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24 entries from April 2008
April 30, 2008
April 29, 2008
Wordless Wednesday: Breaking The Rules
Moms -- they're all around us. Remember, Mother's Day is May 11.
Since the subject of the picture is so difficult to make out I'm breaking the Wordless Wednesday code.
See the bird that might be a mourning dove? She and her significant other built a nest on the downspout outside my bathroom window. For nearly a week she's been facing the other direction so all I've been able to see is a birdy tushie, but this morning she turned around and I saw for the first time that she wasn't a robin, as I'd expected.
Here's how I think she might look in real life:
Considering that I took the photo in the morning, it might actually be Dad sitting on the nest, because according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:
"A Mourning Dove pair rarely leaves its eggs unattended. The male usually incubates from midmorning until late afternoon, and the female sits the rest of the day and night."
The nest is in the best of all possible places because we can observe the little darlings when they hatch; their chirping won't be an annoyance because I'm not in that bathroom during the day when they'll be awake, and by the time I go to bed they'll be long asleep.
There should be two babies; I think I'll call them "The Coo Coo Pigeon Sisters."
Even if they're boys.
See more Wordless Wednesday
Visit FeeFiFoto and create photo books with all your best nature photographs. Great Mother's Day gifts!
This One's For My Friend Kristen
From Not Always Right | Funny & Stupid Customer Quotes; the image is from the Big Site Of Amazing Facts:
Me: “Good morning, sir, what can I get for you?”
Customer: “Ehhh…I’ll have a coffee.”
Me: “Excellent choice, sir. What kind of coffee? Our menu’s up there on the board if you’d like, or perhaps our house coffee?”
Customer: “What other kind of COFFEE is there? This IS a coffee shop, right?”
Me: “Well sir, we are a specialty coffee shop, and have many different varieties. If you’d like–”
Customer: “NO! This is so STUPID! Why would anyone bother having DIFFERENT kinds of coffee!”
Me: “…”
Customer: “Ha ha! Just kidding. I always wanted to do that.” (He skips out of the store. Yes, skipped. Keep in mind this is a middle-aged man.)
Personally, I've always wanted someone to spill wine on me in a restaurant so I could say: "Drink up everyone -- the wine's on me!" What have you always wanted to say or do?
Visit FeeFiFoto and put your kid's photo on a travel mug -- bring your own mug to Starbucks and reduce waste.
April 28, 2008
Is Your Birthday In May?
Make personalized calendars even more personal with the addition of peculiar dates; here are some for May.
FeeFiFoto has been producing personalized photo calendars as a core part of our business since we were established about five years ago. Recently we added a bunch of new templates, a thousand or so pieces of clip art, and the capacity to arrange photos in collages instead of being limited to a single photo per page. We've always had a feature that lets you enter your own family birthdays, anniversaries or special events.
Here, for your listening reading pleasure, is a list of May dates that will make your personalized calendars just a touch more ridiculous interesting.
1
Mother Goose Day
Save The Rhino Day
Kate Smith, b. 1909
2
Fire Day
Baron Von Richthofen, b. 1892
3
Lumpy Rutherford Rug Day
4
National Candied Orange Peel Day
Audrey Hepburn, b. 1929
5
National Hoagie Day
6
Beverage Day
Sigmund Freud, b. 1856
7
International Tuba Day
Paste Up Day
National Roast Leg of Lamb Day
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, b. 1840
8
No Socks Day
Have A Coke Day
How does this differ from Beverage Day?
9
Lost Sock Memorial Day
10
Clean Up Your Room Day
Fred Astaire, b. 1899
11
Eat What You Want Day
Twilight Zone Day
Salvador Dali, b. 1904
12
Limerick Day
13
Leprechaun Day
Joe Louis, b. 1914
14
National Dance Like A Chicken Day
15
National Chocolate Chip Day
16
Wear Purple For Peace Day
Liberace, b. 1919
Is there some connection here?
17
Pack Rat Day
No, not Rat Pack -- Pack Rat!
