Sunday, July 25, 2010

Load Me Up

I had a meeting with Pearce Plastics on Friday, and they have hired me to redesign their website. I walked out of their offices with a signed contract, a $500 advance and about 2 gigabytes of images from their graphics computer (still running OS 9.2, which is what I was using in about 1996). It took me two hours to upload the images onto my flash drive at their offices and about 12 minutes to download them into my computer here at home. And there are still images that I don't have. The total contract is for $2100, so I'm actually making some money from the web design skills I learned this last year.

Haven't heard back from McGraw-Hill yet, except for a short reply to a thank-you e-mail I sent out on the Monday after the interview. It said they would be in touch, so that's something. I'm crossing my fingers and praying I make the final cut, since I have a feeling it would be a very nice place for me to work for some time to come, and my design (and redesign) expertise is just what they're looking for. They want someone to help "spiff up" their publications and kind of mentor their designers, and I've got lots of experience with both, so I hope I'm in the top of the running.

Next Thursday, the 29th, is my 57th birthday. I never thought I would be this old. Of course, I had a hard time conceiving of being 47 in the first year of the new millennium, and I got used to that in short order. But the new century has certainly thrown me some nifty loops, on all levels of my life. I do have to say, though, I think most of them are pretty nice improvements on where I thought I was going in the 1990s. And I'm feeling good about 2010, feeling like it will probably end on a positive note. But I'm sitting here waiting for things to come to fruition. Pendancy is driving me nuts!

First the publications job. Then the whole fumigation thing for the house. Then the planning and execution of the remodeling on the house. Then planning into the future for a lovely retirement in a small town. But if I try to take too much in all at once, it overwhelms me. So all I can do is focus on what's right in front of me, which is this new website design. Plastic bottle caps of every kind and color: a world of threaded wonder.

I think the website will turn out looking quite nice, and I think it will be very useable for Pearce's customers. It's the first real entry into my website portfolio, which will need to grow substantially if I'm to make any money at all in retirement on web design.

As for the fumigation, we've found a motel in town that will take us and the cats (and the fish) for the four days we will be homeless. The event is planned for August 19-23, and I'm hoping that I won't be starting the new job at that point as well. But one never knows. Whatever comes down, I will be ready for it.

The Employment Development Department sent me a letter on Monday saying that I was ineligible for a new unemployment insurance claim because I had not worked in the last 12 months. Seemed fair to me. Then on Friday they send me another letter, saying I was eligible for a new unemployment claim because I had income during the period from June to September last year. Turns out my severance pay from Nielsen makes me eligible for another round of claims, but I have to refile and go through the interview and orientation rigamarole all over again. Hopefully, I'll be gainfully employed in a couple weeks and it will be a moot point.

But I can't help thinking how unfair it is that I get another six-month claim because I got a cushy severance deal, while there's lots of folks out there who made minimum wage and weren't given so much as a breath mint on the day they got fired. In my mind, the rules should be far more flexible for those folks. They're the closest to being out on the street; they're the ones that society should be the most worried about. (Not that I won't take the money if I'm due it; just that it seems a bit unfair).

QVC had Christmas in July on today, and it got me thinking about the upcoming season, although it's months away. We have a ratty old artificial tree that we've been saying we're going to 86 for the last three years, but then the year-end financials never allow for such an extravagant purchase. Perhaps this will be the year. They had snowman cookie jar/candy bowl centerpieces and faux holly battery-lighted trees for the mantle and other assorted holiday drech. If I were rich, I would have purchased it all; that was the mood I was in.

August 8 is the second anniversary of our marriage. I think the traditional gift is wood (no jokes about giving or getting wood, please). So salad tongs? Some elaborate hindu box? I'll think of something. We actually have two anniversaries: January 12 is the anniversary of our domestic partnership (it will be six years this coming January) and then August 8 is the anniversary of our nuptials.

We kept the domestic partnership because the laws on gay relationships vary so much from state to state that the marriage might be in force in one state, while the domestic partnership might be in force in another state. A lot of states would just like to lynch us. It's extremely bewildering, to say the least.

Hope this finds everyone well. I have not had any e-mails on my new great-niece from my brother in a week or so, so I'm assuming that means that everything's fine and all are adjusting to having diapers in their lives once again.

I should stop whining so much: Everyone has to deal with tomorrows that are uncertain. That's why it's called the future.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Hot. Hothothot. Hothothothothot!

Summer has arrived with a slam here in the Southland. It's gone from 85 and breezy to triple digits and large, angry thunderstorms rolling up from Mexico, making everything muggy and sparking numerous fires. For Pasadena, though it's just meant hot and humid with no breezes. It's weird, because this is the weather we usually get in late August/early September. The forecast is for it to sizzle through the weekend and then settle back into the upper-80s/low-90s for the rest of the month.

And, of course, my big interview at McGraw-Hill was scheduled for the hottest part of the day on the hottest day of the year (so far). So I kicked the air conditioner on around noon and kept near a fan while I was in long sleeves and a tie. I can only use the air conditioning in my car when it is in motion, as the compressor stalls out the car while it's idling. It's one of those things I don't want to spend money fixing on an old car, so I just toughed it out until I got on the freeway. (And, besides, it was only an eight-mile trip to the McGraw-Hill offices.)

