The Good, the Bad, and the Whimsical

First, the bad. I’m absolutely swamped at the office right now; I had thought that once we got the latest high-profile, firmwide video finished we’d be able to take a little break, but alas, it’s not to be. As I’m discovering, one of the downsides to being “management” is that I’m the one who has to do all of my staffing justifications — and unless I can show not only that I need the staff to finish the work but that the work itself is a higher priority than other projects, I’m losing my most tenured assistant. And then, on top of that little concern, my desktop machine’s gone haywire again, refusing to recognize several of the attached hard drives and neglecting to sync data on those it does see. Lessons learned: Apple’s Disc Utility isn’t the best at managing RAID arrays, and FireWire drives are temperamental beasts. I haven’t lost any actual data (at this point anyway), but I’m spending hours just trying to reconstruct the system to the point where I can work again. Hours I can’t afford in light of my staffing dilemma. We need to get a more stable, permanent solution in place, but it brings up the whole “how much is video worth” debate again — an argument that had been effectively settled, but rears its ugly head every time we need to make an additional equipment purchase.

It’s not that I can really take issue with being saddled with this responsibility — it is an inevitable consequence of the growth of the video function from a sideline to a mainstay. The loss of creative control I’d anticipated, but I feel a little... not really blindsided, but at least caught off guard. So that’s the explanation for the lack of substantive posting of late, and the probable lack into the immediate future.

Unless somebody in the Bush regime does something too stupid to resist comment again.

The good. Congratulations to the Lead Balloons — or three-quarters of them anyway — on a successful jump. Poor weather on Saturday necessitated postponing until Sunday; Courtney couldn’t make that time, so she’ll be going at the end of this month, but the other three (along with David’s brother-in-law, Curtis) all lived through the experience. I had debated going down with the girls to see them, but it would have been an hour-and-a-half drive each way. Some other time, perhaps.

And finally, the whimsical. There’s a local art event I’d like to call attention to. Erie sculptor David Seitzinger (father of the aforementioned Lead Balloon member) has an exhibit of “Wire Whimseys, Sculptures & Mobiles” running on Saturday, May 17 from noon until six at the Abigail & Lauder Greenway gallery. His work (what I’ve seen of it, anyway) is a fascinating array of eclectic styles, all extremely compelling. I strongly encourage everyone to attend. The gallery’s at 5721 Bent Branch Road in Bethesda, Maryland (at the corner of Bent Branch and Mohican Roads).