Happy Anniversary

I think I'm typing faster now than I used to.  Because I have to.  I just learned this week that the rest of the world has eliminated the double space after a period.  I learned it after realizing my double spaces weren't translating through HTML while editing my new site.  My world is rocked.  Almost as much as when I learned that there was no 3rd comma when typing a list.  I halfway do it the new way & halfway the old.  I wonder if I'll ever be able to stop double spacing. 

So my new website is going live as we speak.  My designer & I started working on it towards the middle of the summer.  Wow, it's been a long road full of lots of sleepless nights.  And money.  Even though I did most of the content (me & one of my employees that came in towards the end to help), it still cost the same amount as my original site.

Since last week I've seriously been considering changing my name.  I've been thinking about for over a year (pretty much since I started it), but it's been more on my mind lately with the new site coming out.  I want my blog to be respected among the foodie community as a source to find good restaurants, but who would want to go to CaterServe's food blog?  Ughh, not me.  I need a new name.  A perfect one. 

I need a new computer.  A new phone.  A headset.  A van.  New equipment.  A full time assistant.  A full time social media/marketing director.  I have the people, I just need the money to pay for them.  And I also need more time to spend with my son - I didn't take any pictures of him this weekend.  :(

It was our anniversary yesterday - we made it a year! 

We had an event that was a disaster (my first one yet).  And Isaiah's babysitter (Nana) couldn't keep him overnight.  We had to cancel our dinner reservations because of the disaster catering.  Then we had about 30 minutes to eat our anniversary dinner at another restaurant.  Then we had to drive to Sunnyvale to pick up Isaiah.  Happy Anniversary! 

But really we had some lovely moments surrounding the actual date, & it wouldn't be very like us if it weren't chaotic & unexpected so I think we're going to chalk this one up as a success. 

Project Delete Previous Life

Several weeks ago, my computer (Mona) started giving me this awful message you can't do what you're trying to do because your disk space is full.  All of a sudden my 3 years of uploading every picture I'd ever taken & my 1 year of taking 1000s of pictures & videos of Isaiah PLUS 1 year of business file after business file (and saving all of them), all of these things finally had caught up to me.  It was time to do something with those 15,000 pictures & almost 1000 videos.  Oh & like 10,000 songs. 

I didn't want to buy an external hard drive because I had one before.  It was this huge box that was really annoying.  I lost the connecting cord amidst many other mystery cords, so when I moved I justified throwing it away because well I couldn't use it without the cord right? 

I love Vimeo so I decided it made sense to upload ALL of my videos to Vimeo since my intention for filming most of them was to eventually share it anyway.  That project took weeks & weeks because I had to preview them all first to make sure that I wanted to keep them.  And in the beginning I was living with the in-laws & really really slow internet.  So I only recently completed the project a few days ago.  In the middle of that, I realized that some videos weren't meant to share with the world when I accidentally uploaded a breastfeeding video without adding privacy & it got like 50 views in one day.  Oops.  Don't even try to look now - it's protected! 

This was a good decision, especially after I realized that if I ever have time to edit any of these, I can download them back onto Mona for further use.  I'm just screwed if Vimeo (and/or the Internet) ever go under.

I freed up about 20 GB of space on Mona, but she still wasn't acting right.  All of the joy of using my Mac was gone because every single action took so many seconds longer than it was supposed to.  The more practical implication of this loss of joy is that it was taking me forever to work.  So I became kindof obsessed with organizing & freeing up space on Mona. 

I deleted pictures.  I toyed with uploading pictures to Dropbox then deleting the duplicates from my computer.  I deleted songs, ones by artists I didn't recognize or that I knew I wouldn't miss.  

Finally after freeing 50 GB & shhe still wasn't back to normal, I took her in to the Apple Genius doctors.  Today. 

Then a pretty important piece of info - there is a separate trash folder for iPhoto, so when I was deleting all of my pictures, they were deleting but not freeing up space because they were still in the iPhoto trash.  Now I remember learning that once.  It's too bad that I didn't remember though because when they weren't freeing up space I started deleting duplicates from the big photo folder & that really deleted iPhoto's ability to load the pictures which essentially deleted the picture.  I lost about 50 pics from Christmas about 4 years ago when the Kipapas visited Dallas.  They were really great.  But I guess they will only remain great in my memory.

Mr. Apple Genius also did some magic trick that made everything go faster.  So that part is back to normal - yay!!!  Because of course I would be totally happy with being forced to buy a new computer, but there is no way we can afford one right now.  We don't even have credit to fake buy it.

But I still succumbed to buying an external hard drive, which actually wasn't horrible because they're pretty awesome these days - small & pretty & much roomier than when I bought mine (years ago pre-Mac days).  I'm okay with this because I know I need to get a handle on my space usage going forward because I'm not going to take less pictures or shoot less videos.

So since Isaiah went to sleep, I've been moving music over to the new hard drive.  It's been very bittersweet.  Music used to be so important to me; I spent years creating that 10,000 song library.  I would constantly be on the lookout for new albums from my favorite artists, and when I moved to Dallas, I was always going to shows.  I still love music, and I always will, but I think it's developed more into an appreciation rather than a passion.  These days I would much rather listen to an album in the background while I'm working instead of going to a show.  In fact, the thought of going to a concert right now (especially any kind of festival that is outdoors) sounds miserable to me.  And when I do listen to music, I trust Pandora to give me my favorite mix based on my mood.  It's much more practical for my current needs then creating my own playlists out of music I collected up until Isaiah's birth.

Nevertheless it's a little sad letting go of it all.  It's like deleting my previous life.  I'm okay leaving that life (cause I love my life lately), but erasing evidence of it is a little different. 

I guess sometimes we have to get rid of old things in order to make room for much much better things.

Bye concert-going Jewel...

Bye partier Jewel...

Bye server Jewel...

Bye old Jewel...

Make way for a much better business owner Jewel, wife Jewel, & Mommi Jewel.

 

Still Recovering

Tonight I'm pretty positive there is no way to get all of my work done, even if I stay up all night.  Business is gradually growing as I wished, but I still feel overwhelmed.  I wonder how others have had businesses & new families & multiple businesses at that.  I am now figuring out which parts of my business I can hand off to trusted employees.  What a difficult thing to do. 

I got a little nap today which was lovely.  I feel like I've been going non-stop for over 2 weeks.  The wedding, then event after event after event, & this past week Isaiah & I have been sick.  Which means more waking during the night which leads to less sleep for me, which means a slow recovery, which also means constant exhaustion.  Then my family came into town & I had to pause a second to throw Isaiah's first birthday party. That was awesome, but I was totally under & couldn't have done it without my sister & her husband, my mom, & a few friends.  I had 3 events over the weekend. 

Back to work.  Here's my baby at his first birthday party.  I doubt I'll get around to writing more about it.  I do know a ton of people got good pictures, so if I ever get my hands on those, I'll post them.