Men men men

You probably been ask this many times, who wasn't?
What is your type?
What kind of men make you blush, feel nervous even for a split second, or fill your fantasies?

No matter if you are married, single, dating, just like our partners, we also will let our eye "hang" for a moment on a man of our "dreams".

Perhaps he will be standing in the subway, reading news paper, in his grey sweater with black framed, thick glasses, worn out jeans and hair that say "I did style them into messy hairdo".
And you may eye his lips, full, colour of raspberries, or maybe skinny and curved into a small smirk. Perhaps peppered with light beard or 12 o'clock shadow or maybe clean shaved with perfect olive skin and wrapped in fresh scent of the cologne.

What would be my type?
Is it easy to just pick 4 limbs, head, attached eyes to it, hair, no hair, belly, no belly, with long legs, short legs, hairy legs, bald, with long hair, ponytail, curly hair, straight, red, blonde, black.
I am unsure.

Over the years I came to the conclusion that it's not really about a list of features that I look in a man but rather a set of qualities. Things that I can swap around, accept, exchange, find interest in even when I thought that I don't want to.

The way he walks, smiles, gazes at you, is he direct or a bit shy, cocky, to loud or maybe to shy. Maybe he will smell beautiful when brushing his lips against the side of your neck or perhaps his beautiful hands will push a lock of hair away from your face so he can stare into your eyes and tell you how beautiful you are. And you will know that he means it, because his smile will be real, and you know his knees feel weak when you around.

Or maybe he will be a macho man, tough, direct, smelling of fresh soap because that's all he will use, with shave head, perhaps a tattoo on his arm highlighting his larger bicep. Wearing plain t-shirt and pain of jeans he owned since 1998 and same plain pair of Nike's.

Will he wake you up with cup of coffee and kiss on the shoulder. Or slap in the butt and way to energetic rubbing because he can't keep his hands off you, even after a long, active night.
Or maybe he cuddle, take your scent with him to work, spending only 10-minutes in washroom.
Will he switch your favorite song playing on iTunes, or try to wrap his arms around you and spin you around in random dance, just to watch you chuckle then slap him on the shoulder because after all you are late to work and there is no time for goofing around, well maybe for a moment, for one more second, for one more kiss, for one more brief minute with his arms around you so you can feel like a princess at least once a day.

So what is my type?

All about numbers.

I was just taking a shower and thinking. You probably guess it already, yes, this is the reason why I decided to blog my thoughts.

Shower seems to always steam out all the thoughts out of my head. For some odd reason every time I step my foot into my little "oasis", I begin to think.

People sometimes ask me about my past relationship and subject of me being married comes up. And then they ask how long I been married. And the answer is always "ten years", though sometimes I lie a little and say nine. Nine always seem to sound so much less then ten, odd isn't?

And as I "admit" to the true length of my marriage, people "ah" and "oh" and blink at me with an odd stare fallowed by "But you are so young".

Yes, I am thirty years old and I been married since 1997, I separated with my ex in 2007.

If you did your math correctly, I was 18 years old when I got married (I'm a December baby and our wedding was in November).

At this point the "oh" and "ah" change into simple open-jaw-expression.

Then, the next question usually is "do you have any kids?". And my answer is short - "no".

This made me think about how people attach everything to numbers.

How long I was married would suggest I have kids. Being married at 18 could mean god-knows what. Number, number, number.

Because ten years sound like so much time, why do people automatically think that with number there is "more" to the story?

Numbers always hunt us. My mother asks me sometimes if I will have kids... because after all I am thirty. Oh my god, thirty. It doesn't matter that I am single, nor am I in love, nor I even have anyone in my life to call "my man". But what is important is the number - 30 -. Why?

We go though our life and we work everything around numbers. Our job around $$$-numbers, our social life around number of friends, our daily steps around number of water-glasses consumed.

A girl I know got married not to long ago, it's been just couple of years, but she already is being asked about number of kids. And the fact that she is not ready doesn't matter to society, because after all two years of marriage are perfect for making a nest.

What means a month of knowing somebody very well and twenty years of not knowing your own lover? Why do we admire the number of commitment instead of the true being ourselves, and doing what feels right, WHEN feels right?

Life is a strange place, but life doesn't give us second chances. If you live it and assign numbers to it, you will cage yourself in what seems to be an ideal plan, but at the end of the day you may die at 90, maybe 75. Will you ask yourself then if this is the right number to die? Did you live all those years without fear of loosing a day or a month or perhaps a year for doing something for yourself? No matter how silly or big it is? Will you ask yourself if years spend at what you been working for were worth it? Did you worked for it long enough? Did you smile the right amount of times? Did you cry enough, did you made love and wished for time to stop?

Or will you worry that when you were 12-years old you should have taken dance classes, or the bike ride with that one boy, maybe walk away from the woman who cheated on you but you didn't wanted for everyone to see that sometimes things simply don't work out?

Don't say you want time for yourself, just say that you are not ready. Why do you have to be?

Don't cry about lost years, if they are in your pass; Why not be happy with who you are because of those years?

