Willo O'Brien

I’m off to stuff my face! woohooo!

Is everybody’s tummys rumbling at the thought of all the delicious food that awaits us in less than 24 hours!?!?! MINE IS! I’m so excited!

This week has been nutty like a pecan pie, I will tell you what! Besides my quickie movie date on Sunday night, I hadn’t left the house since I got home Friday night! I’ve been workin like crazy and am proud to say today I finally left the house again. haha! But I’m once again feeling the high from being a seriously productive maCHeeeeN! *flexes muscles and shows snarly tough teeth*

Today Ali stopped by & it was a great excuse to go for lunch! woohoo! We went & ate outside at a little cafe up on Cortland (Bernal Heights), and were both beaming at the fact that it’s the day before Thanksgiving and we’re sitting outside with no jackets, in beautiful 75 degree weather! (Well, Ali was beaming about a few other things… hech hemm. ;) We’ve got good lives.

so bright we can hardly see! :p

After lunch Ali went w/ me to buy some yummy pecan tarts (mini pecan pies) & whip for the big day, and now am just back here for a bit before I head out to BAM. THEN my friend Mateo is making me dinner & we’re watching a flick. Ooh, that reminds me, I’ve got to pick that up on my way over there. I’m really excited to have a big 24 hours off, and then most likely it’s back to it on Friday!

Maybe tomorrow morning, while my GBC is cooking, I will see about posting some photos. After the whole PBHD (photo black hole debacle) I’ve been a little sad in the photos department… but I will rise up and trudge on! :) Plus, I gotta clear some room to take photos of my fabulous friends and our tummy’s full of delicious food & drink! woohooo!

Hey friends of the blog world… any of you reading this who are and/or know a Freelancer who is an awesome identity (logo/branding) designer? Can you please either email me or hit me with a link to your/their portfolio? (must contain examples of previous identity/logo work).

I have a regular client of mine that keeps me very busy as it is, so I’d like to farm out this particular task. Thanks!

I know it sounds crazy, but let me be the first to say: Making out isn’t everything!

Unfortunately neither is stellar great taste in music. gah… the search continues.

In other random Monday news, I learned something lastnight when looking for image references for a Kangaroo paw. I didn’t know it was a flower! That reminds me, I need to go visit the newly renovated Conservatory of Flowers (yes, still… not so “newly” anymore, I know), and the new De Young, too!

:::

I went to Corpse Bride lastnight at the Parkway (pizza, wine & couches! woohoo!) and it was pretty good… I could have done w/o the musical aspect… but the animation was superb and really enjoyable to watch. The story, although not the best ever, was entertaining enough and kept my attention as luckily I hadn’t heard a lot about it. But again, it’s mostly all about the animation. (hahahaa, I almost wrote meditation).

Boy, let’s hope I’m not making other random mistakes today. I was up till the wee hours working on a deadline, so I could use a nap! Happy Monday, everyone.

FUN:

• Getting to know somebody, and realizing you have more in common than you thought
• Running into old friends, especially when one of them is entertainingly tipsy
• Discovering a great bar, hidden in one of my favorite neighborhoods
• Making out/dreamy kisses
• Meeting someone who is just as into music as you are and within a week receiving no less than 9 albums, 7 of which you have never heard of the artist, 2 of which you have another album by them, and all of them are excellent.
• Looking forward to the next date
• Snugglefests with Kazoo
• Eating breakfast out on my deck in the beautiful weather we’re having!
• Thinking about where my first open water dive will be, if not this Christmas
• Having my Mom here for Christmas, and planning a spa trip in wine country
• Thanksgiving is coming!

NOT SO FUN:

• Having the "let’s just be friends" talk
• Getting blisters in the same place on both thumbs from overzealous sweeping/cleaning up of the leaves & weeds that have been piling up in the driveway and walkways of my house
• Having to work all weekend
• Losing 8 months of photos from 2004. I still can get to all the ones I uploaded to Fotki, but everything else seems to have simply disappeared into what has now been coined the Photo Black Hole Debacle. Out of all of the photos, the one that keeps coming to mind was this hot one Rick took of me flashing him in a mirrored elevator when we were on a trip last fall. It was really sexy and a great memory of an amazing weekend. One of our last trips and amazing weekends before the reality of our demise started to set in.
• Realizing the drama and sadness happening in my family is far from over
• Paperwork (I have SO much I haven’t been dealing with – ak!!)

