how i spent my summer vacation, and other things

It began with "Taco Cottage," the annual weekend when my taco night friends take over my parents' cottage. I wasn't able to find a substitute for the church I was playing at in August, so I actually got up at ridiculous o'clock to drive in to Lorain and play the organ, and was back before noon. My friends only stayed for a few more hours, but then my parents came up, so I spent another night and came home Monday. It might have been nice to stay a little longer and go to the beach, but I didn't feel like slathering up with sunblock (and my skin is very sensitive to sun exposure since the radiation therapy).

Tuesday brought a trip to Accussess--or the eventual location of its offices--to pick up my check for the logo design. While in North Olmsted, I stopped by Guitar Center to buy a pair of headphones for my digital piano. It's amazing what a difference stereo sound makes with this instrument (my amp, by virtue of only being one speaker, is mono). I then spent most of the afternoon playing song after song simply because I loved listening to this thing. This would prove to be a recurring theme throughout the week. Audial cocaine.

I also got a microphone stand, as I've needed one twice in as many months. Now all I need is a portable fold-up piano bench, and my Gig Collection is complete. Well, that and maybe a nice cart to wheel around the amp. And may I interject here that Guitar Center is a great store and their employees are awesome, so I will likely be buying any and all future musical equipment there. Rock on.

Tuesday turned out to be the most productive day of the week; I also went out and bought my new TV. I had checked prices and specs online and visited Target the week before, and eventually decided upon a Memorex 20" flat-tube TV/DVD/VCR. (Yeah, I didn't know Memorex made TVs either.) Twenty inches is quite literally the largest TV I can have, because of where it's situated in my room. None of the 16:9 widescreen HDTVs were small enough, nor do I "trust" most of the technologies out there yet, especially the ones that are essentially just computer LCDs with a TV tuner attached.

Yes, the FCC is forcing everyone to switch to HD in 2009, which is one reason I hated not getting an HDTV, but I had to settle for what I can use right now, and I'm happy with it. That's also the reason I opted for a model with both a VCR and DVD player built-in, as I really don't have room (or power outlets) for multiple machines; plus, the three components all interface with each other quite nicely, so that's convenient.

And yes, I do still frequently use a VCR, and no, a digital video recorder won't suffice, thanks for asking (I'm looking at you, Circuit City). Oh yeah, and it was nice buying my TV at Target rather than Circuit City or Best Buy, where the bloodthirsty employees descend upon you like wolves and try to sell you expensive cables and $30 limited warranties and condescendingly try to convince you that you don't really want to buy what you wanted to buy.

My wishy-washiness paid off, as the TV was on sale $50 cheaper than when I was price-shopping. I was actually worried a bit, because I checked Target's website that day and couldn't find it, nor any other TV/VCR/DVD combos, listed anymore. I guess they were removing it from their product line, which would explain why it was on sale. Works for me.

Wednesday and Thursday were rather uneventful and were essentially midweek "college Saturdays." I finally watched Saving Private Ryan and Master and Commander, two movies I had had from Netflix since March or April but never had time to watch. Actually, I had put off SPR because I had heard how gruesome the opening scene was, and I never really felt in the mood. I can see what people were saying, but I'm sorry I waited so long to watch it on account of that. I thought M&C was great and have been instructed to watch it again in surround sound.

Friday night was Amy's birthday dinner at Sakura in Lakewood, where we had hibachi-style Japanese. Mmmmm. I purposely ate a small lunch so I could have a full dinner, which I'm glad I did. A bit pricey, but good stuff. Since it was more or less "on the way," I also stopped at Dave & Buster's beforehand to rack up some tickets. I now have 12,000 tickets on my card and have yet to find a prize worth cashing in on (I already got the beach towel and coffee mug a few years ago). It was nice to get that urge out of my system though.

Now then, Saturday: Geauga Lake. Can you believe I've lived here 26 years and never went there? I'm pretty sure the last time I went to Sea World was with the 4th grade bus trip, but I had never been to Geauga Lake, nor Six Flags when it was under that title.

