February 2002
Tuesday, February 26
Wednesday, February 13
Drew likes the way that the dooce does mp3. I've been meaning to do something like that. Downloads, and the like. Drew's been listening to the Doves album alot lately - weird that she had The Cedar Room. She's got great photography goin on as well - because it's all about the captions.
I've been running into vast quantities of former umm, fellow students over the past selection of days. Yesterday it was Heather and Eric at the diner. Today it was Michael Taylor. He fixed drew's flat at the service station while drew read the newspaper. Odd that Michael Taylor fixed my flat this morning, and that my professor Michael Taylor gave a lecture in Creative Nonfiction class, this very afternoon. I love that class. I love writing. Occasionally. Not as much as I should.
It is very odd though, being the guy who reluctantly "passed 12th grade senior English with a low C and clep tested out of both college English A and B" to be enrolled in a senior level writing course alongside literature and journalism majors. Many many terms, for many many writing techniques that unknowns to me, had names. But who cares about terms. Hey I've got an idea: Let's define it and analyze it, until we've killed it.
I feel that I am still somehow on the same playing field with them though - which is strange.
Tuesday, February 5
Friday I drove 45 minutes to Little Rock, with plans to meet up with some fellow students and Dr Simmons for a site visit (tour) of Peerless Graphics. Arriving early, I made my way to some kind of waiting/conference room, ..to wait, and had a fun time sitting on big white-leather furniture and watching the office laides run in circles. We spent alot of time walking through the facility, checking out all of the cool equipment and observing the goings-on at a legit prepress and printing facility. I was really impressed. There is virtually no limit to the amount of knowledge a person can aquire about the nuts and bolts end of design and production. You could easily spend a lifetime just becoming fairly-skilled at any one of a dozen niche positions in that place. It's nice to have such organizations at your disposal when you'd like to spend more time on design and less time on spot colors and proofing and registration marks.
We walked out of the building and made plans to meet in the river market district that afternoon, for a tour of Forza Marketing. So a guy wearing kayaking pants steps out of an important client meeting and shows us around. The place seemed "wide open". That's the only way I can describe it. I'm talking "out there", ..in a very "yes I will certainly work in a place like this someday" kind of way. There was a guy at Peerless Graphics who spent 24/7 operating a drum scanner, ..and these guys at Forza were pushing the curve, farming attitude, and putting together great stuff in a fun, results-geared, environment. Or at least it seemed that way. I had no idea there were such things going on in Little Rock.
So Friday gave me a new focus. It kind'a cleared up a blurry vision of what I've been hacking my way through the jungle, ..towards.
Oh and I took some pictures with my picture taking device:
Saturday involved a nice little party at the Park Hotel in Hot Springs. If you let somebody else touch your camera, they are required to photograph the owner of the camera.
Sunday involved the SuperBowl. Me and Matt picked the Patriots.
Looking back I'd say it was a nice stretch of three days. Nice as in: best I've had in quite a long time.