“Last winter, we began a total review of all programs and spending, measuring everything against the yardstick of our core values: public safety, healthy neighborhoods, sustainable economic growth and improved education all delivered by a more efficient government with the highest ethical standards.

…

Our goal is to:
Preserve programs that work,
Adjust these programs to actual needs,
Find real efficiencies that can be implemented quickly,
Collect money owed to the city,
Rebalance fees for some city services to better cover our costs and
Share the burden of sacrifice that spending cuts require.

I believe that sharing the burden must begin with our schedule of business and wage tax cuts. After more than a decade of annual cuts, it would be folly to continue cutting in this dangerous fiscal environment.”

Now to take from this is that he says we must “share the burden” and I totally 100% agree, my friend Dave Speers has this awesome idea posted on ideablob.com and I for one would love to see it actually happen.

So the whole point of this post is to make you and everyone else reading aware of this situation in Philadelphia and all I am asking you to do about it is spare a vote for this idea on idea blob, thank you.

I started playing sports when I was about four years old, and since then I have not stopped. I’ve played softball, soccer, field hockey, and basketball. I’ve always had a knack for sports, I can pick them up almost instantly. Softball had always been my sport of choice, after my first year I started playing up an age level. When I was about eight years old my dad took me to watch a softball tryout for the Gamblers which was a local travel team; after about five minutes of watching them I turned to my dad and told him that this is what I wanted to do, I wanted to play travel softball. When I was eleven I made my first travel team, the Doylestown Fury. From then on my goal was to play collegiate softball. I won’t bore you with the scouting process, but basically you have to market yourself well enough and be good enough to get college coaches to notice you. It takes hard work, determination and copious amounts of persistence, thank you dad.

In my junior year of high school I contracted Mononucleosis, and relapsed the same year. I missed 65 days of that school year. It’s still astonishing that I passed. It took me more than a year to recover from it. I graduated ready to finish the summer and start art school, I was going to play softball for Temple University. (Tyler School of Art is part of Temple University).

I was a walk on, and made the team. I was ecstatic. Words cannot describe how happy I was, especially because the first practice that we had was a scrimmage. I was the last batter, I cannot remember if it was the first or the second pitch, but I hit an out of the park home run, right over center field, with two RBIs. That is the only thing I will really brag about when it comes to softball. Well there are a select few other things but that’s not the point.

The training schedule was incredibly rigorous the team was up at 5:30am every day in the gym, the team would lift together, and then we would run. Morning practice would end right before 8am so we could get to class, My classes ended at 1:30 and I had to catch a 2 o’clock bus to the Ambler campus for practice. We would get back around 7 or 7:30pm I would put my equipment away and be back for study hall by the latest 8:30 and would be in study hall until it ended, which I think was 11pm. I would go back to my dorm relax, finish work that I did not get done in study hall or the bus, take a shower and go to bed. The team and I would do the same thing everyday. I should have known better than to let myself do that much physical activity. The third time I relapsed was in the fall of my freshman year of college. I had to quit softball for the first time in my life. My doctor told me that if I kept playing that I would end up in the hospital and do some long term damage to myself, he recommended that I never play again, at least at that level.

I was devasteted, to say the least, and to this day I cannot put to words how much it hurt to see the only true goal I ever had for myself wither and die.

To this day the greatest failure of my life is contracting Mononucleosis. I got it from a girl on a soccer team I was on, I gave her my water bottle to use because she forgot hers. She put her mouth on the spout, I didn’t care at the time, I did not think anything of it. A few weeks later she had to stop playing because she had gotten mono, and a week after that I came down with it. To this day I battle with the fatigue, getting sick easily etc., and I always will. This virus has stopped me from doing the one thing that was literally my life from the age of eleven on. It is still strange not to be playing, I miss it. I wish I could play for my college. I can however play with summr leagues as long as it isn’t too intense, but even then I tier easily.

I guess the only thing I can say that I really learned from this is that life happens. There are tons of things that are out of your control and you can’t be angry at them, you have to adapt. Come on people survivial of the fittest! :)

I met a lot of really amazing creative people, who have got me really excited and inspired about everything. I am still trying to process the whole weekend because it was a lot to take in, but all I can say is, Roz Duffy, JP Toto, all the volunteers and everyone else that attended Barcamp Philly and make it so freakin’ amazing, you guys are awesome, thank you.

I am going to really write a serious post about all the stuff that has started to mull around in this head of mine but I’ve gotta buckel down and get some school work done.

I hate that everyone thinks that they are experts on the election. I hate that there are a lot of people who try to jam their ideas and beliefs down my throat. I feel like I’m back in Catholic School.

