On Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 11:11 a.m. Crystal wrote:
I am sad to inform you that Hitachi Television passed away Saturday April 26. Although his passing came as a surprise (I think maybe the lightning storm may have affected him.) and there is much sadness, there is also joy, knowing that he lived a long and fulfilling life, experiencing adventures from his worldly travels from Pittsburgh, PA (where he first met some of you!) to Virginia to Virginia to Virginia to Virgina and finally to Virginia. Wow! What a long and exciting life Hitachi had! Always the prankster, Hitachi's favorite trick was to place his dead pixel right on the face of an actor/actress, making you think he/she had a huge blemish. Hahaha, good times!

Hitachi is survived by his constant companion, Jensen Remote (Talida introduced the two to each other in 2006) and numerous friends.

Funeral arrangements are currently being made. Please spread the news to any other people Hitachi may have touched in his life.


On Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 1:55 p.m. Crystal wrote:
Last night, I hooked up my monitor/tv to the cable box so we could watch tv again. It wasn't working initially but after I reset the power strip and cable box, we were able to watch tv on the little monitor. So this afternoon, Ann was trying to figure out how to watch tv when she turned Hitachi on and off again by accident...30 minutes later, when we were again discussing how to move Hitachi out...we realized she had turned on Hitachi!!! (ok, we're slow)

So he's not dead. It's a good thing that I've been gimp for so long...Ann and I postponed throwing out Hitachi for the past few weeks because of my ankle! Yay Hitachi!!


On Fried Day, July 4, 2008 approximately 10:00 a.m.:
Hitachi white-ed out mid-drum game.


On Sadder Day, July 5, 2008 approximately 1:00 p.m.:
Hitachi still won't turn on.


On Stunned Day, August 10, 2008 at 10:15 p.m. Crystal wrote:
Hitachi died. Again. No nice obituary this time since we've already said our goodbyes...though it is still a sad day!

My Life Started in an Elevator
"Believe it or not, I had never used the verb "to fuck" in any context until I was thirty years old. But by the time I was thirty-one, I was using it as a verb, adjective, adverb, noun, and—in moments of sheer frustration—as a hyphen, as in un-fucking-acceptable."

Hearts Trump Heads
"Let's say I want my creative people to work harder on an assignment and come up with more than one good idea...If I tell them their one idea isn't good enough, I have assaulted their creative egos. And if the team includes a man, I have also somehow maligned his masculinity."

Gentlemen vs. Hooligans
"...it's a well-known fact that clients rarely buy our best work. In fact, some clients are gifted "shit-sniffer." If you have a terrible idea buried in a pile of great work, they will sniff out the crappy idea and buy that one."

The Bad Boys on 27
"When the Bad Boys got bored, they would play catch in the hallways, and anyone who interfered with their game—for instance, by trying to walk down the hall—did so at his or her own risk. At first I thought they weren't very good at playing catch, because their balls frequently went wild and they were constantly breaking the light fixtures on the walls. Then it dawned on me: They were aiming at the light fixtures, but they just kept missing them. Either way, their aim was terrible."


Go read it.

DC is the beast in the east
Go home to the west, that is the best

-Cat's catchy cataclysm mnemonic

Literally. There was a layer almost half an inch thick on my Taylor. Gross. (I'm thinking I should have put it back in its case...)

Crystal and I were trying to think of easy songs to learn in a short amount of time. I remember Naomi and I used to play this church song that went something like:

I love papayas (papayas)
But mangoes are sweet
I love bananas (bananas)
But nothing can beat
The sweet love of God

Yet Googling guitar tabs for this proved...(wait for it)...fruitless.

Any other relatively basic guitar songs we can learn?

P.S. We are limited by our inability to do bar chords and unwillingness to tune our guitars to something else. (Or at least I am limited by these things.)

"Below the Beltway" by Gene Weingarten from The Washington Post Magazine:

Did you know Americans can't spell competently? It's true. They spell it "competantly."

Ha-ha. But, seriously, we don't know how to spell, and this deficiency is getting worse. A few weeks ago, a study came out showing that a shockingly high percentage of adults were stymied by such common words as "calendar," "accommodate," "questionnaire" and "definitely." The results were embarrassing (a word that, as it happens, 28 percent of Americans cannot spell).

The press release for the survey blamed this regrettable situation on cellphones, the use of which encourages semiliterate text messaging shortcuts 4 u 2 use.

Personally, I blame Fergie.

I don't mean to give off the impression that everything in my life is negative.

It's only because I pretty much have no life outside of work. And I used to blog a lot more frequently. About many different things. Happy things. Silly things. TV things. But when one is at work all the time, it's hard to keep up with the postings.

So, even though I made a delayed new year's resolution to get said nonexistent life in working order (er...up and running) and I was successful at doing so for about a minute, we're going to try this again.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

On the upside of things, by spending so much time in the office, I have earned a promotion to Patsy. No really, this is good. People can directly blame me for things now. (As a Shit Filter, I was inconsequential.)

And it couldn't have come at a better time. At age 26/28/30 (shall we just play Lotto?), it's nice to know I can go out for lunch every once in a while.

Many thanks to my good friends for helping me celebrate this past weekend. And I was so touched to listen to my voicemail and hear singing (and intentions of singing). Y'all are rockstars.

...is a bitch. Guess what? I don't like the weird mixed signals either. *nyah*

Well, you know what they say. That's one small step for Ann...



That’s it. That’s the entirety of what they say.

What a doozy of a week. Things that I've learned:

1) Designers are my friends. Blades are not.
2) Production is my savior. Printers...not so much.
3) I need a life outside of work.