clifford.: May 2006

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STERLING!!!!!

Happy birthday brother. You have the dubious honor of receiving my first electronically generated birthday card*. Hope you like it...

Key:

1) You

2) A CD symbolizing all the music you have given us. Thanks brother.

3) A rostrum with a politician, cus you work with those peeps.

4) Maryland. That is supposed to be a star, but it kinda looks like a spider eating Baltimore.

5) A Spatula, cus cooking.

6) Supposed to be grey hairs, but you can't really see them.

7) Snazzy suit.

8) News paper boy. You did that for 4 years right?

9) I didn't know how to draw a symbol for hard work, so I thought what are some hard jobs? A farmer and a blacksmith, that's hard work. A farmer works hard all day, and a blacksmith must be precise, he can't cut corners. So I chose to draw a sickle and a hammer because whatever you are doing, you do it well and you always work hard. The red background is dualistic in purpose - I think red is a good symbol for boldness and loyalty. Plus you have a red personality.

Someone told me that the sickle and hammer is on the flag of some country back east, but I'm pretty sure I thought of it first.

10) That's Megan, your wife. She's great.

11) The background is Utah. It is the background because you were born and raised there, and no matter where you go or what you do, Utah is the background of your life.

Happy birthday Sterling.

*As with all of my cards this is not supposed to represent all of the feelings or memories that siblings associate with the recipient. It is a sampling that is restricted by artistic capabilities.

dad = rad. part deux.

so remember a few weeks ago
when rod and i were kickin it at his house
and he was playing along with broken social scene?

well this week he's kicked up the awesome a notch.
at this very moment he's playing along with bright eyes.
road to joy, to be exact.
i'm gonna make him teach me to play it.
holycrapourdadisthegreatest.

x

sterling? megan?

until we get at least one post from sterling i am going to have to tell you things about him and possible post unflattering photos.

hmmmm, what shall i tell you first?

today is 12 may.

and we all know that means my birthday is in exactly one month.

so i thought i'd throw this out there...

http://www.sublimestitching.com/stitchitkit.html
or even this
http://www.sublimestitching.com/lapetite.html

but the bigger one is the same price as the smaller one.
i don't know why that would be of any interest to any of you.
*cough*

but hey. y'never know.

money changes everything

Today in his flutter of activity preparing to go out of town, Rich had me run to the bank to deposit a couple checks we've recently received from Sony. On my way to the car I checked out the deposit slips and noticed the total amount from those 2 checks is roughly what I'd make in 3 years at my current salary. As I started driving, I realized that much money in one lump sum would take care of my debt -school and otherwise- allow me to pay off the rest of the money I have on my car loan, attack full time the cost of the few semesters I have left in school, comfortably take care of books and other additional school expenses (study abroad perhaps?) and still leave me with a nice bit to live on with a part time job while focusing on graduating college. And I think even there would be room in the amount for a nice long trip to Europe or South America or a few scattered vacations in the States.

But as is, for the next three years I will slowly make baby steps toward financial order as well as slowly knock out classes while working full time here at Origin. And that's fine, I quite enjoy my life and have so many blessings and opportunities and fun for which I am so very thankful.

However, I must admit it was a bizarre feeling to hold in my hand an amount of money that is very standard for Origin Studios to receive and to think how much it could alter my little life right now. As well as how different it is in one sum versus strung out over the next few years.

Weird...

i don't mind thanksgiving point.

two weeks ago, rod and emily and elizabeth took a little trip to thanksgiving gardens to see the tulip festival. there were more than tulips...

there were some cute little yellow flowers

there was some crazy old man

there were lovely pink blossoms of various sorts

there was a super hip and incredibly gorgeous girl

and there was the perfect photo opportunity

and i discovered that i'm a decent photographer.
before we left, daddy bought us m&ms in whatever colors we wanted.
in all, it was a good day.

LOTOJA - Or, How I Decided to Die.

Ok, I did it. I just signed up for LOTOJA. September 9th I will ride my bike 206 miles from Logan, Utah to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The red line is the race course. The light blue one is the crew route, and the little graph in the top left corner is the course elevation profile. Wish me luck.

yee-haw

There is nothing better than getting a call from Tasha at 5:00 on a Friday to tell me the newly-wed Blake and Rachel are having a party in 2 hours...a cowboy party that is.

Well we decide that if we were going to do it, we were going to do it right. Conveniently, between the Tasha/Christopher household and my house, we have a dozen western cut shirts, a handful of cowboy hats and a few pair of boots, and not to mention bandanas, bandanas, bandanas. So we got dressed and rode our bikes to the DeGraw's apartment.

I love any excuse to wear my favorite shirt.

Look how cute we are (and serious).

To our delight, at the party there were theme appropriate treats:

Blake was brewing (root) beer in the corner and Rachel had made delicious chili...

which we ate in tin cans with wooden spoons.

Seriously, Blake had some amazing woman hair (he has since cut it though).

I don't remember now what had happened that made it necessary for Jeremy to comfort Tasha, but I'd put good money on betting he had made some kind of racist joke.