The other day was Micah’s last day with us at D.O.E. * sniff sniff * To mourn his last day we went to his favorite lunch joint in the area-Georgetown Liquor Company. Note all the old school video games in the background. Perfect work farewell for Micah and all his geek ways that we’ve come to rely on & will greatly miss. * sniff sniff *

Micah has always wanted to order a pitcher of whiskey…simply for the shock & laughter of it. (It’s Micah’s sense of humor for those who don’t know him.) Therefore Styk did his best to surprise Micah & make this desire come true. Either the bartender balked or Styk’s wallet prevented it from being a pitcher, but I think an entire PINT of whiskey is still a rare order in a bar & will accomplish messing one up. One should note the 2 gin & tonic’s Micah had consumed before the pint showed up.

Oh yeah…we gave him something to remember us by…if he remembers the night that is.

The tale of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary comes from the Middle Ages, a traveler’s tale from the far east. It’s full name was ‘Planta Tartarica Barometz’ - ‘barometz’ is the Tartar word for ‘lamb’. The fruit of the Vegetable Lamb was cotton, but travelers from Europe knew nothing about cotton in those times. They reasoned that the material was wool - a fabric they did know. The figured that since wool came from sheep, and that the plant was some kind of animal/plant. They thought that the puffs of cotton were tiny sheep attached to the plant by their navel. It is said that the plant bent to let the sheep graze on the grass beneath it, and that when all the grass was gone, the sheep dropped from the plant and ran off, the tree dying.

text source: “Vegetable Lamb.” Encyclopedia Mythica from Encyclopedia Mythica Online.

As promised, here are images for the second ink pass of the Dept of Energy Promo poster I’ve been working on. Shown above is the second split fountain done in light green to medium green to a dark brown color. The illustration on the block is my polymer plate for the second image. More photos showing the process behind this set-up is behind the link that follows….

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I printed the first & second runs of the Dept of Energy Promo Poster I’ve been working on. Being a tease, I’m only going to showcase the first ink pass today. You’ll have to wait until Monday to get the pictures from the second ink pass.

Shown above is how the split fountain looks on press and on the large block I used. (It should also be noted it was * gasp * sunny out!) If interested in more photos continue on into the post.

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Surfing the net today looking for ispiration, I found this thing of beauty on neha.manoka’s flickr photostream with an explanation of where it’s from. Thanks for permission to show it off here!

“Made in 1983 this is a 25 years old classic 4.5V zinc-carbon battery with its three 1.5V cells enclosed in a cardboard case. It was a very common thing in the “past era” in Hungary. Obeying to the laws of physics almost all of them have disappeared since as these babies had a natural habit to leak.”

I love walking around to spy what is on my teams desktops. Everyone has different habits-some 1-2 windows open (me), some 10, some 50 (Styk!)…Therefore I thought it would be fun to start showcasing what some of ‘em look like at any given time.

The first one is from Micah’s computer. He’s from the 2D design department and is currently working on a logo for a current client (Round 2, I believe) as well as a few illustrations, a CD cover simply for the exercise of it (always good to expand your skills as a designer), as well as iTunes (music is always an essential around here for getting the creativity going full throttle) plus many other windows.

His desktop, which can only be slightly seen here, is of a dog parachuting from out of the sky. “Why?” you ask? Well, we leave that story up to you…