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Measuring the Easy Stuff vs. Measuring What Matters

amanda_lee — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:07:39 +0000

I went to a super-competitive nationally ranked school, and while I valued the education it gave me, it warped my view of what was within the normal range of acceptable intelligence. As a result, I felt an intense need to prove I belonged there, so I became obsessively focused on the minutia of the numbers and measurement at the expense of the bigger picture. Test scores. Memorized facts. Boxes ticked off. Hours spent in ballet class or on the piano bench. Rarely did I ever think about doing something I enjoyed or learning something real. ¹

This is a thought pattern I’m still trying to break. It’s hard, because you wouldn’t believe how often I hear adults who are several years out of school talk about their test scores or their GPAs. Few things compare to the universality of these numbers – nearly everyone remembers their scores and their grades. Some people took their SATs multiple times. ²

There are other, more common measuring sticks that grown-ass ladies and gentlemen regularly use to measure their success. Salary. Dress size [sometimes relative to the dress size you wore in college]. Calories burned. Square footage of your house, garage not included. How little we slept last night [because the amount we sleep is inversely proportional to our importance].

The Internet isn’t exempt, either. In fact, it might be worse, because we have so many ways to measure everything – ways that can be refreshed constantly and cost us nearly nothing. Blog hits. Comments left. Retweets. Friends, +1s, likes. Ad revenue. Subscribers, clickthroughs, forwards, CPM.

I want to stop measuring the easy stuff and start measuring the important stuff. I’m not sure what these actual metrics will be yet, though.

For you, though, what are your personal yardsticks? How can you tell, quantifiably, whether you’re doing a good job with what you’re doing?

¹I’m not going to tell you my standardized test scores, because that would defeat the purpose. But for the record, I studied very hard for them. I think this might have had less to do with raw intelligence or desire to do well and more to do with the feeling of virtue I got from sitting around in coffee shops surrounded by half a dozen SAT practice manuals when I knew my classmates might be doing something other than studying. And, honestly, those logical reasoning problems weren’t going to solve themselves.

² Strangely, I’ve fallen in lately with a bunch of graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and they never bring this up. I did some digging and discovered it’s because their classes are all graded on a pass-fail basis. Lucky bastards.

Photos: Our House

amanda_lee — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 05:01:49 +0000

I’ve been storing some of my books in my mom’s old train case.

Before we had really bought any wall art, I found an old S encyclopedia at a thrift store, so I cut it up and put the pictures in frames. Pictured here: South America, skeletons, sailboats, and space travel.

We are not fans of Michelle Bachmann, but Chris loved that awful, scary, uncanny valley-like photo of her on the cover of Time, so he commissioned a sketch of it from an artist he knows. People don’t know what to make of it.

Our friend Mike Lopez made this tiny crocheted hat for Chris.

The zebra mask is an old favorite. It lives somewhat creepily in our bathroom above the toilet.

This is Lindsay Lohan’s mug shot. Katrina got it as a bonus gift when she ordered something from Etsy a few years ago, and she gave it to us.

What’s on your walls?

I Made This: Deeper Context Logo

amanda_lee — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 02:50:55 +0000

In the past couple of months, I’ve been helping my good friend Jeremy with his startup. Here’s the logo design we worked on:

This is the first logo design that I’ve done that wasn’t super-cutesy and hand-drawn first. The typeface is one of my favorites from the League of Movable Type, and the symbol on the left was Jeremy’s own creation. I’m pleased with how it turned out! Do you all like it?

[A note on Deeper Context: The entire site is still in progress, but seriously, hire this dude. He'll do brilliant work for you.]

A quick update on my sensory deprivation experience

amanda_lee — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 02:53:42 +0000

I got such great feedback from everyone about my sensory deprivation post, so I wanted to tell you guys that I did an Ask Me Anything session over on Reddit about it. If you’re inclined, go check it out and ask me about it!

The Traditional Christmas Video E-Card [Made with Love by Chris Collins]

amanda_lee — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 15:23:35 +0000

Chris made this video two years ago, and it’s still amazing. Merry holidays, y’all.

31 New Things: Grow out my Hair for the Whole Year [First Photo]

amanda_lee — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 02:56:51 +0000

[I'm trying to do 31 new things in my 31st year. is the full list of what I'm doing, with linked updates.]

When I was about 7, I cut my own hair. I had bangs and a pageboy, and I hated it, so I took matters into my own hands. When I got in trouble almost immediately after, I thought fast and blamed my best friend, thinking I’d be off the hook and my mom would never call her mom. I was so wrong. Megan got in trouble, and I’m fairly sure she never really forgave me [and neither did my mom].

In the last five years or so, I’ve repeated this home haircut – I get annoyed with how my hair is behaving, and I cut it. And then I regret it. The only salon haircut I’ve had since 2006 was from a hair modeling gig I did, where the cut turned out a little bit like this. For the most part, though, my hairstyles for the past five years has been cycling through these two moods [ragecomic via the lovely Redditor MizGinger].

However, since March, I’ve mostly left it alone. This is where I am now:

I’m planning on posting an occasional update photo so you can see how well I’m doing with this goal. Maybe if I’m feeling fancy, I’ll make an animated gif. Fun times!

[Yeah, that's right. I put a silly Photo Booth picture on my blog. Sans makeup. So what? I'm not currently dating a professional photographer. Sue me.]

Style Song: I love hot toddies.

amanda_lee — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:11:57 +0000

[image via thewanderous]

Whenever I’m feeling sick
And I cough, and my throat feels thick
A toddy I drink,
And quick as a blink
It helps me feel good super-quick.

