What a long morning it’s been!

The staff at Kmart were quite baffled.

What a long morning it’s been!


I’ll admit, I was running out of ideas when I thought of this. Nevertheless… my photographic evidence:

In other news, my hair looks good right now, because my sister received a GHD hair straightener in the mail that she ordered from the internet. We tried it out.

This one was a toughie.
I love chocolate so much, normally any chocolate in the house is gone within 4 hours or so. But, one week ago I bought a 200g block of Cocoa Belgian chocolate, and am now in between typing, eating the final two squares.
It’s been a strange year, and a lot has happened. I’ve had many clients, some of which disappeared off the face of the Earth before I could get any money off them for the design mockups I sent them. But those ones paled in comparison to one client I (nearly) had early on.
Back then, the business was fresh and exciting. I didn’t know I was in over my head at that stage. I received a phone call from a startup company that wished me to create a website for them. It would be a website based on placing working holidaymakers from Australia in jobs in London.
Sounded fine, I thought. I went and saw them and discussed it. They were pretty nice people. They said they would pay me a little to start off ($250 I think it was) and that I would make a percentage of the profits.
They complimented the Illawarra Directory, and said that they wanted their website to look similar to that. I was pleased, and went home feeling good about the project. So good that I made a design that day, because they wanted something for the next day – I did consider that somewhat demanding of them, considering I had other clients to work on as well, but I brushed it off and did it anyway. It was a good design. I was proud of it.
The next day they called me and asked me to come around again. They were close by, only in Shellharbour Village, so I obliged.
This time I wasn’t alone. There was another graphic designer there. She was really friendly, and I can only hope that she cut her own ties with this ridiculous company like I did.
Here’s where things began to go downhill.
They didn’t like my design. Apparently, they had decided that they wanted a “grungey” design instead of the sleek design I had given them, modelled off the Illawarra Directory. Okay, I thought, that’s fine. No dramas. I’ll use that design in some other way.
One of the ladies decided that she wanted Photoshop. She actually had me take her laptop home and install Photoshop onto it, and return it to her. Once I got back, the woman decided I needed to stick around for a while and help her use Photoshop. She’d never touched it before, but she wanted to participate in the website design for some bizarre reason.
Finally, I made an excuse that I was meeting another client that afternoon and had to leave.
The next business day, I received another phone call from the Photoshop n00b. She needed me to tell her how to do something. I think it was something to do with erasing a background from a photo. I did my best to explain to her how I achieved that, and then continued to work on another client once the phone call ended. The phone started to ring again. I answered, and the idiot had some other question that I answered, and hung up.
Then, she called again. I pressed “busy” on my phone. Then I switched off my phone.
When the day had ended I turned it back on, and I had two voicemail messages from her.
One of them was something along the lines of “Hi Natalie, I really need your help with Photoshop. I thought it would be easy to do things, but I’m having so much trouble. Can you call me ASAP?”
Yeah, she thought Photoshop was easy. Never mind that I learnt to use it through both trial and error and through my DIGITAL MEDIA CERTIFICATE IV course.
I sent her an email.
Regards,
Natalie
As you can see, I really thought it out. I even went to the trouble of seeking out tutorials for her.
Her response? (Red text is my comments)
I’m very sorry you have misunderstood our aim with requesting some help with Photoshop. We wanted to provide you with our ideas so that you could successfully design the website quickly to bring in the sales, which we would all proffer[sic] from.
We respect that you are busy with your other clients’ projects but our aim is to facilitate a team approach as we will be working partners for some time, and quite frankly we may need to teach one another skills from time to time to optimize the business. (What? Not for $250 upfront and a measly 2% profits, thank you bitch – you’re lucky I even gave you the time of day) I think it is best if we detract our partnership at this point as we are looking for someone who has the time for this project. (You mean someone who actually doesn’t object to being part of your little sweatshop operation?)
Thank you for the time that you have given so far and we both wish you well in your future business.
Best Regards
I simply replied “Good luck finding someone.”
They’d need it. Anyone that would do that for them would have to be someone completely unemployed and desperate for work.
I hope those girls’ business fails miserably. They don’t deserve anybody’s money if they think that’s a good way to treat well-meaning but naive people.
Hey look! Two wins in one day!
At Boost today, I bought a large (well, they call the size “original” but that doesn’t mean anything) green tea and mango super juice. It took me a good half an hour to finish off.
Tonight, I made a very ugly but VERY delicious tiramisu.

