Hand Lettering

As you may know if you’ve ever heard me critique type choices on signs around town or complain about the design of menus in restaurants, I have a penchant for good typography. Seeing my dad’s calligraphy on Christmas cards inspired me to try that as a kid, although I never had the patience to get good – it’s always been hard for me to practice because you go through so much paper (more…)

Lilac Festival

Every year in May, Rochester holds the Lilac Festival. Fortunately this year, unlike previous years where they bloomed too early and faded by the time of the festival, the lilacs bloomed perfectly on time (see below) for us. I went along for my first time Saturday afternoon with a large group of friends’ friends. The weather didn’t look too promising when we started, as it was breezy, cloudy, and a bit (more…)

RPG Characters

A favorite activity for me is escaping reality to play tabletop roleplaying games with friends. I can work off imaginative energy by picturing situations and kicking ass to hopefully save the day and experience some funny situations. I grew up on stories of my parents’ RPG characters’ exploits, which involved all the drama of epic legends but without the freaky bits. So when I look for (more…)

Inquiry & Yearning

I was doing some thinking back through the past two months of Inquiry and Yearning, as my discussion group declared March and April to be, and wrote some thoughts down from what I observed or was mulling over. They are probably a bit random, and I guess they feel a bit incomplete to me, but I thought I’d post them anyway. (more…)

A Modest Mound of Bones

Some time ago, I was doing some exploring when I found basically an entire deer skeleton near the top of a hill, picked completely clean and gradually being overgrown with grass. I like this excerpt from John Updike’s poem, “A Modest Mound of Bones,” and I think it was especially descriptive of them after I went back last week first thing in the morning with my camera. (more…)

World Traveler

Talking with one of my friends about places we’d want to go, I realized that I have a lot of places that I want to go in my life. I may not have a lot of activities on my “bucket list,” but I have places I want to go and photograph in my lifetime. I’ve been saving a lot of them on my Pinterest, but these are the top places. (more…)

My Design Process

Since most people not in the industry have so little to do with making websites, and I’ve gotten some good questions about what exactly I do to make ones like in my portfolio, I thought it would be a good thing to make into a blog post!

The steps most web designers I’ve met go through with a client are as follows: (more…)

Cartomancy

Although many people look down on it or consider it heretical, tarot has been a big influence on my life since I was about eleven, when my dad did my first reading for me. Although I profess the more atheist view of the cards, saying that they are basically inkblot tests to see what rises to the front of your mind, sometimes I feel that they are a little too on target to be just cards and ink. (more…)

Market in the Morning

Saturday was absolutely lovely. When I went out in the afternoon, it was warm and sunny, and all of the bushes along the path behind my apartment were a-twitter with all the little critters preparing for spring’s arrival. Every birdcall from the branches above me seemed to belong to a different bird. I had a nice long walk down the path singing – singing! – which I generally don’t do if I think there’s a chance other people will hear me. It was just that kind of a day. (more…)