MAGGI PICAYUNE

Today is Rad’s birthday, or as I nicknamed him, the Radman. He’s a pretty cool dude who lives in the Phoenix area with his wife Kim and son Owen. We also got to attend his wedding in 2002. Nothing makes you long for Winter to hurry up and end quickly than being in the Arizona desert in November. I’m sure the guests from the Midwest were even more reluctant to return to the cold and wet weather of Central Illinois. 
 
I’ve lost track how long Rad has been there. I know it’s at least a decade because he sent this awesome postcard he made about his move. He’s standing out in the desert, near one of Phoenix’s geological landmarks. I need to find it in my storage since I can’t remember if it’s Camelback Mountain or somewhere. 
 
July is a very fitting month for Rad too. Both of the friends I made and kept from Dynamic Graphics have July birthdays, like me. Rad and Christina. But this is all about Rad today. 
 
We originally met through our mutual friend Steve Bryant back in my GDW days. I think we hit it off because I always looked forward to his visits to Bloomington-Normal (he lived in nearby Peoria). Obviously he was into the same geeky things we liked, comics especially and he could draw, just like Steve. One time Rad was even nice enough to draw a Star Wars character for my local gaming store’s newsletter. He also got my foot in the door for a job at DG in 1993. I’m still trying to repay that favor. 
 
When we worked together at DG, I saw the coolest demonstration of his artistic and Mac talent with Adobe Illustrator. Rad was the lead person on the Designer’s Club line of clip art, exclusively vectored files made in Illustrator yet could be opened with Aldus FreeHand or CorelDraw. He could quickly tweak the images so software could take advantage of the layer features, thus an incentive for DG’s customers to subscribe to the digital formats over print. One piece in the print edition was a robot sitting behind a desk by Mitch O’Connell, pretty nice but limited. The Radman used a combination of Adobe Streamline and Illustrator to make the desk and robot separate items. Thus the customer could remove the desk or use it alone. What was cooler was Rad’s skill at drawing the parts of the robot obscured by the desk in the print version. 
 
You can see more of his awesome talent at his own site. Be sure to wish him happy birthday too.

Bryant at his new digs in Austin

For well over a year, my e-mail had been bouncing whenever I tried to contact my friend and co-worker Bryant Beck over in France. It wasn’t just our work addresses, but even the personal stuff through our .Mac accounts. Being an employee of a Fortune 500 company, my first instinct was dread and sadness because he may have laid off while over there. Fortunately, he was still in the employee directory and his immediate supervisor in California said he existed. Then I put in a ticket with Apple’s IT department, even provided a copy of the bounced messages. IT blew it off as saying Bryant was ignoring me. Guess they didn’t read it since it stated the recipient didn’t exist in the mail server. 
 
Not a problem anymore. Bryant moved back to Austin this week! After four years of working at Apple’s set up in Paris, he and his family returned but they’re in Round Rock this time, not Austin. It is great to see him and hopefully we can continue our weekly lunches at Whataburger. It’ll be the new one up on Parmer Lane, not the older place off of Cameron or on the Braker Lane exit. I have so many questions about his four years there. 
 
You’re probably asking yourselves, doesn’t Bryant drive you crazy some days? Not really, you’re probably thinking of other Republicans and those who really are Republicans but won’t fess up to it. Bryant is more of a Contrarian yet a more intellectually honest one. Besides, our friendship isn’t caught up in feuds over who the worst president in modern history is or which economic system is better than the other. He’s my age (older by a matter of weeks), he grew up in Idaho, I lived in North Dakota for a year so I have an inkling of what “rural” life in America was like in the 80s and there’s many other qualities I like about the guy. Personally, I think we get along better with each other because I proposed this theory based upon one of my favorite novels (The Scarlet Letter) one day after one of our many debates, okay, it was an argument. Bryant is Reverend Dimmesdale because he is a well-educated dude of faith yet he doesn’t have any illegitimate children with Hester or anyone else. I am Roger Chillingworth, Dimmesdale’s opposite, a person of science and rather secular but I’m not secretly poisoning anyone, trying to find out who the father of Pearl is. Bryant laughed at it. Maybe he didn’t like the book or he watched the horrible Demi Moore version. It’s just silliness anyway or is it? James Carville is married to Mary Matlin. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are friends. How could us being friends be weird then? It’s just great to have him back and someone who understands my butchered French.

It’s official for Somara, she will be in training next month for cake decorating with HEB. I can’t remember if it’s for six weeks or four. Doesn’t matter too much, this is something important to her and she will be on a more predictable schedule for a while. As a decorator, my wife will gain a more valuable skill in the bakery-pastery world, even within HEB because she can transfer to a story closer to the house. The distance isn’t so bad for her, it’s the friction she seems to have with her manager (I know that too well) and a couple other co-workers. Personally, I think all the tension comes from this HEB being a brand new store with a different approach. The day-to-day interaction doesn’t matter so much anymore, this is a good step for her culinary career and I know she’ll have a good time. Somara was quite happy back when she was attending TCA, including the six weeks she had to be there at the crack of dawn. 
 
Now if you need a special cake, you need to talk to her directly. I would only screw up the quote on how much it would cost, how soon, etc. I only exceed at eating her cooking, nothing else.

Another culprit for my dental woes.

I haven’t been terribly attentive about the saga of my teeth lately. The remaininging fillings I received aren’t very visible and I didn’t get Somara to take “before” pictures in time to contrast them with the after. But I do have great news to counter the less gross picture above. The great news is the improvements on my gums. I have regained a couple milimeters in many places. I only recall the hygenist calling out only a half dozen numbers over three (three or less is good, four or higher is a bad amount of gum retreat, seven or higher is pretty nasty). I’m not out of the woods yet, I have to return to the dentist in three months. Meanwhile, I have to be more aggressive with my flossing. There’s no way I can drink my out of this with Diet Dr. Pepper. So what’s with the tooth picture? That’s the wisdom tooth that had to be removed because it was contributing to my gum problems by pushing up against my upper right teeth. Hopefully its absence will alleviate the pressure and put my gums back on track.