Art and Science

My client has asked (ax'd) for posters to be placed in high school band rooms around the area, advertising their private lessons. This is what I've come up with so far.

Their company colors are apparently that blue and gold, and since we're trying to appeal to high schoolers, I figured we'd better have a good-looking and casual young model.

Now I just need to find a decent and affordable printer. Originally these were to be 24x36, and the cost was just astronomical! Even at 11x17, it's still no bargain. The designing part is the cheapest, it's the printing that costs you, ESPECIALLY if it's color. And check out different printers, too...the difference in cost can be amazing. A job for another client came in from one printer at over $800, while another one would do the same thing for $150. I tend to check out at least three printers for a quick estimate, and I have a list of at least eight that I'll do business with if they can get the price right. Business cards run from $80 to $20 per box of 500, depending on the specials you can run into.

In other (not so much) news, I spent my afternoon helping to clean up after a fundraising garage sale, and scavenging the good stuff from it to put into our June LLL fundraising garage sale. I came back with an entire van load of stuff, which promptly went into the garage. Hmmm. Now where does the car go?

Since everyone was starving to death we went to Red Robin to eat. While we were waiting for our food, I got out David's number dice for him to play with. There are two 1-6 dice and one with a plus or minus sign on it. The idea is that you roll the dice and perform the math problem. So David's going along happily (he actually thinks this is a fun way to pass the time) and we're not paying TOO much attention, and suddenly he says, "Dis is negative one!" We look over and he 's rolled 1 - 3. Usually we just tell him to take the big number and subtract the smaller one. But this time he's decided to do the problem as it sits. "See?" he says proudly. "Dis is negative one!" Doug arches an eyebrow at me.
Have you been teaching him this?
I shrug at him.
Hell if I know where he got it. We've been working on counting money.
So Doug gives kudos to David and explains why the answer is actually negative two. He then looks at me and shakes his head. "My five year-old is doing negative integers." I chalk this up to an over-abundance of Cyberchase, personally. (We also told him the other day that he kind of reminded us of the character Matt in the program, and I think he liked that.)

After lunch we stopped and picked up insulin for the cat (*singing* Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you...), then came back and experimented with 1,001 places for the new PVR to go. Well, it's not new. The old one had several things go wrong with it, so Doug spent time redoing chips and got a new case and thought (thought!) it would fit into the entertainment center. Unfortunately, there's no air flow to speak of on the shelf we were thinking of, and the thing overheats. So we've ended up, in sheer desperation, putting it on top of the entertainment center, but since it has a low profile, you really can't see it. And it's so QUIET!! The last one sounded like you were sitting at the airport half the time.

I went to the store and got chicken livers (cats again) and chicken breasts (people food!) and a tube of croissant rolls. Which David deeply adores and would happily cut off his left leg for. I would rather that he eat homemade croissants, but the amount of work that it takes to make them is totally out of the question. It requires a great deal of refrigerating and folding and rolling and refrigerating again and...like I said, so not worth it.

So Doug grilled the chicken and I put most of the rest of it together; we ended up with salad with romaine lettuce, tomatoes (red, orange, yellow and green ones....I have discovered I HATE the green ones), mushrooms, eggs, chicken, bacon bits and homemade croutons from French bread.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, I have a huge stack of dishes to do, not to mention more cat food to make. Sigh.

David is studying matter and the three forms thereof (solid, liquid, gas), and the conversion of each. And he says to me, "I have a good question. Can you turn gas into a solid?" I had to look that up. The answer is yes, and it's most commonly done with carbon dioxide fire extinguishers. The gas is under lots of pressure, and it's suddenly released AND cold, and comes out of the extinguisher as little solid flakes. And by the way, dry ice is thusly named because it goes directly from a solid form (ice) to a gas (vapor, or mist) without passing into the intermediary liquid phase.

And did you know that you can stupidly strap two fire extinguishers to a grocery cart, climb inside, squeeze the handles and propel yourself forward a few yards? Did you further know that less stupidly, you can take an empty film canister, fill it 25% full of water, drop in half of an Alka-Seltzer tablet, cap it, stand it on it's cap and watch it launch?

Ah, the internet!!