18
International Museum Day
Visit Your Relatives Day
Frank Capra, b. 1897
19
Frog Jumping Jubilee Day
20
Eliza Doolittle Day
21
National Memo Day
National Waitresses/Waiters Day
Fats Waller, b. 1904
22
Buy-A-Musical-Instrument Day
Richard Wagner, b. 1813
You can't play Wagner without musical instruments
23
Penny Day
Because that's all you'll have left after spending a few grand on a piano
24
National Escargot Day
25
National Tap Dance Day
Ralph Waldo Emerson, b. 1803
26
Grey Day
Jay Silverheels, b. 1919
27
Body Painting Arts Festival
Wild Bill Hickock, b. 1837
28
National Hamburger Day
Ian Fleming, b. 1908
29
End Of The Middle Ages Day
How can they be so sure the Middle Ages ended exactly on May 29th?
30
My Bucket's Got A Hole In It Day
31
National Macaroon Day
Walt Whitman, b. 1819
See more Strange Holidays.
Please visit Save The Rhino and save some rhinos.
April 27, 2008
April 21, 2008
Gifts For Customers
Even exterminators can gain business by distributing logo mouse pads to prospective customers.
See the square button at the top right of this page? The one that says "Do You Need Marketing Campaign Ideas and Pricing? Contact Me." It looks sort of like this:
Do you have any idea what the text inside that little square means?
It means that if you need marketing campaign ideas and pricing you should contact me.
Duh.
Seriously, it means that my web site, FeeFiFoto, can help promote and brand your company or service similarly to the way Coca Cola promotes their brand, but for a lot less than the half billion dollars it costs to sponsor the Olympic dressage team and a lot more expeditiously than the approximately half century Coke needed to burn its name into the world's collective retinas.
Here's how. Let's say, just for the sake of illustration, that you operate a computer consulting service. You're the geek dork saint who comes to people's houses to set up computers and download software and establish wireless internet and replace connections that have been chewed by the puppy and clean up spam and blow cracker crumbs out from between the keys and wipe up popsickle splatters and ... well, you get the idea.
So you've got this business holding the hands of fretting work at home moms who write blogs on laptops in their kitchens, and you hasten to the rescue when the computer is glitching and the sixteen-year-old with a fresh driver's license is too busy to help his poor panicky mother because he's off flirting with girls working at the supermarket, and mom is freaking out and threatening to drop kick the laptop into the next room and then cram the pieces down the toilet and let somebody else plunge it for a change and ...
Not that I've ever experienced any of this, because I'm just making it all up.
So you hang one of those magnet thingies on your car but you know that most people are too busy texting and driving and blotting up Diet Dr. Pepper from their laps to remember the information on your magnet thingy; meanwhile, business cards -- well, those are so easily used to hold a wad of gum misplaced. Assuming your ideal customer doesn't have access to a bat-silhouette searchlight, how do you keep your identity in front of her nose so she can find you when she needs you?
How about working your logo and tagline into a witty mouse pad to give all your customers? Everyone who uses a computer needs at least one mouse pad. And you don't even have to be a computer guy to find a mouse pad useful in marketing your business. Carpet cleaning? Bingo. Window washing? Ditto. Dog walking? Exactly. Any business or service that needs customers can benefit from giving out small personal gifts with name, logo and phone number, so that when the customer needs you all she has to do is pick up the phone mouse.
April 19, 2008
April 18, 2008
April 15, 2008
Wordless Wednesday: Isn't There Enough Confusion Already?
This one's from Frostfire Zoo:
I took this one myself. Drove by it about four times with Robespierre hanging the camera out the window, until we finally gave up on getting a clear picture, parked the car a block away, and walked.
I Had A Point Here But I Forgot It
I feel like I forget everything.
I'm tired of being forgetful. It's bad enough that I forget where I put things, or where I'm supposed to be, or to bring my purse when I need to buy groceries. Sometimes I remember what I'm supposed to be doing, write it down, enter it into my computer, and then don't believe my notation because I'm convinced I must be missing something.
