Downpourette

Southern California is getting its first autumn rains today. Of course, we call it a "storm," which will drop an inch or two of rain in a 12-hour period. It's actually the tail end of a low that brought the northern part of the state much more weather, but down here we have news teams covering it like it was the arrival of Will & Kate.

But the day is cool and I love being inside watching the gentle falling of the rain. For the first time in months, I've been able to put on a long-sleeve knit shirt and not break into a sweat.

Yesterday, I met with a woman Steve knows who does custom chocolates as a sideline. I am going to give her marketing stuff (such as it is) a makeover, with a new logo, brochures, cards, etc. I'm doing the work gratis, since I really need something recent in my general design samples online. I'm also going to put together a website for her and do the photography of her products for it.

I'm still waiting on the job at Pasadena City College. I checked in with the woman in HR with whom I am in communication, and she said the position was still being reviewed by the committee, and that I should check back in a couple more weeks if I haven't heard anything by then.

As I've said before, I'm holding off putting the big bucks down to start my studio until I know whether this job will pan out or not, so the only thing I have left is to redesign my own website with the new logo and all, and wait to upload it until I find out.

Until then, we're being very good about pinching our pennies, except for the one extravagance of spending $100 to replace our Blu-Ray player. We got our first one a couple years ago, and it was not playing some of the discs we get from Netflix, so we decided to upgrade the firmware on the machine. After much research and several calls to the Sony "help line," we had burned a firmware upgrade disc, which we popped into the machine.

It accepted the disc and started whirring and flashing, and whirring and flashing. After about 45 minutes of whirring and flashing, we noticed it had not advanced from the readout "0/9." What's more, there was no way of getting the disc to eject (we had tried Sony's technique and it hadn't worked). The last call to the help line elicited a verbal shrug from the "helper," who said to take it into an authorized repair shop for servicing. Knowing that this would cost far more than the unit was worth, Steve decided to use some of his overtime cash to purchase the new one.

While we were installing the new player, we also broke down and pulled the old VCR from the stack, as we hadn't used it in years. This will also give us a good reason to donate our remaining VHS tapes and get some much-needed room back in the upstairs closet.

Well, we seem to have arrived at a lull in the "storm," as the rain has stopped falling. But the skies are still a close dark gray, and I think we have a few more hours of downpourettes in store before tomorrow morning arrives. By the weekend, it promises to be back up into the 80s and 90s, one last stab at summer, which is usually the case in mid-October here in La-La-Land.

Nothing Doing

I keep on telling myself I'm going to write something on the blog, then when I sit down to compose it, I can't think of anything to say.

Stuff is in a holding pattern right now, and although I try to keep myself busy, I still feel like I'm not doing anything of importance, since there's no real direction to work in right now. So here's a picture of the cat with her big, six-toed, snow-shoe paws: This is a typical pose for her on the couch: She looks like she's ready for a manicure.

I realized the other day that she has never known a time when I haven't been at home all day. It's going to be a big surprise if I get a job and start leaving every day in the morning, just like Steve. Working a business would mean even more comings and goings, which would keep her constantly confused (something I attempt to do on a regular basis in any case).

No real job prospects have popped up, and the few that have I haven't heard from. The one prospect that I really hope pans out, the position at Pasadena City College, is still being reviewed by a committee. The woman in HR told me to e-mail her if I hadn't heard anything by next Wednesday.

So I've been filling up my time with constructive things I can do to get ready for opening the business if this position doesn't come through. It seems to me that it is the perfect job: within two miles from home, working for a worthwhile concern doing things I'm familiar with and getting a good salary for it. After 846 days, hundreds upon hundreds of resumes sent, and a half dozen actual interviews, I'm ready to give up on the job market if this one doesn't pan out.

So the brochure is finished and ready to print. The business cards are finished and ready to print. The type specimen book is finished and ready to print. It seems like pretty much everything I can do without spending money I have already done. Once I know which way the ball drops on the PCC job, I'll have a direction in my life.

But right now it's rather schizophrenic: Work on the business stuff, then spend time with online tutorials boning up on Word and PowerPoint (I know both programs but haven't used them in a while, so I'm checking out the latest versions at lynda.com as a refresher course). Everything else has been pretty much normal, mundane and everyday.

The summer is winding down and keeps making meager two- and three-day attempts at rallying one last heat wave. And, while things have been warm, the last hurrah of summer just hasn't happened. We might get rain this weekend (tropical in nature), and by this time next week, it promises to be in the low 70s with another low front out of the northwest bringing rain. Hopefully, that will mean fall has really arrived.

