Headvoice

Spring in October

I took this picture in the spring of 2001, and it really echoes back to me again. It feels like spring now, even as the evenings turn frosty.

But the reasons are muted and personal. The snow will surely start falling soon. What has changed is my perspective. Work is all new again. My love and I are in our sixth year together. And yes, there is the new car, which is surprisingly fun and rewarding to drive.

It is deeper. Change is natual and good; but not always comfortable or simple. It is complicated, just like evolution. The best is very much yet to come...

Happy Halloween!

Blockage

Sort of blocked for the past few days... like some big cheesy lump stuck halfway through my consciousness forcing things to distort, that and way too much drinking on Saturday night. We had a nice time, but having to shriek at the table to be heard over the sound system does diminish the enjoyment levels, doesn’t it? The food was lovely… and the drinks and wine were very good; to a fault actually. Red wine after martinis is not allowed from now on.

It is the worst kind of Monday. Didn’t win a piece of business that I thought we surely had. And then it was time to let staff go; including an intern that was deserving of an offer. Is it too late to take over my father’s marina business on the jersey shore?

The internet is changing the world, but why can’t I do the job I was hired to do?

Bored Member

It seems circumstances are adding up, and I cannot avoid the evidence that I am becoming officially grown up. I suppose at 44 this would be expected, but like everyone there is a kernel of a child still refusing to acknowledge what the calendar screams out.

I am approaching 50. My god, on a promo spot on the dreary weekend Today program out of NYC last Saturday morning, they pointedly called people over 50 seniors. I was counting on that being 65 like it always has seemed to be. Come on!

So this week I was voted onto the Board of Directors for a local symphony orchestra, and have started driving a new car, which is definitely an adult vehicle. Maybe I really am a senior…

Driven

Suddenly I am spending time on sites like this. Help!

No Tats

Surfing so many great blogs over the past few weeks... and I notice that lots of guys are getting tatoos, or adding to the ones that they already have. Shit, I don't even wear a watch!

Sure some are cool, but I couldn't committ to getting one. Call me old fashioned, call me lame, call me "no tats Tammy". Now, liposuction... that I could be talked into...

Flaky Pastry

We all have some flakes in our lives... you know, the people that you can count on to screw it up no matter what it is. It just seems my situation provides more flakes than a serving of decent puff pastry.

Solution: Move away from the window... do not answer the phone. Change your email address. Don't be home when they come to visit. Go away for the holidays. Forget birthdays. Life is too short and there are too many real, honest and caring people to surround yourselves with... aren't there?

Writing About the About Page

I normally don't have much problem talking or writing about myself, yet I am anxious about writing my "about" page, a feature found on most blogs. So, we will start working it out right here with a little list.
Five Things You Probably Don't Know About Me
(and of which I probably should keep to myself...)

1. Given the right stimuli, for example---acid reflux inducing stress, a rich dinner and strong coffee---I can projectile vomit quite precisely. In fact, I dropped most of an $115 steak dinner from Smith & Wollensky in NYC directly in a street drain on East 49th one night.


2. In the late seventies my girlfriend and I went to Carnegie Hall under the
   influence of something strong and heard Beethoven's 9th performed with a huge chorus. Result: white light pouring off the stage.


3. I own way too many clothes, but somehow can't find a pair of pants most mornings.


4. Three important words: fear of heights.


5. Maybe it is because I cooked for a living for quite a few years, or perhaps it is because of almost continual Food Network viewing, but I literally dream of food; menus, meals, pastry, wine...

Today's Quote

"It takes a big idea
to attract the attention of consumers
and get them to buy your product.

Unless your advertising
contains a big idea,
it will pass like a ship in the night.

I doubt if more than
one campaign in a hundred
contains a big idea."

- David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising

A New Set of Wheels

Yee haw! Tommorrow afternoon I am finally going to get my new car.

Wiped

What an exhausting day. Up and out the door by six thirty so that I can whip together the pieces of an important client presentation in the quiet of my early morning office. It is the best time of day for me to work. But by the time four in the afternoon rolled around I was completely wiped out---all I could do is drive home on auto-pilot.

Get out the list of things that indicate the end of the world is coming...
What the hell is this all about?

Does your father know what you do for a living?

Mine doesn't. He told me that over dinner last week. But I understand completely. I really do.

My brother and I grew up in the same house. We were raised by the same people and lived in harmony under one roof, on an island off the New Jersey shore. He takes his own boat and sails into the open ocean, both the pacific and atlantic have been his workplace, and fishes for tuna and swordfish mainly, not using nets but a technique called "long-lining" where hooks are used hanging off a very long line supported by bouys.

How does he make a living? I can understand just as our father can. Catching fish and selling them; mostly to the Japanese sushi market.

But how do I make a living? And how do I tell my father what it is that I do?

Such Polite Turkeys

Yes, it is that time again. More than a month in advance of celebrating Thanksgiving south of the border, we here in Canada are smack at the end of a holiday weekend, where countless numbers of birds have paid the ultimate price to end up as sandwiches come Tuesday morning.

