Thank goodness for girlfriends
Posted
Thursday, February 28, 2008 11:02 AM
My supersaver girlfriend Kristen came over today. We haven't seen each other for a month, so we had a lot of catching up to do. She walks in, takes one look at my kitchen table and sits down. She picks up one of my snowflake favor kits and says "These are cool, need some help?" Then she picks up one of my STD magnets and says "Huh, no date. I can fix this." (Background story: I designed my own STD magnets, but forgot to include the date. I know, duh) She takes me out to dinner, listens to me *** and whine and moan and sigh, and then takes me to WalMart.
At Wal-Mart, she makes me buy these clear return address labels. These are to print our date on them and stick them directly on to my STD magnets. I buy the labels doubtfully, thinking: "Sounds like a good idea, but so far, nothing has worked." I've tried different kinds of pens (Sharpies, ballpoint, highlighters), different stickers, labels, and markers. Everything looks tacky. This morning, I had resigned myself to ordering new magnets that include the date.
So I print out a test label, trim it, and stick it to my test magnet. By the way, my test magnet looks like it's been brutally attacked by a date stamp. I get ready to reject another idea. I stick the label to make sure it's on there good. It looks fantastic. You can barely tell I've stuck something on it; the background shows through the label; our date is decipherable and...dare I say...pretty!
I'm so stoked. Kristen has once again breezed through my life to pick up the odds and ends and put everything back together beautifully.
Of course, nothing in life is that easy. So now, I find myself filling ink cartridges, cleaning nozzles, running print-head alignments, and cursing under my breath. My printer won't print colored ink. Oy. After an hour of working on my printer, I've given up. Actually, this is one of my brillant ideas. I'm going to leave the printer till tomorrow to see if it's worked itself out. Don't laugh, I actually read this online. The nozzles need to dry out or something.
So, lucky for me, I started this dang STD project over a month ago. I'm still working on it. The other girls in my Jan 09 club say they are sending out STD's in beginning of March, so I figure I should be right on time. I picked up some DIY Response/Reception cards from Office Max to print the info on the cards. I got a snowflake punch and some sparkly blue paper from which I've been busily making a pile of snowflakes to decorate these plain white cards, and I got some photocorners to attach the magnet to the card. Whew. I'm exhausted.
So, I have a few more days in which to complete my February Goals (sadly, I have to go back to review them). In the meantime, I'm punching out snowflakes like a maniac and slapping my printer until it bleeds blue ink. Hopefully, my next post will show off my finished STD's.
On a NWR note: I sqeaked by in the finals to be on the Las Vegas Poetry Slam Team. Which means the next five months I'll be fundraising, practicing, editing, performing, and writing my butt off. Then I get to represent Las Vegas at the National Poetry Slam. Yay!