The one thing I have been dealing with the last two weeks is toe injuries. First I bashed the little toe on my right foot and separated the nail from its bed. It's a small nail (as shown here), so its removal was not painful at all, but there was a day or so when I wasn't sure whether it would reattach itself or give up the ghost and come off.

Several days later I whacked my left big toe and broke the nail, but luckily not down to the quick. Then a few days after that, I drove the little toe on my left foot into a chair leg and broke it (the toe, not the chair). That one has been my major bane in the last week to 10 days: At first it was swollen, then it was sore and stiff, and now I'm getting those itchy-twingey pains that come when a bone knits. I rammed my right big toe into the stair riser this evening, but no lasting damage was done.

The phrase comes to mind: "Put on some shoes, idiot," but at first it was too hot for shoes and socks, especially as I was foregoing turning on the air conditioner on all but the hottest days. Then, even as the days cooled somewhat, my little toes were too sore to push into a shoe. Looks like fall is coming just in time to protect against any more tarsal incursions.

I've been very good with my savings. The trick is not to spend any of the money except on must-haves and gotta-pays. Makes for a boring existence, but hopefully this period will be over soon and I will either have the security of a good job or the tight-rope exhilaration of starting a new business and drumming up customers on my own. Just as soon as I know, you'll know.

Fine Grind

Another two-week lapse between postings here. The weather has been hot, which always brings on the lethargy in me, and I've been focusing more and more on gearing up for a dive headlong into the world of free-lancing.

The Fictitious Business Name statement has been filed and published, so I've been focusing more on setting up the studio. The more I plan and sketch, outline and rough out, I find there's more to be done, more to get done before I can even think of moving forward with a presentation.

The first big thing is all the sample stuff I need. I have to have color sample books (available for a mere $400). Then there's paper samples (units run $5 apiece, and I would need several dozen, at least). Then there's type sample books: serif, sans serif, slab serif, script and cursive, display and novelty fonts.

Now here's something I can do without putting out any money, so I've been spending five or six hours a day setting up templates and filling them with the typefaces I have available for use. It's a Sisyphean chore, even with streamlining the procedure as much as possible. I figure I've got about 2,500 fonts (not all activated, of course), and they all need organizing. One thing I have found, though, is that I'm still good at remembering most of the names and what the fonts look like. They are still probably my most favorite thing about graphic design.

I brought the format down two basic layouts; one for text faces and one for display faces. The first one (above) can handle up to four versions of a typeface per page and is organized by font families. I have about 245 of those pages. Then there is the single-font layout (left). I have about a hundred of these specimen pages so far for script faces, and the display and novelty faces promise to be just as numerous. I'm still on the fence about putting in blackletter fonts (also known as Old English or Fraktur), but they are popular with the kids. I'm up to 1,000 typefaces so far, and could well over 1,200 in the bound type books once I'm done. Each page has my logo on it, which makes it a lot more "mine" than just a generic type page.

The next legal procedure, of course, is getting my city business license. This is pricey, though, so I don't want to make that leap until I'm sure there is no job on the horizon. And there still may be a job on the horizon.

I dropped an e-mail to the woman in the Human Resources Department at Pasadena City College who helped me out with questions about the application. She wrote back and said that the committee had not reviewed the applications yet (the deadline for submission was Aug. 26), so I should give it two or three weeks and get back to her if I hadn't heard anything by that time.

So now I'm back to working on my brochure design. I was designing it as a square, since my logo is a set of concentric squares, but, in checking out mailer requirements, I find that the post office does not like mailers that are square, since the machines don't know which side is up (normally the long side). They're being awfully picky for someone who's going down the tubes because of lack of mail.

I played around with rectangular formats for the brochure but never came up with anything that pleased me. So I've gone back to the square format, which I guess I will just put inside an envelope that's oblong when I have to mail it. This is now putting me onto a whole new tract, which is having a packet to give out rather than just a brochure.

I've also got a potential small business client on the line who I have offered to do a free campaign for, including setting up a website. We have e-mailed and called back and forth and have yet to actually set up a meeting. Wouldn't you know it, she makes chocolates, so I'm sure payment will come in some form. She basically creates the chocolate novelties on a per-order basis, so a boutique-type website would be ideal for her. Working with her might also tie me into wedding planners and event planners in the area, who could also be a lucrative market for my work.

