Registered my very own business today

Whew, you are catching me coming down off a marathon session of transcribing recipes, sometimes having to squint to even read my own handwriting or editing the recipes on the fly knowing I always make some subtle changes to the recipe as I prepare it.  It has just been a crazy week but I am still on track and making good progress. Things are not looking too bleak.  Yesterday I emailed back and forth with Lesley and like the dependable trooper she is, she was able to roll with my craziness and it looks like we will have our photos for the cover.  I talked with Adela here in the office yesterday and she helped with me the sizing for the photo for the cover.  Today I emailed Todd to see if he can still help with the layout in InDesign.  If not, I will have to quickly find plan B.  I have spent hours last night and today transcribing recipes. 

I also set up my own business this morning.  George Henry Press is born!  My very own publishing company, named simply, after the street I live on.  How exciting I now own my very own publishing company; Martha Steward Living watch out.  Oh sure, my company has no assets, lots of debt, no published product yet, has paid no taxes, employs no staff, doesn’t even have a logo.  But it is all mine!  I also talked with the publisher again today and got some more questions answered.  So many balls in the air I feel like a one arm juggler in a Russian circus, keep ten balls in the air with one hand and out of breath, but fearful if I fail I will be assigned the job of cleaning up the poop from the dancing bears!  Hey, can you tell I am getting punchy?  Still running, and running hard, no rest yet, and I can’t let myself ease up thinking I am getting ahead.  Sore eyes, tired fingers and aching back will just have to be tolerated until the book is at the publisher.  After that, I may collapse for three days on my couch with a tub of ice cream!  And not ice cream I will have made by hand, creamy store bought ready to be eaten grocery store given ice cream!  Better run to get back at it, more work awaits!

The cover photo has been chosen

Yesterday was a fun day.  I worked with Lesley, my photographer extraordinaire, and whittled down the photos that could be possible for the cookbook cover to four.  Then I hijacked my lunch hour at work and printed out the photos.  I numbered them and then created a little cheat sheet for myself with three questions:  which photo do you like the best, which photo makes you feel the happiest, and which photo most resembles your own life and own experiences in your own kitchen?  Armed with my cheat sheet and questions, and the print outs of the four possible photos, I conducted an informal focus group with the women in my office.  It turned out to be such fun.  I would approach someone, ask if they wanted to participate and then I would lay out the photos and ask them the three questions, recording their responses. Seriously, once people started to understand what I was doing, everyone wanted a turn.  And I had to keep them separated so they would not bias each other’s answers.  But you should have seen the arguments.  People arguing that their favourite was better than someone else’s or that such and such was wrong with this photo and not another.  Or that the men in the photo were hot or not, or they didn’t like this woman in the photo’s hair or lips.  So funny.  But as always, the marketing science always pays off, and soon there emerged a clear front runner.  The laughable thing was all afternoon people would come to my desk to see if their favourite was the front runner.  Everyone was cheering for their favourite and getting pretty competitive to win or feeling sullen if their choice lost. I had a blast and so did everyone else. The best thing is I now know which photo most appeals to most people which I hope once it is on the cover of the cookbook will also translate to more people in public liking the cover and finding it appealing and so choose my cookbook over others.  I was good again last night and spent three hours working on the insides of the cookbook and with some progress the last few nights, I am feeling motivated to keep going.  I have to admit it was at times a bit of a hard slug but I would get up and walk around a bit or go make some popcorn but always forced myself to sit back down.  I can’t believe how lazy I can be or so willing to bargain with myself why I can leave something till tomorrow or put it off.  I am quite happy to run away from pain or hard work!  But I pushed through and am feeling better for it.  Still lots of work ahead of me but going back at it today!

Still plodding along

I had such a productive day yesterday.  Seriously I am feeling pumped about how much work I got done on the cookbook.  Nothing like an impending deadline to focus the mind!  Flashbacks to late nights at university aside, I made great progress yesterday.  I have made myself a plan to get the cookbook done and I am sticking to it, come what may.  And I had my first proud moment last night.   I worked for three hours after dinner and completed everything I was supposed to complete. Now if only I was that productive at work!  It is going to be a tonne of work in the next little but I am committed.  And if I am not committed now, I will need to be committed by the time I am finished!  Today more of the same, transcribing and formatting.  Doesn’t really make for a very interesting entry today but this is definitely the mundane, repetitive, ordinary part of the work!  Nothing glamorous, just hard work.  I had a thesis supervisor at university who once said it is not necessarily the smartest people that achieve, but those who do the work.  Well, I am short on the smarts in this case so I better rely on the work!  Heading back to it, keep poking me will ya to keep me working!

Back from vacation and jumping back into work

Back home again and what a vacation!  We had just the best time.  It was beautiful weather the whole time we were away in the Dominican Republic, hot sunny days, no clouds, clear night skies filled with stars, warm ocean breezes blowing in the evenings.  We ate way too much, enjoyed teas in the lobby and cocktails before dinner, talked, laughed and best of all took lots of naps. I spent literally days in the sea, body surfing on the waves, paddling around in the turquoise waters, smiling and swimming with my guy.  We left the resort for a little shopping and mostly just relaxed.  I found that I was much more stressed than I had realized and enjoyed the time to unwind and get refreshed.  I even found some time to journal a bit about the cookbook and do some planning.  