Don't put all those numbers into jars of "anniversaries" and "celebrations of years of commitment". Put them into your pocket and smile, because you made your life your way, slow or fast, sloppy with mistakes, or flawless and full of laughters or tears - you took each step not because you had to meat the "deadline" but because it made your heart skip the beat and worth living.

How to Make Small Green Choices at Home

The effort to "go green" is more important now than it has ever been. The world has a fixed amount of natural resources and the population is expanding at an outrageous rate. Some natural resources are already depleted. So, as population growth continues to use up our limited resources, there are fewer resources available. If we want to leave our future generations with the same standard of living we have enjoyed, we all need to make an effort to contribute. Though they may not seem significant, there are little things each of us can do each day in our own home to help make a big difference. Here are some ways to get started.

Instructions

Step 1
Change your light bulbs. Compact fluorescent light bulbs use 66 percent less energy than standard incandescent bulbs and last up to 10 times longer. Replacing your old light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones can save $30 in energy costs over the life of the bulb.

Step 2
Buy "tree free" 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper. You can buy it for everything from greeting cards to toilet paper. Most tree-free paper is bleached without the use of toxic chlorine-derived bleach, so it reduces chlorine pollution in addition to saving trees.

Step 3
When you decide to put in new flooring, opt for bamboo floors. Bamboo is attractive as a building material because it is very hard, strong and dimensionally stable. Using bamboo flooring allows you to freshen up the look of your home and help the environment at the same time.

Step 4
Buy hemp rugs. They are both stylish in design and affordable. Hemp rugs are all-natural area rugs that are good for the soil. Hemp fiber is stronger than cotton and has a naturally course texture that will somewhat soften with time. The rugs actually become stronger as they wear. Hemp is also naturally resistant to rot and mildew.

Step 5
Use healthier paint. A variety of healthier paint options are now available. You can add character to the rooms of your home by painting your walls with natural paints, zero volatile organic compounds (VOC) paints and low VOC paints, all of which are considerably healthier choices.

Step 6
Make use of organic cleaning products. Natural cleaning products offer environmentally safe, cost-efficient alternatives to the toxic and potentially lethal household cleaning products used in many homes today.

Step 7
"Go green" in your garden. Incorporate used or recycled furniture in your designs. In addition, avoid all chemicals and use natural remedies. It is also a good idea to include native plants in your design. They are generally disease free, use little water and help attract beneficial wildlife. These ideas not only help the environment, but also help make your garden look beautiful.

For more info on how to improve your life, check out book by Method "Squeaky Green":

Random can be good

So you are Polish eh?

Yes, I am Polish.
I was born and raised back home. I left Poland when I was 18 years old and very often people ask me about Polish cooking.
This is the reason why I decided to creative this post (links to recipes included).

Polish cuisine (Polish: kuchnia polska) is a mixture of Eastern European (Lithuanian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Hungarian, etc.) and German culinary traditions, with some Russian, Italian, and Turkish influence due to historical reasons. It is rich in meat, especially chicken and pork, and winter vegetables (cabbage in the dish bigos), and spices, as well as different kinds of noodles the most notable of which are the pierogi. It is related to other Slavic cuisines in usage of kasza and other cereals. Generally speaking, Polish cuisine is hearty and uses a lot of cream and eggs. The traditional cuisine generally is demanding and Poles allow themselves a generous amount of time to prepare and enjoy their festive meals, with some meals (like Christmas eve or Easter Breakfast) taking a number of days to prepare in their entirety.

Traditionally, the main meal is eaten about 2 p.m., and is usually composed of three courses, starting with a soup, such as popular bouillon or tomato or more festive barszcz (beet) or żurek (sour rye meal mash), followed perhaps in a restaurant by an appetizer of herring (prepared in either cream, oil, or vinegar). Other popular appetizers are various cured meats, vegetables or fish in aspic. The main course is usually meaty including a roast or kotlet schabowy (breaded pork cutlet). Vegetables, currently replaced by leaf salad, were not very long ago most commonly served as 'surowka' - shredded root vegetables with lemon and sugar (carrot, celeriac, beetroot) or fermented cabbage (kapusta kiszona). The sides are usually boiled potatoes or more traditionally kasha (cereals). Meals often conclude with a dessert such as makowiec, a poppy seed pastry, or drożdżówka, a type of yeast cake. Other Polish specialities include chłodnik (a chilled beet or fruit soup for hot days), golonka (pork knuckles cooked with vegetables), kołduny (meat dumplings), zrazy (stuffed slices of beef), salceson and flaki (tripe).


Grandmother's Cheesecake (Sernik Babci)

Dough:
1-1/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1 egg
3 Tbps sour cream
1/3 cup confetioners sugar

Filling:
6 eggs
2 cups confectioners sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 lb. farmers cheese or ricotta
2/3 cup melted butter
1-1/2 cups mashed potatoes (not seasoned)
Save the ones from the night before.
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup grated orange or lemon peel

For the dough, combine the flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl. Cut in the butter with a fork.

