We’ve decided to buy folding bikes.

During the past couple of weeks I’ve found myself digging through folding bike forums, searching for the best bike that falls within the amount I want to spend. The folding bike is absolutely perfect for the amount of space we have (insert plug for WeeHouse – my future dream home), plus they are super cool. However, sometimes I can’t help but think what it would be like to have a tandem bike.

When I was young, my grandma used to sing me the song about a bicycle built for two and I was totally intrigued by the concept of two people riding on one bicycle. Then, when I was in college and working at the Department of Grain Science, my boss and her husband would go on bike trips around the world with their tandem. Way cool.

So hooray for bikes and songs about bikes.

For those of you who don’t know (ie. didn’t receive an email from me this morning saying I was mugged in London) my email account was hacked this morning. I don’t know that I’ve ever had so many ups and downs within the span of 2 hours.

I felt like my life was being systematically deleted and by 9:00am this morning I felt like I had gone through labor.

————

Down: Finding out my account was hacked

Up: Realizing there are things I can do to warn people I was hacked

Down: Realizing my Facebook account was hacked

Up: Changing my email account on my other social media and financial websites to an alternate address

Down: Realizing that my alternate email address had been hacked too

Up: Regaining access to my alternate email account

Down: Realizing my LinkedIn account had been compromised

Up: Regaining access to my primary email account

Down: Realizing all of my contacts and email had been deleted

Up: My husband thoughtfully sending out an email to let people know that they should send me an email because I had lost all of my contacts

Down: Remembering that I don’t have any contacts or emails

Up: Realizing that all of my contacts are saved in my iPhone (again thanks to my husband)

————

The really odd thing is the password I used for that account always showed up as strong whenever I typed it into a password strength analyzer.  According to my husband, even with a strong password, it’s not surprising that I was hacked. Apparently, it all has to do with your security questions. If someone could find the answers to your security questions by doing an online search or by checking out your social media profiles. Your a candidate for hacking.

The main bright spot of the day was a couple of the emails I received from people who had either replied back to the spam email (some of my contacts knew we were going to London this Spring but just weren’t sure when – so to them it was totally plausible). Others were just messing around with the hacker.

Here’s the original email:

I’m writing this with tears in my eyes, I came down here to London, United Kingdom for a  short vacation unfortunately i was mugged at the park of the hotel where i stayed, all  cash, credit card and cell were stolen off me but luckily for me i still have my passports with me.

I’ve been to the embassy and the Police here but they’re not helping issues at all and my flight  leaves in less than 6hrs from now but am having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel  manager won’t let me leave until i settle the bills,

I’m freaked out at the moment

My brother’s reply: Well i guess you’re on your own. I warned you about going to London……idiot.

How loving and absolutely priceless. I would have loved to see the look on the hacker’s face when he read that.

My sister’s reply: Yo what up!!! I know it was a rough morning this morning, but if you only knew the response. The phone was ringing off the hook all morning : ) Oh and Aunt Ethel just about called David to go to the embassy and help you. Ha. That would have been a little funny. Anyway hope your day starts going better, and remember you get to see all of us this weekend so get excited!! Luv ya!

Again, completely hilarious. Plus she got bonus points for trying to make me feel better.

I’ve been dying to make another animated gif since Q and I figure this is my chance. Here’s to you hacker. May you be spammed as much as you spam others.

P.S. To my readers: If you haven’t already, please send me your email address. brookefrancesi at gmail dot com.

The phase “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is a pangram (a phrase that uses all of the letters of the alphabet). It’s especially used when demonstrating a typeface because it is short and coherent.

Unfortunately, I’ve always taken issue with this phrase; I’ve never met a dog (lazy or otherwise) that would allow a fox to jump over it. I like to think that it seems about as unrealistic as saying, “The quick brown dog jumps over the lazy dinosaur,” but then it wouldn’t be a pangram.

But who needs an “f” and “x” anyway?

Photo credit: Me (or some family member) – Porter Kansas Huber

Font Credit: Octin Vintage

Today marked the beginning. The beginning of what I hope will not be a summer-long war on soldier beetles in my office at Aptera.

Solider beetles are completely harmless and are some of the least frightening bugs out in the world – the look almost exactly akin to a lightening bug or firefly. But (and there is a but) they think they are made to fly and obviously aren’t. They clumsily flap their insect wings and usually end up flying into other objects in their general vicinity; which would be me if you were wondering. For that reason alone, I detest these little creatures. I work in fear of having one of them drop from the ceiling into my hair, or of having one of them fly directly into my face while trying to escape our office.

Luckily, our office manager was kind enough to purchase a bottle of insect spray and thus the War on Bugs began. I’m thinking about purchasing a holster for my bottle of bug spray tomorrow.

* Note: The insect in the image I’ve used is not a solider beetle. It looks like some sort of bee and the great thing about bees is you always know exactly where they stand. Bother them and they will sting you. Leave them alone and they’ll do the same.

I took a short hiatus at the beginning of this week because of all the craziness at work. The upside is that things have been extremely busy. The downside is that I’m exhausted and out of motivation when I get home.

Thankfully, things have calmed slightly and my motivation and inspiration are back! The quote and embellished typography are mine and they give you peak into my head. Yes, sometimes I think I really am crazy.

In January, one of my friends from high school asked me to design the Save the Date cards for her wedding (see them here). Once we finished those, I was thrilled when she asked if I would also design her wedding invitation suite.

While her save the dates had a trendy chic feel, she wanted to go with a more typographical / modern calligraphy style for her invites. Her colors are charcoal and kelly green and the invites were printed on Neenah ESSE 105lb Pearlized White with texture. The finished invites are really nice and tactile and were printed by Courier Printing in Grabill.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Confession time. I was completely out of ideas and inspiration this evening.

Statue of Liberty photo credit: me

Idea credit for nautical element: Google image search

Idea credit for weird scribbly element: Ffffound.com

Idea credit for vector clouds: Freelance project from last week

I’ve been thinking about the mountains quite a bit lately – mainly because I’m loosing my brother and his wife to them fairly soon. They argue that even when they lived in the Nashville (ish) Tennessee area, that we still didn’t see each other very often, however a 7 hour drive versus a 20+ hour drive makes quite a difference.

So here’s to them. Enjoy the hills.

This design doesn’t really have any sort of purpose; it just looks cool and reminds me of an upside down meteor shower.