Music is so awesome, but I don't make it as much as I used to

There was a time in my life that I would play music... a lot.

I had a guitar. I had a voice. I could use them both at the same time. And yet, these days, I just stay on my home... catching up with the TV from 2004.

..probably the year that I was "into" music. :)

But just a few minutes ago, I was listening to Sebadoh's "License to Confuse" & really missing MySpace.


If I'm forced to think about it, I probably stopped playing the guitar & singing when I started playing Guitar Hero.


I guess the reason I miss MySpace is because at the end of your blog posts, you could put what you're listening to. I always found that whilst perusing the old posts, I was most interested in what I used to listened to.

I could tell my mood from what I was listening to. I could tell how awesome i felt by the lyrics.

Today, "License to Confuse" starts with a rather angry riff; rock it out & then admit "I'm not attractive today, I'm not a sight for sore eyes."

Today, my entry tells you how fox-tastic I am NOT feeling.

Despite that, I still played some music on my guitar.

Well, not MY guitar. Roger's guitar, since he was under the weather and it seems that every time I play guitar & sing, he gets happier for some reason.

It's probably because I'm not a very good rhythm guitarist. :)

But the point of the story is that Roger gave me my dream guitar for my birthday: A Seafoam Green Squire Fender Strat with pretty pick-ups and a matching Honeytone mini-amp that I can clip into my skirt and rock out with anywhere I'd like! It even has a freakin' hardcase.....

SOMEone loves me!

Why haven't I taken pictures of it yet? I don't know.

But I do know one thing: The first ting I learned to play was "Undone (The Sweater Song)" by Weezer. It's the only song that's easy enough to repeat over & over again and still sounds rad. ESPECIALLY the talking parts.

I need to get pictures of me rockin' out... making music and making music awesome!

What kind of music are people listening to today? What kind of moods are you feeling? I didn't see any music features on your blogs either. ;D

Geektastic Giveaway!

Hey all!

Here's the scoop:

I was wondering if ya'll would help me vote on the Geeky Embroidery Card that I make for my shop, as they're really time-consuming and I'm kinda boggled as to which one to work on first. Which one would you most likely want to see?

If interested in voting, check it out on the upper right sidebar ->


The terms:

There are many ways to have an entry for this giveaway. Just leave a comment about which ones you've done and it counts as 1 entry!

Here are the different ways to enter:

- Vote on the sidebar & tell us which one you've voted for in your comment.

- "LIKE" our Facebook Fan Page. If you're already our fan, then "Suggest" our page to another friend & it still counts!

- Post this giveaway on your Facebook Page.

- Tweet this giveaway.

- Heart our Etsy Shop and/or an item in our shop [counts as 1 entry EACH].

- Feature your fave item from NerdJerk on your Facebook/Twitter [counts as 1 entry EACH].

- And as suggest by Dominique, following my blog will give you another entry!

On 25th May, I'll announce the random winner of the new Geeky Embroidery Card of their choice!

Thanks for voting! :D

Re-Tooling the Site

Yes, it's that time again...

I've got to re-tool the Etsy Shop so that it reflects more of my awesomeness rather than everyone else's fuzzy feelings that are had from Nintendo inspired geekery.

Which is too bad, since I'm a big fan of making things like that.

The new banner up top shows just one part of the new look. I'll finally be making those rad geeky calculator holders for gadgets (I put my new fancy camera in the BOOBS one, spelled 80085). The two prototypes that I had made look something like this:



Classy, right?

Well, I've thought of a new one: The Calculator from HELL! And it'll have flames on it. Which is relatively rad.

I know there are a ton of people that do gadget pouches, but I'm pretty stoked on my designs since they use rad buttons for the buttons on the calculators.

Also, I'm going to finally make the typewriter Post-It holders. :D They'll come in about 4 colours. They'll also have buttons for keys and come with a Post-It pad to start ya off right!

The new Nerdity Notebook designs are taking a little longer to come up with that I could like. I'd ended up finishing "Spike" the Punk Cactus with a Mohawk (or as I like to call him: "Mohawktus") and Indie Kitty is pretty much finished.

Spike/Mohawktus is going to be screen printed onto pretty awesomely soft shirts with a raging neon pink mohawk. We're hoping to sell a lot of the new items with custom designs this way. :D

If you missed them on our Facebook, then you can catch the concept design sketches right here:




So, as you can see, I've got a lot going on. :D Whew!

Plus, my boyfriend, Roger and I are about to take a trip up to Portland, OR for my birthday on Thursday! Right now we're planning what we're going to do for Friday, Saturday & Sunday... It'll be my first real vacation in a while to my favourite place in the whole wide world! Would love to hear some ideas from people that know the area.

We joked about gettin' married at the famous VooDoo Doughnut cos, yeah, you can really, really do that, but since he nevered proposed with a Cracker Jack ring, it might be jumpin' the gun a little bit. ;)

Plus, sugar has been making me feel MIGHTY weird lately (as in my vision goes out of whack and everything gets ultra lucid) so I think I'm going to only have ONE doughnut... and that's the one I wanna marry... The "Memphis Mafia"..! It combines the ultimate tastiness trifecta: bananas, chocolate & peanut butter! UBER BONUS: It's in fritter form!

