2.10.99

    I've been feeling very down lately. Run down and put down. I think it may be due to the fact that we have no coffee pot. It's not that I love the coffee pot or that the coffee pot and I had a special, unique relationship. No, it's not that. It's just that it was so much easier to make and brew coffee when I had a coffee pot. The coffee pot was amazingly handy at holding, containing and dispensing coffee. You can fill the coffee maker with water and put in fresh grounds and even press the little button but without the coffee pot... well... it's just so messy.

    There would be a coffee pot except my husband — my sweet, adoring, devoted husband — smashed it into a gazillion tiny pieces.

    To make a single cup of coffee I must put in one mug's worth of water and a couple teaspoonfulls of grounds and I have to hold in this little lever and wait for the cup to fill up. The coffee maker is too smart, you see. If you pull out the pot it seals off the spout so you don't get coffee brewing all over your counter. When you put the pot back in it presses the lever and resumes dispensing the sweet manna of life.

    T. offered, oh-so nobly, to rip off the lever so that it would dispense continuously. My response: "Nooooooooooooo! Don't you dare! Get away from there! Back! Back into your cage, you beast!"

    He meant well but can you get a more male response to a problem such as this? It's broken so let's just break it some more. He's off today trying to contact Braun and get a new coffee pot. Braun has a very pretty little website but it's utterly useless. If I can't order the parts I need online then what is the friggin' point?

    I've been busy, busy, busy doing some more contract work. It's not making me entirely happy, though. I think it's something in the process. I work really hard to come up with something original, snappy and fun. I want it to be something that the client likes and feels good every time their stinkin' page comes up. But, no matter what I can do, the client isn't always going to like what's right.

    I know that what I find aesthetically pleasing is not going to be pleasing to everyone else but what some people like is just crap. There's a small project I'm doing now that's just getting all mucked up. I was given simple parameters and the three designs that another designer had done before me plus the existing design. I was told what they liked and didn't like and that I was to sharpen and improve upon the current designs. No problem. I turned out something good.

    Now the client wants to add a large, incongruous image right into the center of the page and throw in colors to the nav bar that clash so badly it makes my stomach hurt. No amount of cajoling or needling on my part is going to make him change his mind. I can tell that he truly thinks he is right and I am wrong.

    So, I'm saving my first design and I'll put that in my portfolio. That way if anyone goes and visits the finished site they'll just think some other idiot hacked it up and not me.

    Off to do more things for other people.