There’s this real estate agency in Gerringong, perhaps you’ve heard of it – you’d remember if you had.
It’s a bit famous on the internet, for being on lists with funny business names. It’s a shame they hardly do rentals, because it would have been nice to tell people I paid my rent to Dick Payne.
Instead, Allyson and I were forced to settle for something marginally less funny.
They didn’t phail us, so we are happy with them.

Mangerton is such an ugly word. With other suburbs in Wollongong having names such as Fairy Meadow and Figtree, Mangerton is a pretty unappealing name for a place to live. But, really it’s a lovely area.
Yes, we were offered the Mangerton house. And the Figtree place, too. But, they wanted us in there too soon. We were pleased as punch today, after two harrowing inspections that turned out to be a waste of time, to be called by the real estate agent and told our application was accepted.
It is to me… I detest washing the dishes, at least during summer where I am drenched with sweat by the end.
On the date we sign the lease, I will be able to tick off #69 on my 101 things list.
Best of all, we’re going to have more space… and a dining room. And we get to take a month to pack up rather than a week.
It seems like yesterday that Allyson and I moved out of home and into our little villa for $250/week rent. But lo and behold, last week we were served a notice to vacate by the 17th of February.
See, we signed a 6 month lease, which runs out on that date. The owner, who had just bought the home, used her First Home Buyer’s Grant, which has a catch: you must live in the home for 6 months in the first year of ownership, or else you lose the grant. Hence why we’re getting kicked out.
We are going to miss that place.
But it’s not all bad news. This time, we are going to move away from Warilla, to somewhere closer to Wollongong, so that if either of us get a job in Sydney it will take significantly less time to commute.
Looks like 2010 is going to be a year full of change. Just like last year was. And the year before. And… the year before that. Yes.
Anyway, we’ve spent the past 5 days or so going crazy with looking at places and submitting applications. The earliest response we’re going to get is this afternoon. If it’s good news that would be awesome. For that place, in Figtree, right near Westfield, would be a really good place to live.
We can also expect a response on Wednesday for a place in Mangerton. It is an average location, but the house itself is FAB. I’m talking dishwasher, lots of space, split level and quiet as. If we were to be offered both, we’d take Mangerton, even though it’s 2 bedroom and the other one is 3 bedroom. However, should we be offered Figtree but not Mangerton, we’d still be very pleased.
Those are our two top ones. There is another terrific one in Unanderra, but there were too many people at the inspection – it wouldn’t be likely we’d be offered it.
The units we looked at were all very so-so. There was one in Wollongong that had absolutely amazing ocean views and was only $260/week… but the apartment was filthy and not very big, and the doors were all unpainted and ugly. Also there wasn’t any storage space.
We have a bit of time, but obviously we don’t want the 17th to creep up on us, as time likes to do when I’m in a hurry.
Well, I did it today. By gum, it was damn easy. Today was hot. Really, really hot. So hot I had to keep fanning myself at work, and it was air conditioned in there. I went through one and a half 1.5 litre bottles of water in the space of six hours.
Well, one down. Only 100 to go.
Yeah, I’m a sucker for these things.
Also on Skippy’s blog was a reference to 101 things in 1001 days, a long-term goals project focusing on doing a set list of things in the ensuing 1001 days precisely. For me, the end date is going to be Friday, 5 October 2012 (calculated using this tool). That’s shortly before the Mayan apocalypse, right?
Anyway, I have finished my list and here it is! I’ll be
ticking them off as I go.