April 30. Sunday Night.

Hi Journey.

A weekend without Eddie is almost surely going to be more productive.

And more lonely.

The heat's on with the shopping cart site again—which means our new CD site is pushed to the side of his plate. The venture money people backing him are suddenly up against the wall with somebody very influential on their Board: there's even talk of scrapping the project altogether. Which all means Eddie is working furiously and not enjoying me or that new Ford pickup.

So I worked all day yesterday. I took a twenty minute catnap just after noon, then back at it again, grinding through end of the month paperwork, reviewing proposals, and trying to dredge up ideas for the PowerPoint for the Open House. Thursdays at BizTap may be good networking, but it's time away from the office and from clients, and I'm not going to let either slide.

Before I knew it I looked at the clock on the wall in Tethered Helium and it was ten after five. I wasn't getting far on the presentation anyway, so I decided to go for a run.

Ideas, Journey. Ideas. Back in school Dr. Dyer always said ideas drive the train. The longer I'm alive the more I see he was spot-on. Everything worthwhile starts with an idea. I know I've told you before, Journey, but pulling up the ideas from somewhere inside and birthing them into this world is always the toughest part of any job for me.

Maybe it's because that's a process I can't totally manage.

Melding the words into a presentation, creating the graphics—all the technical details; well, I've got Joni to arrange it, Shelly to supply some great photos of our work, and Mary Robertson will weave in some really splashy custom background templates. It'll look dynamite; but then I've got great talent to tie the wrapper around the concept.

But I've got to theme it all, Journey—nobody else in the shop can.

Bridges. After my nap I started out thinking about bridges. Did I ever tell you why I picked that theme for my business, Journey?

It was back in San Francisco, over ten years ago. Case was in back on the tandem as we biked across the Golden Gate Bridge. When we first started across the bridge it was a tad foggy, but the lane on the west side wasn't shrouded-in by any means. We stopped a couple times for several minutes each--dawdling, shooting photos--and I have to tell you Journey that Casey wasn't much of a stoker; but she was only thirteen.

Page 2.