I have a really good feeling about the possibilities of this position. I met with Mike, the director of operations in Monrovia, and kind of went over the various publications they produce there. He said they're looking for someone to spruce up the design of the publications, maybe do some training with the designers there, and also get in there and produce some of the magazines, as well. Sounds like my kind of job.

I showed him my portfolio, which he seemed genuinely interested in and impressed with. Then he took me around and introduced me to those who were there. Like at the Reporter, there were a lot more cubicles than workers, and I got the feeling that this was the first expansion for the group since our recent economic unpleasantness.

Just looking at some of the magazines they had produced, I could tell that there was a lot of room for graphic improvements. They layouts were good, but just didn't go that extra mile, visually, and a lot of the layouts were rather pedestrian (and I mean that in the nicest way, just in case Mike's reading this!)

So he's just starting to interview and said it would be two to four weeks before there was any decision made, and that he would probably call in a few candidates to work with him and his superior from the New York office before making a final choice for the job.

So I'm going to hop onto Lynda.com and take some refresher tutorials, since it's been a year since I was running InDesign in the trenches, so to speak, and the last six months I've been preoccupied with stuffing my head full of Dreaweaver and Flash and Web-based designing. One does like to hit the ground running.

I just got a wonderful long e-mail from my friend Jessie, who has been teaching in the Silicon Valley area up north. Seems, for various reasons that sound good and wise to me, she's going native and has taken a teaching position at an international school in Trinidad. All I can say is YOU GO, GIRL!

And stay there long enough so that Steve and I can come freeload off you for a couple of days. Neither of us has been to the Caribbean, and Trinidad has always, in my mind, been the epitome of island living. And promise me we'll get to drink stuff out of coconuts. Yeah, coconuts.

We're hoping to get the estimate on the flooring work within a week or so. It's important, since I really can't start moving on the budgets for any of the other remodeling until I have that base cost in hand.

The Internet connection was out all last night and into this morning, but it's fixed now. The weekend's coming up. No other job prospects popping up on the job sites, but that's okay for now. Life is good.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Our Shining Star

Here are pictures of my great-niece, Natalie Paula McDougal, the most recent addition to the clan (not in Klu Klux or Arian Nation kind of clan; like in Scottish McDougal family kind of clan).

This first photograph is with her grandmother, Pam, who is my sister-in-law. She's so cool. I like all my sister-in-laws, but Pam is the only one who didn't come out of California, and so, even though she's from Wisconsin, I think of her as sort of exotic. And she's got the best laugh you've ever heard. And dynamite pajamas. (If you don't believe me, go stay with them sometime.)

I'm getting these pictures funneled to me from Steve, my older brother (and the only one of my siblings to be called "grand-dad" so far). I'm sure he has something cerebral and sarcastic to say about that, but I haven't had the opportunity to talk with him since the birth. He is the one who's sending the e-mails, so I'm grateful for that.

And here's a shot of Natalie (who, prior to birth was simply referred to as "Squishy") at 10 days old. Her eyes are open and she already has that wispy Scandinavian angst that made Greta Garbo so popular. And, checking out her digital expression, she has the McDougal attitude toward the world already. Good for her!

I don't know how the rest of my generation of the family are taking this happy occasion, but great-uncle is as close as I'll come to "grandpa," so I'm adjusting to it.

The only great-anything I remember in my life was my great-aunt Kittie (who was the namesake for my own Aunt Kittie and my sister Kittie and my niece Kittie). She was rather eccentric. I remember going on shopping trips with her and my mother when I was just six or seven years old. We would go to "antique stores" (which were really high-class junk shops), and then we would have lunch.

This was about the time Metrical came out. It was kind of like Slimfast. Great-aunt Kittie would always bring one with her to lunch, order a sumptuous meal and then drink the Metrical with it, believing it would make her lose weight. My father, a doctor, tried to explain you drank the Metrical instead of having a meal, but Kittie would have none of that: it was a scientific miracle, pure and simple. I only hope I can attain that level of nuttiness by the time Natalie is old enough to appreciate me.

In other news, cousin Robin (whose website I still have to mount for her) is appearing for the next two weeks in an A&E channel series called "The Glades." From the e-mails I've been getting (beyond the ones that beg me to get something online for her), it looks like this might also evolve into a recurring role for her on the series.

And speaking of employment, I got my second call from McGraw-Hill today, setting up an interview for this Thursday afternoon. The portfolio has been spruced up and organized, so I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille. The guy I talked to on the phone (Mike) sounds like an easy-going, easy-to-talk-to kind of guy, so I'm not too nervous. I just need to show them that they would be insane to give the job to anybody else. And, really, it sounds like something I would be very good at, and a good continuation of my career.

So Steve's on full-time again at work (did I tell you that? It just happened in the last week or so) and I may possibly be fully employed again very soon. But not to count the chickens before they're hatched: I might arrive for the interview only to encounter the worst sort of publishing sweat shop; who knows?

