From the Desk 8/5/2008

This morning I arrived at work after picking up some food from Chick-fil-A. I began working on revising some more graphics and placing them in test pages of an older catalog to see how they looked, stood out, blended in, etc. I then started to work on the theme for our breast cancer promo in October. We received a mock-up from our web-server company on a "pink site" that we could launch for the month of October to better promote our push for the cure of Breast Cancer. I worked on the main graphic we would use (which are pink boxing gloves...."Help knockout Breast Cancer! - a possible theme) and emailed that to my contact to include in the next version. I took a short break around 10:30 to run down to ABC Mailing to deliver the check for the postage for our catalog mailing that goes out on Thursday. I was fairly proud of myself for no longer needing directions to find my way there and back. When I returned I answered a couple of emails and then decided to eat my lunch. I ate my lunch at my desk today as everyone in the group was either meeting family for lunch or running errands.

I scanned a couple of sites listing concerts for the area over the next week and saw that Amos Lee, who I first saw in concert with Norah Jones, was playing at the Variety Playhouse tonight! I was thrilled and when I found Christina on the sales floor I asked if she wanted to go. She was excited and said yes. I knew that she really wanted to go because it was her brother's birthday and she said she could cut the family festivities down in time so we could still go. I searched for tickets on Ticketmaster and soon discovered that the show was sold out. I was highly disappointed, but kept looking for tickets on craigslist. I sent out emails to people posting tickets for sale, but only got one response letting me know that the tickets she had to offer were already sold. I returned to work stuff and met briefly with Vickie and Stacy about an idea they had. They wanted to explore the idea of creating some products (charts, etc.) that we designed and bore our logo. This idea was very exciting to me, but I know that unless we bring a graphics person on board to help design these items that it will be hard to balance that work with the work that I need to do to maintain the marketing calendar. I worked on removing the backgrounds from two pictures for the rest of the day (taking around 2 hours). As you can see from the two pictures the difference between the before and after graphics. It is a tedious process to properly remove the background from an image, requiring you to zoom in down to the pixel by pixel level to get it right. I looked up and realized that it was almost 5:00 so I saved my progress and then shut everything down to go home for the day.

Once I got home I played a bit of Guitar Hero III to unwind from the day. I have decided, possibly foolishly, to begin working through the game on the hard level. This level was one I never thought I would try, but I have decided to jump of that ledge today. I beat the first 3 songs about 2 weeks ago and then failed the next one so I hadn't tried it again since then. I beat that song that I failed, played through the following encore song. I then kept the momentum going and beat the following 4 songs which led me to the first battle on the hard level. I failed it impressively 4 times and then decided to take a break for the night. I ate some dinner and then sat and stared at our website for about an hour trying to determine what graphics we should use to jazz up the boxes at the bottom of the homepage. Nothing brilliant came to me, but I'm sure it will eventually. While I was doing that I had the USA vs. Australia Olympic Men's Basketball game on. I noticed that it is sometimes hard for professionals to work together when the team is comprised of lots of stars from the NBA. Christina called and she was on her way over after her brother's birthday celebration. When she arrived she had a gift for me; leftovers of dinner that her mom sent to me! So for dinner tomorrow night I will be enjoying fried shrimp, grilled fish, and cornbread! We watched an episode of dirty jobs and then stumbled across a gem on the Universal HD channel: The Naked Gun 2 1/2. Christina had never seen these movie before so I felt privileged to introduce her to them. After the movie was over we watched an episode of Family Matters and then it was time for her to leave. We said goodnight and I walked her to her car. I came back inside and quickly fell asleep as my eyes were tired from staring at the computer screen all day.

Meditation for the day: Psalm 119:160 “All your words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal.”