Winter Song

February is halfway over, that's obvious.  I haven't posted anything since the beginning of the month, also obvious.  There's a moment in winter when the dullness just sets in, can I get an amen?  For me, the frump moment begins February 1.  I don't hate February.  Heck, I don't even hate winter, but there does come a time when in order to survive it, I prep for springtime.  Don't get me wrong, March is a teaser month, but at least it owns the official equinox date.

As I previously posted, I started an introductory interior design course back in January, and it ends mid-March.  I have learned a lot in the class.  For starters, I have learned that I don't want to be an interior designer, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  To me, it's progress in the never ending process of figuring out what it is I'd like to do with my life (career-wise).  I have learned some really neat things in one of my favorite departments, practicality.  So while I won't be getting an MFA in interior design anytime soon, I can draft floor plans and design and/or change spaces based on principles of scale, proportion, color, etc.  How cool is that!  We all design the spaces where we live to fit our tastes, and a lot of the things I've learned in class will be very useful in my every day life. 

Since I'm not redoing a room in my apartment at this time, my final project will be to design a sewing/craft room.  I feel like this is every woman's dream, but I'm probably way off on my made-up statistic.  I'm thinking of that scene from Glee where Will Scheuster and his wife Terri are standing in her craft room and she says, (pointing to her glue gun while using an evil, I-want-to-be-a-mother-now tone) "It's not a bad thing, Will, to want a real life, AND A TO HAVE A GLUE GUN THAT WORKS!" I'm pretty sure Glee was making fun of craft rooms, but I kind of love that quote anyway.  If they were making fun of craft rooms, I don't care because I dream of the day when I don't have to pack the sewing machine up from the kitchen table every time I'm finished using it.  Sooooo, that's my final project in interior design, which leads me into my next creative venture.  All I'll say now is that it involves my prep-for-springtime motto being in full swing (literally) because I am currently sewing my very first skirt!  But I've said too much, more on that later!

9 to 5

Raise your hand if you love The Office.  I do!  It's my favorite television series, and well, sometimes I go on little Office marathon binges and I watch every episode all over again because I own every season on DVD.  In my daily life, I have little Office moments wherein something happens or someone says something that makes me think of an episode or quote from Agent Michael Scarn or the character I simultaneously love and hate, Dwight.  

One such moment happened to me a few weeks ago.  I volunteer at a local arts organization in town, and I was sitting in a meeting with people I did not know, and I would definitely be seeing them again.  There was one little problem:  I could not remember everyone's names.  I immediately set forth in my mind to think of a way to remember people's names sitting across the table from me, and that's when it happened.  Please read the below quote, and try to picture me in the meeting actively trying not to crack up.  Anybody remember this episode?

Michael Scott:  I don't know you.  But I need to know you in order to sell to you.  That is why I have asked you to go around and tell me your names.  I have an amazing mnemonic device by which I have no memorized all of your names.  [Pointing to people] Shirty, mole, lazy eye, Mexico, baldy, sugar boobs, black woman.  I have taken a unique part of who you are, and I have used that to memorize your name.  Baldy.  Your head is bald.  It is hairless.  It is shiny.  It is reflective, like a mirror.  M.  Your name is Mark.