The last couple months have really been a blur for Amy and I. We’ve spent every free weekend and almost every evening sanding, spackling, painting, caulking, sorting, packing and cleaning. We won’t be making the move to Atlanta till the 1st weekend of April but we want to make sure the house is in the best condition possible before we put it on the market.

With all that constant work it was nice to take an evening off last night to celebrate my 30th birthday with a few close friends at Miyabi. It had been a few years since the last time I ate at a Japanese Steak House and I forgot how much fun it was. “Big Daddy”, the chef at our table, was hilarious and made sure to wish me a, “Happy birthday, sir Jason” every time he put something else on my plate.

The BakeCaker’s amazingly beautiful, bi-winningly delicious tres leches cake.

While it was tempting to eat every bite, Amy reminded us that there was cake waiting at the house so we all ended up leaving with pretty hefty to-go boxes. Anyone who has ever had one of Amy’s cakes will tell you how awesome they are and having tried most of her creations, I have to say my 30th birthday cake was the most delicious yet. It was a 4-layer tres leches cake with toasted meringue frosting that was so moist and fluffy I’m gonna die. I really have no words to describe it so I’ll just quote Charlie Sheen here and say that it melted my face and was bi-WINNING triumph. I’m making a note here, huge success. Seriously though, I couldn’t have had a better birthday or a better birthday cake and I’m a lucky (old) man to have a wife like Amy.

PS: If you want to try Amy’s Tres Leches cake, keep an eye out on BakeCakery.com. I’m pretty sure there is no tiger blood or Adonis DNA involved but she’s planning to post the full recipe soon.

On Friday, Amy and I said goodbye to one of the world’s greatest grandmothers. Cathleen “Maw Maw” Bishop was Amy’s mom’s mom and was an inspirational figure to both of us. Hearing that she had hours left to live, Amy wrote the following update on her Facebook wall.

Quite possibly saying goodbye to the sweetest, bravest, most hilarious, amazing grandma a person could ask for. Her body is weak, but her will is strong and her spirit beautiful. I love you Maw Maw and I will cherish your memories.

We drove down to Florida Friday afternoon but missed her passing by a couple hours. It was tough not getting to see her, but good to be there with the family. She was a mother to 8 children, loved listening to both Elvis and Engelbert and never missed an opportunity to cheer on her Tampa Bay Buccaneers. We’ll miss you Maw Maw.

Stone by stone she makes her way
reaching higher every day.
Over streams and through the trees
with tired feet and aching knees.

Some fools say it’s for attention
“It’s just for pride” another mentions.
Still up and up the climber goes
ignoring pain, without repose.

Halfway there the voices shift
only fellow climbers rising swift
Still up and up the climber’s route;
to reach her goal, she’s fighting doubt.

It’s far to late to give up now
to turn around she can’t allow
Still up and up the climber’s flight;
the tunnel’s long, she sees the light.

A few more steps, she’s at the top
but now she knows she cannot stop.
Still up and up she makes her way
reaching higher every day.

(Photo by Susanica under Creative Commons.)

I could easily blame my own post count on any of the suspects listed above. Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds produce an incessant fire hose of information that demands constant attention and interaction. The battle for my already deficient attention span is a tough one, but it’s entirely internal. When I think about writing a blog post, I start asking myself lots of questions. Who really cares? Does anybody actually read personal blogs anymore? Is there anything I can write that hasn’t already been said? Why should I invest my already-limited time into something so mundane as a public journal? For me, these are the cynical thoughts that have lowered my post count over the years.

Enter Project 52

The premise is simple. Starting in January, produce at least 1 new blog post per week for a year. Over 250 people have taken the challenge so far; probably for 250 different reasons. For me, it’s about not asking the questions above and writing for the sake of writing. I’ve always treated my personal site as more of a journal than an informational resource, but I get so caught up on the value of what I post that I often neglect posting altogether. So therein lies the challenge. While next year’s content may end up being only slightly more valuable than the stream of consciousness style of posts we all make to Twitter, I’m bound to come up with a few gems in 52 posts.

For more info, visit http://project52.info/ or follow @p52info on twitter.

Last year I waited until November was over to post about it so I could show the progression of fuzziness. This year I decided to show my face as soon as I had a beard worthy of my last name.

So, who’s with me? Anybody else out there laying down their razor* for the month and sporting the woolly caveman look?

* I make an exception for occasionally shaving the hair on my neck.
I just can’t get into the wild neck beard.

Writing for Digital-Web

After years of learning from and being inspired by the web professional’s online magazine of choice, I’ve finally contributed an article to Digital-Web. I decided to write about finding and using stock imagery. It’s not a groundbreaking or hotly debated topic, but selecting and incorporating stock is an essential step of the design process that is often skirted by web design educators and authors.
Check it out: Cooking with Stock

Finishing up the Exterior Painting

This has taken way too long, but Ames and I are almost finished painting the exterior of our house. We took your suggestions and went with Scheme #4. Somehow the colors didn’t quite come out the same as my Photoshop mockup, but we still think it looks pretty sharp.

Mental Note: Spending several weekends balancing on an aluminum ladder is not a fun task for the hottest part of the summer.

Speaking at Refresh Augusta

Chris Harrison has driven an hour to be a part of both of our first two Refresh Columbia meetups while at the same time working to get the ball rolling with Refresh Augusta. I’ll be headed down to their next monthly meetup to talk about design for developers.

Speaking at The Webmaster Jam Session

I must have done something right at the 2007 Webmaster Jam Session because they asked me to come back again for this year. The 2008 Jam Session will be in Atlanta, GA on October 3rd and 4th. I’ll be giving a presentation titled Design Disrepair where I’ll discuss the ins and outs of renovating a website.