A Review: Three Tiny Habits.

amanda_lee — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 02:50:15 +0000

I’m really interested in the work that BJ Fogg does on behavior change, so I was stoked to participate in his Three Tiny Habits project last week. It went like this:

- At the beginning of the week, the participants told him [via a web form] what their three habits were.
- Every day, the participants got an email every day asking me whether they’d done their habits, whether they planned to do them the next day.

You build three habits at once. Each habit has to be an action that takes you less than 20 seconds, and it has to be immediately preceded by something you do every day. This way, the thing you already have a habit of doing can form a trigger for the thing you’re trying to make a habit of doing.

My habits:
- Gather up the garbage to take out right after I snap the leash onto my dog. In our one-bedroom apartment, we have around six garbage cans¹, so if I don’t stay on top of it, it’s a pain in the ass to have to take it all down at once.
- Hang up my coat and put away my boots immediately after taking them off. I’m always freezing when I come in, so before this my habit was to keep my coat on and then shed it after I sat down at my desk to work a little bit.
- Shut down my email after I take my melatonin every night. I’m lacking a good shut-down routine for my evenings. Usually I work until I’m too tired to work anymore, and that means I fall into bed without a proper face wash/flossing/meditation and general wind-down. I thought this would be a good step.

How it turned out:
- In taking out the garbage every time I went downstairs with the dog, I ran out of both garbage bags and my stash of grocery store bags that I habitually save within two days. Doing it every time was excessive. Now that the week is over, I’ve been taking it out once a day – either the kitchen trash or the trash from all of the other rooms in the house. But it’s way better than what I used to do, which was to wait until the cans were all full and then try to juggle them when I went downstairs.
- I’m a lot better about hanging up my coat and putting my boots away. What helped me was having a sweater and mukluk socks right there where I hung my coat, so that I could hang up my coat and slip into something else warm immediately.
- The email shutdown was the hardest thing, because while I did it every day, there was nothing stopping me from logging back in and continuing my old habits. It was a start, but it wasn’t enough to change my habit of late-night work in the long-term. I’m not sure if this is something I can change, or even if I should try, since my late-night schedule isn’t really causing any problems for me.

It was an interesting experiment, and I can see how it would be really easy to augment the habits I’ve already established with new ones. I’d love to see the full results of this whole experiment.

¹ I should probably feel guilty about the amount of waste my household produces, but I’m always working on that. I recycle, damn it.

43 Things: A Review

I Made This: Tot Dogs website

amanda_lee — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:16:10 +0000

One of my clients is a couple that owns several restaurants in the Cincinnati area who are opening a brand-new restaurant concept. We’re holding off on launching a full site until they’re certain when they’re opening, but for the time being, I made a quick placeholder site.

I suggested the email signup form so that we can keep track of the people that want more information about Tot Dogs. After the full site launches, we’ll send an email announcement, and then that list will be our marketing list if we end up doing any email campaigns. [And it goes without saying, if you live in Cincinnati and you're into gourmet hot dogs, you should totally sign up for the list. It'll be neato.]

The logo was done, so it was just a matter of finding a color scheme that worked well with it. I think it looks great. Don’t you?

Routines: The Specifics on Getting Shit Done

amanda_lee — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 23:13:36 +0000

For actual work:
Textwrangler is a free no-frills text editor I’ve used for years for actual writing. When I started learning to code, I started using it for coding. When I got better, I started using Coda, which is a text editor that’s optimized for web coding. My favorite features of Coda are the Local/Remote views [which allow you to push a file live without any FTP use - the FTP is built into the application], and the automatic validation error notifications [because sometimes I need someone to kick me when I forget to close my tags].

Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. These are pretty self-explanatory. I’d like to use an open-source or free alternative, but I’m not in love with GIMP or Pixelmator, which are two open-source options.

Mailchimp and Constant Contact. I much prefer MailChimp for its super-easy user interface, its pricing plan [free for up to a certain number of emails a month, and discounts for nonprofits], and the ease of A/B testing. I like that I can actually code the emails myself easily, or choose from a whole bunch of templates. Also, apparently it has an iPad app that can act as a sign-up form and then automatically add contacts to your lists [meaning you never have to type out email addresses after having a sign-up at an event]. My biggest client, though, uses Constant Contact and has for years, and isn’t really amenable to switching. They’re not as extensible as MailChimp in that they don’t allow A/B testing and they’re a lot more limited in the templates they offer, but their UI has gotten a lot better in the past few months – their WYSIWYG editor was really finicky for awhile, and would mess up all my typefaces/layouts if I highlighted the wrong thing.

Crossbrowsertesting helps me get my sites to look the same in every browser. While I hate designing for outdated browsers with the fire of a thousand LED bulbs, sometimes it’s necessary, and CBT allows me to test and troubleshoot without actually building a lab of old computers.

These pens. And this paper. And these pens, when I have to write in color. I try to use as little paper as possible, because I’m much more likely to lose something or spill coffee on it if I’ve written it down on paper. Sometimes, though, I have to draw or write off of the computer.

Learning:
I have a Lynda.com premium account, which gets me instant access to a whole load of video tutorials and exercise files for learning to do new things on the web. I try to block out time to do one full tutorial a week, but some of them are upwards of ten hours or more, so I have to break it down.

I don’t have a TutsPlus account, but I still do the tutorials on there that I can access for free. The paid account gets you more tutorials and exercise files, which are useful. The free information is still top-notch, though: that’s where I got the idea and the instructions for my beer label, among other things. I might subscribe in the next couple of months.

Staying on task:
Pomodoro is my go-to app for Pomodoro Technique…obviously. It allows you to set the length of sessions and breaks, the frequency of long breaks, and how often you’re allowed to give yourself a break. It also has a computery voice that talks to you at the beginning of every pomodoro, which you can set to say different things. [Me personally? Whenever I complete a pomodoro, it says, "Nice job, whore." And when I take an unplanned break, it says, "You're fucking up. Get back to work." This causes me no shortage of amusement.]