When I was going through fertility treatments I took a medication that really whacked me out; one day I set up a lunch date, wrote it in my calendar, contemplated the entry in befuddlement, and immediately called my friend back to ask if we'd just made plans.
Months ago I entered all of Cleo's choir performances into my calendar and then a few weeks ago read a memo about a scheduled concert that I hadn't written down. No problem -- I bought tickets and invited some family. Two days before the concert I discovered that I'd been correct in October when the schedule first came out: this performance involved only the older kids. Half a dozen tickets down the drain, not to mention another humiliation notch on my belt.
I'd like to be able to blame it on my kids. I'd like to be able to claim that having them has destroyed too many of my brain cells. I'd like to be able to assert that I'm so much busier with them around that no single person could keep track of all I have to remember. I'd like to be able to claim that they leave the house in such disarray that nobody could find anything here. I probably could, but it wouldn't prevent me from lambasting myself every time I left my credit card in another wallet, canceled it for the fifty-second time, and then found it exactly where I'd left it.
I've started making calendar entries with side notations like: "Yes, really -- confirmed April 15, 2008".
You won't believe what I found while searching for ways to jog my memory on the web. Introducing: The Remember Ring from Uncrate.com. It's battery operated and preprogrammed to remember your special events and remind you subtly by heating up to 120 degrees for 10 seconds every hour starting 24 hours before the event you usually forget.
(July 14 is Bastille Day, in case you forgot.)
This leads me to all sorts of memory-related questions:
- Can I program the ring to remind me that this is the day the kids stay after school for baseball practice?
- Can I program it to remind me of every single birthday, anniversary, performance and orthodontist appointment on my calendar? Or do I need a separate ring for each appointment?
- What's to prevent me from forgetting why the blasted ring is heating up and hurting my hand and just chucking it in the trash?
Why is it so easy to forget stuff?
Set your magic ring to remind you that Mother's Day is May 11 and there's still plenty of time to visit FeeFiFoto and design personalized photo jewelry (sorry, no rings, but we do have charming charms) for Mom, Grandma, Auntie, Sister, Daughter, Granddaughter, Teacher ... well, you get the idea. If you're forgetful, design a calendar with all your favorite photos and enter special dates.
April 14, 2008
And The Winner Is ...
Mother's Day Giveaway winner(s)
Okay, contest entrants -- do you recognize yourself in these words?
"I think my mom would love anything on your site, so it's pretty hard to choose! I would probably go with a photobook for her with pictures from us as kids up until now...I'm also going to post this on my site :) great contest idea!"
If you're Chelle, Cleo has chosen you as the winner!
Congratulations Chelle! You've won a $50 gift certificate from FeeFiFoto. Start designing that photo book.
But wait! There's more.
Since so many people entered this contest, I'm issuing $5 gift certificates to everyone else who entered. Keep your eyes on your email to find your GC code.
Don't panic -- I'm planning a similar giveaway for Father's Day. Won't that be great?
Visit FeeFiFoto to spend your contest loot on special personalized photo gifts for Mother's Day.
Noodling About Doodling
Wonderful, unique doodle calendar
These are amazing! I happened upon them at a site called Doodlage while Entrecarding (not that I'm blogging about Entrecard) and I had to write about them. The artist's name is Lisa Congdon and she lives in San Francisco. Take a look:
Like my taste in art? Who wouldn't? See more here, here, here, here and here. Oh, and here.
You can make a living from doodling! Who knew?
Visit FeeFiFoto and put some of Lisa's witty doodles (or your own doodles, or your kids', for that matter) on a personalized tote bag for Mother's Day. If you're not talented to design your own doodle calendar, create a FeeFiFoto calendar with your favorite photos.
April 13, 2008
Excuse Me -- Do You Know Where SoHo Is?
How can you find your way around New York City without looking like a hick?
