pixie sticks and magical wishes

Editing and color-coding world vector maps.
Inputting data into Illustrator.
Scaling circles. 
Wanting to cry every time I saved a copy and (thought) Illustrator flattened all the layers in my map.
Redoing maps because of said flattening.
Becoming best friends with Dreamweaver.
Making Transmit FTP work for me.
Editing my HTML index.
Using w3schools at every single step.
Understanding divs, span, ID vs. class, z-index.  
Writing CSS style page.
Meetings with Amy. Lauren. Byron.
Adopting Byron’s shiny page template instead.
Completely at a loss for what colors to use.
Meeting with Max.
Finally determining a color scheme.
Learning that Illustrator did not permanently flatten the images, just grouped them.
Trying to study for a midterm.
Drawing keys. 
Copies and copies of copies of the map SVGs.
Progression of grumble noises.
Guess-and-checking the coordinates of the top 10 circles. (Really should use Chrome developer for this next time)
Formatting the article. 
Fiddling with the backtoarticle box and linking within.
Getting the hang of the containers (really, brute forcing it to work).
Not sleeping for almost 48 hours. Not eating for most of the second day. 
Wanting to kill my computer because I couldn’t figure out why the Javascript wasn’t working at 5 in the morning.
Trying to get the images to fade in place.
Switching to # method in the hopes that it would work better.
Finally figuring out how to get the Javascript hover+click+info detailcontainer method to work (!)
Happy noises (according to Kylie).
Writing Javascript files. 
Re-editing map SVG/PNGs so the top 10 didn’t show up. 
Converting circles from Illustrator to Photoshop (select, copy, paste, enter three times, delete background layer, calculate pixel size, save for web, update CSS file, save, FTP, Apple-R).
Changing the opacity of the top 10 for the hover.
Learning about font stacks and grabbing fonts from Google Web Fonts API.
The different successions of keyboard shortcuts ingrained in my brain and now muscle memory.
Three more HTML pages.
Four more CSS pages, just for the circles.
Adding to the Javascript file.
Copy-pasting so many rules and styles.
Divs within divs within divs…
Making different CSS types for the different colors. Inc, dec, nochg, etc. Actually figuring out how to utilize span also.
Columbia from “Rocky Horror.” Kyle the foreign kid. 
Adding the illo. Align right div for photo so the credit would be formatted properly.
Matching the backtoarticle box to my color scheme.
So much Florence, Foster the People, Bon Iver in my Beats.
Finally successfully getting the detail container/country info exactly the way I wanted (!)
Writing and formatting country descriptors. 
Five nights of Halloween (ha). Being wrapped in a comfy blue blanket and coughing everywhere.
Adjusting top and left for so many different containers.
Ignoring homework. And my two impending midterms (plus a story or two). Living breathing sleeping this project.
Creating an image header for the DB article page.
Edit, copy, paste, save for web & devices, drag into folder, re-FTP, Apple-R. Rinse and repeat.
Explaining the methodology/thoughts behind the madness. (Is it strange that I’m weirdly proudest of the methods/FAQ page?)
Am I done? No there’s definitely things that can be changed. I think I’m done. Yessss it’s all shiny and finished!
Four maps. Seven days. About two months.
Tweeting/Facebooking/social media-ing this shiz. Damn straight.

And the past two months:
Talking to Farzad. 
Negotiating with Media Relations, Admissions, Office of AIM. 
Talking to Machiko. Sam. Lauren. Amy. Emailing legit multimedia editors.
Geeking out over NYTimes.com graphics every time I explained this project to someone. 

Getting it to work:
So incredibly exciting. Getting just the hover+click to work was amazing. Finishing the entire project was elation. So happy. It’s low-fi, but I’m still glad. Baby steps. More fantastic projects to come, that’s the goal.

That was a rather surreal experience. I don’t think I’ve ever been someone who had an urge to “say hi” to the chef. The exec chef, who makes recommendations to you about what to order, who explains each course and personally brings them out, whom you can tell is talking to your adorable server about you and your table. So incredibly touching of them to treat us so well, but it also made me a little abashed. I wanted to say “No, we’re really not that important. You have other, by far more important guests (like the endearing elderly regular Eddie sitting near me) to attend to. Do we need to leave, are we taking up space?”  Never mind that we were there an hour longer than supposed to be. Best dineLA experience and the perfect way to end this week. 

Heirloom tomatoes, burrata cheese, prosciutto, Sicilian extra virgin olive oil, aged Italian balsamic vinegar, sea salt.
Farfalle pasta, lobster, asparagus, white alba mushrooms. Pomodoro sauce (baha).
Filet mignon, port wine reduction, mushrooms, leeks.
Creme brulee with a crackly top. 

Pretty sure I ate enough food to feed a small village. Plus there’s more in my fridge.

Baked snickerdoodles while listening to Macklemore. Mmmhm.
Felt incredibly absurd buying a cart full of pumpkins at TJ’s for my roomie’s birthday. 
Painted said pumpkins with two makeup brushes because I don’t have actual art brushes, whitegirlproblemsmuch.
So much studying to do for my midterm.

My Thursday night.

All day every day.