I’ve also used Focus Booster, and it’s not as customizeable [read: you can't get it to curse at you], but it’s very pretty. It changes colors as the session goes on, so you can see based on what color the timer is how much time you’ve got left.

I wasn’t sure how to categorize Boomerang, but I think it’s apt here. Boomerang is a Gmail extension that allows you to send messages that are currently in your inbox away, but to have them return at a specific date. This is perfect if you have an email with a task you can’t get to now, but you have time to deal with later on in the week, or a task that has to be completed on a specific date. Boomerang is a big component in helping me maintain Inbox Zero all the time.

Business-y things:
I use Freshbooks for project management, time tracking, and invoicing. It has a project manager built in, so at the beginning of each project, you can estimate the number of hours you intend to spend on each task within a project [illustration, content strategy, meetings, coding, cross-browser testing, monthly maintenance and backups, marketing, etc]. It also has an invoice generator built directly in, and it hooks into my Paypal so I can get paid faster.

For recurring events and scheduling, nothing beats Google Calendar. It’s pretty self-explanatory.

Is there anything I’m missing? What kind of tech do you use to get your work done?

Jumping on the Bandwagon: 31 Things in my 31st Year

amanda_lee — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:33:11 +0000

I’ve never been good at adopting the ideas that other people are already doing, because I never want to seem like I’m copying them. So I hesitated to do the “XX Things in XX Years!” kind of lists you see on other people’s blogs. [Plus, if we're being really honest, I don't like not being able to follow through with what I want to do, and I was pre-emptively embarrassed at potentially not being able to get it all done. This has happened before on blog-based list projects, and it's embarrassing.]

It wasn’t until around September that I gave it some serious consideration. I was feeling bored with my life, which consisted of a lot of work and yoga and not very much of doing new things. So that’s when I started putting together this list – 31 things I’d like to do in my 31st year.

1) Grow my hair out for the entire year. Trims are okay, but nothing too extreme – I’m tired of having short hair.
2) Do an entire session of sensory deprivation.
3) Learn some more Python and make a functional program with it that I can give away for free or for donations.
4) Sell some stock photography. I take a lot of pictures. Some of them are good. I’d like to be compensated for them, even just a little bit.
5) Go to yoga 275 times. This means I’m basically going every week day, and some weekends. [Current count: 1. I woke up unable to move my neck two days ago, and I don't want to risk paralysis when I try to do a headstand.]
6) Take a social media hiatus once a month for a weekend. It has to be intentional, not accidental.
7) Do something with all the lyrics that have been living in my Evernote for ages.
8) Start a live writing event every week with friends via shared Google Doc, making it public as it goes.
9) Pitch over 100 potential clients in new topic areas, and write about what I’ve learned.
10) Build a computer. Mostly because it’s completely different from anything I’ve ever tried. Also, I secretly love going to Microcenter and confusing the dudes who work there, who should really hide their confusion better: “A lady? Looking at soldering irons and multimeters¹? She must be lost. Let’s show her where the iPads are.”
11) Take a woodworking class. No one makes furniture like I like, and if they do, it’s expensive and/or really awful quality. I want to see if I like doing it, and if I do, I’ll make a bunch of stuff for my apartment.
11a) Make doors for the built-in shelves in my living room, turning them into cabinets. This is less a woodworking project and more a matter of getting some wood cut and hanging it on hinges, but it’s still important to me.
12) Take a screen printing/printmaking/letterpress class, and use the results to set up an actual shop on my blog.
13) Sew a Mondrian dress.
14) Fully fund my IRA for 2011 and 2012. Did you know you can make IRA contributions for a given year after the year is over? For 2011, I can still make contributions until April 15, 2012. Totally doable, especially since I’ve already got a bit in there.
15) Write a course.
16) Write 2 ebooks.
17) Do some kind of creative project with my sequined heads. [Since I posted that photo, the number of sequined heads in my apartment has multiplied by a factor of three. And I have enough sequins and pins to make about eighteen more. Be very afraid.]
18) Open a travel rewards credit card, and use it for globetrotting.
19) Record an EP of Magnetic Fields covers about my ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends. Get musicians I know to guest on it.
20) Put up insulated curtains on all my windows, so I can stay warm this winter.
21) Dye my hair.
22) Knit socks. I hate wearing them, so I’ve never tried to make them, but I love tights. So if I could find a decent pattern that isn’t ugly, I could make tall socks and wear them with a garter belt. Or I could just give them away as a present.
23) Buy a new MacBook Pro.
24) Visit New York City for the first time since I lived there.
25) Visit Detroit.
26) Adopt another dog.
27) Buy a new Roomba, and/or fix my old one.
28) Join a CSA and have fresh meat, eggs, fruits, and veggies delivered to my house. Eat better as a result.
29) Move into a larger apartment in my building. Use the extra bedroom[s] to be a bad-ass hostess, and use the balcony [oh yes, we all have balconies in my building] to host hookah parties and barbecues.
30) Have a Derby party, complete with fancy hats.
31) Do Thanksgiving with friends.

I also have a couple of bonus items, and if I complete them, I’ll write about them here, but this is the official list. If I get a third of the way through this, I’ll be pleased.

¹ I’m pretty sure this is the exact conversation a couple of the sales guys were having when I bought my multimeter. And it was embarrassing for all of us.

Style Song: My New Coat

amanda_lee — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:16:07 +0000

[Sorry for the Instagram-style shot. I've misplaced my real camera.]

While fashion is what I enjoy
The weather will always destroy
My love for the frocks
From my long summer walks
So extreme measures I must employ.

