Tag Archives: office

LIVE

release

free

Yesterday was “mostly” move day.

It took about 4 trips, slip-n-slide-style in the VW dodging over-confident soccer-moms in their H2s and Navigators.

Our original intention was to take the big stuff that won’t fit in the house and store it at my dad’s until spring-time when we would then re-schlep everything to my driveway to sell in the upcoming garage sale.

The truck we secured for the big stuff was out of commission from the ice.

In a single moment of clarity and calm I got it:

“fuck it. Fuck it all. – in the end – it means nothing to me”…

The hassle, headache and effort of moving the two desks, a shelving unit and a sofa would probably not offer “that” much in a garage sale. Maybe $400 if we were lucky.

so… Why was I freaking out trying to horde this CRAP only to peddle it later?

Knowing bulk pick-up for the city was coming up – we moved the stuff to the curb..

vacating office

Standing there, feet frozen, I got a strange sensation. Sitting right there on the street was a symbol of what we’ve talked about doing with the company since 2001. And – at the same time – the symbol of me deciding back in 96′ to go it alone and go into business.

I bought my first chunky old school desk when I got my first apartment. I found it at a used furniture warehouse in what once was a dark dirty corner of St. Louis. (Now a parking lot for St. Louis University).

I paid $180 for it – and it required disassembly and several trips to get it back in my little Golf.

That desk has had 4 different macs on it.
I’ve spilled countless cups of coffee on it.
I’ve billed a quarter of a million dollars from that desk.
I’ve had sex on it.

I was sitting at that desk when every major decision about the company has been made – including getting rid of the desk itself.

It’s not the the physical item that has true worth – it’s the experience and memories attached to it.

On our trip back to the studio for the next load we passed a snow plow truck with the desk stuck in the back of it. I smiled…. Knowing that old thing has a new home and wondering what adventures it will have.

Everything we had put out had been snapped up within an hour. A good day for dumpster divers.

Now after that big babblefest about material things and their meaning – I should note that I’m not giving up our Aeron chairs for nothing – even if it means rolling them by hand the 20 miles out to our suburban home.

And while I’m being a hypocrite, I should also point out that I’m not blogging.

LIVE

Best laid plans of monkey and men.

kaboom

Well… Uhhh…. Urrrrrrr….

How can I wrap this up in a nice easy to digest info-byte.

The Friday after they took the powerbook away. I’m crippled – but still have my old G4 I can work on…

9:30am
Got to the office to find out that out landline was down. Apparently the switch over from land to cell is not as painless as they had suggested. We’re waiting for SWB to do whatever it is they need to do to release our old number to Sprint. This could take a week. No huge one – call the clients and make sure they all have the other cell number.

10:30am
Our landline went bye bye and with it – the DSL…. It’s being transferred to our house, but we have to wait for SWB to do whatever it is they need to do which will allow our ISP to set us up.

on-the-fly problem solving
OK… No sweat. I can still work, albeit on a dinosaur. We just figured we’d pack up the systems and take them to the loft and tie them into their T1 that afternoon. We changed our packing priorities and started packing up the computers.

1:15pm / shit hits the fan
Our friend with the loft calls from L.A. – “Hey Jim, I’m sorry to tell you this but I’ve had it with the building owner (tedious, yet valid issue here)…. I’m closing that office down – you can’t move in”.

(long pause for dramatic effect)

Voila… We’re fucked… Here, a week out from the switch over – the “moving ball” has already started rolling and can’t be stopped…

So.. Once again, when we’ve decided to embrace change, the universe has seen fit that we jump directly into the deep end instead of shimmying into the pool via the kitty end.

The intention of the loft was to serve as a buffer while we continue to slim down the company’s operations, get Kevin on powerbook, etc. By the fall, I wanted us to be in a position of ZERO-reliance on a physical space to work.

