Saturday, April 25, 2009

Down to the wire.

We leave soon for Turkey. I am desperately working to get two clients websites moved to new hosting. This has not been easy since many of the tech support people are complete idiots. I don't use terms like this lightly. They have cocked this process up seven ways to sunday.

Trying to get stuff done around the house. I finally got the chance to pack (Rossana, of course, was ready weeks ago and has merely been tweaking her bag). Downloaded a Turkish translation app for the iphone. I won't be using it for email or calls over there waaaaaay too expensive unless its an emergency. I will be taking my Netbook with me and blogging whenever I find a few drops of wifi.

For a short preview of what we might see in Turkey I present this tourism ad. I'm not sure about the giant horsemen or the flying mermaids. Looks dangerous.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

There and back again...

It was back to sunny Florida for the FX-International show last weekend. I went solo and I'm not sure it was worth the effort. Yes, there were some cool media guests there. Yes, I did get to sit in on Leonard Nimoy's appearance which WAS very cool. But the work to do it...

The biggest pain was that the convention center closed its loading dock at 7pm. I arrived at 6:50. EVERYTHING had to be loaded onto my new dolly. Gridwall, stock, mannequins the whole enchilada HAD to be in the doors in 10 minutes. It was the fastest load-in in history. I managed to get it in the door and to our spot just in time. The whole load was so heavy I got rope burns on my hands and was so winded I was nausious. Nothing like 8 hours of sitting in a car and then running a 600 meter dash.

Despite being a well established show, the crowds and sales were way down for everyone. We made money at least, which is more than I can say for some of my fellow merchants. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

Turkey is a little over a week away...