is this a joke?

okay, so i need to go back onto the topic of baby names for just a minute after discovering this "article" on babycenter.com from back in 2005.

(yes, i read about baby names. i've been doing it since the 6th grade. we all know this, but i still feel i need the caveat.)

here are some highlights from this article:

"We're particularly impressed with the BabyCenter parents who used apostrophes to come up with unusual, clever, and musical-sounding names."

they are encouraging this??? look at this horrendous list with the following heading:

"Revamp a classic name with a little punctuational flair. We dig these very creative apostrophe-enhanced spellings from 2005"



Rach'El??
De'Liberately?? THAT'S NOT EVEN A NAME!!

it's one thing to have crazy people on baby name polls (dear Yahoo Answers Baby Names, thank you for all the countless hours of killing-time-at-work entertainment. love, andrea), but when these are somewhat "qualified" people (if Editor's Choice means the "we" in this article are editors at the popular/somewhat credible website about babies) making these suggestions to the public... then we have a problem.

how does little Rach'El even learn how to spell her name, let alone learn how to correct people on how to spell it? "mommy, how come apostrophe isn't in the alphabet?" and by the time she's 12, i'm sure she's either already visited the judge to change her name or is on drugs to forget all the stress that comes from having to spell your name to people all day long... "no, no... it's R-A-C-H-apostrophe-capital E-L". how could that poor girl not want to shoot herself every time someone has to spell it (or pronounce it? no one knows what to do with their voice when they see an apostrophe that's not an O' at the beginning of a last name.) just so sad...

and if that's not enough for one article, here is the next section:

"Food for thought
When Gwyneth Paltrow had her daughter, Apple, in May 2004 she opened the door for a variety of tasty treats that serve as great baby names. Our favorites from 2005:



my only comment on this is... couldn't they have at least spelled Caramel correctly??

there should be laws against this stuff.

(as a shout out to where i discovered the exciting world of Yahoo Answers Baby Names, check out this blog on bad baby names... hilarious. although he really needs to write on it more!)

duvet cover: on the bed

although it's not exactly finished. close enough though! i have to figure out how to enclose the bottom. i'm thinking buttons since the back side is longer than the front so maybe it can fold over. i'm not too concerned about that yet, so it will probably be a few months before i get around to it. ha. you can see what i'm talking about in one of the photos of the duvet below.

sooooo glad i can finally move on to new projects... (like curtains? so i don't have to sleep with an eye mask??)

more owen photos

surprisingly, i'm doing this again... posting more photos one by one until i happen to show a whole album. sorry. i just figured it's better than not writing a blog post and also better than me showing some more photos of me still sewing that GD duvet cover. i'm halfway finished the back though. soo... maybe sort of kind of soon it will be finished.

here are two photos i was able to work on at home for lunch today. it would have been three if my (is it too elementary of me to use the adjective "stupid" here?) boss hadn't survived his trip to peru. which means i'm back to one hour lunches...

what a cutie this baby boy is:

excitement

i am....





(excited)

the bachelorette is finally over!! woo hoo!!

oh, is it not over for you? because it is over for me. no more reid! thank god. he didn't even like one minute of jillian. and he's all, "i know i should have told her that i loved her..." um, why? so you could have stayed one more week to have a better chance at being the next bachelor? that show is. torture.

at least that guy ed provided (minutes of!) entertainment at our bachelorette girls night by wearing those incredibly short shorts. i'm pretty sure some ex-girlfriend turn "friend" was responsible for suggesting he wear those on national television...

i think next season i will plan girls nights at my place to not watch the bachelor. although then... what will we have to talk about and make fun of? maybe i'm not as excited about this ending as i thought...

owen's photoshoot

when i first moved to san francisco i babysat with my sister for her friend's seven month old son, oliver. i brought my camera and took some photos of oliver that his parents ended up framing. well... oliver now has a seven month old brother, owen, and his parents wanted similar photos done for owen at the same age.

my sister and i went over yesterday for a visit to hang out and take some photos (and to eat some delicious picco pizza... yesssss). here are some highlights from the photoshoot... i love the last one where oliver ran away from the group family photo in order to stand directly in front of the camera. he is hilarious!






by the way, yes i did cut work again today at 12:30... my boss is in peru! and i'm no good at doing work that should take a few hours earlier than the last few hours i have to work on it. what am i supposed to do in between when the company blocks all the interesting internet sites to browse? exactly - go home and work on these photos (and a little bit of the duvet - only one last block to sew onto the front!)

working from home

if there is one thing i am good at at my cubicle job, it is knowing when i can leave early with no one noticing and taking it upon myself to do so. yesterday i used this special talent and left the office at 12:30pm. if anyone noticed, they certainly didn't care enough to tell me!

i used the afternoon to finalize my photos of katy & ryan's engagement shoot and posted the photos to my website here.

then i immediately ran downstairs to the sewing machine to continue my work on the duvet cover. since beginning, i have given up all attempts to make sure i'm sewing at 90 degree angles. that doesn't reeeeally matter, right? i decided if the duvet cover ends up fitting over my duvet no matter how ridiculous it looks, it will be a success. sewing is difficult! i'm definitely ready to get back to my knitting after this project...

here are some photos of how the duvet cover is coming:





also on my special unanticipated-afternoon-away-from-the-cubicle, i was able to talk a bunch with lisa (and have a super-skype with julian - the kid who after only a month of being away from i barely recognize he has grown so much... thank god - or jesus, whomever is responsible - for inventing skype) where i laid out my case for why wes was a plant on the bachelorette and thought i should share my case with all both of you here on my blog:

1. there were 30 bachelors instead of the regular 25. (5 plants! including the weird foot fetish guy)
2. they never would have played that guy's music/song without reaching some deal with his PR people. they would have just editted it out.
3. he never would have admitted to having a girlfriend if he wasn't a plant. he wouldn't have risked it that early on in the show.
4. she went home to meet 5 families instead of the normal 4 - wes not counting for her finding "love" since he was a plant...
5. the show can't risk having a dud season since then no one would watch the following seasons - they have to plant stories in order to make sure each rose ceremony definitely is "the most dramatic rose ceremony EVER".

as a caveat, i hate this show. and seriously (this time i really mean it even if i do happen to know someone on the show) i will never watch another season again.

and by the way, if ed can pull off not "losing" by getting picked by jillian, he will be the next bachelor. (in a season which, as i stated previously, i will not be watching)

amy & eric's online asuka album

amy & eric's wedding album has finally been ordered... what an interesting process! i really learned a lot. especially about how terrible it feels to be giving them their album almost 11 months after their wedding. that will not be happening again!

this last delay was over the coloring of the photos. getting in touch with asuka was difficult because they're only open while i'm at work in a cubicle without my personal computer. we finally found a time that worked and i was able to go through all the photos to make sure the colors would be printed the way i wanted them to.

i think i already posted a lot of the pages i liked from the album, but here is the entire album... complete with exciting page turning features. yay!

i'm doing it wrong

i know when one has a photography blog, they're supposed to wait until all the photos are finished and then post a few highlights, but i just can't do it this way. especially also because when you have a blog you're supposed to write in (on?) it once a day... which i am also doing wrong.

good thing no one reads this to call me out on it... ha.

anyway, here are some more katy & ryan photos. i haven't been working on any other projects until these are finished. i really wanted to send these out to them today, and worked on them for 5 hours last night, but couldn't even get halfway through. i like too many of them! and am having way too much fun with my new photoshop actions. hopefully they will understand and like them too...