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One of the HOW Design Conference sessions I thoroughly enjoyed this year was Von Glitschka’s “Creating 5ive Alarm Concepts”. In it, he describes the process of purposely living our everyday lives as a way to collect experiences and moments of inspiration. These experiences become conceptual triggers that we store away in our brains and at the right moment can be ignited like matches. A lot of times we as designers tend to look in familiar areas for these ‘matches’ when we should be hunting outside our own industry. How? According to Von, through reading, travel, culture and people. If you’re hitting that wall and feel like you’re creatively flat-lining, I’d highly recommend checking out this session, which he so kindly provides on his blog Art Backwash. Thanks, Von!

The trends that surround design and designers is amusing. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to attend the HOW Design Conference for the past several years and it’s interesting to see the fashion and culture of designers. I know it’s not fair to stereotype anyone, but most young designers look and accessorize in very similar ways. Even if I was 20 years younger, I would still be too much of an introvert to express myself in such ways. I don’t know that I fit any of these profiles other than maybe the messenger bag. I would most likely never be profiled as a creative. An uptight tourist maybe, but not a designer. Nope, I’m about as unassuming as vanilla ice cream.

I realize flying is the most efficient and, dare I say, safe way to travel but whoever engineered the coach seat was a very little person. I think I may have a touch of claustrophobia because I can barely tolerate sitting in such confined quarters for more than a couple hours. Combine that with a need to stretch out a bad knee and flying becomes a somewhat uncomfortable experience.

I know I can’t be completely alone with my sensitivities so I try to be conscious of other people’s ‘comfortable’ space requirements. It’s just common courtesy. I wish someone would tell that to the guy in 14B that feels the need to fully recline his seat to take a nap. It essentially turns the tray table into more of a restraint, so when the refreshment cart rolls by I have to refuse because I can’t drink without arms. Thankfully today’s flight won’t have more than one leg (no layovers!) and will be much shorter.

My two boys are paying the price for all their cloak and dagger antics while camping last weekend. Evidently each one of them managed to conceal themselves in a patch of poison ivy while playing capture the flag. Their legs look as if they’ve been flogged with a cat o’ nine tails. Getting them not to touch the infected areas has been somewhat futile. Between the daily applications of Cortaid and constant reminders not to scratch the itch, the outbreak seems to be slowing. After four days I don’t know what’s worse: the oozing pus or the whining.

The boys and I ran some errands today, including taking in the recycling. In addition to the usual load of aluminum cans we brought in some tin and plastic. When we first entered the drop off door there wasn’t a soul to be found and then, out of nowhere, a grumpy, recycling curmudgeon made his presence known.

He seemed friendly enough, but in my efforts to make small talk about recycling he launched into a tirade about how terrible plastics are. Clearly the man had his breaking point and I unknowingly pushed him over the edge with my surprisingly inadequate understanding of why plastics are such a pain.

‘You see all that aluminum?’ he asked me gesturing to the ceiling-high wall of crushed can cubes behind him. ‘Yeah’, I returned sheepishly. ‘Well, plastics are terrible for space consideration. With such a thin membrane they are made up almost entirely of air and you have to compact the hell out of it to make it smaller.’ I nodded as if knowing what the big deal was.

‘I emptied this plastic bin three times today and look at it now!’ He pointed at an overflowing heap of plastic containers and bags containing even more. ‘You can just put your bag down right there with the others and I’ll empty the bin again later!’ With a quick eye roll he turned his attention back to the can crusher and tore ferociously into my bag loads of aluminum.

We suffered through a few minutes of loud crushing and then awkward silence as we approached the window to claim our bounty for the cans. With clearly one of the worst jobs any person could have, our host did manage to squeeze out ‘have a nice day.’ It should be better than yours, I thought to myself.

Anniversary gift traditions are an odd thing. If I were to follow the old tradition, I’d be giving my wife ivory (though, the updated, more politically correct gift suggestion stresses the importance of using imitation ivory). Don’t misunderstand me, I think fourteen years of marriage deserves something significant; I just know that my wife deserves more. Any woman who is able to accept a man for who he is and love him unconditionally is worth much more than ivory. I was fortunate enough to find such a woman and after fourteen years, I could probably get her the mounted elephant head and she’d still laugh about it (though maybe not right away) and love me anyway. For that I’m grateful and blessed.