Everyone Knows It's Windy

Yes, the holidays are here. In Pasadena, they came in with a blast, literally.

Last Wednesday afternoon, I received a letter from Pasadena City College thanking me for my application and saying that they had found other candidates more closely matching their needs, etc., etc. Kept on file for etc., etc. Within a few hours of reading the letter, a great wind came up from the north, blowing 45 to 55 mph, with gusts up to 85 and 95 mph: Hurricane forces bearing down on our town full of old, noble trees.

By the morning, there were hundreds of trees up rooted and tumbled upon buildings and vehicles; tens of thousands of branches, some of monstrous sizes, ripped off and strewn in the streets, making normal traffic impossible. Roofs were blown clean of tiles, temporary structures like the tents in the Christmas tree lots were twisted and tossed hither and yon.

Hither and yon: sounds like an acupuncture clinic.

Now, whether receiving the letter and the winds were linked is anyone's guess. I've got a huge ego and I'm still pondering what sort of omen this might infer. One thing's for certain, though; while I will continue to look for employment, I am going solo as a designer, which means a shitload of work in the next few weeks to gear up for launching the studio at the beginning of the new year.

I just got back from the bank, having taken the funds from a CD that matured today and moved them into an active account in order to fund my new business endeavor. I have to spend as much of the launch cash as I can by the end of the month in order to make my taxes go away for 2011. This can be done.

But also other activities await: reworking the website to reflect my new logo and look, filing for business permits, joining the chamber of commerce, printing cards and brochures, purchasing color swatch books, and joining the AIGA.

I've started a Facebook page for the studio and have to remember to begin taking pictures to put up there. I'm going to concentrate or sharing pictures of local public graphics that I really like, as well as updates on what's happening with the launch of the studio and tracking its progress. Here's a photo I took at Andy's Diner on Colorado Boulevard (a place where we usually go to have Saturday breakfast before starting the specific chores for the day. I can guarantee you there is no Photoshopping involved here, just a weird grouping of objects in the right light.

We got the tree put up this last weekend, but we have yet to finish putting on the ornaments, and we haven't begun to put out the other decorations in the room. I think this will be our nightly busywork this week.

So I leave you with the first entry in my holiday video offerings: this was the favorite from last year's collection, so I use it to kick off the blogging for this month of months, this year when Hannukah, Christmas and Kwanza are all piled on top of each other.