Monday, September 24, 2012

Hothothot Exciting Times

It's been so damn hot. Seven weeks of hot and the weather people keep promising us a few days of cooler weather, but they always get moved ahead a few days, and we're stuck with hothothot.

Meanwhile, the entire Los Angeles area was majorly distracted by the arrival and flyover of the space shuttle Endeavor on the way to its final home at the California Science Museum, somewhere in or near Exposition Park. I'm sure you've seen footage or photos of the shuttle riding piggyback on the 747. Everyone has a photo, it seems, but me. Even at work, Steve heard it and went outside and saw it (although he snapped no photographs).

I was very dutiful and watched its progress on the television on Friday morning, and when it was scheduled to fly over JPL here in Pasadena, I was out on the street, my iPhone ready, for a shot I could share here. I heard the rumble of the low-flying jet but saw nothing. Feeling rather bummed out, I broke down and took this photo on the way home from grocery shopping on Saturday: it's the Goodyear Blimp hovering over the Rose Bowl during a USC football game. Not quite as stunning as the shuttle, but an unusual sight in most people's skies.

I've been working on the design samples for the Chamber of Commerce Directory and finishing up the work Martha sent me on the ASC handbooks. I've also been working on putting out a weekly e-mail newsletter which links to the blog page on my business' website. There will be no newsletter this week, however, since I quickly realized, after four newsletters, that there's just not enough of interest to put out something on a weekly basis. So the next newsletter will come out on the 1st of October, explaining that it is now monthly, much to the relief of everyone receiving it, I'm sure.


You probably have heard about the older woman in Italy who decided to "restore" a fresco of Christ in her local church and ended up botching the job. The final image was horrific but, as shown here, even the most tragic of results still points out that we are made in his image. (Or so Bob Ross, here, would claim; do you remember his how-to painting show on PBS?).

Steve and I have decided to head to Eureka between Christmas and New Years (his only paid week of vacation at Pearce Plastics) as a much-needed getaway. Testing out the travel websites for that week, it soon became apparent that the only way we could possibly afford the trip was to fly on the actual holidays themselves, when the fares were reasonable.

So we leave on Christmas Day and return on New Year's Eve. In between we don't have much planned except checking out more housing in the area with our Realtor up there. The whole trip was predicated on my sister's belief that we needed to spend a week up there in the winter to make sure we didn't mind the cold weather. I don't think it will be an issue, though, since it's always in the 50s or 60s and rains most of the year. Steve and I both like rain and cool cloudy days, so I don't think there will be a problem. The rain gear will be packed in any case.

That's about it for now. Work on the directory will be starting in earnest in a few weeks, and a lot of the initial work is just building and resizing advertisements to go in the directory. The real build won't commence until November, I think.

Hope this finds everyone well and happy. And now that I'm not churning out a blog and newsletter a week on my website, perhaps there will be more punctual submissions here.

Monday, September 3, 2012

More of the Same

There’s been no blog post for two reasons: I’ve been busy and I’ve been doing the same thing.

We had our first meeting for the Chamber of Commerce Business Directory, and this month I’m focusing on coming up with three different design schemes for that publication, ready for presentation at our next meeting in early October.

Martha over at ASC has sent more chapters my way, some for revision and some for original layout. She’s been on vacation for the last week, so that work got turned around and two days from now, when she returns, I’m sure more work on the handbooks will be forthcoming.

The one event of note is that I’ve initiated my weekly newsletter and marketing blog as my primary ongoing marketing tool for the studio. The inaugural newsletter went out on Aug. 27, and the second one goes out tomorrow at 6:15 a.m. PDT. So, I am spending my spare time browsing on the Internet and culling information for the short articles that go into the newsletter and the marketing surveys that drive the blog. The idea is to give small business owners a little something to read every week, taking them to the website and hopefully putting my name in their heads as a designer of choice.

If you’d like to be added to the mailing list for the newsletter, go to my website, fill out the contact form and I’ll get your e-mail address added to the list.

The weather is still hot and more tropical moisture is said to be moving into the area, making it hot and sticky. The 10-day forecast is a carbon copy of the last 10 days, and September is notorious for being the hottest month of the year, so no relief on the climate front.

To sum it up, life has just gone on: the wildfires are nowhere near us, the summer-storm flooding is in the high deserts, far away. We did get one brief thunderstorm move through Pasadena last week, but it lasted maybe half an hour. There have been moderate earthquakes — a three-point-something over there and a four-point-something out there — but nothing really worth getting out of your chair for, even if we felt them.

Steve and I have decided to spend the week between Christmas and New Years in Eureka, taking another look at the real estate in the area and planning more walks and hikes in the forest and on the beaches, familiarizing ourselves with the lay of the land. Hopefully, there won’t be too much rain, but we have the rain gear ready if there is.

As you might know, Steve is looking toward retirement next year (just 10 months away), and the whole concept of my studio is so that I can have an independent source of income for as long as I choose to continue working (which is forever, at this point; I can’t see sitting around and doing nothing in particular). At some point in the next few years, we plan on making that move north and living out our years among the redwoods.

For now, we’re waiting here for cooler weather here and the end of daylight savings time, keeping ourselves busy while we do.

Hope this finds everyone well and happy.