Probably contains the amount of calories that would be used to power a street lamp for 3 days but *shrugs* I don't get to eat those but once a year and I'm sharing the one I get...

...maybe.

*narrows eyes*

Would you share a banana fritter (think apple, but replace it with potassium-laden goodness) with cinnamon baked in, topped with peanuts & chocolate chips and striped with a dash of peanut butter & fudge glaze?

Only if you were sane.

Well, here's to hoping lots of working out gets done, lots of blog posts get finished and tons of items get posted before I leave on the 20th!

Rock on!

Motivated Schmotivated

Gee - Remember all that talk about getting off my butt to get things done since the only way to show things can get done is by doing it?

Hehe

Well, instead of doin' a ton of blog posts that not only sounded motivational, but rather interesting reads, I ended up spending time with my awesome sister and her boyfriend in San Francisco last week.

When I had to go and sit down to do some blog posts that I'd been thinkin' about doing all week, my face looked something like this:



Incredibly attractive... I know.

But on the plus side, my sister & I had a lot of bonding experiences.

Yesterday, I ended up doing a ton of gardening and felt rather accomplished. SO much so that I thought I outta conquer that whole "How I End Up Makin' a Comic in a Couple of Days" post. Although I'd had a feeling that it would be relatively EPIC, I had no idea how many freakin' references and back story there were in making a 10 panel comic.

And that got me to thinkin'... How much of that story do you guys really wanna know ANYways?

With having rocked the garden pretty hard and forgetting to eat while asking my boyfriend to get back on task (was supposed to be workin' on his work bench for his screen printing business instead of cleaning 3 year-old paintball splatter that'd decorated our garage door), I felt like I might accomplish almost anything. And then I tried tackling the beast-of-a-post for 1.5 hours.

Things That I've Learned From This Experience or MOTIVATION 101:

- Eat something before takin' on big projects. Your friends will thank you.

- Make a list of what needs to get done. This is like a shopping list, just more prioritized. You can even make sub-bullets of awesomeness needing to be addressed so that you don't forget why these things were important.

- Set time goals. Preferably used for the highest priority items so that no matter what, you have addressed them. An example of this was transplanting the plants between 3 PM and 8 PM in order to still have enough daylight to do so.

- Have a Plan B, C & D for next time. It's not always going to happen the way you'd like it to. Having a plan for getting it done no matter what is what'll help get you through.

Lather, rinse & repeat this process.

Simple, yet effective, folks. Having lists = achieving boy scout-esque preparedness status. Feeling like you're prepared can also help you stay on task.

Today my list looks like this:



And since I'm almost done blogging, I think I've got a pretty good chance of getting the rest of it done.

Holler.

Practise What You Preach - To Blog or To Sit & Stare?

I'm really great at procrastination. Like, for reals.

But I'm also really good at givin' out advice. Oh MAN, am I ever!

Sound familiar to anyone?

*sigh*

Recently, I've been speakin' with the ladies on the D-Listers Team May Forum thread about blogs, giveaways, not-enough-time-in-each-day and "If I plan an awesome party, will they come?" syndrome.

It's not necessarily a pity party; it's more like a "I have this problem. Oh. You have that problem too? Holy crap. No WAY! Man, it's hard" kind of a party.

But being a solution minded type of girl, I thought that maybe we could do something about it. So I suggested that maybe we could hold a team challenge to get us all motivated...

And then this little light bulb went on...



I need to get rockin'! I can yap-yap-yap and dish out awesomeness (like the most solid gold bricks of knowledge that I've stored away in the recesses of my noggin!) til I'm blue in the effin' face, but truth is that you can't preach somethin' that you haven't practised.

Plus, whatever happen to my "Awesome-ating" blogging aspect!? (read two posts down)

SO, BALLS! I've got to get off my tush o' mush and rock some cool topics.

Some of the amazing items that you can look forward to this week are:

- "How I End Up Makin' a Comic in a Couple of Days": This post will be featuring the entire process behind my recent submission to PAPERLINKS.oRG

- "Gettin' a Small Space to Look Like a Big Business": I haven't got a lot of resources (monetarily speaking) to be able to run my business and since I'm unemployed, it makes it even harder to make my business look & feel professional (Spending money to make money is hard when you gots none, yo!). So, I plan on sharing a few steps that I've taken to represent NerdJerk as a whole.

- "What Did You Wanna Be When You Grew Up? : Knowing Your Roots & Using Them to Help Motivate Yourself": I've got some potentially embarrassing pictures (including a 6 year old self with a mullet) to illustrate the fact that knowing who you were when you were a kid, livin' in dreamland and remembering what it is that you dreamt about can really help you keep focus in the long run.

Plus, some Etsy sellers, fellow artists & awesome items should be featured as well!

So, if you're remotely interested in reading about this AND/OR taking part in this (such as being featured/interviewed), please feel free to follow this blog AND/OR email me.

Comments & concerns completely encouraged!