Beat egg into the sour cream. Stir into the flour mixture then stir in the sugar. Knead the dough until well mixed and smooth.

Roll dough on a floured surface into a rectangle. Line a 13x9x2 inch pan with the dough and bring dough part the way up sides.

For the filling, separate 1 egg and reserve the whites, beat remaining yolk and whole eggs with the the sugar for 5 minutes at hight speed of a electric mixer. Add the vanilla, beat at high until the mixture is soft.

Press cheese through a sieve, blend cheese with butter add the potatoes, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt. Stir in organge peel. Fold into the egg mixture. Turn into prepard crust in pan.

Bake at 350 degrees F for about 45-55 min. or until set. Cool well before cutting.

Poppy Seed or Nut Roll

8 cups flour
1 pkg. dry yeast
1 stick of butter or margarine melted
5 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 cups of warm milk

Filling:
1 lb. poppy seed or ground nuts
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 sticks margarine or butter
1 cup milk, hot
1 lemon rind

Combine all filling ingredients and beat well.

Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup of the warm milk. Combine the flour, sugar, salt and eggs. Add remainder of the milk, butter and yast mixture. Beat until elastic. Sprinkle top with a little flour and cover with a cloth. Let stand in a warm place until double in size. Punch down. Divide the dough into 2 pieces. Put on floured board and roll out into a rectangle. Spread cool filling and sprinkle with raisins. Roll like a jelly roll. Place in greased pan and let stand to rise again. Brush top with margarine or butter bake for 45-60 min in 350 degree oven.

Cabbage Rolls (Golabki)

1 head cabbage
1 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb. ground pork or veal (opitioal)
16 oz can tomato sauce
8 oz can tomatoes
2 cups cooked rice
2 eggs
1 onion finely chopped
2 Tbsp. margarine
Salt and pepper to taste

Remove the core from the cabbage. Put the cabbage in boiling water and remove the leaves as they soften. Saute the onions in the margarine for a short time. In a bowl add the onions, meat, rice, eggs and salt and pepper, mix this well.
Place about 2 Tbsp. of the meat mixture in the center of a cabbage leaf and roll. Put the meat rolls in a large pot and pour the tomato sauce onto the rolls. Then squeeze tomatoes from can and arrange on top of the rolls. Simmer over low heat for 2 hours.

Fire Vodka (Krupnik)

1-1/2 cup honey
2/3 cup water
1 tsp. vanilla extract or 1 vanilla bean
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
8 sticks cinnamon
2 whole cloves
3 strips lemon peel
1 bottle vodka

Combine honey with the water, vanilla, spices and the lemon peel in a large saucepan. Bring this to a boil cover, and simmer for about 5 min. Add vodka, remove from the heat serve hot or cold.

Instead of designing icons and costing me extra, why don’t you just use the ‘Wingdings’ font?

clientsfromhell.net

"I’ve decided that the amount you invoiced us for is far too much. Here’s my thinking: We are paying you to come up with an idea — we’re not paying you for the time you take to think about it. The actual idea must only take about 30 seconds to think about as you come up with it. All these visuals, that’s just typing. I can do that in Word. It would take me 5 minutes. So I only want to pay you for 5 and a half minutes work."

Client: “The blue isn’t right.”
Me: “What PMS color are we trying to match?”
Client: “Oh, you know, the color of the Texas sky around daybreak.”

“I hate this new font. Use the first one I showed you. This one makes the site look cheap instead of elegant.”
The ‘cheap’ font was Georgia, the ‘elegant’ font was Georgia Italic.

"Wait, you’re working on other projects? For the money I’m paying, you should be exclusive to me."

"Thanks for emailing me the PDF. Can you please resend it to me at 100% and not at 147%."

"Well I’m a bit of a designer too. I have a Myspace."

One client called me this morning. After a brief discussion and proposing the price, suddenly he said :
“I’m sorry, I thought freelancers work for free.”

Client: “It’s a great design. Beautiful, classic, elegant and sleek. It hits everything on our wish list, can we add in some cheetah or leopard print?”

"We shouldn’t have to pay you for this, because if we had the resources in-house, we’d be able to do it for free."

"We need a logo. It needs to have a picture of a barn, a river, and some fish in it, along with our name, and our tagline. It’s very simple. I already drafted up the idea for you in powerpoint. It should be pretty easy, and won’t take up much of your time. You can do this for free, right?"

Client: “That font right there! It’s clean yet edgy. There’s no WAY I’ve seen that font before, I would’ve remembered! What font is that?”
Me: “Arial.”

"Make sure it’s not too edgy, not too flashy, not too much detail, not classical/traditional, not too complex, exciting, but not all over all over the place, efficient but fun, clean, fresh, modern, up beat, contemporary, high readability, smooth, shapeless, timeless, not outdated, but simple."

A client just submitted his logo to me by sending a link to his store’s address on Google Maps… “Click on the thumbtack and it will take you to a picture of the front of my store. The logo is on the sign.”

The Grumpy Sailors