A little history lesson here: Geauga Lake was bought by Premier Parks in 1995, which also bought the Six Flags parks (and changed its company name to match) in 1998. GL was called Six Flags Ohio in 2000, and they added three roller coasters to make the park more appealing. 2001 brought another coaster and the acquisition of Sea World of Ohio, creating Six Flags Worlds of Adventure, touted as three parks--amusement, water, and animal--with one admission. Six Flags as a whole has fallen on tough times, what with the general decline of amusement park attendance after 9/11 and rising gas prices, combined with the expense of having to relocate the animals for Ohio's cold winters and the harsh competition in this area with the more popular Cedar Point. So in 2004, CP's parent company, Cedar Fair, bought SFWoA and reverted the name back to Geauga Lake. Having no experience with animals, they decided to close the animal portion and expand the water park there and lowered the ticket price.

Cedar Point season passholders (such as yours truly) were admitted to Geauga Lake free on Saturday and Sunday, so Stu and I took advantage of that. I wanted to ride all of their coasters at least once, which was a pretty simple task since the lines were so short. The only two I didn't ride were Steel Venom (formerly Superman: Ultimate Escape), because it wasn't running, and Double Loop because I happen to hate the Corkscrew at Cedar Point and can't imagine having to endure it twice in one ride. We waited waaaaaay too long for Thunderhawk (formerly Serial Thriller). Of the ten coasters there, I only liked two, and several of them were downright unbearable. I thoroughly enjoyed Dominator (formerly Batman: Knight Flight), which is a lot like Raptor at CP, and Big Dipper, an old wooden coaster built in 1925 that gives great airtime.

Currently, a Cedar Point pass will get you in to any Cedar Fair park (such as Valleyfair or Dorney Park) except Geauga Lake, because of its proximity. Now CF has purchased the Paramount parks, including Kings Island, so I'm wondering how the season passes will work next year. If we can get into Geauga Lake with our passes, I'd like to go there more often and just ride the two good coasters and spend the rest of the day in the water park.

The water park was pretty cool and reminded me of the kids' play area at Ontario Place in Toronto. Only unlike there, Geauga Lake's giant water treehouse area is for kids of all ages, not just those 12 and under (not that the 13-year-old Bryan who was all excited to return to Ontario Place is still bitter or anything). Liquid Lightning is a 4-person raft ride that goes through a short tunnel then shoots you out into a giant funnel, where you slide up one side... then the other... a few more times... then splash out the bottom. Very cool.

Sunday presented my last day playing for Delaware Avenue Methodist in Lorain as well as the last day of my vacation and our first Camelot production staff meeting. I expected some chaos upon returning to work Monday, but it wasn't too bad; most of the chaos happened in my absence.

Then today I found out I got a raise, effective next pay period. It was somewhat surprising, considering the company's financial shape, but after the insanity of the past month and my willingness to be flexible and do my best to keep things running, I can frankly say I bloody well deserved it!

BG blotter

Now that I've been out of college a full four years and my parents are both retired from teaching, the summer has stretched itself from Memorial to Labor Day. In some respects, "summer" goes from the opening of the cottage in mid-May to the closing in late September. This year, I'm considering summer to be Cedar Point's opening day until the first cold day when I get a craving for apple cider and chili with cornbread.

That's a long-winded segue to the Bowling Green police blotter, which is once again updated daily on bgnews.com now that school is back in session. Some highlights from today's report:

Founders was evacuated because of a fire alarm. BGFD reported that burnt popcorn was the cause.
Ah, the ol' leave-the-popcorn-in-the-microwave-too-long trick. My dorm senior year had a kitchen on the third floor, so we had our share of legitimate late night fire alarms.

A subject was reportedly climbing the flag pole outside Commons.
Go protest somewhere else, ya hippies.

A bat had to be removed from the top floor of Mosely Hall.
I'm told bats are fairly common in this area of buildings. At first I thought they were talking about a baseball bat on the roof. Damn fool kids; next time I KEEP IT!!

A woman on North Enterprise witnessed an unknown man approach her residence as she returned home. Officers checked the area and found her roommate with her boyfriend at the residence.
The structure of that last sentence doesn't make it exactly clear to whom "her" refers, which could draw up some amusing conclusions.

Joseph Ryan Rosenberg, 22, and Zachary G. Cook, 22, were observed picking flowers beside a home on Ridge Street and were warned for disorderly conduct.