I respect your decision of who you are voting for; I don’t try to change your mind. If there was one thing that I learned from my family it is that people are stubborn and they will think what they think unless you give them credible evidence to sway their decision. And even then most people are set in their ways.

So please you can tell me what you want, but don’t try to persuade me.

I’d like to share a story. Last Fall(Fall 2007) before the primaries I was going to register to vote. I was walking through campus and there was an Obama table with voter registration applications. I walked up and filled one out. The people there said they would mail it out blah blah blah. This was a school sponsored table for Barack Obama. I told my family I registered, my dad said he would tell me when my registration card would come in. I never got a call. The day before primaries I contacted my dad, assuming that he forgot to tell me when it came in, but he told me it really never came in the mail. By law you have to recieve your voter registration card 14 days after it has been sent, at least in the state of Pennsylvania. The only conculsion that I can come to is that those people or other people down the line, who endorsed Barack Obama or the democratic/another party, threw my registration away because I am a republican. I can see other arguments for this in their favor(like it got lost in the mail yadayadayada) and I would listen to them except that I know other people that this has happened to. So this makes me think that it wasn’t just an accident. And it really makes my stomach turn to know that there are people out there that would actually do something like that. Just because I am a republican doesn’t mean I won’t vote for Obama or any other party. It really grinds my gears that politics are so dirty, but I guess that’s life and that’s how it’s played.

The first project I am working on is animating a childhood nightmare. I started out telling the story of what happened in the dream but I am shying away from that; I’m more interested in recreating the feeling of fear and anxiety. I asked twitter what scared them, what made them fearful, some of the responses included:

helplessness, terminal illness, being covered in insects, Buried alive. By zombies, implied horror, driving over drawbridges, seeing the ground rushing up at you through the window of an airplane (descending in an airplane

The nightmare starts out with my dad and I going to his friend Bob’s house, we walk up to the door and go inside, Bob says I can hang my coat in the closet, but I’m not wearing a coat, I go to the closet anyway and open it there are skeletons hanging from coat hangers and I panic and woke up. It was a reoccurring nightmare, and I was terrified of it when I was younger.

The second project I am working on at the moment is “the commute,” what does it mean to me and to other people. For me it is mostly chaotic, I am not a morning person at all and I want to see what it is like for everyone else. I really like typography and I think I am going to construct some people on a train out of these words that you guys have come up with, they include:

stoned, Stressful, hellish, long, slow, Long (60 miles each way), Boring (No radio), Hot (No A/C), and Unpredictable (Unreliable car continues to brakedown on route), traffic, busy, morning, rush hour, car, coffee, heavenly, monotonous, rural, picturesque, wasteful, expensive, relaxing

I may also make some sort of layered word cloud, I don’t know yet, we will see.

I will keep you posted with some pictures and other things soon. :) thank you muchly for your help!

Tomorrow is the first Failcamp. It is taking place at everyone’s favorite Philadelphia coworking space, Indyhall. Everyone is encouraged to come and share how they have failed. There’s a catch, you have to share a story of your own failure. I am having difficulty finding something to share. I have been racking my brain all day trying to come up with something legitimate that isn’t just, oh I failed a test or lost my favorite shirt. I have not seen a lot of failure in my life. I have been very lucky so far, but I also have a lot more life to live and a lot more to fail at. The thing is I’m not afraid, I know it’s coming, and frankly I’m kinda excited for it. I like a challenge. So come on failure give me your best shot, this one’s a freebie.

• A chance for me to concentrate on my art.

There are a few projects I have wanted to start for a while, but I never got around to starting them. I want to take pictures constantly and draw a lot more. I need to get motivated to get these my ideas off the ground, instead of sitting in my head for years until I’m a day late and a dollar short.

• To get in shape.

Cliché? Yeah, I know it is. In all seriousness though I would really like to eat healthy and work out a bit every now and then, this isn’t a ‘I’m so fat I need to loose twenty pounds,’ deal cause it’s not that, I just want to feel healthy for once.

• I want to read.

I cannot tell you when the last time I actually picked up a book was. I want to expand my knowledge. There are so many books I have to read, that I have wanted to read for a while. I just never had the time to read them.

• I am going to appreciate life more.

The problem with my generation is they take everything for granted. I need to thank people everyday for the things they do for me. I am so blessed to have everyone that I do in my life. I would not be the same without them. I would also like to meditate and try to find inner peace/tranquility. I feel so stressed out all the time I would like to remedy that. Part of that has to do with school. On that note:

• I am going to get good grades.

Self-explanatory. I want to do well. ’nuff said.I have a good feeling about 2008. I wish nothing but the best for everyone in this holiday season and the year to come.