Speaking at SXSWi 2009?

Well, that depends on two things:

1. How well my panel did in the public voting.
2. Whether or not SXSW fits into the plan for next year.

I submitted the same Design Disrepair panel that I’ll be presenting at the Jam Session. Why? Because it’s going to be a very fun talk with a unique perspective that should be a good fit for SXSW as well. Trust me, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and working on it between all the other stuff mentioned above. Even with this much confidence though, I didn’t promote it because I’m not sure yet if I’ll be going to Austin in March. The last two years at SXSW have been amazing, but it sure eats up the time off and vacation budget. In the 5 years since we got married, Ames and I have only taken one vacation that was longer than a week, and that was only because it was paired with an engineering conference she had to go to. Somehow though, I’ve managed to take a full week off for SXSW twice. So…if my panel gets voted in, I can swing a long vacation with Ames and still have the time/budget for SXSWi, trust me, I’ll be there.

I have been quietly searching for this embarrassingly goofy photobooth polaroid for at least 2 years now. I included a low-res scan of it in the original amesnjas.com website, but that was back when Amy and I lived in Florida. Like the polaroid format itself, I was afraid the tangible evidence of this memory was lost forever.

I was pleasantly surprised though when I re-discovered the picture in an old box of notes last week. The box was from the Summer after that picture was taken. We had been dating for almost two years at that point and as you can read from the polaroid, had just gotten engaged. It was really a bitter-sweet Summer though. I was headed to Italy for a 6 week project with Campus Crusade for Christ and Amy had been awarded a 10 week REU scholarship to do research at the University of South Carolina.

While those were both exciting, life-changing opportunities for us, it meant we had to be apart for almost the entire Summer. As I was packing my suitcase, Ames gave me a wooden box with hearts all over it that was filled with little pieces of paper. Each paper was individually rolled up and tied shut with red ribbon. She explained that I could open one whenever I missed her. Every piece of paper had a note written on it about why she loved me. I ran out of notes long before the end of my trip, but this was the last one I opened, and the object I was actually searching for when I discovered my favorite picture.

To celebrate our fifth anniversary, I had a recent picture of us blown up and I put a copy of that note with it in a frame. I figured it was an appropriate gift (along with some jewelry of course) for our 5th anniversary as she’s about a year and a half from being finished with a PhD at the University where she spent that summer 6 years ago. It’s amazing to me that it’s been so long since those memories were created, but we’ve got plenty more to make. Happy Anniversary, Ames!

March 6^th, 2008

I was coming down the stairs with a basket of laundry at night on March 5^th. I tripped near the bottom and landed on the tile floor. Hand looked pretty funky, so off to the emergency room we went. Whee. The next day, they put me in a cast. Amy never approved of this color.

March 7^th, 2008

The very next day I flew out to Austin for SXSW, barely making it to the convention center in time for my book reading. I’m sure I sounded a bit nervous/unrehearsed because I hadn’t even looked at my slides for the 3 days prior to my presentation. (Thanks to Veeses for taking this photo.)

March 13^th, 2008

I went in for a followup Xray the day after getting back to Columbia and the Doc said my bones had shifted and that I had 2 options: I could have surgery, or he could rebrake it and put another cast on it. Epic Fail. I opted for the rebraking, and the rest of that day was a pain-pill haze. Ugh. The next day I was feeling well enough to go back to work and started learning how to code with one hand and a pointer finger. Amy was much happier about this cast color. So much for Cyberwoven Orange.

March 29^th, 2008

On March 29^th I served as a groomsman in Brian & Colleen’s wedding. I couldn’t drive go-karts at the bachelor party, and Amy had to un-stitch the arm of my tux jacket, but it was great to see old friends and former college roommates.

April 21^st, 2008

I had an 8am appointment this morning to get my cast sawn off and this is what my hand looks like right now. Gross. I have very little movement in my little finger and ring finger, but it feels great to have that thing off my arm. The xrays looked good, but it’ll take 3-6 weeks of physical therapy to get my hand back to full-functionality. In the mean time, I look forward to taking showers without a plastic bag, sleeping without a sledgehammer, and getting to exercise again.

The moral to this story is NEVER BREAK YOUR HAND.

The image above is the third in a series of collages from a childhood sketchbook.

A few weeks ago, Ames and I drove down to Orlando to see one of my best friends from college get married. While I was in town, I managed to find time one morning to head over to the UCF campus to check out my old stomping ground. A lot has changed in 5 years. The stadium is AWESOME, roads have been completely moved, and construction is still going on everywhere. The Visual Arts building however, where I spent the better part of 4 years, is eerily the same. I checked the schedule in the department office and saw that my favorite graphic design professor, Chuck Abraham, was in the middle of a full-day Digital Illustration class, so I decided to rudely pop in and sit down. I’m glad I did. He was talking to the class about the illustration work of Burne Hogarth, which was fascinating and new to me. After the lesson, he left the students to work on an Illustration assignment and took some time to show me around and talk about what’s going on in the art department.

One of the stops in our impromptu tour was the UCF Art Gallery. Seeing the type and calibre of work that was displayed in the MFA Thesis Exhibition really made me miss being in such a focused, creative environment. If you ask Amy what I want to do when I grow up, one of the many occupations that she’ll list – some more ridiculous than others – is a college professor. My experience at UCF had a lot to do with that, and being back on campus made me seriously think about getting my masters. It probably won’t be while Amy is still in school, and I have a lot of other competing life goals, but getting to teach people about something I love to do is just as fun as doing it in my opinion. In the mean time, I’ll just keep doing what I love and loving what I do and I’m sure everything else will fall into place.