I hired Muir as an assistant to help out with the tedious bullcrap, but she doesn’t really know Photoshop other than for quick photo manipulation, building an entire PSD and labeling everything just isn’t an option right now.  Thankfully for her, she’s picked up another job with someone local in town so she’s able to get more of a paycheck being as the tedious gruntwork on my part (right now) is Photoshop based.

I’m thinking of going through my friends list on FB and Twitter and putting out an S.O.S. to anyone who knows what they’re doing.  I’m not looking for someone to code everything, but having an ounce of a code background (especially in WordPress, Joomla and Mangento) is a big help.

Any takers?  Email me.  krissy (at) agndesigns.net

I’m up to 8 different sites and I feel horrible that I’m not able to get everything done in the timely manor that it requires.  On top of everything I’ve got Muir working on AGn Designs to get the SEO to the highest it can possibly be so that holds the potential for bringing in even more work.   I’m ten seconds from ripping my hair out, which is in desperate need of a dye job because the grey has over run my entire face and needs to be covered up ASAP.  Is there time for that? Not really.

Today was one of those extremely productive days where I accomplished everything I’d set out to do, but absolutely none of that list was work related.  I took a drive out to Lowes and Home Depot to pick up tile, grout and everything else someone would need to complete a bathroom.  After 10 years I’ve basically said “enough is enough, I want my own shower again” and flat out told my father that I’m paying the bill and having Muir’s awesome husband come in and do all of the plumbing and tile work for me.  Originally I wanted to go with a tan/beige feel like you’d find in some 5 star hotel, but when going through Home Depot a case of mosaic tile really stood out for me and I couldn’t pass it up.  So, I’m going with a 12″x12″ white tile in the shower, with the blue/grey mosaic inlay which is not only pleasing to the eye, but matches the existing tile on the floor giving me some time before I need to worry about upgrading that.

The shower itself is not an upgrade, it was a complete tear down 10 years ago that was never put back together so we’ve been using the shower in my dads room for as long as I can remember. I’m sick of doing it and due to a near future schedule change for him, I’ll have to shower at 2am in order to not be disturbing anyone – while managing to disturb myself at the same time because I do NOT like going to sleep with wet hair.

So, at some point next weekend Muir, munchkin and hubby will be coming over bright and early. I’ll be in the living room putting Muir to work on whatever’s going on with AGn and hubby will be in the bathroom all day helping to give me my champagne-taste-on-rainwater-budget bathroom.  I honestly was really, really surprised with how much the cashier told me the total was when she was done ringing us up.  Cement board, grout, five cases of large tile, case of inlay tile, case of bullnose/trim tile, corner tile, tile adhesive, sponges, caulk and spacers, plus two soda’s (cause that shit was just heavy to lift and I was dying of thirst) was only $300.  Figure if I’d gone to a contractor he’d charge me $3500 at least to take care of the bathroom and wouldn’t even pull a permit because people suck like that (Thanks to Holmes on Homes [HGTV] I’m learning things!).  To top everything off the work is being done for free, I just needed supplies.  I’m just so over excited and can’t wait to just sit down in the tub and soak for a few hours.

When I got back to the house after my 6 hour shopping spree, we all wound up heading out for dinner cause I was running completely on coffee and a breath mint for a good 12 hours today.  Now we’re all pretty much comatose in the living room.  All I know is I have to put in at least 5 hours tonight, and then wake up bright and early for my usual daily visit from Muir and munchkin.

Time to crack the whip on myself and get movin.

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I haven’t had much going on other than work which is the reason for the lack of updates for the past few days, I was doing really well with updating as frequently as possible (typically once a day) but the work load just hasn’t allowed for that.  It’s a lot harder balancing 10 clients at once than I thought it would be.  I feel that no matter how much effort I put into all of them, it seems I’m putting some on the back burner more frequently.

There have also been some issues with my email which has a lot to do with the fact that things aren’t being knocked out as quickly as they should be.  For some reason IMAP isn’t reading right into Thunderbird OR my phone and with that I’ve missed quite a few emails OR my emails aren’t even making it TO the client.  It drives me crazy because that’s a hit on my income when that happens because it seems like I’ve abandoned the project when I really haven’t.

Either way there’s quite a bit on my “to do” list for today.  Muir is over for her usual daily visit, the baby’s been a little cranky today so it’s been tough sitting down and getting everything done. On the upside, for her, I don’t have a lot for her to handle today other than a phone call and whatever is currently on the task manager that Sean’s been throwing work into.

For now I’ll get myself back into photoshop and start knocking things out.

She got a lot done out of her task manager, the big one was getting Dreamweaver setup on her MacBook.  After 40 minutes of transferring it to her off our in-house server and then installing it – we found that it wasn’t acting right.  Sean did a quick assessment of it and came to the conclusion that her hard drive is corrupt.  We thought of the numerous different ways that this could happen and settled on the diaper bag.  There’s a magnet on the front pocket and we think that the laptop may have gotten to close to it and now we need to work on fixing everything.  From there we also were able to figure out why her cellphone is so screwed up – magnet strikes again.