I purchased a parka that’s brown
It’s knee-length and filled with down
Without it, I’d freeze
And develop a wheeze
It’s required to live in this town.

My clothes underneath are the same
As I wore when the weather was tame
But when it gets this cold
I’d rather be rolled
In a Michelin Man-sized frame.

How to answer the “When are you going to get MARRIED?!” questions [in ways that are less abrasive than "None of your @#&*ing business."]

amanda_lee — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:07:16 +0000

[When this posts, I'll be attending a wedding and hopefully dodging these kinds of questions. Wish me luck on dodging the well-meaning nosy relatives. In the meantime, here's some of what I've prepared to say without being evicted from the wedding and disowned from my family.]

a) Ignore the question. Repeatedly, if you have to.
Them: “So when are we going to hear that you’re getting married? You’re not getting any younger!”
Me: “Did you know there are over a million bricks in the Empire State Building?”
Them: “That’s nice. But didn’t you say you were dating a nice boy?”
Me: “The funny thing is, I’ve never been in the Empire State Building. Can you believe that? I lived in New York for almost three years and I just never did it.”
Them: “Hmm. So tell me about your boyfriend. Is he marriage material?”
Me: “The thing is, I really hated the touristy stuff in Manhattan. I get anxiety in crowds like that. And everyone’s like, trying to take photos…so weird!”
Them: “It is weird. I’m going to freshen my drink.”

b) Give them way too much information.
“Been there, done that. Not going back again!” [Works best when a significant other is present and willing to nod knowingly.]

“Well, we’re trying to get pregnant first. Man, it’s been fun.” [Wink here. If they pry, name-drop sex positions and go into detail about your menstrual cycle.]

“I’m having way too much fun being promiscuous. Did you know that the World Health Organization’s definition of promiscuity is only three sex partners a year?” [Chuckle after you say this. If you feel inclined, talk about the wild night you had last March, and the pictures that are somewhere on the Internet.]

c) Turn it around.

“So will we hear wedding bells in your near future?”
“Wow. That’s a really personal question. I didn’t know you and I were that close. By the way, how’s life in your bedroom?”

“I’m not sure. When are you going to get divorced?” [Only works on married people.]

“I’m waiting until all my gay friends can get married in this state. We’re going to have a big gay wedding. Want to be a bridesmaid?” [Works best on homophobes or xenophobes.]

d) Lie.

“I’m saving up for a Harry Winston. Actually, I have a Kickstarter where I’m raising money. Would you like to donate? The minimum donation is $450.”

“I’m actually holding off on marriage until my band is on MTV. Here’s our single. Want to be on our street team?”

“I’ve just been so busy! My [insert obviously fake business name] business isn’t going to run itself, you know!”

“I’m planning to elope to Vegas. Like, soon. I don’t think any of you are invited. Sorry!”

e) Up the sketchiness factor.

“I can’t answer any questions like that without my lawyer present.”

“My therapist doesn’t like me to talk about my relationships with anyone except her.”

f) Change the subject.

“Oh jeez, I need another drink. Can I have some of yours?”

I’m 30 Today. [Warning: Cheeseball post ahead.]

amanda_lee — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:45:41 +0000

When I turned ten, I had a slumber party, and I had high hopes for it turning out a certain way. I drew up a schedule. There were plans: arrangements for when we were going to order pizza – in the middle of the movie, so it would arrive in time for us to eat it while we were having the talent/costume contest, leaving us enough time to pin tails onto donkeys before I opened presents and cut the cake. The night was to end with us in sleeping bags in a circle, telling ghost stories and gossiping about the boys we liked. My guests, however, were a project manager’s nightmare – they were much more interested in hanging out and playing board games than sticking to the birthday girl’s schedule. I tried to reason with them – they were throwing the whole night off, could we please just sit down and watch the movie? – but they weren’t having it. I left them in the basement, locking the door behind me. It didn’t take long for them to realize they could come out the patio door and around to the front door, where they promptly rang the doorbell and got me into a shitload of trouble. [If anyone who was at that party is currently reading this, sorry. I've been working on being more flexible in the past two decades.]

These days I’m a bit more lax about my birthday plans [ironic, since planning things is what I do habitually, almost obsessively]. Tonight I’m attending a cousin’s wedding, where I’m hoping everyone will be too busy drinking and having fun to say anything about my milestone birthday. This has less to do with my feeling uncomfortable about my age, and more to do with the general dread of over-the-hill jokes and queries about when I’m going to settle down and have a baby, already [which, can we stop that, too?]. I’m sure I’ll do a lot of fun stuff over next week – it’s been my practice for the last few years to celebrate from the date of my birth to the date of my adoption. Current plans include starting some new client work [a redesign of a magazine website and a WordPress dev gig for a hot-dog stand], eating burritos, drinking cheap beer and not-so-cheap riesling, going to yoga, and hopefully seeing lots of friends.

For the past year I’ve braced myself for dreading this birthday. I’ve written before about how I think the baggage attached to age sucks and how we need to collectively get over it, but thirty is a big deal to most people, and I thought it was silly to think I’d be immune to the anxiety attached to aging. But today is the big day, and I don’t feel anything close to anxiety or dread.

Instead, I feel relieved. I’m trying to be more honest in my blogging, so I’ll say it here: I spent most of my twenties trying to figure my shit out, miserable because everyone else seemed to have theirs already figured out, depressed because I didn’t know what I wanted from work or relationships or life at large, poor from working the jobs I could get rather than striving to do something better. And I’m not at all sad to leave all that behind.