Ah, Natalie: It's a fickle world you find yourself entering. Thank God you're starting out in Wisconsin, where things seem to make sense, at least to begin with. But, then, all is illusion, n'est pas?

Thursday, July 8, 2010

End of the Tunnel?

On Friday, a well-recommended contractor stopped by in the early evening and talked with us about the remodeling we've been planning for the condo. It was actually a two-man operation: one of the guys is the construction expert and the other one was more skilled in interior design. We were impressed with them and said we would send them information which they could use to give us an estimate.

The Fourth of July weekend started with a bit of good news. Seems one of the folks at Steve's work quit on the spot, so Steve is now working full time ... for now. As a worn-down existentialist, it made me feel good. Nice way to start a three-day weekend.

We had corn on the cob and hamburgers on Saturday, and hot dogs and corn on the cob (with potato salad) on Sunday, and went over to our friend John's for dessert (which magically included egg salad sandwiches and watermelon) and watched the fireworks in South Pasadena which appear over the church on the corner where he lives.

And Saturday we went out to flooring outlet sales rooms to collect information on what we might want to do with the first phase of remodeling (from the floor up, as they say). On Monday, Steve gathered together the information we had gotten (he took lots of photos of materials, etc.), and sent the information off for the estimate.

Tuesday morning, I had a message on my cell phone. A person from McGraw-Hill had called from their New York office. When I called back I found myself on the receiving end of a phone interview for a job I had applied to a month ago.

The interview went really well, and the guy interviewing me said I should be getting a call from the HR person in Monrovia in the next couple days.

My God. A second interview. I immediately got out my portfolio and started rearranging things for a presentation.

This is one one of those jobs that, when you read the description, you think to yourself, "This was made for me. I'd be really good in this position." It's working on a group of architectural and construction trade magazines which McGraw-Hill publishes from its Monrovia offices. That's only about seven miles from home, so the commute wouldn't be bad at all. And the pay grade is right around what I was getting at The Hollywood Reporter, so it would be picking things up, economically, and continuing on.

I didn't hear from the HR person today. I'm waiting to hear from him tomorrow (I was actually given his name). If I don't hear from him by the end of Friday, I'm calling New York back on Monday to goose things a little.

Yeah, I know it's just an interview (well, a second interview), and there are probably eight or 10 people that they're interviewing for the same position, but it seems just so right for me.

So the portfolio is all set and spruced up. I've practiced the presentation, I'm ready for the interview. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that this is the end of unemployment: a new place to be, a new set of challenges to call my own. The end of unemployment checks, the beginning of real paychecks. Or maybe not. Prayers, please, people; prayers to add to my own.

It's a year since I was officially separated from the Nielsen Company. In August I exhaust my unemployment payments. In December I lose my COBRA health supplemental payments. Getting this job could be another one of those skin-of-our-teeth experiences that God puts us through to remind us how fragile things are on this planet.

I'll post an update when appropriate. Until then, happy thoughts; very happy thoughts, everyone.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

World's Largest Paperweight

Well, it came today: the glass sculpture that I bought when I was up in Eureka. When I woke up this morning, there was a message on my cell phone from the shipping company. I called them back and the woman told me that the truck was in my area and the driver would arrive "pretty soon."

He did, in a very large truck. There, in the back, strapped onto its own pallet was the box: five feet long by two feet tall and two feet deep. "It weighs about 80 pounds," the driver said, and I told him that sounded about right. "What do you got in there?" he asked. I was tempted to tell him a paperweight, but replied, "Art glass," instead.

He moved the pallet to the tailgate and lowered it to the ground, then cut the box from the pallet and tipped it onto the dolly. He got the box to our front steps and together we hoisted it up into the entryway. "Sign this," he said. I told him I wanted to open the box and inspect the piece before signing off that it was in good condition. He complained and said it only meant the box wasn't damaged. "If there's anything wrong inside, that was their packing, not us," he said. I kept dismantling the box. "We're not supposed to wait," he said. But he did.

The packing job was almost overkill, and I have never experienced so many of those foam packing peanuts (I call them "ghost turds") in my life. The piece, however, was in fine shape, so I signed and the driver left happily. Afterwards I wondered if I should have tipped him.

Once I had the piece entirely unwrapped, I had a mound of ghost turds four inches deep and about five feet in diameter. Luckily, the cats did not seem at all interested in them or I could have had a real mess. But, after about a half an hour of corralling and scooping and corralling some more, I got all those turds back into the shipping box.

These pictures just don't do the piece justice. It is 36 inches tall and about 14 inches in diameter at the base. The internal coloring and general refraction and reflection of the piece is amazing. The overall impression is contemporary, but much of the technique to create it comes Venetian glassworking in the 18th century, so the color inclusions have an almost classical appearance. It was the one thing I splurged on with the inheritance from mom. I kind of consider it her last birthday present to me. The rest of the inheritance is being soberly spent on home improvements and tucked away in CDs and IRA accounts.

This piece, however, is going to be the visual inspiration for the remodeling that we have planned.

So you'll just have to drop by some time to see the thing for yourself. It has no function except to do what it does with the light around it. And that's pretty cool, if you ask me.