Berkeley

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!