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My original blog - I have moved to http://shannonclark.wordpress.com so this remains only as an archive.
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Searching for the Moon
by Shannon Clark
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Thursday, September 18, 2003
Catching up
with life, the universise, and everything and everyone
Okay. I know it has been over a week since I posted, possibly the longest stretch I have gone without at least a small post since I started this Blog. But I have been busy if not productively then at least mentally recharging, regrouping, and thinking. So, in short order a few sets of announcements, updates, and other items.
As a few of you know this past weekend I was in CA for my grandmother's 80th birthday. A long weekend of family events and catching up, lots of fun but also fairly draining between the long travel times, the time shifts, the stress imposed by the events, and the stress I imposed on myself because I was out in CA instead of back in Chicago working.
Thursday I flew to LA and visited my Aunt. She had long promised to take me shopping as she thought I needed an update in the wardrobe department. We didn't have much time because she had many different tasks and errands to run, between getting ready for the weekend and the sale of a house she had had on the market since April (which closed the next day). So we went to one store where we managed to find me two pairs of jeans that fit and two really great shirts (still haven't gotten the jeans which were being tailored to correct the length of the legs and mailed back to my home). The shirts are really great, one short sleeve and one very cool red shirt. All-in-all a very successful couple of hours shopping.
We then delivered a plant as a present to her realtor and I shopped at the local Vons to get ingrediants for our dinner which I was cooking as small way of thanking her for her hospitatlity and the clothes. I made us a salmon salad nicoise with fresh salmon which I broiled with fresh baby dill and a sauce of olive oil, herbs, lemon, and honey. The salad was organic mixed greens, hard boiled eggs, cherry tomatoes, and baby red potatoes. I also prepared a rice wine vineager cucumber, jicama, and vidalia onion salad (with a few hot peppers washed and crushed to add flavor). All in all a very tasty meal which also impressed my aunt and my cousin with my cooking skills.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were taken up with a wide range of family events - dinner Friday in Santa Barbara at a great restaurant, Saturday daytime spent visiting and exploring the markets, Saturday evening 70 of my grandmother's closest friends and us attended a charity event at an estate in Monticito (which was both a lot of fun and quite amazing), and then brunch Sunday morning. I ended up helping the caterer for the brunch, I made the fruit salad (chopped fruits for 50 people) and helped prep the smoked salmon plate, the caterer said she wished I lived in Santa Barbara. In any case it was a lot of fun. I then started on what felt like a 12 hour journey home (down the hill to wait for a bus, 2 hour bus ride to LAX, check in, 2 hour wait at the gate, flight home, only to learn that the CTA had stopped running trains early on Sunday evenings so after a few miles of walking still had to take a taxi to arrive home just after midnight.
In all it was a fun weekend, but it was also stressful.
This week I have been catching up and starting the process of preparing my office to be moved.
After the end of this month JigZaw will be moving from our current offices to a number of new ones. I will be working from home in a home office and probably will make use of Regus for someone to answer my phones, recieve my mail and provide me a downtown office to work out of and/or meet with people (they have a plan that for <$300/mth you get all the virtual office services plus 50 hours of office usage/month - probably just about perfect for me).
My developer will be moving from our current offices to a shared office/tech incubator which is just blocks from his house. We may also be hosting some of our servers in that facility and may store our excess furniture there as well - the details of that are being worked out. My mom who has been helping us with out bills will be taking one of our computers, our payables files, and our shreddrer and storing that at her home.
Our copier and some of our excess furniture is being sold to one of our neighbors.
But, I still have to find all of our other excess office equipment and arrange for it to be sold (hopefully), probably sometime next week. I then also have to pack up what I need for my own home, pack up what is going to the other places, and start to resolve the numerous big and little issues that remain to be done before we move.
These include:
1. Set up DSL at my home office (started already)
2. Set up phone service for my home office - not yet started, probably going with Vonage.
3. Select a laptop and purchase it for myself (both because I need a Windows 2000 or XP pro system and I will now need a portable system with good WIFI to work more effectively). I'm leaning towards a Sony Vaio, but am considering both an Apple system or another PC maker's system) - it needs to be very lightweight, have great battery life, and solid service. The Sony Seems almost ideal but appears to have poorer WIFI.
4. Sign deal for office space for my developer.
5. Sign deal for Regus office space (or other option for our mail and main line phone)
6. Find a mover - coordinate with where we are moving items, this could be as soon as next Tuesday! (yuck but also a bit of a relief to get it over with sooner vs. later)
7. Sell/transfer obligations for my current Xerox, some misc. furniture, and my PRI phone line - lots of paperwork and annoyances.
8. Write a survey to use to drive sales of my consulting service (leading into sales of my software), write, test, distrubute - lots of work likely.
9. Start updating my advisors and business partners of how to reach me during the move and after.
10. Clean my house both because my girlfriend is returning to Chicago from her business trip tomorrow and because soon I will be working out of the house.
11. Do laundry and drop off dry cleaning (see #10)
12. Start cleaning and packing my office - look for stuff I need to read/reply to /deal with quickly vs. stuff I need at my new home office vs. stuff I need to throw out (and/or scan in my business cards etc). Also means I have to sort my computer equipment, computers, "schwag" from conferences, articles etc. i.e. Lots of filing and sorting for me.
I'm sure there are many more big and small tasks ahead of me, but you get the picture.
9/18/2003 06:06:00 PM
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