Artypants, Curley and the Man from D.A.D. have taken their trip to New York City to visit the THE SCHOOL. They've tried to navigate an encyclopedia of neighborhoods under the guidance of an 18-year-old who thinks she knows everything. So they wander in search of a restaurant Artypants visited a year ago, and she's determined not to consult a map or ask for directions because that would definitely brand her as a Not-New-Yorker in an instant. Instead she leads them in zigzags and concentric circles on the theory that sooner or later they'll have to stumble across the place unless darkness or Tuesday or the next Ice Age should happen first; in any case, if she's a good enough faker she can pick any restaurant and pretend she's been there before ("We sat at that table in the corner ... I think that's our waiter ... I'll have the usual.")
Meanwhile, my sister, unburdened by an exemplary any measurable sense of direction (she always turns right, no matter where she's going, always right) surreptitiously asks passersby questions she believes make her appear casually well informed, like: "Do you know where SoHo is?" or "Can you tell me how to find TriBeCa?", while calling our mother and me to ask for directions even though we're approximately 871 miles away and we weren't invited on this trip. Naturally, the response she mostly gets from strangers is along the lines of: "Go home, bumpkin!"
So as a public service I'm providing a list of some of the better known and lesser known NYC neighborhood acronyms.
You New Yorkers talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a subject: The World Wide Web is neither worldwide nor a web. Discuss.
First we have SoHo, which stands for "South of Houston." Misasking for directions to SoHo will immediately brand you as a hayseed if you have a) no idea what the acronym stands for (SOuth of HOuston) or if you have b) no idea how to pronounce it, which is "HOUSE ton" and not "HEW ston."
NoHo: North of Houston (see above)
Tribeca: Triangle Below Canal (that's all I know about this one)
DUMBO: Down Under The Manhattan Bridge Overpass (I am absolutely not making this one up)
Nolita: The space between Little Italy, SoHo, NoHo, and the Lower East Side
ProHo: Prospect Heights (I know nothing else about this one, but by the way, since when does "Heights" contract into "Ho"?)
Flatiron District: Not an acronym but mentioned here because I admire the Flatiron Building
For more on the college road trip, look here and here and here
Do you know your way around New York city? How about your own city?
Visit FeeFiFoto to design a personalized photo clip board to keep all your maps and street guides in order.
April 09, 2008
How To Decide?
Now the game is on: How does Artypants choose the college she'll attend?
First, she can most likely eliminate the three that said "No, thanks", including Bupkes University, The College of Dweebs and Nerds, and the School of Don't Recognize a Good Thing When They See It.
This leaves the other six, all of which must be revisited online and in person and on the phone and in her dreams sometime before May 1, when the final decision must be set in stone. And as much as I love Artypants and I'd love love love to accompany her on visits to these colleges on the East Coast in the spring time away from my kids, I'm simply not going to be able to go because I wasn't invited.
So -- next weekend Artypants, Curley and the Man from D.A.D. will fly to New York (not that it's one of my favorite cities in the entire universe or anything) and spend three or four days making like East Coasters while Schpilkes, Cleo, Robey and I attempt to sooth our ruffled feelings and pretend we're in New York by actually going to see the Harlem Globetrotters play.
I'm not worried. I'm sure they'll bring back some cool souvenirs. Hope they remember my sizes.
Do you think the Harlem Globetrotters are a fitting substitute for a weekend in New York? Me neither.
Visit FeeFiFoto to design custom graduation gifts for Artypants or anyone else on your list, including beautiful porcelain tiles suitable for graduation photos.
April 08, 2008
Wordless Wednesday: There Are Almost No Words To Describe It
Again with the Frostfire Zoo (I love that place!)
Evaluating Colleges
First you choose the colleges, then the colleges choose you.
So back to my brilliant and talented niece, Artypants, and her never ending battle for truth justice and the American way to find the right college.
She attends a school where one hundred percent of the graduates attend college; therefore there's gargantuan pressure to gain as many acceptances as possible to the highest echelons of the ivy leagues and way more than your classmates find the school that's right for you.
