Where, There and Every Here

Yeah, so it's been three weeks since I made an entry. I've been kind of busy.

You may recall the last entry was on the day I submitted my mailing at the post office. Well, the next day, I got two phone calls from potential clients. One's a well-established beauty salon here in town and the other is a private mental health-rehab hospital, also here in town. Out of the gate, I did a poster for the salon (for a charity auction they were donating to) and a redesign of a flyer for a seniors program for the hospital.

I've also been spiffing up and expanding on my contact database, which is now almost 900 entries. Then there's folding another 500 brochures and pasting 500 cards inside them, joining the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, revamping my website with more pages and information, and finalizing the custom designs for my business forms in Quickbooks.

I also have been developing my business page on Facebook and my Twitter site. Facebook has been somewhat of a challenge, since I had just gotten the hang of working with the page and they rolled out an entirely new look and format, so it was back to the drawing board (digitally speaking) to come up with a new look for the page.

Big treat for me on Monday of this week: my sister-in-law Pam was in town (well, Laguna Niguel in Orange County, which is just down the road, in Southern Californian terms) with her friend Connie, visiting their friend Marcia. So the three women and I got together in downtown Hollywood for lunch.

I picked the Pig & Whistle for its authentic 1920s crazy Hollywood pseudo-Moorish architecture, and because they have an excellent shepherd's pie. It also allowed them to see the stars on the sidewalk (the Hollywood Walk of Fame), check out the Kodak Theater (which Billy Crystal dubbed the "Chapter 11 Theater" at the Oscars ceremony) and see the footprints in cement in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater.

I hopped on the Gold Line light rail here in Pasadena and transferred to the Red Line subway at Union Station to head out to Hollywood and Highland. The women, who had spent the morning at Venice Beach (at Pam's request, I understand), arrived at lunch around 1:30. We had a wonderful time. I had the club sandwich and a vodka collins. I can't remember what everyone else had (though no one had the shepherd's pie), but I do remember the conversation was scintillating.

The next highlight of my week was my first social/networking mixer as a new member of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce. It was held at Mijares, the oldest restaurant in Pasadena (and really good Mexican food). I got to hand out six or eight cards and mingle with a dozen folks or so. It went fairly well, considering that walking into a roomful of strangers and striking up conversations is one of the things I hate most. My reward was ordering a couple of their "garbage" burritos to go and bringing them back home for dinner.

The one thing I haven't gotten the hang of yet is trolling the Internet to find interesting things to tweet about or post on Facebook. And I also want to expand my links page, because there are so many interesting sites on the web having to do with typography and design.

So, all in all, things are going well. In less than a month I've gotten two clients (my goal is 12 by the end of the year), and I've started networking both online and in reality. Keeping the conversations going and sprightly is my next goal. And posting relevant, profound and astounding things here on the regular basis, of course.

Of course.