Girly-Bits

We watched a documentary last night on a typeface, of all things. Helvetica, to be exact. It celebrated its 50th birthday last year. I personally prefer Gill Sans.

But Helvetica is ubiquitous. Look at the American Airlines logo. A classic designed by Massimo Vignelli, who also did branding work for Knoll, Bloomingdales, Xerox, Lancia, Cinzano, and Ford Motors. Other logos in Helvetica: Fendi… Staples…. Muji….Metlilfe…. Greyhound… Sears… Jeep… BMW… Toyota… Kawaski… Target… Tupperwear…. Nestle…. Lufthansa…. Helvetica is the prom queen of all fonts.

And since I’m doing a post with lots of obscure names in it… I just started taking baclofen:

Do not use baclofen at a time when muscle tone is needed to assure safe balance and movement for certain activities. In some situations, it may endanger your physical safety to be in a state of reduced muscle tone.

Just what I needed… less muscle tone.

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0122trinitylogos2.pdf

Now that the toll road is moving forward, the regentrification of the Trinity River can begin. Above is my favorite of the suggested logos. See… There’s a little fish for the Trinity Lakes, a little bird for Trinity Fields, and a leaf for Trinity Forest.
I guess anything can get branded these days, even nature. So pretty soon the Trinity may invoke verdant fields and happy bunnies instead of old tires and dead bodies.

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Our dear friends Howard and Lisa said goodbye to their sweet baby Haley this week. She was a valiant little dog that H & L rescued after she was in an accident, and she always had lots of health problems. They took such good care of her, but she’s in doggy heaven now.

We almost thought our dog Nick was in his end days last week. When he came back from the vet after our vacation, he couldn’t eat or keep much down at all. When I got back from LA, he was just skin and bones. But Daddy saved the day with a food processor and some spoon feeding. Looks like Nick will be around a bit longer…. Below is a picture of Nick in his holiday hoodie. We roll him around in the cart when we take Finn and Angus out for a walk. Bless his little heart.

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Our dear friend Bryan had some of his marvelous shadow boxes in a gallery show tonight. The term shadow boxes doesn’t really do him justice, they are multi-layered, intricate and full of symbolism. And we’re going to get one in exchange for some work that Les is doing. We are so excited! Bryan’s work was clearly the best on display tonight. He’s just so talented. We capped off the evening with dinner at Fadi’s. Fadi’s kind of sucks. But still, it was a nice night.

Pictures of the day are here.

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Les took me to a Lakewood landmark restaurant today: Gold Rush Cafe. After a short wait for a free booth, we ordered a pair of burgers, veggie for me, cheese for Les. It’s just a hole in the wall, but….

Mmmmm good!

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I forced paperwhites inside for the holidays, and here they are popping up on their own outside in January. Dallas, bless your heart.

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This is how I’ve spent most of the evenings for the past week. We got back from Santa Fe on Sunday, and after two more lovely days off, I headed for Southern California. San Diego had a monsoon, and I drove up to Pasadena on Saturday in pouring rain. Isn’t there a song about it never raining in Southern California? So much for that. And after a couple of unremarkable days in Pasadena, I drove to Orange County. The whole trip was dreary and gray, and no opportunities for picture taking. Today I head back home. Hurray! My iTouch and a glass of wine have been great companions until I can be home with my Les and my bowzers.

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Despite having the beginnings of a nasty cold, I pulled myself together on New Year’s Eve and we had Martha and Bryan over for a glass of champagne. We invited Philip and Craig, but they wanted to stay in. Then we went to Hattie’s for a wonderful meal. Ironically, Philip was there almost the whole time! He was picking up dinner. We started with some delicious mac and cheese, and then I had tomato basil soup, Les had pork, and Martha and Bryan had roasted, stuffed chicken. We’re so fortunate to have such lovely, dear friends. A few pictures here.

When we came home we opened all the presents that we didn’t take to Santa Fe with us. In addition to my iTouch, I got lots of lovely hand made jewelry from etsy, a lovely ring from Tiffany, a super-size Pentagram typographical calendar for my office and lots of yummy-smelling bath products. Even though we swore we would be in bed by 10, we rang in the New Year with Alicia Keys.

New Year’s Day, we’re just going to hang out in front of the fire. We were going to go see No Country for Old Men, but I’m going to stay home and recover from my cold. Plus, Thursday I leave for a week in Southern California!

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