When the credits rolled at the end of this movie, I wanted to break into applause. I refrained because no one else did, but I turned to John and said “That was amazing!” It was Friday night, and we went to see The Book of Eli for our date night. I fought the movie choice because this was supposed to be a date, and rated R violence and blood did not strike me as romance, but we didn’t wanted to drive all the way to Columbia to see Avatar, so I caved and prepared myself for an intense post-apocalyptic bloody ride.

Let me be clear up front, this movie is violent. If you have a low tolerance for violent movies, you probably shouldn’t see this movie. The violence is quick, unlike movies such as 300 and Watchmen that zoom in and make you watch every blow up close. There is also a lot of language, not excessive and unnecessary language in my opinion, but some ears might bleed from watching this movie. Now that we have the disclaimer out of the way, on to the goods.

via here

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we're moving!! the blog is going to its own brand-spankin new site! check it out: http://teaatelevensies.com

Remember that period of time last fall where I kind of fell off the face of the earth? And every time I surfaced either on the blog or twitter, it was with groans about how I was at work for 12 hours every day?

Yeah, it was to produce this stuff. Come along, kids, and have a look at the national ad campaign my design firm developed for Flip Video, including the takeovers of seven train stations, lots of celeb endorsement, hundreds of ad sizes, thousands of files! Epic? Well, for a first year grad, yup.

there’s more to this article. keep reading…

Remember this remix of Alice in Wonderland from a while back? Someone at DisneyPixar (someone BRILLIANT) realized this genius, Pogo, existed, and they’ve released an official remix of Up. And it’s just as fab as his other work:

(Watch a beautiful, hi-res version here.)

Are we starting to enter an era in media where large corporations quit fearing the voices, creations, and reactions of every day consumers, and instead grow smart enough to join together with them? Even, dareIsayit, celebrating the consumer’s voice?

Yeah, I hope so too.

…white, milk, and dark chocolate covered espresso beans. Free lunch. Looking forward to a jazz club for happy hour. Having spent a weekend with loved ones.

Choosing to smile.

As someone who just had to survive a semester of Magazine Editing and relearning all of the grammar rules we so often take for granted, I found this cartoon and the ten others at TheOatmeal.com and felt compelled to share it with you:

via TheOatmeal.com

Go here to see all ten. You will not be disappointed, and you just might learn something!

A few of my favorite things…all wrapped up in soft, calm neutrals.

Sources: 1, 2/3/7, 4, 5/6

The sun just poked it’s head out for the first time in a few days — just in time to light the clouds on fire.

Yesterday was the first day of a new semester for me at the University of Missouri’s Journalism school. As I sat in my first class and the professor went through the niceties of introductions, he recited his resume for us. It was very depressing that about 80% of the publications he had worked as a journalists have folded. Even some of the students in the class had to preface their internship experience with the statement “but that magazine/newspaper is not doing very well” or “has folded.”

Sometimes its hard, getting a degree in something that could be obsolete or replaced with the Internet,  print is dying, that people would rather read it online than turn pages. My parents, while they support me and pushed me to go to graduate school for journalism, have voiced occasional concern about the security of my future career.

To keep my spirits up, though, I remember that while the medium might change, journalism will always be around. Even if everything moves online and we do away with books, magazines, and newspapers on paper, someone will still need to write the content that will be populating the Internet. Those articles and essays and blogs don’t fill themselves. There’s still reporting to be done, interviews to conduct, and sentences that need constructing. Until we can transmit news to the masses telepathically, someone will always be there gathering the news, organizing the news, and putting it out there for the masses to read.

Deep down I don’t believe that print is going to go away, not in my lifetime anyway. It’s still difficult to make a profit off an Internet publication, and despite some of the oldest magazines closing, the Internet, and the recession, the number of magazines launching and surviving is growing. Even if I’m wrong, and I do live to see a day when printing presses are closed for good and everything moves to Kindles and laptops, I don’t believe my job will go away. Someone still has to put together that content, make sure it’s readable and correct. I hope to be one of those people.

Guys, do you know why web design is the hardest thing EVER for me?

Because getting from BRILLIANT CONCEPT I SMOOSH TO PIECES WITH LOVE (step 1) all the way to VOILA COME IN USERS (step 5 billion, give or take) takes forever long. And by the time I reach step 5 billion, I always completely fall out of love with whatever brilliant thing had happened eight months ago. Even when I was an itty bitty young-un (okay, 16) and spending all of my time in my room, on my laptop, designing designing websites websites websites*, I had this issue.

So, all that to say…I have some GOOD news. Plus meh news.

Good news! 5 billion steps ago, Char and I began working on a self-hosted, brand-spanking, wicked awesome new website for the blog. Without our buddy Joel and his so-much-appreciated lending of wordpressing skillz, it never would have happened.

But the site should be live in about a week! YAY GOOD NEWS.

Meh news is I am a million percent over the design we developed. So…once it opens I’ll be flailing my hands at you and begging you not to judge for a few more months as I revamp. Grin.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

*seriously. my mom thought I was going to die of lack of social skills. thanks for making me have friends over, mom! Ilu.

Also, after reading this entry, I think I am more prone to hyperbolic statements after reading copious amounts of dooce, attempting to design wedding invites for everyone and their mother except me, and hitting 11pm. Note there were two of those exaggerative statements in the last sentence, and your girl wasn’t even trying. Booyah!

The lack of posting here at tea@elevensies has not been without good reason. John and I brought home a new dog! Roskoe now has a little sister, and it has been a week and ups and downs with these two. Lucy is a puggle (pug/beagle) that we adopted from the Humane Society in Sedalia, Missouri.

On our way home from Sedalia.

We brought her home on Wednesday, and so far, this is what we know of her. Lucy was a stray wandering the streets of Sedalia when the town’s dog catcher found her and brought her to the humane society. Despite her “mean streets” background, she’s the best cuddlebug. Her happy place is snoozing in your lap. You cannot sit down in our house now unless you want a puggle using you as a lounge chair. She can jump 4 ft. in the air when excited (even when she’s in her kennel, which doesn’t end well for her). And she loves to go outside as evidence by the little hoppy dance she does when she knows you’re about to take her outside.

big bro teaching lil' sis how to spy on the neighborhood.

The transition of bringing her into our home has been an adventure. The shelter wouldn’t let us bring her home until she was spayed, so I introduced a puppy recovering from surgery to a puppy who loves to wrestle. That was tough trying to keep Roskoe from pinning her and listening to the cries of boredom from Roskoe, who was indignant that I wouldn’t let him play with his new little sister for three whole days. Today, however, the gloves were off. I’ve been letting Lucy gauge how she’s feeling in regards to her recovery, and today, she greeted me with the 4 ft. jumping we hadn’t seen since we first met at the shelter before we adopted her. She met Roskoe’s attacks with valor (since he’s got a good 10 lbs on her) and some fancy wrestling moves of her own. She even played some tug-o-war with him. In fact, I had to separate them because the wrestling wouldn’t stop. There was just a constant rolling and bouncing of two furballs following me everywhere I went! I couldn’t get anything done!

Thanks for letting me take the blogspace to introduce to you our latest addition to our family. I apologize for the poor quality of pictures. They’re from my iphone. My real camera is dead, and I can’t find the charger.