I recommend you go back & read the “FUN” list as this not so fun list is a total downer.

Oy, this week has been really quite crazy. Here’s a few snippets into the fun stuff:

Monday night: Dinner w/ Mario & then Deathcab for Cutie at the Warfield. SO STOKED Mario scored us tickets at the last minute!!! We only saw the last couple songs of Stars’ set, but honestly I felt like the sound was horrible! Seriously, I’m not even that huge of a snob about that (hmm, maybe I am more than the average joe), but this was really quite horrible IMO. Regardless I was glad we didn’t totally miss them. Ali & Darius showed up & we all enjoyed the Deathcab set BIG TIME! I’d seen them probably about 2 years ago and wasn’t as huge of a fan as I am now, so needless to say this one absolutely blew me away. Very, very cool. Thanks again, Mario – and Happy Birthday!!! xo

Tuesday night: A date! (different boy) It actually went quite well! :) I’m excited to see him again… ooh I wish I could tell you more, but not yet. Anyway, let’s hear it for great dates! And for feeling like dating again, finally! I’m loving it!

Wednesday night: BAMboozled, where we’re interviewing new Editor/Co-Facilitators, and then I raced to a show at GAMH: The Shout Out Louds w/ The Rosebuds (The Sun also opened, but unfortunately I missed their set – bummer!). The Rosebuds were great, though, and I quickly realized I’d already seen them once, at SXSW 2004. I really like em!! The Shout Out Louds, who I’ve also seen before when they opened for The Futureheads, were fantastic! They are so good!! Ali made a great point that the lead singers voice actually sounds a lot like Robert Smith’s. It does! The show was extra fun because my friend Matt was there… he’s actually the one that rounded us up for this one, as originally it wasn’t one we’d planned on going to. So Ali & I were like, “wow, thanks so much for inviting us out to this show! we hardly ever go see live music these days!” hahaa. Matt’s funny and super sweet, and I was glad to finally introduce him to Ali & vis versa because they’re both such huge parts of my life!

Which leads us to tonite: Dandy Warhols @ The Fillmore!! Can you believe I’d never seen them live? Ali couldn’t. Rick actually turned me onto them, so I’ve only been listening to them for about 2 years now, but almost instantly had fallen in love with them. That said their new one doesn’t do it for me AT ALL. Thankfully though, as I predicted, they played a ton of old stuff, which was awesome! The couple new songs & some of their spacier stuff I couldn’t get into, but overall it was really fun to finally see them live.

The openers were a band called the Out Croud, whose lead vox is Matt Hollywood from Brian Jonestown Massacre. They were a tad too psychedelic for me, but the BJM song they played was good, and they did a cover of Maggie’s Farm, too – and shit – I knew it Ali! I just looked it up & it is Bob Dylan – I almost said that!

It was fun to see both Matt Hollywood & The Dandy’s after seeing DIG (both Ali & I have seen that documentary a couple times!) – it’s like they’re huge celebrities compared to other bands. Funny how just being on TV can do that. :p Matt hung around in the audience a ton, and it made me think he was tired of his boring band mates and he wanted to meet new people to smoke pot with. haha.

Oh & we saw someone pass out. Scary! She went down hard, I hope she’s OK. I’m sure it was just dehydration… you’d be surprised how often that happens at these hot, packed shows! Drink water! Don’t lock your knees! This has been an important health message from Show Ho Central.

