Furlough Friday

iPhone 4 Capture

For the first time ever in 20+ years, had to postpone today's shoot for health reasons. Fortunately, weather bringing strong gusty winds, intermittent showers and hazy, less than ideal skies provided cover for the image of invulnerability I try so hard to project... Ha!

Only made it out of bed yesterday for multiple runs, always a few seconds too late, to the loo. Fever, chills and intense intestinal distress had me lying around in a daze for most of the day. Haven't eaten a bite now since dinner two night's ago and beginning to feel a little weak. Need food, but fear that it will spontaneously eject itself across the room (think Jackson Pollock canvas) as soon as it's ingested keeps me from tempting fate for just a little while longer...

After a few quick design changes, the summer email promo was completed and roughly 250 sent out last week. Very happy to report that there was an immediate response rate of 20%... emails acknowledging receipt (and none of them cursing me for SPAM) & two immediate assignments a direct result. One of those assignments was supposed to happen today, but you know how that turned out... or didn't. Fortunately, we've been able to reschedule it for a week from now, followed by another two-day assignment taking us back to the Big Island for more resort work.

Here's the final promo design sent:



Now the weekend is nearly upon us - offering a couple of days to completely mend the bowels and, with any luck, get some long-overdue gardening done. Last week's strong winds threatened to topple a massively top-heavy bougainvillea tree, destroying a supporting fence structure in the process. Heavy-duty pruner & saw in hand, I fought the bougainvillea & the bougainvillea won. So scratched and bloodied was I that the guy managing the weigh-in station at the local composting repository felt compelled to inquire if I was "OK"? Horror show... Let's hope we fare better during this weekend's lawn-warrior outing.

HAPA is currently winding it's way through Japan bringing music of the islands to their multitude of Japanese fans. Founder Barry Flanagan was kind enough to text me this photo of their show poster, drawn from our studio sessions of a few months back, taken outside Tokyo's Cotton Club:

photo: Barry Flanagan/HAPA