Not A Dollarshort

Coloring Contest Finalists.

Update: The Winner has been announced and all the entries have been posted.

The three finalists from the most recent coloring contest are now posted online.

We had to sort through about fifty entries, so if your entry isn't one of the three, don't despair. They were all great and I so appreciate the effort.

Now, go vote!

Oh, and I must mention that those thumbnails were generated with Movable Type version 2.0 beta. I didn't think I'd actually ever use thumbnails but I'm glad we added this feature.

And if you're wondering why exactly I've been so lax posting to A Day Late and dollarshort.org, it's because I've been trying to pack and work on MT 2.0. Thankfully, we launched the beta yesterday.

Reminder.

Don't forget -- tomorrow, the 18th, is the deadline for entries for the coloring contest.

Scenes from a Marriage.

Mena: Will you go downstairs and get me some milk?

Ben: No.

Mena: Come on, it's Valentine's Day.

Ben: Get your own f**king milk -- I just went downstairs and got you a piece of cake. For Valentine's Day.

I should note that he indeed went downstairs to get me a glass of milk to go with the piece of cake.

So what do we learn from this interaction?

1) It may not be candy and roses, but it's real love, nonetheless.

2) Cake? In the middle of the day? Time to cut back.

Yeah! Crown Molding!

So it's official -- the lease is signed and we're moving to the Outer Richmond in San Francisco on March first.

Yeah for us.

No, really. We're terribly excited. It's amazing how quickly this all came together. Part of the reason that we're actually going through with this is that we never came ourselves time to talk ourselves out of the situation.

The apartment is lovely. It's near The Legion of Honor, has a view of the ocean and meets all of our picky requirements. It's half the size of our current house, but has ten times the personality.

It has crown molding and hardwood floors, for goodness sake!

So now, I've got a thousand and one things to do. One of my first priorities is planning a garage sale. I'll be posting a list of the items we're selling -- sort of like an auction catalog (but not really). If you want something and live in the Bay Area, then make sure to check it out.

That is all.

Jinx.

We have an appointment tonight at seven to see an apartment in the City.

I can't tell you how much I want this place be the place. I've seen pictures of the apartment already and it's quite lovely -- it actually seems perfect for us.

It's a bit isolated from the rest of the city -- not a bad thing since I'm still rather scared of big city life. I want the friendly suburbs and the nice restaurants. Public transportation and a garage.

Something will be wrong. The house is probably too far from the DSL hub. Or maybe it's haunted. Or maybe there's a monkey living in the back bedroom and we have to let him have his space and cook his dinner.

Speaking of monkeys, there is just something so right with this picture.

And now, some patchouli talk.

Please send us the positive vibes we need to land this apartment. Let the landlord know that we are the best tenants -- we're clean and quiet and pay our rent on time.

And we'll even take good care of the monkey.

Snow!

The Web rules my life: Reason #419

While reading Onfocus this morning, I said to myself "Wow! It snowed in Sebastopol?"

Only after seeing PB's wonderful pictures did I bother to open my window blinds to see that, yes, it also snowed in Petaluma!

And it was honest to goodness real snow! Not that pathetic frost that we get so excited about once a year. This stuff was everywhere -- on cars, roofs, covering lawns. The most I've ever seen in low-elevation parts of California.

Since I've only really seen snow twice in my life, this was a real treat.

I'd hate to think that I would have missed this glorious morning because the first thing I look at each morning is my computer screen. How utterly clueless I am!

For some reason, somes kids aren't at school today. Because of this, there were tons of kids outside playing in the snow. Two sad girls were trying to sled on flat ground in a park. The snow had already begun melting and they just sort of sat on their sleds.

Regardless of their inability to sled, they seemed to be having the greatest time.

Ben and I had a wonderful time just walking around the neighborhood.

I took some pictures.

I was tricked!

I received a phone call from my dentist's office today. Apparently, something awful had shown up on my new set of x-rays and I needed to come in later in the day for a consultation about a needed root canal.

I arrived at the dentist in a "consultation" state of mind.

I should have known something was amiss when they started putting the drool bib on me.

In order to avoid the possible root canal, they decided to first refill the offending tooth. And, since I was in the office already... well, you know the rest.

While the procedure was pretty uneventful, I was able to drown out the sound of the drill with the vocal stylings of Mr. Nat King Cole via a portable CD player.

Out of the selection of CDs that the office offered -- Shania Twain, the Titanic soundtrack, some various Beatles albums (Magical Mystery Tour??), I settled on Nat King Cole because of the soothing nature of his voice.

It was ironic, however, to listen to Cole's rendition of "Smile" as my mouth was being pried open by some monstrous metal apparatus holding taut the dental dam.

I swear, I felt like I was in a David Lynch film with a little bit of "A Clockwork Orange" thrown in for good measure.

The moral of this story?

Make sure to floss and avoid Sour Straws.

Coloring contest results.

Congratulations go to Susan (entry Entry 1) for receiving the most votes in this last coloring contest.

She receives a $20 Amazon gift certificate courtesy of our sponsor, phonezilla.net and endless praise from dollarshort readers.

The other finalists received a good share of the votes. And, in order of their entry number, they were:

Harmony from hscreative
Emily from sorryfortheinconvenience.com
Cecily from silvershoe.com

They'll receive two official dollarshort.org pencils. Sad, I know.

Thanks everyone for participating! Let me know if you're interested in coloring again.

Now, you can view all the entries here.

Finally.

Between Movable Type and a small side job (is it technically, a "side" job if you don't have a main job?) I'm finishing this week, I've been utterly and completely swamped. This will explain why I'm so damn slow with regard to posting the results of the coloring contest.

Paul, the contest's sponsor and I have chosen four finalists -- now you pick the winner.

Names, for the time-being, have been removed to protect the innocent and keep the voting fair. So, if you're one of the four finalists, please don't tell your readers to vote for your entry.

How do you vote? Well, since I'm throwing this up on the site in a bit of a rush, we're going to have to rely on some old-school method of voting.

So, click the "vote" link next to your favorite entry. You're email application will launch with the number of the entry in the subject.

That's all -- you don't have to include a message in the subject body.

I know, this is so 1994.

The entries:

Entry 1 screenshot - [vote]

Entry 2 screenshot - [vote]

Entry 3 screenshot - [vote]

Entry 4 screenshot - [vote]

And remember, just because you're not on the list doesn't mean you didn't submit something great. Wait until to you see all the entries - they're pretty neat.

I'll take vote emails until 7pm PST tonight.

Coloring Contest.

This is just a reminder that the coloring contest ends tomorrow.

While I didn't receive as many entries as I did for the Japanese print contest, I do have to say that the ones I did receive really blew me away.

And I thought I had a lot of time on my hands.

Although this contest went on for about a month (as compared to a week and a half), I think I just picked too complicated of a design. Factor in the holidays, and the low turnout makes sense.

Too complicated? Prove me wrong. You still have one more day to enter.

And remember, the winner receives a $20 Amazon gift certificate courtesy of the contest's sponsor, phonezilla.net.