Posts in category Travel

Destinations

Feb19
2009 Rob Written by Rob

Sometimes you make the right decision and know it’s going to work out. Other times, you make the necessary decision – and then make it work.

Life’s changing. We’ve both felt the change coming for a long while now, in the little frustrations and the not so little aggravations; in a gradual dissatisfaction with being dissatisfied; in the building need to build something new from the remnants of old ambitions and future dreams. We knew it was coming.

We don’t know what’s going to happen next week, when Kristi returns to work. Could be good news, could be bad. But we’re prepared to roll with the punches. Worst case scenario, we have a financial runway of about six months, plenty of time to get done what we need to get done. And so this week has been all about preparation: ordering business cards, designing new stationary and envelopes, setting up and stocking a new client database, writing new sales letters and planning out a long term marketing and sales strategy.

And gotta say, we’re kinda psyched. It’s an exciting thought. And we’re having a great time this week, both working together here in the office as business partners. The trip’s just starting.

Want to see what we’re up to? Go visit our new Destination Copy website – Kristi’s new travel writing site!

And be sure when you visit to sign up for her monthly travel newsletter, The Secret Gate. We’ve already sketched out some really great article plans, six months out – travel tips and adventuring ideas for California and beyond. So get on our mailing list and we’ll make sure you get it.

Posted in Everyday Life, Work

The Tape That Binds

Feb02
2009 Rob Written by Rob

So lately my laptop has been annoying me.

Not the laptop itself. My machine is a nice little Toshiba I bought a few years ago with a chunk of first quarter money; it runs Red Hat Linux, has all the upgrades and customizations I need and is pretty well tied in to the rest of the house network. Even when I’m working in the office – sitting at my desk, in front of the two big flatscreen monitors that serve as my office workstation display – the laptop is still folded open in front of them. The laptop is a trusty friend. It’s the thing hanging off the laptop that’s been annoying me: my portable hard drive that contains all the business files, connected to the laptop via USB cable. Wherever the laptop goes, there’s the hard drive, hanging off the end and looking for a place to comfortably rest while I’m working.

So anyway, I got tired of messing with it and tucking it out of the way. We got down to Office Depot to pick up some early year tax deductions and I bought some heavy duty velcro tape. Some tape on the laptop, some tape on the underside of the hard drive, a little extra tape for a cable restraint.. and TADA! The hard drive and USB cable are now mounted securely and snugly to the lid of my laptop! And the best part is, if and when I want to unmount it, it’s velcro!

It appeals to the geek in me, velcro’ing things to my laptop. Now I’m looking at the digital recorder and the office phone. Contemplating what I can velcro to the office monitors. To the office white board.

I could probably velcro something to the cat. It’d be an easy way to keep his meds handy, and we still have plenty of this stuff left.

Sunday morning we decided to take a short road trip to nearby Knight’s Ferry, a local Gold Rush town that is now a charming little historical side spot along the Stanislaus River. We’d gone out to do some site research for some upcoming writing projects. Brought the dog, the digital recorder, a handful of things.. and of course we brought along the GPS, suctioned to the windshield and cabled to the car’s lighter. The cable runs down the dash and over and around.

I looked at the cable, thinking. “You know hon – I know the perfect way to keep that cable out of the way.”

“SHUT. UP. IF. YOU. WANT. TO. LIVE.”

“We can strap it right to the side like this..”

“I’m serious.”

“We’ve got plenty left.”

“God give me strength.”

Posted in Everyday Life, Projects / DIY, Work

Weekend In Florida

Nov07
2008 Rob Written by Rob

Veterans Day weekend, 2008. A year ago this weekend, I promised to Kristi at Cocoa Beach and she said yes. We stayed overnight at a nice hotel, ate chocolate-covered strawberries and drank champagne, and generally just soaked in the wow-we’re-engaged vibe. It seems a lot longer than just a year ago.

We’re flying into Orlando this weekend to wrap up some old business: mostly, to clean out my storage unit and shut it down. We’ll be shipping some of the stuff back, taking some on the plane with us and disposing the rest of it somehow in Florida. We also plan to get together with friends and family, finally giving Kristi a chance to meet my parents, and then to visit Cocoa Beach on Monday.

I wish I could say that I was giddy-excited-happy about this trip. I’m looking forward to parts of it, like visiting people and fetching my stuff finally and enjoying Florida orange juice. I’m looking forward to walking Cocoa with my wife. Not looking forward to two nine-hour plane rides across the country or traversing the crowded claustrophobia of Orlando for a weekend. I remember last year coming home at OIA after spending my first week here in Modesto, getting hit by that wall of warm humid as I stepped outside, looking around and thinking, why the hell does anyone live here? And that was after only a week. It’s been a year now, so I’m expecting the same effect only greatly amplified.

Maybe it’s just knowing that this will be the last trip to Florida for a long while. Perhaps a very long while. There’s a certain melanchony twang to it. Home’s in California now, among the Sierra Nevadas and the craggy Pacific shores and the broad valley farmlands and the crowded streets of San Francisco. We haven’t even left yet and I’m already feeling homesick to return.

It’s a strange feeling, preparing to visit the foreign land that you lived in for over 30 of your 37 years.

Posted in Everyday Life, Family and Friends

Berkeley

Oct24
2008 Rob Written by Rob

I think I’ve mentioned before that things tend to break for the business at around the fifteenth of the month. It’s the weirdest thing: first two weeks, dead. Then we hit the fifteenth and the phone won’t stop ringing, leading into two weeks of crazy-crazy-crazy before dying off again.

Every month, right around the 10th, Kristi has to talk me off the ledge. There’s nothing quite like knowing that the month is almost halfway over, and then looking up at the status board and you’ve got two freakin’ billable hours logged so far for the month. Is that going to be it? Oh crap.

And then the fifteenth rolls around and BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM it’s all incoming mortars. Within about a week, we had big new projects from my industrial joint client, a New York marketing firm, an orthopaedics practice and my A/V lift designer client, and had a very hot, very solid lead on a client that does GPS tracking systems for trucking fleets. We’re going to end up rounding out the best October the business has seen in – well, looking back now, probably ever. The flipside is that now I’ve got a desk full of work that needs to be done soon if I want to bill it on October billing. So it’s off to the races.

Perfect time to take a day off for a field trip to Berkeley.

It’d been scheduled for over a month, this field trip with Kristi (and fellow EU teachers Brad and Anthony) and about forty gifted students from East Union. And it was fun: we piled up in a charter bus, watched movies there and back, and went out to UC Berkeley for the full campus tour. The kids were great. We adults raided the gift shop for a Berkeley coffee mug, wandered aimlessly up and down Telegraph trying to find someplace to eat that was open before 1pm, and generally soaked in the college experience. By the time we returned, Kristi and I were just exhausted, feet hurting and both of us ready to crash. Luckily we had dinner planned at her parents’ that night, or else God only knows what we would’ve ended up eating. Granola bars, maybe.

Berkeley was fun. I got my mug. The kids got their big-city-college experience. Kristi got photos. And now we both have a LONG day ahead of us. I have three client calls and two big deliveries to get out the door. She has football duty tonight, and so she might not get home until almost 9pm.

Just one of those Fridays where you’re living for Saturday, know what I mean?

PS – Good news. Kristi’s parents have agreed to take care of Samson while we’re in Florida on the weekend of 11/8. That’s a load off: he’s expensive to board and doesn’t take to it very well. It’s one thing for a 10lb cat to dislike boarding, it’s quite another altogether for an energetic 120lb lab. He’s going to be a lot happier that weekend staying at Grandpa and Grandma’s house. Thanks Don and Kathy!

Posted in Work
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