Wonderful intentions aside, our friend with the loft has a horrible track record for botched deals and bad luck. I was gambling that they’d be stable enough to get us to that “ZERO RELIANCE” period and THEN later, (which I expected), something to go wrong or go squirrelly – we’d simply be able to slip our Powerbooks in our briefcases, grab my files and step away.

Alright… Fine.. Note to self: don’t play the stock market or bet on horses.

So… Nowhere else to go – we’ve started throwing stuff in the carport of the house. (oh yeah – in the biggest winter storm of the season).

We’ll work out of the house for now…

We were just starting to get a hold on the house and now it’s popping at the seams with boxes.

The textbook scorp in me demands control – and in situations like this I feel completely powerless and overwhelmed. Kevin, my rock, is exhausted trying to keep my mental state from completely deteriorating. Mr. “nothing stresses me out” Chad is also keeping me sane with hugs and hourly installments of: “it’ll be fine”.

We’ll be having a huge garage sale in Spring – but until then will just need to deal with the chaos.

Good things: Going to save a bundle on office overhead (and billable hour overhead).

I should blog about this so later after it’s all said and done and we’ve morphed into whatever it is we’re going to be I’ll be able to look back and say – “Wow – remember when the rug was yanked from underneath us professionally and I spent a week digesting my own internal organs?”

LIVE

airport shuttle

face

Yesterday was more packing….. and breaking the news to the office landlord that we’re leaving. He was very cool about it and is letting us use our deposit for this month’s rent. (right on).

Friend Rico called and needed a ride to the airport.

Kev and I picked him up and shuttled him up to Lambert. I guess the “terror-level” or whatever they call it has been reduced, there was no random car searches like there was a few weeks ago.

Career circumstances prohibit me from sharing funny stories about this specimen in my friends collection…. So I’m sitting here on my hands.

Which is fine really – I don’t blog.

LIVE

saints… and sinners

and over there we’ll put the burning effigy

Got to the office and Kevin exploded with energy and within two hours our storage area in the basement was cleared out and everything that’s to move with us was brought upstairs…

After a few phone calls, and a good spell jamming out to innocu-rock on hold with Sprint – we arranged for our land-line to be transfered and added as a second cell phone.

Out to Radio Shack to pick up an extra cell phone – most likely the ugliest one I’ve ever seen, but it was cheep and fills the need now. (Kevin promises we can fullfill my toy-lust once we stabilize after the move, catch up on bills and the phone I really want gets released in a blue-tooth friendly version (so it will work with iSync).

Lunch at Hard Rock and picked up babybear and headed down to meet xenohomo at… ironically, the building we’re moving the studio to…. Unknown to us, while we were spinning the deal to get the corner in our friend’s loft, Neel was negotiating with the building’s owners to have this year’s Saints and Sinner’s ball on one of their vacant floors.

Mardi Gras is a big deal in St. Louis – we’re second to New Orleans.
Every year The AIDS Foundation of St. Louis has a fundraising ball which coincides with the season. This year, Neel is the chairman for the event.

He asked if we’d help him out with decorations for the ball…. Leery of the previous years of being pro-bono’d to death by the bears – but genuinely wanting to help our friend out, we agreed to pitch in and lend a hand.

We walked through the space and Neel and Kevin talked about decorations, Chad listened quietly – and I took photos and had phony-sweet exchanges and glaring contests with the building’s rep, who… coincidentally also works for an ex-client. The last conversation I had with the woman was rather nasty and heated, probably because she thought I was being unreasonable because I was refusing to do projects until they paid their invoices which had aged beyond 9 months. We finally got paid – but we haven’t worked with them since… I miss the account, but then again – I don’t miss working and not getting paid.

She was shocked to see me there… She’s new to town and is probably still learning just how “small town” and incestuous St. Louis is.
It can make you… and break you…

We parted company and I gave her a wink, and a smug grin and told here “You’ll be seeing more of me”…

I can be a phony bitch when it’s called for.

I can be a blog-denying smart ass too.