A 3rd Street resident reported someone on his patio. Officers arrived on scene and discovered a raccoon. Resident claimed he's missing a duck decoy was missing from the patio and claimed the person may have taken it.
Raccoons are always comic gold, ranking up there with penguins and ostriches.

logo

I unintentionally won a logo design contest. I didn't mean to, really.

This guy posted to the Northeast Ohio Performing Arts (e-mail) List saying he was starting up a small educational software business and was holding a logo contest. First prize was $100 plus $50 for each year they used the logo, second prize $50, third prize $25. Since for-profit companies generally pay a minimum of $1,000 (typically more like $4,000) for a well-designed logo, I didn't have much interest in submitting anything.

But then he posted to the list a few days later asking if anyone would like to critique the submissions. I happen to have an interest in logos, as my three books full of nothing but logos will attest, so I replied saying I'd be interested in offering my opinions. Frankly, as I predicted, they were pretty poor as far as logos were concerned. Most of them would not be easily reproducible on various promotional media, such as t-shirts, pens, and trade show banners. Most of them would require full color printing, which is more expensive than spot colors, and would not convert well to simple black. And most of them would be difficult to recreate as vector art, which means they would have to remain a raster image and there would be an upper limit to how large it could be scaled, and in general the lines would not be as crisp.

There were pieces and parts of a few that I thought worked, so I told him that. In the course of exchanging a few e-mails with this guy and swapping opinions, I got to the point where I couldn't really express in words what I thought he needed. I decided instead to just whip up something in Freehand:





One of his logo submissions -- which was actually just something he'd thrown together as a demonstration -- split the company name into "accu" and "sess" using two colors, which, I pointed out, makes it clear how it should be pronounced. Until I saw it written that way, my eyes blurred every time I saw the name. However, if that logo were printed in just black, the same problem would exist. I suggested something in italics, both to get around this problem, and to give the image some movement. Italicizing "sess" would lead the reader's eye off to the right quickly, so I chose to italicize "accu" instead. By the way, the name is a portmanteau of "accurate assessment." Even with my solution for the logo, people I show it to comment that it's hard to say... but I digress.

Personally, I liked the purple and green best; the star was just something I played around with, but I wasn't happy with how it turned out. Someone else's logo submission turned the capital A into an A+, which I thought was a good way to incorporate an educational theme. But he said that, since their software intends to help students score better on standardized tests, an "A+" would not apply, but a checkmark would. So I added a checkmark to my design and came up with this:



Same basic idea, just two colors, easily reproducible at various sizes and on various media. But I kept playing around with color combinations and stumbled upon this:



The second one down. See it? An apple! It's not blatantly obvious, not screaming "Hi, I'm an apple!!," but the hint is there. This disappears when printed in plain black, but the logo still works. It's also three colors instead of two, but black is pretty cheap, and often there would be black text on the page anyway.

He showed the submissions to some of his friends who worked for advertising agencies, and they voted that mine was the best. The only thing they didn't like was the "e" in sess. This is a part of the Kabel font and is what makes Kabel, Kabel. This was the font he originally used in his demo logo, which is why I used it; I also thought it made it slightly less formal and stodgy, since their product is geared toward students. Simply rotating the "e" looked incredibly wrong, so I just changed the font to Gill Sans.

Thus, the final design is:





I picked up my check yesterday, and he's going to send me some promotional materials once they're printed, so I can add them to my portfolio. He also runs a laser engraving business, so he made me a small wooden plaque and a few wooden keychains with my design on it. Very cool.

Considering how little effort I put into it, I made out fairly well. I won't be doing any more cheapies, though, at least not with for-profit companies; this was sort of a fluke. Still, it was kinda fun to design a logo that I know will be used for at least five years.

ach! the nyews

I just got back from an awesome weekend with my friends at my parents' cottage. It's always a bit hectic to plan for 8-10 people staying (or not staying) overnight and coming and going at various times and coordinating meals and whatnot, but always fun and always over way too quick. I love you guys, and thanks for all your help. I swear one of these years we'll have nice enough weather to go to the beach; we've struck out three years in a row. But that's nothing four hours of Apples to Apples can't fix.