Right now, I have the best relationship and the best friends I’ve had in years. I’m making music and art. I’m not broke [I have a Roth IRA!]; I’m doing the work I want to be doing, and I’m getting better at it every day. I’m a lot more aware that everyone’s just doing the best they can, and I don’t feel so far behind the curve anymore. I’m not immune to failure, or sadness, or loneliness, but I’m in a better position to handle any of those things than I’ve been in my entire life.

So in the next year, I’m going to fail harder. Try more things, even if it means giving them up when I find out I don’t like them. Meet more people, because I always feel better when I go out and have fun, even if the night starts with crippling “What the hell am I doing here? Why didn’t I stay home?” anxiety. Work on new and interesting work projects and music, which is always a sure sign I’m doing something right.

Happy birthday, me. It’s going to be a great year.

A Letter to: The Dude Who Threw a Beer Can at my Head at the Glitch Art Festival

amanda_lee — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 02:02:57 +0000

You weren’t like most of the people at the show – hip enough not to talk to one another, or just awkward enough to seem hip. It was refreshing to see someone attending with enthusiasm, even if you weren’t familiar with what the work was about, or what the purpose of the gallery space was. I could even ignore the fact that you were blatantly there looking for a story, because you’re in a Hunter Thompson phase where you meet a cool girl at a bar and then follow her to an art party, and then proceed to get really drunk.

It’s cool, though. See, I’m not an Internet/video/glitch art kid. I spend a ton of time going to shows with Chris and his friends, but I’d be hard-pressed to talk about the work super-intelligently, or with more acumen than a freshman art history student merely regurgitating the last New Media lecture he sat through [he was probably hung over - don't judge him]. In short, I’m not an elitist asshole who thinks that glitch art festivals are just for People Who Get It.

That might be part of the reason I started talking to you. I’m always glad when people appreciate one another’s work, and also when they seek out new, awesome stuff to appreciate. And I’ve been the odd one out enough times to understand how weird and awful it can be to attend a party and have no one talking to you. So we chatted – about marketing [you worked in it for several years before deciding to hang it up and go into journalism], about your blog [you don't really blog, which I find hard to believe if you want to be a journalist, but okay], about how ha-ha hilarious it is to be some of the only non-art kids at this show. And you were cool. I might have given you my card. We also talked about going back to school as an older student [which I've tried to do at various points when my grown-ass career wasn't going the way I hoped].

We split up to talk to other people, like people do at parties, reconverged with different groups of friends. I introduced you to everyone, because I wasn’t about to make you feel excluded in a scene where you didn’t know anyone. And we drank, and we chatted, and we had fun.

So I don’t understand why, later in the night, I was standing at the other end of the room talking to Chris and felt a beer can hit me in the forehead, and when I looked up, you were yelling how sorry you were.

I know. It was probably an accident. You finished your beer and you were having a great conversation with Eric, whom I’d introduced you to awhile earlier, and you wanted Chris and me to come join your conversation [and possibly also to present me with another beer]. So you tossed the can in our general direction, without thinking about the worst that could happen.

Seriously, dude. What the fuck?

A Window into my Week: Rosie the Roomba is sick.

amanda_lee — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 01:50:07 +0000

Rosie the Roomba hasn’t been up to the task lately. Having had a taste of life with floors that aren’t covered in dog hair, I’m trying to get her fixed up. The multimeter says that the batteries are working fine, so I might have to learn to use a soldering iron tomorrow.

Moving In Together: How It’s Working With Chris and Me

amanda_lee — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:31:50 +0000

Chris and I moved in together about a year and a half ago. We lived with roommates at first, and then last July we got our own place – a two-room studio apartment in Clifton. In January, we moved to an enormous one-bedroom in Humboldt Park, and it’s been splendid.

When we merged our stuff, it wasn’t really a problem. Chris is a die-hard minimalist – I’m pretty sure he brought two bags full of clothing, assorted toiletries, a folding bookcase, and a bed when he moved into our place. We share similar ideals about not owning things we don’t need, or love, or use often, but while he’s pretty strict about not owning much of anything at all, I rather enjoy having furniture. So everything except his bed and his bookcase is mine. [Read: If we ever break up, he's going to have to make some emergency trips to Ikea.]

As a result, I’ve been in charge of the decor in our apartment. It is clearly done by a girl with a fixation for visual cleanliness and no tolerance for clutter. I get extremely distracted having a bunch of stuff that’s not put away out of sight, to the point where if I’m working from home and I can see something that’s out of place, I put it away. Chris being an artist, though, means he brings home a bunch of really fun art for the walls – a few weeks back, he commissioned a drawing of that scary, uncanny valley-style photo of Michelle Bachman from the cover of Newsweek from a street artist. As soon as we frame it, it’s going to live in our hallway, and scare the bejeesus out of me every time I see it.

Since I’m the “neat one”, I do a lot of cleaning. I have mixed feelings about this, but they mainly stem from the fear that people will think I’m a bad feminist.¹ Chris is great about helping when I ask him to – he has some things he knows he has to do regularly, and he knows he has to clean up after his own messes [or face my wrath].

He is also really great about helping out with dog responsibilities. Hachiko is my dog, so I take care of the expenses of food, grooming, training, medication, and vet bills, plus the clothes he wears², but I know I can rely on him to help make sure he gets enough exercise and bathroom trips, especially if he goes out after I go to bed.

Which brings me to the single point of friction: we have opposing sleep schedules. If left to his own devices, Chris would sleep until 4 p.m. and stay up until dawn. I’m by no means a morning person, but I like to go to bed in time to be up and ready for yoga in the morning. Since he works a nine-to-five job, though, he typically gets to bed around 2 and then naps when he gets home from work. This was a really big issue when we were living together in a two-room studio apartment trying to save money for the move – if I wanted to get work done during his evening nap, I basically had to leave, because there was nowhere I could sit with a light on without keeping him awake. Likewise, when I wanted to go to bed at midnight and he was still awake, I indulged in many “WHY CAN’T YOU SLEEP LIKE A NORMAL PERSON?!” conversations. Now that we’re in an uber-spacious place, we can just shut the door and avoid the whole issue. [I am guilty of hauling him out of bed every weekend for brunch, though.]

