Christmas Eve

Well, it's Christmas Eve, really late. I should be taking a shower and brushing my teeth and going to bed. But first:

The Little Woman had her yard sale. She collected 70 or 80 bucks and got rid of some stuff. And we met some neighbors we hadn't met before. That was the best part.

And I collected half my fee for the Banner project. That made for a Merry Christmas because we were almost broke. As it was, we were able to celebrate the way Americans always celebrate, by going out and shopping and giving a shot in the arm to the economy. I had to accompany my (almost) 18 year old son to places like Best Buy and Toys R Us. It amazed me the stuff people were buying and carrying out of the store. All of it made in China. A lot of it in big cardboard boxes. Guitar Hero and big Barbie Doll sets and flat screen TVs and Blu Ray DVD players. All stuff I neither could afford, nor did I actually want any of it. I wondered where all the money was coming from to buy all this stuff. After all, this is the Great Recession, the younger brother to the Great Depression. Who has a job to pay for all this stuff?

I think I saw a lot of credit cards coming out of wallets at the checkout counters. The economy is structured with low wages and lots of available credit. But I think the available credit is coming to an end for a lot of people. I predict 2010 is going to bring a major hangover to the spending spree people have been on even in this serious economic downturn. Especially in the downturn, because people don't want to face reality, and they use their credit cards like a security blanket. I think a lot of people are finding out the blanket is shredded.

We actually had a rather modest shopping trip -- a few DVDs and books for my son and a relatively inexpensive pair of speakers for The Little Woman's audio setup in the studio. After all, an aspiring country singer needs a decent pair of speakers.

Oh, I mentioned I collected half my fee for that Big Project. It was a PDF project with images and text, an annual report for a non profit financial institution that does good work in the Inner City, funding minority and women-owned business and the like. It has some connections to City Hall through its president and CEO is a smart and savvy banker who was born in Watts, an African American section of L.A. at the time. Now it is turning majority Latino. Most bank presidents, I bet 95% are old White Guys. Not this gentleman; he is African American, and he has managed to reach his status by getting a good education in the world of business and being really shrewd. He's also just a really good guy. Unusual, I think, in the world of banking. Look how those crooks acted with our bailout money. But I digress.

I had this PDF project, and I began by building the pages in an HTML editor and converting to PDF. I worked for weeks on the thing. And it looked pretty good, but because I had to use tables, nothing really lined up quite right and the client didn't like it. So I did it over. And this time it looked worse. But the client showed me what he really wanted and gave me half the fee. THEN I learned last night in just an hour or two how to use Adobe InDesign CS2. I have had it on the desktop for a couple of years or more and never used it. What a wonderful program! You can drop images in anywhere, no tables. And text, no tables. Move stuff around. And then automatically save it all as a PDF and it looks great! It's all compatible because it is all in the Adobe family. Now I will be able to put the rest of the project together in a day or two and collect the rest of my fee before the New Year. Whew!

It's a good omen for 2010, starting out with some money in the bank. Happy Christmas, Have a wonderful Winter Solstice Season. My best wishes to both of my readers, (or all three or four) for a Great New Year.

Gotta go.