Insane in the Membrane

This has turned into an insane week!

PISSY WORK STUFF
Late Monday afternoon I found out I had to put together three PowerPoint presentations for the first day of our summer sales meeting, aka tomorrow, thanks to our Publisher's unexpected and, for all intents and purposes, immediate move over to our Conferences division, leaving our senior sales guy caught out there having to take over at the last second. Among the many things on the two-day agenda is a presentation on a new magazine we're launching in October that primarily lives in the no-longer-Publisher's head. Because I've been working on the marketing for it, I actually know more about it than the sales people, so I ended up putting it together. From scratch! Also had to put together the circulation comparision presentation for our regular titles, as well as my own marketing presentation. More PowerPoint in the past two days than I've ever done. They do look nice, though. :-)

Funny thing is, change #572 at the company - I'm on my fourth marketing director and now, my 7th publisher, albeit across several different magazines - has left me rather cold, not feeling the usual spark of "new opportunity" that's kept me there this long. Nevertheless, I'm approaching tomorrow as my last stand. If nothing significant changes after this, I may have to start looking around.

INTERESTING COMIC BOOK STUFF
Sent my pitch for the comic anthology I mentioned the other day and got the go-ahead for it! Basically, it's an adaptation of a poem of mine, Mozer, Bethea & I, that also serves as an answer to a comic book I ripped a while back and caught some flak for. Figure I kill two birds with one stone, trying my hand at writing a comic story while answering the typical knee-jerk response to a bad review: "Why don't you try writing something yourself?" Those who can, do, right?

Some interesting doings behind the scenes over at Buzzscope, as Midtown makes a questionable decision that, while I disagree with, should give the site a bit more flexibility to be what it wants to be as opposed to what they want it to be. The downside is the potential for getting a 1099 that I could write off some of this stuff against is lost. Can't miss what you never had, though, so onward and upward! I still have a couple of ideas that may turn into a few pennies, though, so we'll see. Brainstormed some stuff with Jon that, if he and his group don't run with, I may go forward with myself.

Imagine that, right?

Still haven't had the time to transcribe the Charlie Huston interview from last week. 90 minutes of talking equals about three hours of typing! Any transcriptionists out there reading this? :-(

GREAT INDIA STUFF
I try not to put it into concrete terms too often, so as to not get my hopes up too high, but she's definitely progressing at a noticeable rate. We figured out her vocabulary has gone from about 5-10 words a few months ago to 100-150 right now. A lot of them are simply repeated phrases she's heard, but she's doing a lot of labelling and recognition, as well as appropriately reactionary things like "Sorry." and "Ooops!" Two weekends ago, she finally acknowledged Maile, our friends Frank and Andrea's daughter, after actively avoiding eye contact with her, and this past weekend, she actually played with her! That was a major step, too.

Oh, and she's points at everything now! That was one of the most glaring symptoms when she was first diagnosed, that she didn't point at anything.

Funny thing is, the ABA therapy is only just now about to go full out. Up to now, it's been about gaining her trust, getting her to sit still for most of the session and understand basic commands.

Her school starts 9/12, but we couldn't get her the afternoon slot that would have been most ideal, so we need to figure out which of the other two slots make the most sense. One would require her waking up with us everyday around 6am to catch a 7am bus, while the other would mean a really late lunch everyday. Not sure which is worse, really.

FUN ISAAC STUFF
Despite how much I resent the fact that we're stuck sending Isaac to Catholic School and had to drop $300 on uniforms this weekend, there's a little something I like about it, too. I think it's partly the sense of him starting school being a major milestone, like we got this far without breaking him! Of course, the first time he comes home and mouths off with something like: "You're not my father! Jesus is my father!" - there's going to be some serious problems!

RANDOM OTHER STUFF
Next Tuesday, August 16th, is my [deleted] Birthday! I plan on hitting 13 the night before, hopefully to help them celebrate their first NPS championship! Either way, it's me at 13 on a Monday night, up their with blue moons and snowy days in Miami. Come on out and wish me well!

Plus, don't forget we're doing the Cure Autism WALK NOW in October, and are raising funds here. A donation there would make for a nice birthday present.