Back into the swing.

When we came back from Columbus, we were greeted with a lot of work phone calls and emails.

On Monday, a client emailed asking how busy I was. I tried to feel out what they were looking for, but I told them I could probably do anything they needed. It turns out they needed a fairly large project done really quickly; 10 greeting cards in about a day and a half. Kind of 2 days.

But the first day was wasted, because I was waiting for direction and they didn't get back to me until really late. So now I had one day.

Francesca and I kind of tag-teamed the project, and Lindsay helped when she wasn't in class or meetings. And we got it done, so that was cool. It was a grind, though. I think that, combined with traveling and being out in the cold, hit my hard and I got really sick really fast. So I spent the rest of this week coughing, sneezing, sniffling and sore. And also still busy.

The next day I had to do a couple waterbottle designs and I was just not having it. I just wanted to stay in bed and die. But I did it, and I actually made a design I really liked with a technique I'm not that familiar with. But now I feel a lot more confident about it so that's cool.

Yesterday the intern and freelancer were in the office and I was trying to contain my infection. A client called and wanted to meet with Lindsay. Lindsay mentioned having people in the office, and they told her we were all welcome to come. So we all piled in and went, and I think they were surprised when 5 people walked through the door. Only 4 people work there, so we outnumbered them.

After work I got in a Battlefield game with Chris C and Jesse. Ryan was in the chat but didn't have the new maps downloaded so he couldn't play. I've been waiting for these maps for a while now, so it's nice to be jumping back in. Black Ops went from pretty interesting to irrelevant in about 2 seconds.

I tested out the maps the night before, but I just played enough to take a small tour of each level. They're pretty nice, and after getting a little more invested last night I had a blast. There were epic moments in each game that can only be described as a Battlefield Moment.

In modern warfare, the excent of an great moment might be like "I killed this dude who was chasing me, then I hucked a grenade that saved my ass" or something.

In Battlefield, it's more like "I was defending an MCOM station and 2 tanks rolled up and I tagged one with a rocket right as the other one took aim at me, but Chris C mortared them and saved me at the last second, but a helicopter was strafing us so we ran in a building but it started to collapse so I jumped out and landed on a dude trying to set a charge on the MCOM station and I stabbed him and started to diffuse it and just as was about to a guy came over the rubble and I knew I was dead but then Chris C slipped out the shadows and shot him in the back and I saved the day just as the helicopter crashed down around us". Damn straight.

I've also been playing Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit. It's good. I'm not totally in love with it but it's really fun and looks really nice. I picked it up for a song during the Black Friday deals, so I'm pretty excited to be playing it.

I actually jumped online for the first time yesterday and played a couple Hot Pursuit races. It's 4 cops and 4 racers, all are real people. The cops are trying to take down the racers, but the racers are trying to finish a race. So it's a super tense, super fun balancing act of trying to shake the cops but at the same time not letting the other racers win. It usually ends up with all but one racer dead (or arrested or whatever happens after they wreck you) and 2 or 3 cops after him.

I'm looking forward to playing more, because the couple races I played online were already quite a bit more awesome than any of the single player content...