I’ve heard people talk about living a lifetime in a single moment. I won’t profess to have or even fully understand the wisdom of the ages, nor will I tell you that I have even lived a lifetime in five days. What I will say is that it is amazing how much good, bad and other into 96 hours.
Where to start…at the beginning…duh!
Wednesday
A seemingly normal day until I got my ass handed to me by a client. Well, it wasn’t as bad as all that, but it was an eye opener and, frankly, I can’t totally blame them. It has been crazy for us as a business lately and we missed deadlines we would normally hit. Completely understandable for them to be upset, but the feeling of sitting in the principal’s office is absolutely no fun, especially when most of it wasn’t my fault.
Once the carnage was over, it was back to work to try and clean up the mess. I still had a ton of other things to do, so this just added to the chaos. This was the start of the bad.
Thursday
This day started with my continued panic over the project at hand. I’m starting to think this was a lesson for me trying to teach me both how to handle the frustration of disappointment and how to not take it personally. It also gave me a healthy dose of perspective on how things need to go.
My business partner, Dave, busted ass to get a lot of work done before he had to get on the road to make his permanent move to Houston from Boston. So, he kicked it.
My day got better as I had lunch with a good friend, Brett, out in west Houston at a place called Hungry’s. Nice Greek restaurant – what would come to be a theme for the weekend – with a very good salad. After a good meal, I headed off to meet with a potential client way out in west Houston.
After showing up early and proceeding to the suite number I was given, I realize that it is not the right suite. I look all over the building for this person – nowhere to be found. Now, I drove way out west to see a potential client for a project that, quite honestly, wouldn’t be worth a lot to us and I can’t find the location.
Next problem: the only numbers for this person are for a different office location and a cell that is turned off. Nice. I wait a few minutes for a call…nothing. I leave and phone another potential client on my way back to the house. My phone beeps. It is my last meeting but I can’t take it as I am on the phone with a client that means much more to the company.
Five minutes pass and I return the call…cell phone turned off and no voicemail. Forget it. On to bigger things.
I then head out to Chris’ house to do some recording. That was great. We nailed down some tracks and I headed home not terribly late. Some good…finally.
Friday
I awoke to the continued pressure of a deadline. Working feverishly, I started at 8am and continued until 1pm and didn’t get finished. Pretty frustrating considering more work was coming in and I needed rest.
At one, I bailed. That was it for me as far as I was concerned. My deadline was Monday morning and I’d finish over the weekend. Not my ideal plan, but whatever.
I went to meet my friend, Kate, for lunch at my favorite Chinese place – Tien Ren. We sat and ate good food and had a nice long conversation. This was the first moment I felt relaxed in quite a few days. Good stuff.
After a tasty lunch, I made my way back home to put in a couple more hours work before going to pick up my good friend, Angie, for her going away party. I was the designated driver and it was definitely necessary.
Angie is one of my closest friend and she is moving to Austin to get married. I won’t go into details. You can read my farewell blog on MySpace.com, where I met her.
Anyway, she and I took off to Byzanto’s Greek Cafe (see what I mean about the Greek theme?) on West Gray. They have these excellent appetizers – feta cheese stuffed filo pastry. Mmmmmm… We had tons of fun. Lots of her friends showed up and there was plenty of nuttiness to go around. I took a LOAD of pictures that I will post most likely tomorrow. These you’ll want to see.
I drove Angie home about 2:30am. She was in need of sleep after she tied on a pretty good one. Well, hell, it was her party. She deserved it. I made it into bed around 3:30am.
Saturday
Redemption. I woke up before 9am without any help and made my way to my desk. I decided that I was going to finish up all the work on this project right then. The reality is that all our normal help was tied up on other projects, Dave was on his way to Houston and I was it. I had to finish up even if it isn’t my normal job.
Fortunately, Rebecca interrupted me and dragged me out for lunch at Baba Yega’s. That was a really good move. I felt a little bad because I was feeling the effects of lack of sleep and deadline pressure. I probably wasn’t the best lunch buddy, but she knows me. She’s used to it. She cheered me up quite a bit in fact and I’m grateful.
I got back to the crib (just seeing if you were still reading, yo) and spent about four-and-a-half more hours completing the project. When I was done, I freakin’ felt great. What a load off my mind! Just in time to go out with my friend, Carolann, and her friends for her birthday.
I even managed to sit down for a few minutes and catch Nickel Creek on Austin City Limits. Maybe it was the beauty of the music or the strength of the performance. Maybe it was the pressure or the lack of sleep, but I sat there and cried while I watched them. Honestly, it felt pretty good.
Carolann and her two friends arrived at about 10:30pm and we headed out to Rudyard’s. We just hung out downstairs until late talking and drinking. Well, they drank. I tried to be charming. Har de har har. After about 1am, we headed over to One’s a Meal (another Greek restaurant that also has killa diner food) for a late night meal.
Feeling like a pimp, I bought everyone’s late night dinner. I’m so ghetto. Werd. We had good conversations and laughed a lot. Carolann is fun to be around and her friends are a blast. Nice evening all around.
I wished them all goodnight and headed home. I spent a few minutes downloading pictures from that night onto the computer (those will be up with the others later) and then haded off to bed – this time around 4am.
Sunday
I managed to sleep in until around 11:30am. That’s late for me, but definitely needed. I woke up to a few positive emails – nice – and the decision not to record today. Chris and I opted for tomorrow in light of some things he had to do and it was a good thing.
I got to spend another afternoon/evening with Angie, who will be leaving at the end of this week. We ate some good pasta from George’s Pastaria and watched Anchorman, Trekkies and some of the Best of Will Ferrell DVD. Mostly, we hung out and chatted.
I was saddened to find out from a phone call that a relative of Carolann’s passed away. Always tough to lose a family member. Her friend called to let me know because Carolann was worried that she wouldn’t be able to call me as she said she would. Very sweet to think of me considering the situation. My sympathies are with them.
So, Angie and I had a good time and I made it back home around 9pm. I sat down for the first time in probably a couple weeks and watched a movie by myself – XXX: State of the Nation. I like Ice Cube and you can’t go wrong with Samuel L. Sure, it was formulaic and cheesy at times, but the soothing sights and sounds of explosions and car chases were just what this male needed to end an insane four days.
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So, that’s it. Some good, some bad and some crazy. All in a week’s work. Let’s hope this week has more good, a LOT less bad (let’s try for none and see what happens) and only the smallest amount of crazy.