Sunday morning Fishing

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Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

This morning I got up at 4 am to go fishing with my father-in-law 'Ron'. I rolled out of bed and threw on some clothes. Clothes that I had set out the night before, so as not to have to turn on a light and wake theBookworm. I grabbed my tackle box, my thermos and my Kelsyus Chair and headed down to the Jeep. My rods were at Ron's house, since the last time we went and it just works out better to leave them there. At least until fishing season is over.

Usually what happens is when I arrive Ron's got the gear ready to go and is set to load up the fishing truck. This morning was no different. I helped him with the fishing cart I made him back for fathers day. (see earlier blog) and we were all loaded up and ready to go.

As we headed to Sandbridge and the fishing peir out that way Ron tells me he didn't sleep at all last night and is feeling like shit. I ask why he didn't just call it off and he just says something like, "it's fishing, man."

We get to the 7-11 at the end of Sandbridge road the one that marks the turn and I pull in to fill my thermos, chat it up with the lady working the counter and get back on the road. This is a good stopping place for me and it seems like I stop there every time we go to Sandbridge. Especailly with the sun, still not up yet.

We pull onto Sandbridge road and head into the darkness and around the winding roads, meanwhile my mind wanders, thinking about the fishing pier that seems so far down the road.

Ron was out there last wednesday and the Drum were running. The guys at the end of the pier must have pulled in about 20 or more in the time he was there and the weather is supposed to be good for a repeat performance today.

It's been an hour since we left Ron's hosue and we are finally walking up the pier, gear loaded up, our eyes scanning the surf ahead. As we get to the top of the walk, our fears are confirmed, all those cars in the parking lot are do equate to people that are fishing on the pier. And not people who are fsihing from the shore.

Ron pays the girl who is manning the gate and we walk down the pier to a point a little past halfway. Close enough to the end to cast out, but far enough away to not be in the way of the pack that are hanging out at the end.

The guys out this morning are serious about fishing and don't take lightly to newbies casting over their lines or getting in the way and causing the loss of a fish. Me, still a newbie, I'll stay out of the way.

So we set up our gear, rig our lines with cut bait and cast out, ready to try our luck.

And as luck would have it, it was a good fishing day.

Ron's Trout

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Puppy Drum

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Not a professional collector

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Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

The other day I went and had lunch with a friend at a new all day breakfast place, well a place that was new to me at least.

Waffletown!

For lunch, we ordered breakfast of course and the coffee came in this mug.

As soon as I saw it I had to have it, so I negotiated with the waitress to get it. She told me it was going to be $5. Standard response from these sort of establishments.

Either they will sell them to you for $5 or you have to steal them, if they won't.

Well over the course of the years I have procurred a couple of mugs, most in the previously mentioned fashions. However a couple have come from friends that know.

Those are just as good if not better, cause then I make it a mission to go find one of those places and eat there.

Cause I like to be able to say I have eaten at the eastablishment that the cup came from.

So why am I not a professional collector. Well normally a true collector knows the size of the set they are collecting, and the rarity involved in obtaining any given piece.

I am more like somebodies Mom or grandma who collects silver spoons. I like them< I get them when I find them. But I am not worried about collecting the whole set.

Do I need to point out "Truck Nuts"

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

I have seen more and more of these lately. I first saw them in a jeep magazine and thought, Hillbilly. Now that I am seeing more and more in my area should I then conclude we have been getting more hillbillies as of late.

the Super box Saga

The continuing saga of “the box”.

For those of you that read my earlier post you probably remember the PDQ box. The “superbox”

All week I have been preparing for the arrival of a set (in this case 8) of boxes to be prepped and palletized, for shipment to one of our buyers for inspection. Earlier in the week I had JoeArtist do some photoshop work on some of the images, while Kickball did the design work.

After we got the files ready, I called in our sales rep for the service beareau where we were going to get our large format printing done. He came in and set us up on their Electronic Work Order system, and we were good to go.

Or so I thought, but after attempting to upload the first files, I come to find out that the EWO system is not going to work for us. So we disked up the files and sent them out to the service beareau the old fashioned way, sneaker net.

Now all we needed were some 20” x 20” prints, 7 of them, and 3 other prints of various sizes that were going to be applied to the box. Nothing fancy, something they should be able to do with their eyes closed.

Well it went out yesterday and by yesterday afternoon I still hadn’t seen the proof I requested. So I called out sales rep, and told him to call me back when he had it all worked out. 3 pm, I still haven’t seen or heard anything so I call him again.

“It’s 3 pm and I still haven’t seen a proof, any idea when I am going to see that?”

