my first press check

Listening to: ambient internet radio on iTunes - groove salad
Feeling: tired :P

First of all, let me say, it makes me so happy that anyone reads my blog!! I mean, I would probably still ramble on incessently about nothing. :D But it's nice to know there's a few folks out there getting some entertainment out of it. ;) now let's just hope i didn't just jinx myself! hehe.

SO! Today I went on my very first real press check. Honestly, it was just kinda boring. It was neat to see the printer's and all, and they had a distribution center too, which was new, but it was really almost exactly like what we did in Digital Pre-Press. I guess our education did prepare us, at least for something. *slaps hands on face like in Home Alone*

It took us (my work buddy/"mentor" Chris, another designer, and a print buyer or something) two hours to drive to Bloomington, IL, to get to the printer. We stopped for gas in "Dwight" and there was nothing but CORN. But so we got there and they had lunch for us from the Olive Garden, which rocked, and it was funny cause later on Chris said that when they come to Chicago they take us out to much nicer places, but you couldn't blame them because Bloomington didn't have much better. I was like, Olive Garden was good enough for me!!

What threw a wrench into the whole thing was that Morningstar was like a new account starting up for the printer (although they had worked with them before) so there were all kinds of scheduling issues to talk about, because we're printing newsletters monthly. Like 6 of them or something, so scheduling is rather complicated.

I realized something today. Everyone at Morningstar is really anal. Not that that's a bad thing, but they make Bob look daring and free. ;) We had to push the black on two of the things we checked, and the red on one, and "add blankets" to another (too boring to talk about here) but the changes were minute. I mean, you could see the difference, but it took us entirely too long, being there. We had thought we could get back by 5, but we actually didn't get back till 8!! Needless to say I was a little annoyed. I went to White Hen (convience store) for my dinner - ended up getting a salad and a yogurt and a hot tea. Pretty decent food here. *yum*

So I was ready to have not been there so long, so what can you do. And I was supposed to go sign my lease today, too, but I realized that I probably wasn't going to be able to, so now I've got to try to go tomorrow or something, before I fly home for the weekend. :)

I can't wait to get home. I can't wait to see Tim. I miss him so so so much. Just being alive is kind of painful. But I'm not saying I think this Chicago thing is necessarily a bad idea--maybe it will help us figure things out, grow. We'll see. Today was the first day I woke up and didn't feel really depressed. I think I just have depressing dreams--in fact, I'm sure of it, even though I never remember them. I think I felt better today because going on a press check is good experience no matter what happens, so I felt better about being here. Tomorrow, we'll see.

I was quiet a lot today. I can't talk about a lot of things. I can't talk about living in Chicago, or my wife/husband, or my kids (obviously) and I can't talk about restuarants. Movies, that's pretty much it. And that's hard, cause people always are shocked by my taste in movies. With steering clear of politics, computers, software, and talking too much about my parents or Pittsburgh - well it starts to seem like it's hard to talk about anything at all. So it was awkward. Meeting new people always is. But I guess I wasn't really intentionally being quiet, I wanted to talk, I just didn't have a lot to say, and that's not normal for me, so... yeah.

Ugh! :) This is long enough already. And I still have to pack my bags, to store in the hotel over the weekend! hehe. Better get to work. hehe :D