We try to split our expenses evenly. We’ve always split our rent and utilities 50/50, even when we weren’t making the same amount of money. When we moved to Chicago, we had a shared Google Docs Spreadsheet of Doom to keep track of who had spent what on groceries, household supplies, and toiletries. Most of the time, it evened out, and if it didn’t, we’d figure it out. Now we’re a lot more casual about it – no running tallies, but we both think it’s fair, and it evens up really quickly. And if it doesn’t, the one who owes money to the other will pay the next time we go out.

We’ve never been super-formal about “making sure we still go out on dates” like all the relationship advice columns say to do after you’ve moved in together. But we spend a lot of time together doing fun stuff without actually blocking out time for it – we have brunch most weekends with friends; we watch The West Wing and Community; we work together on freelance projects and art stuff; and we take Hachi for long walks in the park across the street.

Have you ever lived with a significant other? How did it work out?

¹And, for real, y’all, that’s not what feminism’s about. It’s about the ability to choose whether to do it. And I’m choosing to have a clean house so I can focus on working and enjoying my life without being distracted by things I don’t like.

²Yes, Hachiko has a Thundershirt. And he’ll probably have a Halloween costume this year, too. Though I doubt he’ll be too happy about that hat.

I Made This: X-Ray Ivy

amanda_lee — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:28:11 +0000

This was a complete accident – I was experimenting with the same effect I used to create Janice’s repeating glitter background for her blog, in hopes of creating a repeating pattern of ivy. Note to self: ivy and glitter do not work the same way.

No related posts.

My Roomba Needs a Name.

amanda_lee — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 01:42:03 +0000

I finally bought the battery that my secondhand Roomba needed. I’ve been running it 2-3 times a day, and dog hair has seriously ceased to exist in other locations than where it belongs [on the dog]. It wanders from room to room, occasionally needing assistance when it chokes on a sock or sucks up an entire iPod cable, but it does its thing, and so far I’ve only had to take it apart and clean it out about once weekly. I’ve seen where dog hair goes to die, and I’m proud to say that it happens in a small white disk-shaped robot with wheels on the bottom. Not so bad, right?

Immediately after getting it up and running, Chris and I started personifying it. We followed it around the house. Watched it bump into things. Picked up dust bunnies and set them directly in its path, marveling at the clean floor it left behind. Cheered as it climbed over the door jamb into the bathroom [where it proceeded to try to swallow the rug]. We’ve mostly stopped following it around, but we’re still treating it like an infant. When it makes the sad “help me” noise, we waggle our fingers and sigh. “Roomba,” Chris admonishes. “What are you into now?” Or when it tries to return to its charging station, but runs out of battery within three feet of it, I speak in my Talking to Toddlers voice to it. “Roomba, you’ve just got to keep trying. Not very much further. You’re a good little vacuum, oh yes you are…yes you ARE…” It’s like we brought home a puppy that’s not housebroken, or obedience-trained, or interested in participating in any kind of good behavior.

Hachiko, of course, hates it. It has displaced him as the household’s sole pet, and he wants nothing to do with it – or maybe he’s just upset about the first time it came at him and tried to suck up his foot. He bolts from the room when it approaches, and if it happens to get near enough to bump him, he snarls. I’ve never heard my dog make a sound like he makes when the Roomba comes at him – it’s downright scary. If I ever capture an event like this on camera and post it here, I’m fairly sure you won’t sleep that night, because the noise is terrifying.

Of course, as an additional household pet, Roomba deserves a name. I’m taking suggestions. Any thoughts?

A Window into my Week: Rosie the Roomba is sick.

Full Disclosure: On Cool

amanda_lee — Sun, 15 May 2011 00:34:08 +0000

The first place I recognized what Cool was was in Mrs. Jackson’s third-grade classroom. Oh, yeah, I’d used the word “cool” ad nauseum before. My babysitter had given me a My Little Pony paper doll kit in kindergarden and I’d immediately exclaimed, “Cool!” I wore cool shoes that had panda-shaped velcro closures and cool black stone-washed jeans with bedazzling along the pockets. I thought it was cool that my parents were musicians. I thought that, in no particular order, cool included things like ballet, Papa Johns pizza at slumber parties, and pink-paged diaries.

But it wasn’t until I met Katie in Mrs. Jackson’s third-grade class that I knew the difference between cool and Cool.

Typically in my school, the Tyranny of the Cool came in a package deal with the Monarchy of the Pretty, the {{}} of the Smart, and the {{}} of Having Your Shit Together as much as a third-grader could. But not for Katie.

Katie had moved from Arizona over the summer. She wasn’t exotic, or sophisticated, or in possession of any adjectives that are synonyms for “better than the rest of us”. She had a weird perm and glasses, and she wore cowgirl boots unironically about a decade before that became cool in Kentucky. She was clumsy and she wasn’t good at music, or dance, or throwing parties, or making anyone laugh.

But Katie made up for it with an inimitable insouciance I’d never seen anyone match. I’d never seen anything like it before – before she arrived, the A-list of my class was always filled with pretty, smart, well-dressed girls who were decent at sports and who Generally Had Their Shit Together. They were nice. We had play dates after school sometimes. They all came to my birthday parties, and I went to theirs. I might have been considered a member of their group, if it had been codified in that way. But it wasn’t. Katie was the start of the in/out mentality, even though prior to her arrival, she’d have been Out by anyone else’s standards.