“well we had some technical difficulties but we are working on it and should have one to you soon.

“By 5?”

“I hope.”

“Listen here’s what we are going to do, I have a meeting from 5 -7 after which I am going to be going by your shop at which time I am hoping to see the proofs.”

He reassures me they’ll be there and ready for me to look at. Well the meeting runs long and I show up at their shop at 8. I let them know who I am and why I am stopping by and they respond by pulling out the proofs.

It’s all Looking good till I realize they have no more proofs to show me and I still haven’t seen the black and white proof I requested. I explain to the night guy my dissatisfaction and tell him to pass along that I will be by in the morning and I expect to see the last proof.

Next morning I show up, no B/W proof, I look at my sales rep who is standing there and ask when I can expect to see this proof and since it is now almost 8 am does he really think he is going to make my 9 am deadline. He admits he will not make the deadline and asks me when I need the items by. I explain I have a 3 pm ship time so I need them before that as I still need to use the prints to prep the item I am shipping. He tells me he will get them to me by noon, and so I leave to go in to work.

At 10 am, I hear that our shipment of mock-up boxes from Asia may be stuck in Ohio. I head down to shipping to find out what can be done about it.

The Shipping dept., is working on it but it doesn’t look good. Apparently the shipment is held up in Ohio, but not in customs as it passed through customs. The people in shipping tried their best but they are not optimistic about the boxes arriving today.

Time for Plan “B”. Up until that point I had expected to be going with my initial plan but now it was time to roll with the punches. And I had just taken a hard shot to the head. It was time to fabricate the whole shipment from scratch up in the art dept. So I headed back to the Art dept. to rally the troops.

When I arrived in the art dept. I called for everyone’s attention.

“We have had a minor setback in the PDQ shipment and now I need everyone to pitch in and help me make the shipment from scratch.”

We moved out into the open area where I ran a short Demo on what we were about to do, and then everyone set to the work of making it happen. RedHot graphics, theFirebreather, and KickBall started fabricating the boxes we needed. While SuperBuck began the process of creating the PDQ I needed from the dieline I had printed out.

Meanwhile theAccessorizer and I floated pitching in on the various parts of the project when each part required extra hands. At one point I was hot gluing boxes together, at another point I was scoring folds and bending cardboard. Where ever the needs were greatest at the time, I jumped in. So when we began to run out of cardboard I went down to the warehouse and requisitioned some Lounge box inserts.

TheBellydancer, who is the brand manager on this project, stopped by frequently and offered to do what she could to help. Which turned out in the end to be more of a logistics and support role but one we desperately needed. She went out and brought everyone back lunch, and the dowels to re-inforce the base box the PDQ was going to sit on. She got a new glue gun and some extra glue sticks. At one point later in the day she even got everyone drinks. All of it very much appreciated.

Well as the day moved forward I began to realize that we were going to be tight up against the deadline. And still I hadn’t received any of my large format printouts that I needed to finish the project. I made the appropriate phones calls go the customary promises and went back to work knowing that if the prints didn’t show up I was screwed. Well they didn’t show up till 3 pm, that afternoon. So when they did show up I met the sales rep downstairs accepted the prints and told him I would call him later to talk about the project.

At 4 pm we were close, the boxes were coming together, SuperBuck had almost finished the PDQ and we were ready to begin the final assembly. With many of the details coming together but time running out, we continued to work frantically towards the deadline which I had gotten extended to 4:30 now, with a phone call to the lovely ladies of shipping.

4:30 we have it almost done so we begin setting up the pallet with boxes, Once that was assembled TonytheTiger shrink wrapped the pallet on the art floor and then went to get the fork lift to move the box to shipping.

WOW! We made it.

We were done. The team had pulled together and gotten it done. Each person doing their part and without any one of them none of it could have happened. I was glad to have had so many people in the dept that day. I was glad to have the people I did.

theBellydancer and I went to the other end of the warehouse to see the pallet on the truck. There was some more shrink wrapping and seeing that it was in good hands I went off to find out the details on another fire that had spouted up during the day. Leaving theBellydancer to watch the shipment go on the truck.

Tomorrow I hope to hear it arrived safe and sound. Tonight I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Things I appreciate

Something I appreciate more than anything else from the people I work with, is ATTITUDE and EFFORT.

Today within the art dept, we had a project that tested both of these things. And I was proud to witness everyone working together with a positive can do attitude and some hard work towards making that project happen.

That made what was a hard days work, well worth it. And made me proud of whom I work with.

Today was a good day for both ATTITUDE and EFFORT.