Students apply to ten, fifteen, twenty colleges and universities, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, New York University, Penn, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Northwestern, Georgetown, Harvard, Stanford, Harvard, Harvard and Harvard.
Fortunately, Artypants and her parents had and used way more sense than we did when we chose colleges; our primary guideline was: "Hand me another dart, Mom."
Instead of choosing the top ten, or the top football teams, or colleges only in warm climates (yes, I admit it -- that's how I ended up in New Orleans for college and law school), they carefully considered, yes, location, but also school size, the makeup of the student population, which schools offered combined arts and liberal arts programs, which art schools maintained affiliations with nearby liberal arts schools so the students could take literature or philosophy courses in addition to paint sloshing and doctoring their work with Photoshop photography.
After considerable research and consultation with the school's witch doctor college counselor, Artypants settled on NYU, the Rhode Island School of Design, Barnard, $%$*)#@!%*&^, and a bunch of other schools I've never heard of, all on the East Coast and all arts-oriented.
Smart move.
As so many of her classmates and high school students across the country rend their garments and weep copiously over rejections from Harvard (poor Harvard, having to spend all that money on postage to reject 92.9% of their 27,462 applicants, which quite possibly adds up to $10,462.67 in stamps and where will poor Harvard find that kind of money?), Artypants opened acceptance after acceptance after ... well, okay -- there were three rejections -- still, she received come ons from six outstanding schools, one of which actively recruited her and another two of which actually offered her money (first time any school has offered any member of our family money to entice us to attend since The Man From D.A.D. attended college.)
For more on Artypants' college hunt, look here and here.
Don't you think Harvard's mascot is goofy? I should talk -- my school's mascot was the Green Wave.
Visit FeeFiFoto to design personalized gifts for graduates, including cookie tins for treats from home.
April 07, 2008
Bona Fide High School Graduate
My niece, Artypants, is graduating from high school next month.
I changed this kid's diapers even though she wore cloth that had to be wrapped in layers of plastic and schlepped home. I helped potty train her though she insisted on sitting for no less than twenty minutes at each attempt, conducting private conversations with the imaginary "pretend spiders" that accompanied her everywhere. I rocked her to sleep even though she developed colic at three months that didn't go away until ... well, if it ever goes away I'll let you know. I kept a crib and toys and baby shampoo at my house. And now she's graduating from high school.
Guess I can get rid of the baby shampoo, especially since she's a Curly Girl and uses only conditioner.
She applied to nine schools. Her artistic temperament dictates that she operate on her own time, in her own dimension, according to her own guidelines. She's well on her way to repealing gravity.
Consequently she applied the same rules and deadlines to composing application essays as many Americans do to filing their taxes; unfortunately the post office main branch didn't stay open until midnight the night before the applications were due so my sister could drive downtown in her nightshirt and hand the packages to a postal worker waiting on the corner.
Through an entire weekend neither of them left the house, or showered, or changed into real clothes, Curley sitting by Artypants the whole time providing virtually the same caliber of moral support she devotes to Duke basketball. After the essays were finished they devoted proportional cheerleading time to the production of the required art projects, which, like the essays, had to be different for each school concerned. Artypants finally got everything finished and weighed and stamped and mailed and then it was time to ...
shower first and then ...
wait for it ...
Yes, that's it -- wait for it.
We waited, biting our fingernails and plucking our eyelashes one by one calmly expecting enthusiastic acceptances from every single school.
A couple weeks ago the letters began arriving, and I'll be darned if that kid didn't get offers from six schools, including two scholarships for no good reason other than the schools seemed to like her work. And why shouldn't they? She's a brilliant writer and artist, with outstanding credentials, who will be an asset to any college so long as she remembers to turn off the water after showering and to shut off the oven after baking cookies.
Think Artypants is cool? Read more here.
Didn't it seem a lot easier when all we thought about was potty training?
Visit FeeFiFoto and design a personalized microfiber handbag with your favorite black and white or color photograph, as a graduation gift for your favorite niece.