And just this last week, Steve was at work and the sales rep from The Castle Press here in Pasadena (that does all their label printing) dropped by. Steve mentioned my setting up a studio, and Greg (the rep) gave him a card and told him to have me e-mail a resume, which I did. I also mentioned that I wanted to make an appointment to drop by their plant and check out the equipment and what services they offer. I think that will happen sometime next week.

It's been cooler this week (80s and 90s instead of 90s and 100s), and I'm hoping that there will only be one or two more hot spells before autumn comes around and, perhaps, some rain. We've gotten plenty of thunderstorms in the high desert, but that's over the San Gabriel mountains, at the foot of which we live. You can see the giant clouds plume up into the sky behind the mountains and you know there's weather happening over there, but on our side it's just hot and humid.

So here it is, day 832 unemployed. It makes my head reel. Who would have thought? Thankfully, we have no children to feed and clothe, no large debt to service, and though the value of our home took the same hit in loss of value as everyone else's, at least we still have equity. I just wish I could figure out what God wants me to get out of all this.

Does God really want me to join the ranks of small-business people? (Not small business-people). Wouldn't that mean God's a capitalist? If this is the case, shouldn't churches be selling stock?

Breakfast on the Sidewalk

HOT. Hot. Hot-hot-hot-hot. It has been HOT! Yes, you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. And bacon and hash browns too, I'm sure. Today, we're getting a break, and it only hit 89° on the patio. Still, I turned on the air conditioner around 3 o'clock: Hopefullly, it will be off by 7 and we'll be able to open up and let the evening breeze do the cooling.

The hottest day was yesterday and, wouldn't you know it, I had a job interview for 2 p.m. Better, the job was down in Vernon, one of the grubbiest, most forgotten areas of Los Angeles. It's all huge, impersonal, industrial buildings and pre-World War II little brick structures with uncertain usages (abandoned, flop houses, crack houses; criminal storefronts; who knows?) The few people on the streets looked depressed and defeated.

The position I interviewed for was designing catalogues for a huge lighting corporation (the creative equivalent of working the drive-up window at Arby's). The building was dismal. The furniture was old, the leather upholstery wearing through on the conference room chairs. I was isolated therein and given several "tests" on customer services skills and accuracy. I felt like a rat being goaded through a maze I had rapidly decreasing interest in completing.

After 45 minutes, my interviewer entered. She was a zaftig 20-something who was leaving and had been saddled with the task of finding candidates for her replacement. She was nice and congenial. The interview went well. Then she said, "One last thing: I want you to build this table in InDesign," and handed me a printout.

I explained I had never built a table in InDesign and she balked. "How would you do this?" I explained an alternate way of building it without a table, and she spent five minutes telling me how it wouldn't work.

"I thought you said you knew InDesign," she said with a slight accusatory tone in her voice. "I do," I replied, "and if you show me how you want this put together, I'll be doing it in 10 minutes: Just because I've never built a table in the program doesn't mean I can't."

Freaking little upstart.

I was designing professionally when she was a blastula straining to divide in her mother's womb. I had a solid working knowledge of color theory when she was filling diapers for a living. I've spent my career learning graphic design programs, expanding with each new version release: nine versions of Photoshop, 13 of Illustrator, six of InDesign, not to mention Quark, PageMaker, FreeHand and a half-dozen others that no longer exist.

Why, when youth looks at maturity, does it see incipient idiocy and incompetence, fragility and mental impotence? This woman didn't know the first thing about web design, sitting there in her 18-34 prime demographic, and her head obviously started spinning when I explaining the emergence of HTML5 and CSS3, their inconsistent browser support and what will be happening in web design over the next five years. (Isn't that cute; the old guy's babbling. Give him a cookie.)

She saw my portfolio; it should be obvious what I'm capable of doing. Or maybe I just found all those magazines and papers while dumpster diving in Hollywood and I'm making up the rest of it.

All said and done, things turned out well: I'm not going to have to make an hour-and-a-half commute surrounded by tractor-trailers to do work I would hate for less money than I'm worth. Also, I came home, fired up InDesign, and generated that damn table of hers in about 20 minutes, anchored objects in prestyled boxes, nested type styles and the lot.

Jobs seem to be popping up all over. Pasadena City College just advertised for a graphic designer and, of course, I applied (it's only a mile and a half from the house). The application period closed last Friday, so I assume they're reviewing things this week, and I hope I get called.