Tonight the power went out

I have to laugh at myself and the absurditiy of my work ethic sometimes. During the storm tonight I got a little stressed tonight when the power went out at our house.

I had a ton of work to do both on the computer and reading through resumes to find a packaging designer. So when the power went out that pretty much slowed to a stop both of those activities.

Well nothing to do now, I thought but go out to the porch sit down in the cool night air and read by flashlight.

Unless as one is walking towards the porch you notice a light coming under the front door from the hall. And then look over to see that the cable box is displaying the time.

Apparently the power didn't go out during the storm, we just tripped the breaker with too many AC's running. Too funny as Kelly and I had both just assumed that the power went off and we were heading off to do other things while we waited for it to come back on, flashlights in hand.

Needless to say I went downstairs flipped the breaker and went back to what I had to do. Except now I am going to take a break to post this blog and go to bed early.

goodnight.

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Beautiful night for fishing

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

The moon turned a beautiful red a little bit into the night although this shot doesn't do it justice, it is nice to see the moonlight flickering over the water as you cast out into it.

2 to start - 5 to finish

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

So we started off with two reasonable sized blues and finished up catching five. the rest we threw back. All in all a nice sunday night spent fishing.

Sunday at the LaundryMat

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Just about every sunday Kelly and I go to the Laundry mat to, well do our laundry of course. This sunday we saw Neesee and Mrs. Beamon there. Two people that I haven't seen in about 7 or 8 years.

This here is a picture of Neesee, whom I first met way back in my dumbwaiter days. When I was bartending at night while I freelanced and went to school during the day.

Neesee worked as a Dishwasher for Syd, for as long as I could remember. Now one of the interesting facts about Neesee is at first glance she appears to be a large black woman. But upon closer inspection one would notice a 5 o'clock shadow and begin to put 2 and 2 together and realize Neesee is a guy, who dresses as a girl.

Today she had a 5 o'clock shadow at 10 in the morning, of course so did I, so who am I to talk.

Another interesting fact about Neesee, is every since I have known her, she has had a side business that she made no attempts to hide, working the corner.

But the most interesting of facts about her is that she is truly a nice person, just so long as you don't get on her bad side. She has always been incredibly friendly and good natured for as long as I have known her.

Well it was nice to see her and Beamon again, I haven't seen them in years. They aren't normally at the Laundromat on sundays. Apparently they normally go Fridays during the day.

Oh, and in case your wondering Mrs. Beamon is a guy who dresses as a guy, but used to dress as a girl. So I still call him Mrs. Beamon and sometimes Beamon, and every now and again I just call him John. But I have always called Neesee, Neesee and really that's the only name I know.

The kitchen project

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Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

So recently theBellyDancer said to me, you have been blogging a lot about work lately. Well that’s true, but honestly I am a pretty straight forward blogger, I blog about what I am doing or what is going on in my life at that moment. And lately a lot of what has been going on has been work.

But this weekend I decided it was high time I got back to the apartment and did some projects I have been neglecting. So after going out for a bike ride this morning on the tandem bike (always fun) and stopping at a yard sale (always trouble) I got started on two projects.

The First project was the kitchen. As some of you know we sold our house back in April/may in order to pay off all our debt and better position our selves should I get laid off. Well a side effect of that was I lost the gas stove we bought that I loved (it conveyed) and I had to start again on making a functional kitchen for the way we cooked.

When we moved into our new apartment there was the standard stove, sink and fridge. And all we had for storage space was a built in hutch. So first thing we did was bring in the prep table I had built for the last kitchen. Which I think is pretty cool if I do say so myself, it’s top is made from a piece of a shuffle board floor which still has a foul line on it. The rest of it I constructed from different woods I got at Pow Mac and then stained to give it a contrasting look.

Well that was good for a start but certainly not enough, so then we added some shelves, a pot rack, and most importantly a pegboard. The shelves are an obvious addition, and probably the pot rack, but the peg board idea came from Julia Childs kitchen she had this Ginormous Pegboard wall where she hung most of her pots and pans. After seeing this I immediately went back to our house at the time and put one in. There we hung all our odds and ends that normally ended up lost in a drawer or in the back of a cabinet somewhere never to be seen again. At least never to be found when you needed them. Once we did this at the last house, I knew this is right for the way we cook. So finally I got the pegboard installed in the apt and immediately the kitchen began to feel like we could work in it.

I can’t wait to cook or bake something in the new kitchen cause now I am sure to know where everything is. Which is important when you are knee deep in a recipe and looking for that one item that can make or break a dish. Like an instant read thermometer.

