169 - Eh

Today was beautiful. I don't know where the cool weather came from, but I loved it. It was one of those sunny, cool days where having the windows open invigorates me. I don't quite know how to describe it except that it makes me feel more alive. When the air is crisp, I have more energy and ambition.

I spent the greater part of yesterday learning about SEO (search engine optimization) and learning to incorporate the parts I could understand. Admittedly, most of it was over my head, but I made simple changes here and there that should get more traffic to the website. The biggest change will be updating the blog to showcase each job. I decided that instead of cluttering up the pages with picture upon picture upon picture, I could post several pics of each job as a blog post and it would serve two purposes - updating the website more often to keep the webcrawlers happy, and showing more detail about each job without constraining myself to just a couple of pictures. I even sound smarter, huh?

I realize few people will subscribe to the blog, but as a potential customer I think it would help me to understand the process and feel more comfortable if I could see a project from start to finish, and at that, see several projects. At Mike's request I also intend to add a gallery of all the pics on the website.

So today I designed business cards:

The design underwent a minor change after I took this screen shot, separate cards for Jason and Mike, but you get the gist of it. On the back there is an appointment reminder. Vista Print is pretty awesome. I love that I can use Jason's own art piece to promote his business. I think it really stands out.

After that I took a walk to the creek to clear my head.

Didn't almost die this time. I actually made it up the hill without stopping, but it was still a struggle.

Today's haul. (still loving the bag)

I guess I really need to stack the stones on the porch and continue to fill the grassy area with gravel. The stones are for the fireplace after all. The big ones anyway. The mid-sized stones can probably stay where they are as a border. This is Mike's project. I'll let him decide. :)

And then I made dinner. I really thought this would be tastier than it was. I know it looks like shrimp, but it's chicken. I marinated chicken in a puree of cilantro, garlic, sea salt and olive oil, then instead of grilling them I cooked them on the griddle. Just seems like a waste to grill for one person, but I *am* dying to try out the grill. Anyway, after they were a little caramelized I tossed them in chili sauce - which I love... I used about 1/4 bottle of it when we went to the Thai restaurant in Friendswood... not quite so much in this dish. I even sprinkled some sea salt on it... still a little bland. I was expecting a flavor explosion. I added some sriracha and lime juice to it... still didn't pop. It was edible and it looked pretty. I paired it with more buffalo fries. So basically my mouth was on fire at the end of the meal, but that's about all I can say for it.

This evening I have been working on the bid sheet. They are looking at more suppliers so I'm trying to get it all set up and ready to go. Still have a lot of work ahead of me but it's mostly waiting on pricing so it should go pretty quickly.

So I guess tomorrow is Monday... I don't hate Mondays anymore and I even get up earlier most days than I did when I had to be up by a certain time. It's nice keeping my own schedule, I just miss having Mike around at the end of the day. Eventually he'll be working closer to home, but for now... we are doing what we've always done... taking distance out of the equation and making it work. It's not for everyone, and it's not what we want to be doing, but we've been doing it for 3-1/2 years now and we're still happily chugging along. Last week, can't remember what day, I looked through the photos from my past blogs, and even though we had a supremely crappy year, we did make a lot of good memories. I guess that's how we got through it, we still managed to have fun.