I think my chances are good, since they were only accepting applications through the mail, just like in the olden days. You had to download their application form, then include it with a cover letter and a resume. I think cover letters put me ahead in the game, since I'm a good writer and can organize and execute a comprehensive cover letter that informs as well as impresses.

Also, Variety is once again looking for a graphic designer. If you will recall, I interviewed with them last November/December and was passed over for what reasons I know not. In any case, I suppose things could be different now, someone could have had a change of heart, so I sent my resume over there once again, but I won't get too upset if I don't hear from anyone.

All these jobs makes things very schizophrenic: part of the time I'm working on putting together the studio, part of the time I'm prepping applications and resumes and cover letters for jobs. Which will win out, do you think?

The Lost Month

It's been just over a month since I last posted here, and I just feel terrible about it. Well, maybe not, but a fair amount has been going on, and I'm feeling like I'm in some kind of chrysalis.

The day after the last post, Steve and I went up to Grover Beach for the family reunion. The other out-of-towners had arrived on Thursday (we got there Friday evening) and stayed until Monday (we left Sunday afternoon), so we got an abbreviated version of the experience.

The house my sister Kittie rented for the weekend was really nice, and a good space for so many people: There were Steve and Pam and Emily and Amanda and Natalie from Wisconsin, and Jim and Carla and Chance from Washington state staying at the house, then Kittie and her husband David (who live in Grover Beach) and Steve and I from Pasadena (we stayed at the Motel 6 with all the bubbas from the San Joaquin Valley who come over regularly in the summer to run their all-terrain vehicles up and down the Oceano Dunes just south of Pismo Beach).

The rental was a three-bedroom house with a kitchy shoreline-themed decor in a mauve-and-taupe color scheme that reminded me of the 1980s. It was a no-smoking rental, but there was a large balcony off the living room on the second story, so all the smokers were accommodated there.

By the time we arrived Friday evening, Jim was making our family's version of tacos (in honor of Mom, who fed five kids very frugally on these). He made 36, which is a record. (For a family of seven, Mom used to churn out 18 to 20 for a single dinner.) Unfortunately, Steve and I had stopped and eaten on the drive up, so I wasn't up for more food. And, besides, I had just made these self-same tacos the week before back home.

Saturday, Jim again took the culinary helm, making a very nice breakfast scramble for all present. I could tell, by the time he was done, that he was starting to burn out on the chef's role.

That afternoon we all headed out to Morro Bay to stroll the Embarcadero and eat seafood and such. Steve and I were the first to arrive at the bay and parked at the south end of the Embarcadero, across from the boat landing. Here's a picture of the view from there. We walked up, past all the shops, and ran into most of the family during our excursion (we had taken separate cars and agreed to go our separate ways, agreeing on a return time in Grover Beach).

Since my birthday was coming up, Steve suggested we look for something I might like in the gift shops that line the bayfront. We took the strategy of browsing the shops on our way north and then stopping on the way back to the car if there was something really special I liked.

At the north end of the waterfront we ran into the Wisconsin folks, who were standing in line to get seafood cooked fresh from that day's catch: There was quite a line. We bade them farewell and headed back south, stopping at a shop on the way back to purchase a set of raku vases I had seen. Turns out the artist who makes them uses horsehair to create the beautiful texture on the vases. They're really beautiful (and reasonably priced, too), and something I will cherish for a long time.

On the way out of Morro Bay, we stopped at the local Foster's Freeze and I introduced Steve to Pepsi Freezes (a milk shake made with ice cream and Pepsi instead of ice cream and milk).

Upon everyone's return to the house, we had hamburgers from the grill on the balcony (with David doing the honors as cook) and then headed out to the beach to build a bonfire, roast marshmallows and make S'mores. It was kind of a bittersweet gathering, since we had congregated in the same spot for an impromptu memorial the week Mom died in 2009.

David and Chance (who are most clearly kindred spirits) had arranged the fuel for the bonfire. They arrived in David's truck with cut wood. Lots of cut wood. A couple chunks were as big as yule logs. Then David, like an impish Boy Scout from hell, began building the fire. He and Chance kept adding to it, coaxing it, nursing it into a contained inferno that could have been used as a signal fire for pirate smugglers: at times the flames shot 12 and 14 feet into the air. Other folks on the beach, their little campfires glowing, looked worriedly in our direction as the flames shot higher, glowing embers flying into the sky.