The Built in Hutch

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Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

The beginning of the Patio Chess Table

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Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

This is a beautful wrought iron table base that I got from a friend of mine SproutGirl. She left me a whole table, when she moved out to San Francisco. But the top that was on it was really cheesy so I long ago got rid of that. And today I began the work on putting a tile table top on top of this base. Something she herself wanted to do, and would love to have the base back to do I am sure. So Sprout if you ever come back to ol' virginny I'll give you back the base and you can make your own top. But till then you'll just have to appreciate mine.

Laying out the design

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Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

So I went out and got a smorgasborg of 2 inch tile peices with which to assemble my table top. Part of the plan for the top was to incorporate a chess table into it. Not so obviously as to come off looking cheesy, but nicely intergrated and subtle. Here I am working out how to do it.

Intergrating the Chess Table design

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Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

This is the table planned out and in the middle of assembly, while the chess table is there, hopefully it doesn't jump out at you too much.

Here is the table plus legs.

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Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

And here's the table assembled nothing left to do but wait for the adhesive to dry and go back in with grout.

yea!

Soon Bookworm and I will be eating out on the patio off this very table.

Fish and well... chips

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Fish & chips, from Poppa's, Superbuck got the special. I got a laugh.

TAKO

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Dream Machine

For those of you that aren't going to blow this picture up. It is a picture of a coffee "tap" regular, hot water, and decaf, all coming straight out of the wall. love that.

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

NICE! Fedex delivers to UPS

So how many times does one drive up to UPS for a last minute drop-off to find a FedEx truck delivering a package to UPS. Whosend something to the UPS building via FedEX ?!?

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Tim's Time

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

So today the IT guy Tim left. Now I haven't been there that long, a month and a half I think, but in that time I really got to like this guy, he helped me out a lot. Getting things set up to help me do my job. But beyond that he really seemed like a genuinely nice guy. Willing to help out whomever needed a little help whether or not it was "his job" I appreciate a person like that.

Saying Goodbye to Marcus

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Art Guy Maths it up

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Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Last night I went back to work on the dieline for this Box. Nothing really left to do but tweak all the measurements, from the last take on the dieline, we sent to Asia a while back. They did a wonderful job taking the dieline and making a hand sample, but the hand sample highlighted some areas for improvement.

None the less when the guy who owned the company wanted to know how much weight this box could hold, I told him I would gladly stand on top of it that is how much confidence I have in the box. He said do it and shoot a picture, I'll send it on to the client. Needless to say this is not the version sent to the client. The client go the one where I am not cheesing it up so much. But for you guys, well, here's to cheese.

Anyway last night I went back to the dieline to make the necessary changes and expect to see this thing fixed up and in production soon.

Wow! my first box in production. Yesterday Singlebuck got to see the completed version of something he worked on, exciting stuff.

Now I say my box, but really this dieline isn't anything that isn't being done elsewhere, even everywhere, in the market place. But there was an incredible amount of math involved in the dieline. And I am kind of proud of figuring out how to make all that work.

Adding to the Cubicle Village

So Saturday I enlisted the aid of Bookworm, SuperBuck, FS SmithGrind, and theMusicMan to enlarge the art area. In some corporate circles this is known as "The Land Grab"

You may be asking why I didn't just get the guys who work in maintenance at the place I work for to do this...

Well they are booked up till October, currently working on the retooling of the "RotoMolder" which is used in the warehouse to make all sorts of products. So it was up to me to do it, if I wanted it done anytime soon(before next year).

Seeing as I wanted to hire a package designer soon and have a place for everyone to sit, it was obvious to me I was going to need some more space. And before next year. Therefor I decided to take this on myself, as I am apt to do. luckily for me I enlisted help, cause as it turns out I could never have done it alone. The task larger than at first it seemed. So saturday morning 10:30 am the fun began...

We began as you would with any re-model, we removed all the "stuff" that was cluttering up the work area. Then we dove into the assembly.

Looking at the way Cubicles are set up you wouldn't think it too hard to figure out...

right.

It seems that when they were designing cubicles they decided they should use one of every different type of available fastener in the process. We had allen wrenches, phillips head screw drivers, as well as the square head; I have no idea what it is called. No torx though, so I guess that is not every kind, but as we were assembling we would be trading tools in order to complete any part of the process. silly engineers tricks are for kids.

Real engineers would have done it all with one type of fastener.

Anway after much toiling and some sweating, we got stage one done. We have claimed more of the "open area" for the Art Dept. and established another work area for the auxillary work force I keep employing.