I have been somewhat anxious these past few days, probably because I didn't get my new car on Friday. If that had happened I would probably be in the driveway right now, blissfully washing or waxing the new vehicle instead of worrying about things at work that I cannot really fix.

Let it go... give thanks for crying out loud.

Geek Alert

Celebrate your geekness and install movable type software as a couple. That was the theme for this weekend. Shouting from our offices and moving from computer to computer, it was life our version of gardening together. But without the dirt and bugs.

Now barely improved with images!

What an interesting tool this is... image embedding and uploading explained to now. But why the hell did I embed this shot of me in a castle in Vienna from June of 2001?

Because of the great memories...

So Mark and I are both learning as we go... shouting to each other from our desks. I do advise when choosing a partner that you have corresponding geekiness levels.

Each of us has installed and started using blogging software on our sites. Time to start publishing to the world a little more consistently... and why not?

Slowable Type

Spent the weekend watching Mark install Moveable Type on his site. Actually spent it cooking and cleaning while he spent endless hours poring over documentation and learning the intricacies of this complicated piece of software. It isn't quite ready for prime time love at www.thatmark.com, but it will be soon.

And then it is time to wrestle it onto this site... so I can grow up and be a real blogger like the big boys!

Timing and Cars

Nobody will let me do my job it seems. If I get a project, it becomes the kick-start to somebody else to completion. Big business becomes tiny projects. Small projects live on sometimes, sometimes not. Politics often stifle creativity in strategy and execution.

This is the case in many workplaces... I am sure. But the burden of still living in the "interactive" space is that it translates into ONLY pitch battles these days. Or is it just me?

On another front it looks like I am going to buy a car. Woooo.

An American Living In Canada

In August of 1999, I moved from the east side of Manhattan to Mississauga, here in Ontario. Canada. And the question I most often answer regarding that is... why? And then, aren't you sorry that you did?

The answer is no. I am not sorry that I did. Here is where I plan to take on this subject. How does an American, born and raised, become a productive and conscientious citizen of Canada? And why the hell would he bother? Please read on.

Lesson One: "I would like to make a reservation."

The time is early September, 1997. The place is New York. We met online. I captured it as a text file. He had a web site online containing photos, audio files of his jingle work, and an entire album that he produced himself. He was in Toronto, and I was living and working in Manhattan.

Does this sound problematic to you too?

We agreed to meet after a couple of hour long phone conversations. I was to fly to Toronto and stay for a long weekend. American Airlines was more than willing to help.

The conversation with my parents took place over our 3,453th fried seafood dinner at Wida's restaurant on Long Beach Island, otherwise known as the home of home cooking.

"I met somebody I am interested in" Silence. Blank stares all around.

A few weeks later it is time to go to Toronto and meet each other. The airline takes my reservation that I have researched on the net. I go and impulsively spend a lot on clothes in anticipation. His brother notes that I could be an axe murderer. The clock ticks and my anxiety grows.

La Guardia. Off to Canada... no passport. Apparently I haven't needed one until this moment, itself an embarrassment. A birth certificate will do. The view from the descending plane I can recall completely, as I was anxious to know what kind of land I was descending onto. With some comfort I realized that it resembled northern New Jersey, someplace I was all too familiar with.

Cla-lunk. We land at Pearson airport. I am in Canada, to meet somebody that I know really well. Sort of. First thing, everything really is in French as well as English. The second thing is nothing, the lack of a change. Faces look the same, but the customs officers sit under Canadian flags. I am officially not in the US.

Stepping out into the terminal on a Saturday morning in September was my passage into a new life, but at the time it seemed ultimately mundane. Banal. And also lonely. He was not there to greet me.

So I immediately moved to contemplate the finale of this debacle. He doesn't show up. I have been stood up INTERNATIONALLY and now have to walk over to the American counter and ask for a seat on the next flight back to New York.

But about fifteen minutes later he ran into the terminal, not wearing socks and glancing anxiously around the terminal. That was almost five years ago, and I moved to Canada in the summer of 1999 so we could live together. This is the story of a New Yorker plunked down in suburban Toronto.

Turn off the freaking heat!

For crying out loud, summer heat and humidity on October 1st in Toronto! When Manhattan is under a foot of water in 2006 I suppose we can consider global warming a done deal. By then I hope to be living in Yellowknife, closer to the Artic Circle where one might still be able to enjoy the change of seasons.

Here is autumn and it seems as if summer can't quite leave us in every way, not just the obvious weather. Work is still overlayed with the summer's simplistic bitchy crap. The love of my life is still plagued by sinus headaches. My need to get a new car is left dangling in the wind, unappreciated.

But some progress has been made. The ongoing life simplification project has netted a new standard email address. No extra phone line, no shitty DSL connectivity and much less spam. Sheeesh, has that gotten out of hand in the past six months.

Go visit my reason for living - http://www.thatmark.com