Took the day to drive down to Alexandria, to work on the Bloomery branding project. Erik asked me to help out with building them a new look for a product line from a distillery out in West Virginia.
Of course, this was the day that it had to pour icy rain, so the roads were just clogged. I managed to skirt a lot of it with Waze, but I was still about a half an hour late. Everyone was happy to see me, though I felt out of touch. Work was buzzing, but I am completely out of it save for this solitary project. I’m glad Zerflin has been doing well, because otherwise we’d really be struggling. The work that we’ve had come in from A2L, Bainbridge, and The History Factory have kept us busy while Brightline works on landing more projects.
I settled in at Kristen’s old desk, she was a developer that moved on to another job.
The work was fairly simple; just reviewing Moodboards with Kuntz (Moodboards are essentially collages of images that we use for inspiration for the branding and logo), and then editing them. My laptop was mind-numbingly slow, though. The files were small, the operations quick, but
Dropbox chose that moment to sync with everything in the world, and so my work ground to a halt. What was only supposed to be a couple hours ended up being the entire day; I didn’t finish up the last round of edits until around 5pm.
Erik was positive, and even asked me about how the family was doing and inquired if I was receiving checks ok, which was really nice. Not all of our clients pay us in a very timely fashion, which is really difficult, but Erik has really been helping.
While I’d been waiting for the computer to kick in, I had been doing art venue research in Alexandria. I’ve already identified at least 25 different coffeehouses and galleries in Baltimore that I might be able to show art at. I hadn’t eaten all day, so I decided to swing by Firehook Bakery to get a chai and a croissant, and see if I could talk to the owner. I met with a Tunisian barista who was very friendly, and told me to call in the morning, because he and the manager would be working together then. He was really nice. I jabbered away with him in French; happy to be able to exercise my rusty language skills.
The ride home was even worse than the ride down, compounding my frustration. I had hoped to be in and our quickly so that I could get more Zerflin work done. Several of the Bainbridge sites were so close to being done… But it only got worse. I had a cheque to deposit into our Zerflin account, but even after trying 6 ATMs and consulting with a friendly Spanish furniture worker who was able to deposit his cheque, I wasn’t able to. Finally, with the help of the furniture worker I found a Capital One branch that was still open, and I stormed in two minutes before they locked their doors.
The man behind the counter patiently explained to me that no, I was not able to deposit money into my Capital One account with my USAA card… I had switched them in my wallet and had been using the wrong card in vain the entire time… Mortified as I was, the teller was very kind and helped me get my check deposit.
Having burned through no less than 8 podcasts on the trip, I picked up Chinese food at the Double Dragon and made it home.
Tamika was exhausted. She’d been working on a new coding project that she had taken on, and was worn out. We chilled for a bit and watched Key & Peele before diving back into work. I managed to get everything done I needed to, but I’m exhausted. And guess what time it is… 2AM…