Without which I would be drowning under the workload that we in the Art dept. have to do. There is no way we could have accomplished the tasks at hand without the auxillary work force coming in and getting things done. But this is what they have asked me to do. Handle it as best as you can with the people on staff and what you can't handle freelance out and get it done that way.

Since the day I arrived at the new job I have heard, eventually the work slows down. This I can believe, but what I don't believe is that there is ever a period where we won't have enough work to do. When people say it slows down there seems to be an underlying inference in the statement that at some point we in the Art dept. will get to a point where we have nothing to do, where we are bored. This I just don't see.

But I do hope to get it all to a point where I get to create something. Where the management of the process isn't so overwhelming, so consuming that I don't get to make any Art at all. As this is where I am right now. But I hope this isn't how it is going to stay, cause if it is, I don't think I will be staying at least not for long.

So I need to get it back to a point where I too get to do a project or two. Where I too get to create something, where I get to make art. Not fine art mind you that I can do at home on my free time. But graphic art, art that sells things, art that affects consumer perception, art that positions and markets a product.

I like making fine art, but I love making graphic art!

This is why I am making room for more people. I need these people to get the job done. Whether they are full time or freelance, I need four people during packaging season, to accomplish what is asked of the Art Dept. Right now I have three sometimes four, two full timers, singlebuck and then sometimes theAccessorizer.

But I am making plans for expansion and making room for more people. This stage of expansion was just the beginning.

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Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Sleep deprived, most of the time

So Friday night I went to bed fairly early for me, 9:30pm and slept 11 hours. Now for some people this may be a normal night, for me that is a long time to be sleeping. Mpost of the time I average around 6 - 8 hours of sleep, But that night was just the beginning.

Saturday morning I got up at 8:30am puttered through the morning, and headed out to meet somepeople who were going to help me add on to my cubicle domain. Bookworm, SuperBuck, FS Smith grind, and the MusicMan all helped me to assemble some more steelcase "furniture" to create more cubicle space and extend the art dept. (blog post coming) We did that from 10:30 to around 2:00. Then Bookworm and I grabbed lunch at D'Egg and went home to take a nap. A nap that lasted from 3:30 till 8:30 PM - 5 Hours ?!?

Sometime during the nap I got a call from Breakaway, he was in town for the day, in my hazy sleepy mentally shut down state I said I would call him back when I woke up from my nap. Which was now 8:30! I called back and realized that by the time Kelly and I found something to eat it and made it out it would be 9:30 probably too late to really hang out and see him and his lovely wife, as well as anyone else who might still be out hanging about, sadness. So I apologized and promised to catch up with him one day in his new neck of the woods. Still feeling bad about not getting up earlier.

So Bookworm and I got dinner went home and I promptly fell asleep again at 10:00 pm only to wake up again at 9:00 am - 11 more hours!?!?

So now this total is subject to the powers of Art math, but in approx 36 hours I slept for 27 of them!?!

27 Hours of sleep! This ought to have cleared my deficit, but even now I am feeling a little sleepy and thinking about taking a nap. This is not like me at all, I hope I am not getting sick.

Hellermans camp ground

Some of you who read my blog probably know/remember jeff Hellerman.

Well, he has begun to blog about his development of a campground/housing development/home building exercise out in the western part of Virginia. He has literally just started blogging but it looks like it is going to be a fun read, of the blogging of a sequential documentation of events variety that my old cooking blog sort of was.

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Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

So this past weekend I went to colorado to see a friend of mine get married. For those of you that know John Surf around my Flickr site to see some of the pictures.

For those of you that want to see Colorado, surf further into the flickr site to see those pictures.

I was going to make a post about their fairy tale wedding and how beautiful it was but that just felt too sappy and so instead I posted some pictures that can speak for themselves.

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Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Tonight I made Cold Brew Coffee. With Cold brew you never introduce heat to the coffee until your ready to drink it.


You simply take a lb. of Coffee coarse ground preferrably and put it into the plastic container on top, inside of which is a filter and in the bottom of which is a rubber cork. Then you pour 9 cups of cold water over the top of the grounds and let it sit for 12 hours. After which you pull the rubber stopper out and let it drain into the carafe below. Pop that carafe in the fridge and you have coffee made that is good for two weeks.


Anytime in the next two weeks when you want a cup of coffee you simply mix one part coffee "liquer" with two parts water and you pop it into the microwave briefly and tadah you have a rich cup of coffee.

Or so the theory goes. I'll let you know how it all goes after I have a cup tomorrow morning, or later tonight if I decide to stay up for a while.

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.