She waltzed into recess one day and announced that she was going to be the president of a new club, and now she was accepting applications for membership. Of course we wanted in – we hadn’t been a part of something this formal since the one year we were in Brownies together. So, she continued, everyone who wanted in had to design a poster for the group, and whoever out of all of us made the best ones would get to be in her club. The club would be called Kool Kats, she said. With a K [which also stands for "Katie", I figured out later].

I wasn’t a great artist, but I did love drawing. So I made a hand-lettered sign with a confetti-style background. I may have even used scented markers. I had somehow left my glitter and puff paint at home that day, so a two-dimensional, non-sparkly poster was the best I could do. Some of the other girls – the ones who’d been my friends before Katie arrived, and still were at that point – had stashes of glitter, puff paint, hole punches shaped like stars and dinosaurs, and possibly even dust from the Hope Diamond in their desks. And it was this stuff that they used to make their Kool Kats posters, the Kourtly, Klassy, Kolossal, Konspicuously Krazy-Kool Kats.

I walked across the playground with my poor little hand-drawn poster in tow. I knew what was about to happen. And I did it anyway. It was drawn on one poor piece of computer paper, and it wrinkled in my sweaty hand, which made it look even shabbier next to al that sparkle and diamond dust that the others had drawn. When I arrived at the cluster of girls in stonewashed jeans and backcombed bangs and Lisa Frank-themed sweaters, she raised her eyebrows. I offered my poster.

She took it. She looked for what seemed like a full minute. She looked back at me with no expression. “Thanks, but I think we’ve got enough.” She hardly spoke to me again. Neither did most of the other girls.

For the rest of the year, those Kats congregated on the playground, a tight little group singing songs together, occasionally monopolizing the slide, and practicing their Kat Koreography for the routine they were planning for the talent show. It never came to fruition. Eventually I stopped watching, focusing on the books I brought out to the playground or trying to play kickball with the boys. They didn’t want me any more than the Kats did, but they were a lot nicer about it.

Katie probably didn’t mean to be what she was. From an adult’s perspective, her behavior was nothing more than overcompensation – she was new in town, with funny hair, funny boots, glasses and no after-school sports she could join. Still, if she were in school now, she’d be classified as a Queen Bee – a glorified little tempest who despite having neither the coordination nor the courage to punch someone, was a bully all the same.

Faithful Friend: 5.13.2011

amanda_lee — Fri, 13 May 2011 18:25:01 +0000

This blog doesn’t have nearly enough pictures of my dog. So here he is. Hachiko is named after that other dog with the same name. [Yeah, the one from the film.] He’s an incredibly intelligent border collie with a penchant for raising his eyebrows at me whenever he knows I’m lying, drunk, or withholding food that I intend to eat myself instead of giving to him. The Ugly Doll at his feet is one of his 56 toys, one of the only ones he hasn’t shredded yet. Give him time. He’ll get to it.

On Quality of Life and Money: A Survey of Sorts

amanda_lee — Thu, 12 May 2011 18:26:35 +0000

[EDIT: See footnotes.]³

What amount of money is necessary right now, if I just handed you a wad of cash in a one-off kind of deal, to make a significant difference in your quality of life?

I’m talking about the amount you would need to be able to purchase a single good or service. I’m not talking about the amount of money it would take to raise your quality of living in a long-term sense – - I might cover that later – but I’m talking about the amount you’d use to make a one-time purchase of a single object or a finite experience that doesn’t require long-term financial responsibility [affording a bigger apartment, a better car, another dog, etc].

For me, these amounts fall into two categories: one-time purchases of things that benefit me in the very short term, and one-time purchases of things that benefit me in the long term.

Short-term benefits purchases: ¹

A massage of an hour or two, $50-$125.
An hour in a sensory deprivation tank, $50. [To be honest, I've never done this - it's been on my to-do list for a couple of weeks, and I'm going to try it when I get back into town next week. If I like it, I'm going to become a regular customer there; if not, I might regress to an animal state when I'm in the tank, and you guys may not ever hear from me again.]
A single house-cleaning session, including having all my laundry done and deep-cleaning the kitchen appliances, around $125.
A single dog-grooming session, including a bath and a haircut, around $125. [Hachi's a big dog. It takes awhile.]

Long-term benefits purchases:

A new Roomba battery, around $35 with shipping. I bought a secondhand Roomba a couple weeks ago, but it came sans battery, and I haven’t been home at my Chicago apartment long enough to order one. Sweeping up dog hair happens approximately once a day, and having a functional Roomba with a functional battery would mean that I’d have to sweep up dog hair approximately never. A+.
A dishwasher, around $400 plus delivery. Chris and I are basically on the same page about everything except cleaning, and dirty dishes are a particular sore spot. [They just don't bother him. I don't get it at all.] Having a dishwasher would ease the conflict that happens when I find a days-old dish in a seldom-used portion of the sunroom and then have to leave it where he sees it so he remembers to wash it².

Do you have some thoughts on this? Come find me on Twitter and let’s talk about it.

¹ I estimated some of these prices, because I’ve never purchased some of them before in my current city, and I don’t know them to the penny amount. Also, some of the larger physical items I might be able to get at a discount and/or buy them secondhand.
²Yes, I’m talking about leaving the dish on his pillow. What about it?
³For the sake of simplicity, I chose to leave out stuff that could potentially improve my immediate quality of life, but that I already buy rather regularly – things like Thai carryout, a bowl of Forever Yogurt, a new top from a secondhand shop. These are arguably an improvement on my quality of life [otherwise, why would I purchase them?], but since they’re relatively frequent, I left them out here.