:::::

Ok, so music aside and the wee bit of nightlife that somehow I manage to fit into mi vida loca, I am SO BUSY. I have just taken on 2 new clients, which I totally didn’t need to do and am *almost* kicking myself for doing so (time and sanity wise), but they’re really fun & I just couldn’t pass up. It actually turned out that I got one, and then another I had put an estimate out for came through and I just really want to do both! So I’m doing it. But there goes the next several weekends, and probably a lot of nights out, too. I think the kicker of it all is that it’s the holidays, which is already an insane time of year. arg. Anyway, it’s not all that bad, it’s just a lot to juggle and I have realized lately it’s nice to just have 1-3 clients instead of 5-10 (yes, I’ve had 10 clients at one time, it’s usually not pretty).

Speaking of not pretty, I might actually “take care of things” this weekend. hahaa. All these dates and shit, not to mention my getting ridiculously busy… it’s been easy to let things slide… but if I’ve learned anything from the last 2+ years of working for myself, it’s that I need to take extra good care of myself when I’m this busy with work. I HAVE to make sure to get to the gym a couple times a week. I need to not eat every meal really super fast at my desk (so not good), and I need to make sure that I’m not so crazed that I’m no longer being “present” with those in my life. It happens, and I don’t like it. I realize I’m not taking time to stop & smell the roses, ya know? Look into people’s eyes… enjoy the little things. Shit, even this week it’s been a little hard to enjoy the shows I’ve been going to with so much on my mind.

But it will get done, and like I said – I’m excited about it all! I just wish I could find more hours in the day!

So no craft day this weekend, or for the next few weeks probably… but I’m looking forward to my day off (probably the only one I’ll have for the next month) next Thursday: Thanksgiving! woohooo!!

I have my regular reads that I try to get through occasionally. And one of them is this cool design blog, Poppytalk.blogspot.com. But you know what? She/they almost post too often. I don’t know – I never want to read the text… or maybe I don’t have time? So I just look at the pictures. Which might be totally design dorky. So I’m here to admit it. Poppytalk, you’re my eye candy & you taste delicious!

Other Yummy Eye Candy Sites:

– Drawn.ca – I read a little, I try to click & check out more of the artist’s work. I only get to my regular reads a few times a week, so often by the time I check back here, there’s only so much time to look, and click here & there. But worth the visit nonetheless because almost every single post is an inspirational gem.

– Manbaby – I have a total crush on this man who calls himself Manbaby. But his real name is Matt Clark. I love him so much I could thinkably print out his works and paste them all over my naked body.

OK, maybe I went too far there. All I know is he’s rad.

:::::

A LOT of people are rad!!! All my friends are rad, and so is my life. My business is going great (Chuck, I’ll take 10 hours for $50.) and if my love life was my music life, it would be taking my breath away & rocking me all night long.

xoxo

Photos are posted from this weekend’s crafty get together that I like to call “Let’s Get Crafty 002“. It was a beautiful day, so we sat out on the deck for a little while before moving the crafts inside. It was so great to see Hez & Darren who I feel like I haven’t seen in forever! Check out the photos & you can see the new necklace Hez made for me! And you’ve GOT to go visit Darren’s site & see the hilarious video he took yesterday, edited & posted. Darren you are HYSTERICAL!

More details & comments about the day are on the actual photo album. Hope you all had a great weekend!

Look at Kazoo’s latest conquest/prezzie for momma:

Awww… isn’t he cute?! The scary/funny thing is is that *I think* I may have picked it up & threw it across the room earlier in the night, thinking it was one of his toys. HA!

We weren’t allowed to take photos, and I almost had to check my camera, but luckily I know one of the door guys so I promised to not take any pics if he let me keep it – and I kept to my promise! I didn’t pull it out until the show was over, so there’s at least one photo though where you can get a peek at the amazing stage. It was incredible!! This show was filmed for a video or something, so everyone was encouraged to dress up as faeries, wizards, or old-timey tophats & stuff… and there were a lot of cool costumes!

After the show (completely high off of how AMAZING it was!!!) we headed to the Hemlock w/ a few other show-goers. And after THAT I came home & went over to my neighbors and we all hung out, listened to music, and doodled. :p SUCH a fun night!!

View all photos