ) I think instead of sitting for hours not really doing anything when I come home from work, I'm going to write more. 

Plus, I have a ton of books to read now as well. So there is that.

Hmm, guess I'm going to be rather busy....

In other news, we're going to visit my grandmother and my parents in Tampa, FL this year for christmas. I'm excited because Priyam never has met her, and after talking to her on the phone, she really seems excited to meet her too. Its great, she sounds almost ten years younger after finding out about this exciting news (my grandma, not priyam lol) It should be fun, and I'm hoping Priyam and I will get some time to ourselves in Tampa to do some exploring and what not. Should be a fun Christmas. Certainly better than going to frozen St.Joseph this time of year. 

Hang 'Em High

Listening to some Dropkick Murphys today at work, I came to the realization that I really don't listen to enough music. In high school I listening a lot of music, spent my allowance on tons of CDs (of all types too, including classical!), and went to concerts when I could afford it. In fact, some of my best memories from my time in Zurich was going to the Hallenstadion for random bands like the Offspring. Now, I don't even have a working MP3 player that I can call my own.

Sad times indeed.

 I'm a bit unimpressed with some of the apps that have music for my phone. Pandora is like a radio station, which is fine sometimes except when I want a particular song. Spotify is nice for a free music app, but to use it on my phone I would have to pay $9.99 a month for the service (which is too much for a service that doesnt allow you to add songs to you library but into playlists instead). Plus, I haven't figured out how to add songs to my Android Incredible that's easy enough to which I know I would actually use it.

Needless to say, these obstacles (plus my fascination with ESPN Radio with Mike and Mike in the Morning) mean my music tastes are not really expanding with new artists, just sticking to my old favorites (hence Dropkick Murphys)

Oh well, whats a guy to do...

In other news, today I think I'm going to buy a few T-Shirts from this brilliant site called Threadless.com. They have some awesome t-shirt designs. I first noticed the website a while ago, but the shirts were $20 each, which is a joke. I would never get a t-shirt for 20 bleeding dollars. BUT, the last two days they have had a sale that each t-shirt is just $9.99. Now that is something I can take part in. After asking the wife all-cute-types last night, I can look into getting one or two shirts. Pretty stoked about it!

All of the Lights

So I've been interested in soccer player background creation for some time, and I had some time for photoshop play today at work (god, love that) so I decided I would try out some new techniques and so I created this image. Its of exciting Manchester City player David Silva. More to come, but I thought I'd give it a go.  Hope you like it...

I realized after I made it that the actual image that Silva himself is a little blurry, but its because I uploaded in a lower resolution (72 dpi) to make sure that it would fit on here if possible. 

The Scorpion and the Frog

Alas, the end of the weekend comes, and another weekend will soon be gone. Today was rather mellow. The wife and I went out and did a little shopping in the afternoon, and I did some laundry. Nothing fancy.

This evening, before watching The Next Iron Chef, I watched Drive with Ryan Gosling. I must say, I was very pleasantly surprised. It was very cool and the cinematography was excellent. Ryan Gosling exudes cool, and this movie was him in spades. The only negative was Carey Mulligan. I first saw her in the Wallstreet: Money Never Sleeps and i didn't like her there either. Something about her acting style. She has this very always sad looking face, and has a very minimal acting style. I always have issues with actors who think sitting around and pouting is good acting, and the same applies here. However, the movie was so good that Mulligan's iffy performance could not ruin for me. On Netflix, I gave it a 4 out of 5 stars.

As for the Next Iron Chef, its pretty obvious that they want a female iron chef. However, Anne Burrell who I thought they had fast tracked for the job, actually was eliminated tonight. SOOOO we'll see. However, more on that tomorrow...

We Deserve It

I've added my first Photoshop creation. Pretty simple, but it gets the point across

"Jeez": A Reflection

How bad is it that I haven't posted in forever to my blog? At work I see all of these successful blogs where people post all of the time, (including my wife's blog) and it makes me upset. Why do I not have the same urge to post as other people?

Then it hit me, it's because my day to day life is relatively nonblog worthy. Since my last post, I have taken a wonderful vacation with the wife (for details go here:http://say-it-is-so.blogspot.com/) and enjoyed  it very much. Halloween and Thanksgiving came and went, and were also enjoyable. BUT, I need to post not JUST about day to day, but also things that interest me, things that make me angry but I keep to myself in polite conversation, but also things that I'm working on and ideas I have for that work.

As some of you know I work as a Viral Marketing Specialist for a travel company. That means I use social media resources, handle the companies' graphic design needs, create email promos, etc. From now on I will also be posting some of my creations on here as well as some of my graphic design work that I've been playing around with.

The moral of the story is that I don't post on my blog enough, and hopefully with plenty of new things that I'm doing, I'll post quite a bit more. As one can notice on my twitter feed on the side of my blog, I post on that plenty with foursquare etc, so I should really commit to posting more.

As you notice, my blog design has changed (all buttons, headers etc were created by me using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop CS5) and I plan on adding more soon under the title Photoshop/Illustrator creations, so look out for that coming soon as well. I plan on doing quite a bit of added new material here, so look out for it. Thanks!

Well, thats all for now. I'll be posting on here again soon!