In the spring of 1998, I moved out of my freshman year dorm room, saying goodbye forever to my freshman year roommate. This 4’8″ dude was the moodiest, rudest, most anti-social dude I’ve ever known. He also happened to be from India. We didn’t see eye to eye on lots of things, and I’m not talking about religion or politics or foreign policy. I’m talking about personal
Archive for » June, 2008 «
In the winter, I don’t allow Mother Nature to dictate my social life. Blizzards have never kept me from The Awesomeness. So why would massive wind destruction be any different? It wouldn’t. You bet.
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Friday afternoon, I was wrapping things up for the week when someone yelled out from the other side of the office, “The Tornado sirens are going off!” This prompted me to immediately shut down my computer, silently turn my light off, and attempt to sneak out of the office. The last place I wanted to be trapped at 5 on a Friday was in the office.
Grabbing my bag, I tiptoed around the cubicles, listening for the voice of the office manager so I knew where not to walk. It was like Neo trying to get away from the dude in the suit in The Matrix, only without all the weird dialogue. Amazingly, I managed to make it to the door and out of the building. When I got outside, however, I saw something absolutely terrifying. The clouds to the northwest were 50 feet above the ground. I wish I’d taken a photo, because the sky was three shades of dark gray, with a darker region in the center funneling toward the ground. Unfortunately, my thoughts were occupied with wondering if I had a clean set of boxers in my car.
It was about this time that I had an internal monologue that I don’t exactly remember, but it went something like, “Hey, get the hell back inside! You bet!”
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On Thursday, I spent the better portion of the day at a training session. As anyone who knows me is aware, I struggle to sit still for that long without doing SOMETHING to stay awake. I’m a hands-on guy; watching someone else demonstrate best practices bores me to the verge of sleep. I needed something, anything, to get my mind rolling at 100 MPH. Lucky for me, there was lunch, because inside the plastic tray was a moist toilette.
Now I know what you’re saying. You shouldn’t use a moist toilette on your face because the chemicals will make you blind, no matter how refreshing it might seem. Well, don’t worry, you. I’m talking about the packaging, specifically, the art deco wrapper.
Before you say it out loud and disturb everyone around you with your musings about how I’ve lost my mind, I’ll say it (or type it) for you…
Category: Graphic Design
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As I was leaving the office on Friday, I got a text from Gilby Clarke. Seems he had ducats for the College World Series game that evening, and I immediately jumped at the offer. This was the infamous rain delayed game from the previous evening, which had started and lasted all of 15 minutes before being delayed. The rain never stopped, and the game was eventually postponed until Friday.
And so it was that the game on Friday began with the bases loaded, one out, and North Carolina trailing LSU 1-0.
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On Tuesday, Omaha’s complete smoking ban unexpectedly went into effect when a state judge signed papers striking down the exemptions in the previous law. The partial ban held that if an establishment served food, smoking was banned. If there was no kitchen, or if the establishment had Keno, smoking was OK. These labyrinthine-esque exemptions led to lots of confusion, apparently. Or so I’m told. Anyway, the state agreed with the confused people, ruled the exemptions unconstitutional, and struck them down.
Wednesday, Dick Herculanum and I headed out to the bars to test this newfound smoke-free paradise. Calls to Continental Frutiger and Gilby Clarke went unreturned; we already knew what his answer would be, so we didn’t bother calling Cliff Glypha. Now, the Omaha Police were allowing a grace period through the weekend, so that all barowners had time to learn of the new law since it came so unexpectedly. So we were curious who would enforce it, and who would play dumb.
Before we headed to the bar, we met at an ice cream parlor in Dundee for a local graphic design social happy hour. I don’t know about anyone else, but ice cream is way better than beer. And I like beer a lot, as you well know. So imagine how much I love ice cream.
As we sat at tables on the sidewalk, we observed as a local TV crew went into the bar across the street. This particular bar, the loathsome Beer and Loathing in Dundee, is considering mounting a counter-attack on the judges’ ruling, and no doubt the TV news crew wanted a juicy soundbite for the news. Whether or not you think smoking in bars is OK or not, a statewide ban for Nebraska takes effect in 11 months, so what are they really gaining? It will take two months to get a hearing, so even if they win, they get what, nine extra months of smoking before having to ban it again? They’ll spend a fortune in legal fees for a short-term victory. Genius, those guys.
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