Our niche? Those people who don’t have to have alcohol to have a good time and who want to raise money for Christian causes. We plan to donate a portion of our proceeds to ministries both local and abroad.

I’m putting up curtains and since there is only one room in the house with curtains it is an expensive and timely endeavor. Do I go with a warm chocolate brown curtain or something in a cool crisp white? How about red or something in a pattern? What about a new rug and that vintage style clock that I saw at Target? And what about Christmas decorations, do I want to hang snowflakes from the ceiling or large silver ornaments? I’ll be ideating about all of things things endlessly and to further frustrate my creative flow I have to decide what color to paint my bedroom. 

 I recently picked up a nice shade of gray called “Winter Oak” and it turned out to look like light purple on my wall. Then I opted for a color called “Sand” but I’m afraid it looks too much like the gold/yellow color that is in my living room already.

What to do? What to do?

I am excited that right now I can afford to do a few small projects and get some nice things done to my house to make it feel more like a home. Like most things in life working on your home is a non-stop effort, but it’s worth it, because there really is no place like home.

It struck me as odd to be in the house of someone I hardly knew and then to be eating with them in a matter of minutes. “Ricky will be back soon the client said, his voice filled with expectation.”

“Who’s Ricky?”

“My Fiance”

I continued to pile some sort of spicy seafood melange covered in a yellow curry sauce onto my plate. I couldn’t help but think, “Is this guy saying he’s gay?”

I sat at the table with my plate of food and my chopsticks making small talk that was intended to unearth more information.

“So have you lived here long?”

“Actually this is Ricky’s place, I went through a divorce a while back and I’ve been living here for a while now.”

The plot was thickening like a nice gravy but my question still remained unanswered. I’ve met some homosexual people in my life but none of them had been over the age of 50. In my guesstimation this guy was knocking on the door to 60 and they were saying, “Come on in, we’ve been waiting for you.”

My Thai food was spicy and room temperature and the wine that he served with it only seemed to enhance the spicy curry and heat my mouth up. We weren’t talking about business and I wasn’t exactly enjoying myself and so I didn’t have much to say.

Finally “Ricky” showed up and she turned out to be a woman and “Ricky” was just a nickname. I was relieved, not because I’m a homophobe but because I often feel more comfortable working with women on projects over men who think they know all about web design.  

“You want your site to look like that?” I couldn’t help but say it like I had just smelled a dirty diaper. The site she showed me looked like a pile of crap with a few words of garamound font slapped on it.

“Yes, this woman does things similar to what I do.” I wanted to reply, “So you bore people with droll websites?”

I held my tongue and suddenly realized that this was going to be an evening of educating the customer. However, after an hour of discussion I left with nothing. No plan. No design ideas. No domain name.

I gave Ricky a list of action items and it’s been almost a week and I haven’t heard anything and I’m not surprised. This is the world of web design and this is why before I start working I require a down payment.

I’m also having a big Christmas Party at my house on the 13th that I’ve got to plan. On top of that I’m trying to get my bedroom painted and I just purchased curtain rods for the living room, dining room and my bedroom and so I’ve got to install all of those.

So what should I call my party this year for New Years? Any ideas? Courthouse Gold? Babes and Bandits, Courthouse Roundup? Any thoughts you send my way will be appreciated!

(As an aside, I note that the two articulate chaps cited above are both from the UK. Britain’s finest, no doubt. In fact, the vast majority of the vulgar and vitriolic responses I saw to my Redux piece came from UK designers. As to whether or not this is indicative of what Socialism does to the populace, I’ll leave for others to determine. But what is certain is that all non-US citizens should stay the hell out of my country’s democratic processes. If nothing else, the fact that legions of Socialists and Communists around the world seem to simply adore Barack Obama is reason enough to doubt the quality of the man, and seems to provide philosophical counterpoint to the criticism offered me.)

I had already sampled a couple of paint colors in a nice shade of Mocha and another shade that looked like dark chocolate, however, on my walls both of them looked like boring crap. Brown is just too easy and too common and so I decided to go with a green that could easily blend in with one of the lighter shades of green that you often see in camoflauge. It was masculine and dark, but not too dark and it made a statement - “The guy who lives here knows how to use color.”

I loved the green and since I had only purchased a quart of it I didn’t have enough to finish the whole wall. I zipped back to Home Depot and couldn’t resist buying a gallon of the green and wait, what’s this? Ooh, Cattail brown! I saw the warm brown tones and immediately thought I should do a gradient on my wall from green to this wonderful brown. It would be like a zen retreat or an African Safari. I could imagine myself wearing one of those hats not unlike the Urban Sombrero and khaki vest and shorts with multiple pockets. Of course I’d have a huge hunting rifle and palm fronds to complete Zen African Retreat.

I went home armed with 2 gallons of Behr pure premium and 42 dollars less in my banking account. I quickly opened the lovely green and slathered the paint on the walls to complete the top portion of my masterpiece. Then I opened the brown and did the gradient only to realize that with the lighting in my bedroom you couldn’t tell there was much of a gradient. Ugh. All the work and effort for nothing and now I still have 3/4ths of each gallon left - what should I do? The Activator in me thought I should paint the entire wall brown and the rest of the room this army green color. I quickly painted the wall brown and decided I would wait for it to dry before I painted the rest of the room. An hour later the wall was dry and I hated the color. It’s a murky brown that says nothing. It doesn’t make me want to shoot a gazelle or an ibex. It doesn’t give me dreams of Africa, rather, it makes me think of baby poo and things that smell unpleasant.

I quickly put my room back together. You would think that after I painted my living room 3 times before settling on a color that I would be better at this by now, but alas, I cannot be persuaded from my vision once I have an idea in my head. I have to see it, try it out, and then decide. It’s an expensive lesson, time and money go out the window, but in the end I do learn something and this time I learned that I don’t like dark brown colors in my bedroom. So maybe I should paint it orange? I’m really tempted to go with a nice tangerine. Just kidding. My second choice is to do very light gray horizontal alternating stripes and then to accent it with bold colors. Unfortunately, this isn’t my idea but one I saw on HGTV and I think the lighter colors will keep the room feeling open and airy.

This book could possibly save your marriage or save the world…

Something I whipped up for a Web Launch Party at work. Think Wii Tennis, real ping pong, and lots of food during work hours - does it get any better?