It's Official

Issue 1 of the 2008 LoonsNest, the official magazine of the Great Lakes Loons, is now out of my hands. The weekend was a bit of a scramble, especially the last 18 hours or so. Working closely with the team, we were getting together photos and bios for all of our likely players for the year, but we did not have the official list until 2AM. When I came in this morning, I had to assemble the last few players added to the roster, get everybody in order and get the last 12 pages put together. It's all in the hands of F.P. Horak now and they will, no doubt, do their usual stellar job.

The start of the 2008 season is now just three days away and I still have PLENTY of work ahead of me, but I can't begin to tell you how great it feels to have the program out of my hands. My next big priorities with the team are working on our first poster giveaway of the season, spending the day taking shots of the players on Wednesday, and then shooting the season opener.


Another nice moment in the past week was the launch party for Tri-City Brewing's newest offering, Loons Summer Ale. 989 Design developed the logo/look for Loons Summer Ale. At present, there are no plans to bottle Loons Summer Ale so the only place you will see our logo is on tap handles and signage at Dow Diamond and select establishments in the Tri-Cities.

Counting Down the Days

Instead of taking the usual shot from right in front of the studio I walked across the street so that I could catch the sun setting. I can't tell you how happy I am to see the sun on a pretty regular basis. I'm happy to be back in Michigan, there's no doubt about it, but the one thing I miss about living in Colorado is the 300+ days of sun each year. The weather is still a little chilly, but it is warming up a little bit.

It needs to warm up a little quicker, though, because opening day for the Great Lakes Loons is only eight days away. Eight days! I am over the biggest part of pre-season hump, but there are still plenty of things to do before next Thursday. My number one priority for the club is finishing the last twelve pages of LoonsNest, the Loons' program. Sixty pages are already at the printer and have probably already printed, but the last twelve pages are the pages which include the player photos and stats. The trick of it is that we can't do those pages because we don't know who our players are going to be just yet. It's going to be a little rough on me, but F.P. Horak has the toughest part of the job because they have to take what I give them and then print it, trim it, fold it, marry it up with the first sixty pages, throw a few staples in and then deliver it in about 72 hours. They're superheroes, I'm telling you!

I am not feeling particularly verbose right now, I guess, because I don't really have much to say. I know there are things I should be reporting on, but they just aren't coming to me.

Too many long days (and nights) in the studio. Come April 4th, I'm going to sleep like there's no tomorrow. Except I'm not really going to do that because there are already three or four jobs lined up and waiting for me to get after them. So after them I shall get.

What kind of week are you having?

Here are things than have happened in the past week and a half:

• The furnace quit working one evening and I woke up to a 40-degree house the next morning. I don't mind the winter, but that's a little on the cold side when you're trying to get up in the morning. I couldn't get it started again so I had to have someone come out and make the repairs, which turned out to involve replacing my thermostat.

• A few days later I came home to find that we had no water. I called the city and was told that it wasn't an emergency and someone could come out the next day. The next morning, a water department guy came out to figure out what the problem was. Turns out that the city was trying to turn the water off at a vacant house next to mine and shut my water off instead. Great.

• After the water was back on, there must have been a lot of junk in the lines because my upstairs sink had almost no water pressure. I tried to turn the shutoff valve beneath the sink and it started leaking and spraying water everywhere. The problem had quickly gone beyond the meager limits of my plumbing skills, so I had to bring in a plumber. Two new shutoff valves later and there are no more leaks and the water pressure is great.

What's next?


Yeah, I know this isn't anything to do with design, but these little problems have been taking up a lot of my time. All the time this stuff is going on, I'm fighting to try to keep up with all of my work.

I had lunch with a friend who is a local mover & shaker today and I think I have a very high profile project coming up in the next month or two. I will update more as this project takes shape.

Okay, time to get back to work. Have a happy Wednesday.