While we made S'mores (with either undercooked or massively charred marshmallows), someone wondered at who invented marshmallows and, for that matter, graham crackers. Several of us took out our smart phones and checked on this. Marshmallows are from Ancient Egypt, believe it or not, first used for medicinal purposes, and Graham crackers were invented by Rev. Sylvester Graham as a health food. Who knew S'mores were so good for you?

After all the fixin's were gone, we headed back to the house in small groups. By now it was 9:30 or so. When Steve and I headed back to the hotel an hour later, David and Chance still had not returned: It was 1:30 in the morning before they returned home, and I'm sure the fire still hadn't gone out completely by then.

Sunday morning we headed over to the house around 10:30 (at the request of everyone; seems we all wanted to avoid an early breakfast) and I made my renowned French french toast while Steve churned out bacon at the stove (I had gone out and purchased an electric griddle just for this occasion and still haven't found a place for it to live here at our house).

After brunch, Steve and I said our goodbyes and headed back to Pasadena, taking a bleak detour on Highway 166 through Maricopa, then down Interstate 5 to avoid Carmageddon. When we got into the San Fernando Valley, we saw the advisory signs on the freeway saying "405 open, thank you, Los Angeles, for your patience." Turns out everyone was so freaked out about the potential of horrible traffic that the entire area had just stayed home, and there were no traffic jams anywhere all weekend long.

After getting home, the next two weeks for me were a kind of lost time. I had planned on focusing on organizing for starting my studio but spent a lot of time dabbling here and dabbling there, never really finding focus on any one task, a little bit overwhelmed by the entire process. By the time my birthday rolled around on the 29th, I was feeling sort of depleted by it all.

The week after, though, Steve and I went over to David and Deeann's house for barbecue, and I got my motivation back. Deeann was the Art Director at The Hollywood Reporter when I worked there, and both of us were laid off on the same day in June 2009. She has been slowly building her own studio since, and it was very enheartening to talk to her about the process. Her husband, Dave, still works at the Reporter as international editor, and it was interesting to talk with him about the massive changes which have occurred in the two years since I left.

The day after this get-together was our third wedding anniversary. It's so heartbreaking to realize that, these last three years, no other gay couples in California have been able to tie the knot without going out of state (since California recognizes same-sex marriages performed in other states/countries).

Proposition 8 is still working its way through the courts, with the pro-8 forces dragging their legal heels to stretch out the process as long as possible. Court after court has overturned the proposition, and if it goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, don't be surprised if even Scalia votes to overturn it. Equal protection under the 14th Amendment is a compelling (and accurate) argument, and the counter-arguments are all based on fear and opinionated prejudice.

As for my other half, Steve: He has been so wonderful through this whole trial of unemployment. Without his support, I think I'd be living under a freeway overpass by now, having an extended nervous breakdown and urinating in the most inauspicious places. And he's just as supportive of the idea of opening a studio, offering to help out with bookkeeping an collections.

During our visit, Deeann lent me a couple books on business organization, planning, marketing and pricing written specifically for designers. I've gotten through half of one and it's really helping me organize what I have to do before I even start up.

So now I'm spending two days a week focusing on the job hunt and three days a week getting all the information together that I need to start the business in a rational and well-organized way.

Still, I'm sort of freaked out by the start-up costs for this venture. My cousin Pat, who worked for TWA back in the day, used to talk about being "dollared to death" when traveling: a dollar for this, two dollars for that; not crippling individually, but collectively those little charges started adding up as you traveled. Business start-up is much the same thing, except instead of singles it's $25 here, $125 there, $200 for this and $500 for that.

Now, I have been saving my spare change from the day I got laid off. I promised myself that I would use it to do something special when I was once again employed. So every day I take the change out of my pocket and put it into an old silver flagon on the dresser; when that fills up, I pour it into a bright red tin. During a moment of panic over money this week, I decided to take out the coins and count them. I can tell you that it took a fair amount of time. Here's the pile of quarters. All tolled, there's over $200 in that tin; almost enough money to purchase the color swatch books that I need for the studio.

But then there's paper samples, an upgrade to my Adobe Creative Suite, a laptop to make my presentations portable, business cards and introductory brochures (which have to be impressive for a graphic design concern, so I can't go cheap).

I wonder about the wisdom of selling one of my duplicate organs to finance it all.

So this nice long posting brings us up to date. Things are good. My biggest anxiety is looking forward to all the networking ahead, putting myself out there and working creatively to entice clients into using my services. A part of me really hopes that a nice, good-paying job lands in my lap by the end of the year; another part can't wait to get out there and wow the business world with my creative acumen.

