The final push.

Alright, I thought I was on track. I was going to the gym, blogging everyday, but then we hit a crunch again... sigh. But the end is in sight and we can only go up from here.

On Thursday last week we went to the AIGA event. Chris S, Francesca, Lindsay and myself met up with Mary and Ben and found our way through the U of M campus. I hate going over there, and make a habit of avoiding the area. We are unfamiliar with the halls and auditoriums, and they don't seem to do much to try to point you in the right direction, but we made it.

The talk started out slow, with microphone problems and guests who didn't seem too interested in discussion, but it definitely picked up by the end. There was good discussion and some drama in the crowd (one woman stood up and angrily argued with the panel until a moderator got her to leave). When we left we had a lot to talk/rant/argue about and that's a good thing.

On Friday the construction finished on our upstairs floors. They look really good, but the whole house reeked of chemicals the whole time. We avoided the fumes by staying at the studio all night. I was in the studio alone all day while Lindsay taught, and afterward we me up with Adam and went to Yum. We stayed there for quite a while, until they were closed, then we went back to the studio. I played Nier for a while while Lindsay and Adam looked at dating sites (for Adam, not Lindsay). We also watched a documentary called "The Science of Sex Appeal" or something like that. By the time we left, it was 4 am... too late.

The next day we got up pretty late. We had a lot of work to do for our final-ish push, so we went to the studio as soon as we could. We stopped for Hot Dogs and worked at the studio until 6 or so, when we went to a friend's house for dinner. Our friend was Lindsay's boss at Target and mine at D56, but she and her husband acts a bit like our parents. They tell us how proud they are and they call us "the whippersnappers" when we're not around.

We were supposed to meet at 112 Eatery, but they just got a new dog, and it's their first ever. So they didn't want to leave it alone and we ended up getting takeout from Rainbow Chinese. Which was good too. We ended up staying 4 hours or so, instead of the 2 like we planned. We ended up leaving at 11 PM or so, just to go back to the studio to work until 2 or 3.

Sunday was a business day. We got up and went straight to work. Francesca came with and we cranked on the final group of designs we needed to do. That's about it.

Monday we met with a drywall guy about the next stage in our upstairs renovation. Then we went into the office. We had a new intern starting, and Mary came in to help too. Francesca had them working by the time we got there, so we joined in. 1/2 way through the day we got Chris S to help, too, so we were working at full capacity. We didn't have enough space to go around.

We finished up the bare minimum, and sent off the designs. We still owe some, but we got the critical ones out the door, and on time to boot. Way to go us.