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september 17 2009

It’s the final footage for my Navy episode.  Lighting sure changes things, eh.

This time with Jasin Dollin, designer and builder of that cute little boombox below – you stick your iPod in and kick it down the street.  He’s launching soon.  

september 16 2009
I’d met him at Rannie’s pano-gala opening recently, and it was odd:

Me: Hi, I’m Keri
Him: [shakes hand] Wait
Me: Waiting
Him: I know you, I’ve posted some of your stuff on my Facebook
Me: [I’ll never get used to this]

And I don’t think I will; I was recognized at the beginning of the year and I still have that same feeling when it happens.

In the background of the right photo is ‘The Leslie Street Spit‘ which, until today, I’d assumed was a busy street downtown where there were a lot of smokers.  Nope. 

It’s a 5km long conservation area that accidentally became that when, during the 60s and 70s, construction rubble was dumped there creating a headland, which the ‘Friends of the Spit‘ fought to keep from being developed.  

Thanks, Friends, it’s cool Toronto has a little wilderness in it like this.  There’s also 300 different kinds of birds there, making it an Important Bird Area (that’s a real thing, I didn’t make that name up).

I ran into a friend today, almost literally… he was crossing the road I was turning right onto while taking that photo on the left.

september 16 2009

He was there for that time the full moon made my head go all weird, he’s in the middle in that photo.

In a rare occurrence I met another Keri at this event.  Today we had coffee and are soon off to explore together.  

She’s a photographer, click here to see her stuff (classy), and I’m taking her along to the Toronto Botancial Gardens because I’ve been trying to get there all summer, there’s one specific flower I’m on the hunt to see.

september 16 2009

Keri’s are similar because we were both supposed to ride our bikes and both didn’t, both were running exactly 4 minutes behind and both showed up wearing pants that covered our shoes… Keri’s have no feet. 

I woke up this morning like this, “ENOUGH. I am having a tough time launching my Gold/Silver/Bronze Sponsorship Program and here’s another day I won’t”.  So I sat down and pounded out a sales-esque letter and started shipping it around.  I requested in-kind things in return for presence on my blog/twitter/episodes to companies I already purchase from.

Start small.  There’s a reason I haven’t been able to pull the trigger on the program I realized, I’m not ready – I don’t feel comfortable taking large sums of money from people, not yet.  I’m a terrible liar so I can’t fake that my traffic is huger than huge, and when I ran my usual test I failed.

My test is, “if I saw the guy on the street could I look him in the eyes?”, no.  It’d be an unbalanced relationship; greedy greedy never gets.  That’s my test for which sponsors to take on too, “if you saw me on the street, could I look you in the eyes and tell you to buy from them?” and “moreover, do I have their products on me right now?”.  I could, I do, and the goal is to keep it as close to 100% Canadian as possible.

Off the emails went, and then tonight I was waiting for the elevator when I got an email back from the owner of one of the companies.

Me: [sharp intake of breath, eyes widen]
Me: [now I have the attention of the guy waiting with me]
Me: I’m about to read the reply to a big email I sent this morning
Me: [reads email, and it’s a YES! And a good yes at that]
Me: Gah, it worked!  This is amazing!
Guy: What worked?
Me: I sent an email this morning, the president himself wrote me back, and he said yes!
Guy: Hey that’s great
Me: I know!  Look! [now I’m holding out my Blackberry with the good news on the screen]
Guy: [high-fives me]
Guy: Hey I always write back personally to my emails, eh
Me: That’s good because look what it does to a human!
Guy: Congratulations again [gets off elevator]
Me: [is standing there vibrating]

This is gonna work, this plan of mine, I know it.  Cross-country exploring has never looked so possible.