Needless to say, minus the fact that Sean, Muir and I enjoyed our time working today – when you include my morning bull shit and her laptop – it’s just absolutely fricken fantastic.

We wound up hitting up Big Lots first.  While it was a somewhat successful shopping experience, I was extremely annoyed by a few of the employee’s as one in particular was going up and down the isles saying “All these people with carts need to know we’re fucking closing soon, I ain’t waiting around.”  Meanwhile, it was like 8pm, and they close at 9.  So instantly I thought “Kiss my fat ass”.  We finally make our way up to the register and spent $70 on I-have-no-idea-what.  It took a good 15 minutes to check out considering the same asshole with the mouth has made her way to the front to bull shit with the cashier about some fucking outfit she’s wearing NEXT WEEKEND to the club.  (Do people SERIOUSLY pick shit out the week before? Come on now!). 

We load up the car and then attempt to knock out our second ‘to-do’ – Dinner.  We were both starving and the usual same old shit just wasn’t going to cut it.  We wound up going to this place in Garden City called the Tin Alley Grill. I’d always driven past but NEVER went into it for some reason or another and decided tonight that I didn’t want the Texas Roadhouse or Bertucci’s.  I want something DIFFERENT.  You can imagine my surprise when I actually can say that I ENJOYED my dinner, something that doesn’t happen very often.  I picked up the grilled chicken caesar wrap and upgraded to the sweet potato fries and it goes without saying but I was definitely in heaven.

After our little dinner trip we took a ride over to Pathmark to finally get grocery shopping off of my ‘to-do’ list. $300 later…Sean’s in a mood cause we spent so much and I’m going through my internal list for the week trying to figure out what I’m cooking on what night to keep things moving.

We get home and unload everything from the car, which admittedly took quite a bit longer than anticipated but when you factor in the Big Lots shopping, plus Pathmark AND the stuff that I didn’t take out of the trunk from last weeks Home Depot adventure, the six to seven trips up the stairs (each) was kicking our asses.  And to any of you whom have been to my house, you know those stairs are a bitch – worse with packages that’s for damn sure.

So we’re unpacking everything and I’m trying to figure out how to play Tetris with the freezer (you know we all do it) and then a looser version of Tetris in the fridge.  I got to the point that I was so completely fucking frustrated that I said “Fuck this” and wound up cleaning the damn thing out anyway.  There was really nothing more that I could do other than that, honestly.

Upon unpacking everything we realized that we’re missing a bag and had to retrace our steps to figure out what the hell happened.  Originally we thought it was going to be in the car and just wedged under the seat, then it turned into check the porch cause we were dumping bags there.  Then we realized that the TWO things we went to Big Lots for (in the fricken first place) weren’t even there!  So tomorrow Sean or I are going to give them a call and ask if they have the bag that we left behind.  Considering the attitude of the cashier – I don’t count on that one happening.

So things are calming down, and after spending a good hour outside just to enjoy the cool breeze (since the house is boiling), I’m sitting down at the computer going through email and all I hear is “Psst, get down here quick”.  I head to the bedroom, Sean points to his new desktop and says “smell that”. I hesitated thinking it was a cruel “I farted HAHA” move, but it wasn’t.  It smelled of burning plastic and he’s like “Yea, I turned it on and then something flashed and now it doesn’t work anymore”.  He can’t even turn it on for the initial boot so who knows what happened.  He’s thinking power supply, I’m thinking it’s a kill switch because a power supply doesn’t randomly blow up after 2 weeks of use!  So that’s going to turn into a second phone call for the day.

So when you factor in work, shopping and dinner – my Sunday was as productive as my Saturday was supposed to be. Though, I probably should be exhausted being it’s 3am, but I guess my random two-part 12 hours of sleep has got me all wired up.

Thinking I’ll check on my Words with Friends to see how badly my one girlfriend is kicking my ass right now lol.

It was my goal yesterday to finally go grocery shopping, and get some cleaning done around the house.  Needless to say, due to freakishly long nap I took – none of it was accomplished.

Today I’m trying to do everything on overload.  I blew through all of my emails, I’m sitting in Photoshop to get a few mock-ups knocked out and hopefully will be able to clean up the bedroom AND go grocery shopping today. Thank God Pathmark is 24 hours, I don’t see that happening until much, much later this evening at the rate that everything else needs to be taken care of.

On the upside – it’s an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day outside.  It’s in the upper 70′s but there’s a nice enough breeze to keep it comfortable.  When I woke up today I made it a point to roll up my sleeves outside to hopefully remove this horrible case of farmer arm that I’ve been dealing with.  While I greatly appreciated the lack of a winter, and love that it got very warm much earlier than usual – I’m still an outdoor person regardless OF the weather at hand. So of course if it’s March and 80*F you’re going to make it a point to be outside as much as possible – even if its more so than usual.  With the heat came UV, and since it was technically “Winter”, I don’t exactly have tank tops at easy access so I went with T-shirts.  Due to this, my lower arms are to the point of making me look like I’ve been on a cruise ship for a month, but my upper arms are my true Irish side shining through.  So I’m making it a point to load up on the sun stop giving me the ability to NOT tan anymore and then bumped up the darkener on the are that’s in desperate need of some color.