How to Work From Home

amanda_lee — Thu, 12 May 2011 01:54:28 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about why I love working from home. Today I’m going to give you a rundown on how I’ve made it work for me. It’s not for everyone, and there’s a definite learning curve, but here’s what I’ve been able to work out so far.

Actually get shit done. It’s way too easy to ignore work, especially with all the distractions your home probably has – the dog! the kitchen that needs cleaned! that bag of clothes we should have donated years ago! But you won’t be doing yourself any favors if you can’t focus. There are entire blogs devoted to ways you can get better at Getting Shit Done. I’ve even written a bit about it myself. Right now, two things I’m loving:

1. Block out distractions. When I’m feeling particularly distraction-prone, I flip on LeechBlock, which I set up to limit the amount of time I spend on my non-working sites – Google Reader, Reddit, Twitter – or block them completely.

2. Focus on one task or one set of tasks at a time. I’ve become a Pomodoro devotee – I use the app to give myself a specific amount of time to complete one task only, so I avoid jumping back and forth between working on different things.

Be responsive. For all your boss knows, you are watching Arrested Development for the fourth time on Netflix Watch it Now. You don’t have to answer your emails the minute they’re received, but answer them on a set schedule, and let your boss know. [My former boss was actually great at this - she checked her email only twice a day, and blocked out time during each check to deal with all her incoming requests. I aspire to that.]

Manage up. You get a reduced commute, the ability to work in pajamas if you want, and an office environment that you control completely. You can eat Cheez-Its at your desk without your cubemates giving you snark! You can listen to This American Life without headphones! Your dog can help you edit your copy! In return, though, your boss expects greater levels of productivity. So give it to her. Tell her what you’re working on. If this means sending a weekly status report of Things You Have Accomplished, do it. [That's a pretty good status report to be sending to yourself, by the way.]

Face time is important. If you need to be there – for an important meeting or for some collaborative work – be there. Skype in if you have to, and definitely keep regular contact with all your colleagues. You still work with them, even if you don’t see them every day.

Do you work from home? Any tips that you’d like to share?

Five Reasons Why I Love Working From Home

amanda_lee — Wed, 11 May 2011 01:12:18 +0000

Since I moved to Chicago in January, I’ve been working remotely for my old job, plus a couple of extra clients on the side. I can’t tell you how amazing it’s been. Here’s why:

1. I can start my actual work earlier, because I don’t have a commute.

I used to think I wasn’t a morning person. I’m actually with mornings; it’s just that I hated scrambling to get ready and get out of the house to arrive at work on time. I’ve always been pretty efficient with my morning routines, but it was a hassle to wake up, shower, get ready, get the dog walked, eat something, and rush to the bus – I always arrived at work feeling like I hadn’t had time to breathe.

Now, my compulsion for routine hasn’t left me, but I have about seven fewer steps – I wake up and get dressed, walk the dog while my coffee brews, and then get started on work while I eat my breakfast. A couple days a week I drive Chris to his train stop, but that’s kind of like an extended dog walk. And I’m at my computer opening Coda about an hour earlier than I otherwise would have been.¹

2. I work in normal clothes.

I’m not good at professional attire. When forced, I try to pretend like I’m Peggy Olson or Joan Harris, but it takes a lot longer to get ready – I don’t feel nearly as confident as I do in my regular attire. I’d rather be working in denim and tank tops with biggified hair. If I were ever inclined to work in my pajamas or my underpants, It wouldn’t bother anyone. And when I was freezing my ass off in my first Chicago winter, no one cared if I reported to my desk dressed in seventeen layers of leggings, wool socks, robe, scarf, and hat.

3. I have a lot more control of my environment.

When I work onsite, I rely on closed doors and noise-cancelling headphones to keep me on task – but I still get people who barge in, or meetings that break up what could have been a whole morning of diligent work. Plus there are environmental concerns that affect everyone – a power outage that affects the whole building and makes us completely unable to use our computers; an HVAC issue that makes the office air freezing; a road closure that means no one can get there at all

At home, this kind of stuff rarely affects me. The closest I’ve come is losing our Internet for a couple of hours, but I immediately tethered the computer to my phone so I can get back to work.

4. I can eat healthier meals without planning ahead.

I am a champ at packing lunch. But working ten steps away from my kitchen means I no longer have to. It also means that if I forget to plan ahead, I don’t end up at a restaurant getting carryout.

5. My breaks are actual breaks, because I have to take my dog out.

When I was at the office, I tried to be strict about doing Pomodoro – partly for building hard focus, but also for making sure I took breaks to rest my eyes and stand up and stretch. What actually ended up happening more times than I’d like to admit was that I spent my break looking at Twitter or Reddit, so it didn’t feel like a break at all.

Hachiko, though, is an unwitting and amazing productivity tool. I have to let him go out every two to three hours, so I know that when I’m working at home, I actually take real breaks and come back to my work refreshed, and I’m probably in better shape from the four-times-daily walks.

Tomorrow I’ve got a post coming about how to work from home without it taking over your life, or deteriorating into afternoons spent watching Twin Peaks episodes on Netflix. Stoked? You bet I am.

¹ I know that arguably I’ve traded this for a six-hour bus trip every three weeks, but that’s not nearly the pain in my ass that a daily commute is. Pro/con, y’all.

I Made This!, 5.9.2011: McGlasson Farms Logo [Practice]

amanda_lee — Tue, 10 May 2011 02:44:28 +0000

I’m doing some design work for my good friend and bandmate Luke McGlasson. This wasn’t supposed to include any logo design [at least not yet], but during some downtime last week, I decided to make some logos featuring quick illustrations of fruits and veggies for him. I spent about 15 minutes on each, and this turned out to be my best one.