Next order of business: Camelot! The last musical I played for was Schoolhouse Rock!, which ended in May of 2004. After that, I was determined to go on a theatre hiatus, just because I wasn't willing to give the time commitment and wanted to get my graphic design career on track first.

Not long after that, cancer happened, which pretty well kept me out of commission until late 2005. I was tempted to come out of my hiatus with a chance to play for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in Medina, but that project fell through. I haven't had to actively turn down gigs, but haven't really been seeking them out either.

Well, the hiatus will officially end this October, when we hold auditions for Camelot at Olde Towne Hall Theatre in North Ridgeville. Is my graphic design career "on track" yet? Hardly -- I'm still working at the same place I was then, and have experienced very little advancement in my ability as a designer there in the last two years. Most of my artistic growth since 2004 has come from my freelance projects, honestly. I did finally get a raise in January, but the threat of being cut back to part-time employment has been looming over me since March, so I've yet to move out of my parents' house. And the last few weeks at work have both been a self-esteem boost and made me more disoriented than anything else. So no, I wouldn't exactly say my career is on any specific track at the moment.

Nonetheless, Camelot is an opportunity for me to music direct. Yes, that's right -- Bryan "I don't know how to teach" Bird will be music directing his first show, after all these years! Camelot isn't exactly the most thrilling show, but the director is my friend Allen, with whom I've worked before (Cabaret, also at Olde Towne Hall), and it's a venue I'm familiar with, less than a 15-minute drive from home. The show will be the last two weekends of February and the first two weekends of March.

And lastly, I'm on a much-needed (see reference to work, above) vacation this week. I'm not going anywhere and have no specific plans or responsibilities, which is my definition of a vacation. My goals are to get a full eight hours of sleep every night and tackle some small projects that I've let pile up over the last few weeks/months/...years. I want to clean my trombone and play it, something I haven't done in over two years. I want to continue packing up my Snoopy collection to put into storage. I want to finally put my graphic design portfolio -- the updated one -- on my web site. I want to go to Dave & Buster's and see if I have enough tickets to get a free TV. Oh yeah, and I need to buy a new TV too -- my ol' reliable 13" TV died. That guy has been with me since aught-1994* and kept me company while I did homework in high school and went to college with me.

*Yes, I know that's not the proper use of "aught"; it's just an old-fashioned word I use to make a rather recent year sound ancient in an ironic way. So don't get all squirrely on me, OK?

I'll let you know a week from now if I accomplished any of those things, or just played Civ 4 all day...

200th post part 2

Continuing the topic of foods I like: bugaboo fudge ice cream!

What's bugaboo fudge, you ask (if you didn't click the link above)? It's black raspberry ice cream with chocolate chips and raspberry cups. "Raspberry cups" are like tiny peanut butter cups, only they're filled with -- get this -- gooey raspberry goo. mmmmmm

It was a comfortable 72 degrees tonight when I went to Target to shop for a new TV, in other words, a perfect night for an ice cream stop. On the way home, I swung by Scoops (formerly Sciarillo's) in Elyria to get a cup of bugaboo fudge. It is, without a doubt, the best ice cream flavor I've ever had, and Scoops is the only place I've seen it around here.

mmmmm raspberry goo......

work

Work has been interesting lately. Two people were fired last week, so the production manager and I have been sharing the duties of shipping, sales orders, and invoicing. In the meantime, we haven't had time to do the jobs we were doing before last week. And since both people who were fired were the only ones who knew the ins and outs of shipping, it's been a struggle to make sure everything is being done properly, especially when it comes to international shipments that require customs forms and commercial invoices. Not to mention all the other little tasks those two people did that we're still not quite clear on who is supposed to be doing them now. Per usual, every problem in the company is blamed on the most recent person(s) fired.

It's getting easier as I get more familiar with the process, but I'm still unsure of myself. We're teaching another production person to do orders and invoices, so the production manager can go back to printing. But I have a week's worth of timesheet logs to input, and I haven't done any graphics work in as much time. I've also been answering the phone fairly regularly and dealing with customer service issues -- a task I loathe, especially since many of the questions could easily be answered by the two people who were fired.

But the boss seems to think I'm doing a great job so far, at least until my first screwup, so that's a motivational boost. Nonetheless, it's a confusing and disorienting time at work right now. I'm just trying to go with the flow and keep my head above water.