Hopefully by the time it truly IS Summer, everything will have evened itself out.

In any event, time to get moving.  Lots to do and almost no time to do it.  If the darn roof was on the Gazebo I’d probably be outside working in Photoshop but you can’t see anything with the massive glare that the suns giving off right now. :hmph:

I’ll admit to getting a very, very late start today.  Last night we had our friend Colin over to hang out for a bit and we all spent quite a few hours playing Words with Friends on our phones (our newest addiction) so we wound up ending the night around 4am, and with some other issues going on around the house I didn’t actually get to sleep until about 5:30, so waking up around 1-ish really wasn’t much of a surprise to me.  Thankfully the dog wasn’t pawing at us to get out the door.  Upon finally realizing I was awake she did her usual “pounce on Mommy cause her eyes are open” morning routine.  So of course it was time to walk her while my coffee brewed and then sit down and relax outside with a cig to soak up the sun, that vitamin B really does help to wake you up – that’s for sure.

It’s in the low 70′s today which is surprising considering it was in the low 40′s when I went to sleep this morning.  Tomorrow’s going to be even warmer, and possibly over 80 on Monday so my only issue is trying to figure out how to get some cool air to my little corner of the living room so I don’t wind up shooting myself based on the heat coming off of the Mac AND the overall heat in the house. I don’t know if it’s the size of the screen or just iMac’s in general but if anyone else has the 27″ iMac and wonders why they’re sweating their ass off – know that you’re NOT alone by any means LOL.

So as I said, it’s time to clear things out for the week.  I’ll be in Photoshop for the next couple of hours but may wind up completing scratching that idea until later tonight because I really, really need to go grocery shopping.  We’re down to almost no food in the house, and even the leftovers are almost completely gone.  And I don’t know about you but when an Italian house hold has bare shelves – something is seriously wrong. LOL

I guess I’ll finish going through email so I can finish listing to the new Halestorm release and then get my butt in gear to get to the store.

Hope everyone enjoys their weekend!

It’s kind of weird, honestly.  Going back and skimming through updates make me wish that, to a degree, things didn’t turn out the way they did.  It got to a point where I’d stopped talking to people for no real reason at all and even 6 years later I have a sense of regret about it.  There were some good net/friendships that I just walked away from because ‘real life’ took the front seat for a change.  I’m not saying I want to go back 6 years ago and stop the clock to before things changed.  I’m also not saying that the conversations/fun I had with everyone wasn’t ‘real’ either.  I know a lot of my issues back then were due to the fact that I was dealing with the loss of Joe, and then the addition of Sean into my life.  I know that both instances had some sense of drama/awkward moments behind them.  I feel the need to say I’m Sorry to anyone whom I offended or pissed off in the process.

There was also a time where my day was fueled by Internet drama via blog or hiding out on message boards with ‘spies’.  I see that as a low point as well.  It had a lot to do with the fact that I spent a lot of time cooped up in my room bouncing from design job to design job and never really got to see the light of day.  I continued to go back and forth with people who, looking at it now, really didn’t deserve any of it.  If you really think about it – no one is better than anyone else, we all have our own lives which are more important than anything that could possibly be going on online.  While they’re guilty of doing the same things that I did, it doesn’t mean that either one is the bad guy and those ‘hard feelings’ should remain.

Basically stating, while I know it’s completely random and probably way too late to say it.   I’m Sorry.  

To any and everyone over the years whom I crossed paths with in a good way (that led to bad) OR bad way (that stayed that way) - I apologize.

The last few years have given me a lot of insight into who I am, and who I’m going to be. It really does take the loss of very, very important people for someone to wake up and realize that things need to change and you need to live every day as though it’s your last.  In the last year my life has done a complete 180 and I feel that, while it’s been hectic, it’s been for the better.  I’m in a better place, job wise.  I’ve made it a point to write-off those whom were not worthy of being in my life, and I’ve embraced the friendships/relationships that I currently have because being surrounded by good people is all that matters in life.

Drama is drama, it’s what makes the world go round (real or viral) and there’s no escaping it.  How it’s dealt with shows who you are as a person and that’s what matters most.

Again, to anyone swinging by that hasn’t been here in a while (for one reason or another).  I whole-heartedly apologize.

Muir just left, if you notice she posted earlier today about Rodan + Fields.  She’ll be posting more often here, as well as on acidgloss.net about her life and the products.  I’ve mentioned before but we brought her on as a Lead Consultant for AGn Designs as well.  Things have been so hectic lately, plus she has a strong background with project management considering everything she’s got going on, so of course we thought she’d be a perfect fit for the AGn team.

In any event, time to change into some more comfy clothing and sit down for the rest of the night with my iPod and a buttload of work.