And a good thing that I did.  Yesterday I sent a note to the publisher of my cookbook and found out that they have a 4-6 lag time between receiving the final version of the book and the time when it will be available on Amazon and other sellers.  So in order to hit a spring release date, I have to have the cookbook finished for March 11!  I only have three weeks left to finish it in order to hit the target release date that they have established.  Yikes!  I have still have so much left to do.  Last night I was a bit overwhelmed but I have started to figure out exactly what is left to do and how many hours I have to spend each day working on the cookbook (when I am not at work, cooking, cleaning etc, never mind just spending time with my guy) in order to have it completed on time.  I will have to call Lesley to see where she is at with the pictures and Todd to see when he is available to help me with the layout.  I still have to register the business, get my copyrights and ISBN numbers, set up bank accounts, oh the work is ahead of me.  But I am determined to get it done!

Add to this work on the cookbook the fact that we have our house now and spent Sunday and yesterday working on it, taking down ceilings, stripping off walls, getting ready to paint and generally starting to work on the house!  My guy has a shopping list his arm long of things to buy for the renovations and decorating but it looks like this weekend I will have to devote the whole two days to working on the cookbook, 8 or 10 hours each day!  He is pretty understanding about the cookbook and I think he secretly likes that I will be preoccupied with the cookbook; keeps me from bossing him around with ideas about the house!  It will be a busy three weeks, jump aboard with me, let’s see if I can do it!

We got our new home; now off on a vacation

I am so happy, indescribably content, over the moon.  I feel like a robin in the spring, flying around, twigs in my mouth, building my nest!  We picked up our keys and drove over to our house, unashamedly texting everyone we knew that we had picked up our keys and were heading to our first house.  I will never forget walking up the path and putting my first key in the door and swinging it open to our new life.  My guy of course took a picture of everything.  We had a great surprise waiting for us when we walked in.  On the breakfast bar in the kitchen, our agent had left a bouquet of flowers, Brie, crackers, grapes, nuts, chocolate and more champagne!  I unpacked our champagne, strawberries, camembert, chocolate, crackers and cookies to supplement and we began celebrating. We wandered around the house, champagne in our hands, talking and looking at each room, my hands rubbing down the walls to assure myself that it was true.  I must have tread up and down those two flights of stairs fifty times, learning the way, letting my feet trust and remember each riser on the staircase, each turn in the wall.  It was echoed, was alternately dark and light and always wonderful.  Paint colours, furniture position and carpet details were interrupted by soft kisses and lingering looks between us.  We have our home.  Later we sat in candlelight and ate pad thai and spring rolls, sipped champagne and gobbled down the remaining fruit.  Our first meal in our first house, an empty house waiting anxiously to be filled with our memories, a blank canvas on which we can paint our life.  It seemed such a shame to leave when we did to go back to the condo but I left part of my heart there and there it remains waiting for us to come back after our vacation.

Later today we leave for the Dominican Republic for our week’s vacation in the sun.  And we both really need it.  We are both fighting off the start of colds, colds I am convinced have been brought on by stress, exhaustion from work and all that is going on right now.  I am so looking forward to warm breezes sitting under a palm writing in my journal or reading, the feel of cool water against my skin under a baking sun, delicious meals, afternoon naps, cocktails in the evening, laughing at evening entertainments and moonlit walks on the beach back to our room when the day is done.  We have a tradition of a midnight swim in the pool of the resort on the first night we arrive anywhere down south.  I will know we will have arrived when I am slipping into the water this evening.  We are gone a week so I won’t be able to write while we are away but I will be thinking of you and saving up lots of thoughts and memories to share.  Have a great week and I will see you when we get back.  

A dream of an 80s yuppie lawyer, so fantastic

I am super excited.  This afternoon, I left work and met my guy to go to the lawyer’s office to sign the final paperwork to get our house tomorrow.  And wow, what a pile!  We met with Jennifer who was quite nice but honestly with her oversized, frosted blonde hair, long purple painted nails, shining lip gloss and tight but faded black skirt, she reminded me of a lawyer from a movie from the 80s, all hip and fast and budding yuppie. Only in her case, it is more than 30 years later and she still has the swing and faded black pumps to show for it.  I fell in love with her. She was sassy, flippant, funny and speedy, like a clerk in a Michael Douglas movie and when I finally shook her bony hand in thanks to say goodbye, I felt like Molly Ringwold should be standing in the lobby, smacking her gum and straightening her leg warmers.  It was fantastic.  But even more fantastic was walking out the door of that non-descript strip plaza in a forgotten corner of the city with my guy, knowing we were together and that tomorrow we would get possession of our first home as a married couple.  And now it is so funny.  We have come home and immediately starting packing the car with things to take over tomorrow night when we finally have the keys: sponges, cleaning products, tea cups, cases of pop, brooms.  And champagne.  We have had a bottle of Veuve Cliquout in the fridge for a week now chilling.  Honestly, what I really looking forward to tomorrow night is sitting on the floor in my new living room, in an empty echoing house, with a dusty old ghetto blaster plugged into the wall churning out tunes, and eating pad thai from a Styrofoam container and sipping cold champagne from a plastic mug with my guy.  I can feel the happiness and the tears already and can’t wait for the first feeling of finally being home, looking around at those dirty beige walls, the chipped counter tops waiting for attention, the dishwasher that needs bleaching and the bare spots where we need to put up some crown moulding and knowing that this is the house we will make our own, where we will make our home.  

What a surprise

What a roller coaster this week has been!  So today at work I found out that I had won Achievement Club this year, a program at my work for employees who have contributed significantly over the past year.  And I found out I am to be included in that group this year and, in April, we are off for a week in Cabo San Lucas in Mexico at a very posh resort.  I am so excited, actually I can’t tell if I or my guy are more excited.  It is going to be great and honestly it is so nice to be recognized for all the hard work you do at work!  It’s a pretty special time right now, our first house is closing on Friday, Saturday we leave for the Dominican Republic for a week in the sun and now this surprise at work.  I am feeling pretty blessed right now and sitting down tonight to work on press release emails doesn’t seem like a chore at all!