Stay tuned to find out who wins out.

Visitors, Visiting, Visitatum

Well, the phenomenon of Carmageddon is almost upon us. Yes, the heaviest-traveled freeway in the country is going to shut down for two days, and, as the name coined for the event would indicate, Southern Californians seem to think this could be the end of the world. It's getting way more press than the recent visit from Will and Kate (the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to those of you who haven't had them pop into your town).

Yessiree, it seems we've been getting lots of visitors recently. On June 22nd, my sister Kittie called from the Hilton here in Pasadena. Seems she was at a meeting of the organization of Enrolled Tax Agents (I can't recall the acronym). She's now president of her chapter on the Central Coast, so she was representing the little people. She must have been getting bored, because she finally called and wanted to set up a dinner date with Steve and I.

Steve already had a previous engagement, but I picked up Kittie on Friday night and we popped over to Old Town Pasadena and had dinner at Mi Piace. I had the Fettuccine Bolognese (handmade pasta and the best Bolognese sauce on the planet) and Kittie had the Perciatelli Alfredo (best. alfredo. ever.). They also have incredible desserts, so we had one and ordered three to go (one for Steve and one for each of us for breakfast!). It was a short visit, but fun.

We discovered, with Kittie's visit, that Patty the cat does not like women. She's not crazy about visitors of any kind (buzz our apartment from the front gate and she's like a bullet flying up the stairs to hide), but women seem to have her particularly freaked out. I picked her up and brought her into the living room to meet Kittie and the cat looked like she was about to be trussed up on a spit, and we didn't see her for an hour after Kittie left.

Marcel, the old male cat, seems a little mellower, which is weird, because he is a rock; he is an island. He sniffs at an outstretched hand and then lopes off upstairs until the commotion is over.

The same was true when my friend Jessie came to visit just this week. Jessie is presently teaching at the international school in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. When she arrived, she was tanned and thin and looking happier than I have ever seen her. She is definitely a tropical flower, because she has blossomed in Trinidad.

She points out that Trinidad is pretty low-rent and third-world, but still, it's in the Caribbean. If they gave someone a trip there on Wheel of Fortune, I bet they'd jump up and down and squeal with delight. We have an open invitation to visit, but I think her contract will be over long before we have a chance to use it.

So what are Steve and I doing for Carmageddon? Well, there's a family reunion in Grover Beach which was scheduled long before the public became aware of this 405 closure, so we'll be heading out of town on Friday afternoon, passing the north end of the closure about seven hours before it goes into effect.

You can be sure, though, that we'll be skirting it on our way back: The map above shows the way we normally would come in green, the 405 closure in blue, and our planned route in red. So we'll head inland on the 126 at Carpenteria, go through Santa Paula and Fillmore (two very pretty little towns), hooking up with the 5, then jumping on the 210 to head back home.

Alive and Well

Just a quick entry to let you know I'm alive and well. This last weekend we took our annual pilgramage to South Pasadena and friend John's house for a weenie roast, the fireworks and his obligatory strawberry cake. Every year we sing "Happy Birthday."

This year was capped off by a mindless spewing of libertarian/conspiracy theory rant by one of the invitees. There were only a couple of us left at the table when he started. Everyone just kind of sat there, stunned, while this guy spouted (or regurgitated would be more accurate) all the fringe right-wing propaganda he had imbibed. He was onto the international banking conspiracy (which was Hitler's excuse for wiping out the Jews, but I wasn't going to bring that up), when Steve and I just had to get going because he had work the next day. The guy used to be a waiter, but now he sells upscale cookware on the road at Costco locations across the continent. Anyway, here's some video of the fireworks from John's front yard.



My unemployment has expired, but I'm not feeling too horrible about it. I have started splitting my time between job searching and gearing up for the business launch.

A lot has to happen before I can really begin marketing myself: Beyond the paperwork for the fictitious business name statement and the city permits for Pasadena, I also have to rework my website and gear it toward clients rather than employers. Then there's a marketing plan: I've decided to limit my focus to personal and small-business graphics and not try to compete with the larger design/marketing firms. Here's an animated version of the logo I've put together for the home page of the website (we'll see if blogger is kind to it when it converts).



That's about it. There's a family reunion on the 15th, and Evan suggested doing something for my birthday (but nothing has been solidified yet). If anything amazing happens, I'm sure to blog about it. Until then, it's just very hot and very sticky weather here in Pasadena. But since lots of the country is in the same boat, it's not really news. And it is summer, isn't it?