Check out the coverage in Durham magazine and of course, the Beaver Lodge Local 1504 website.

Every now and then a story pops up in the news about some dude with way too much money deciding that he’s going to buy his way onto a spaceship to fulfill his childhood dream. The latest wannabe spaceman is Guy Laliberte, the founder of the wonderful circus troupe Cirque du Soleil. What caught my eye in this story, though, is the description of Laliberte as a billionaire.

I wondered if he’d been a rich kid to begin with, so I looked up his bio on wikipedia. I’ll be damned if he didn’t turn his talents of stiltwalking, fire-breathing, and accordion playing into a franchise that made him unfrigginbelievably wealthy.

Back in the day, the rainbow-striped tome “Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow” was popular in the gang of freelancers I hung out with (I never read it myself). Some people have pointed out that the formula is not quite so simple…otherwise the phrases “unemployed actor”, “starving artist” and “unpublished writer” wouldn’t roll so easily off the tongue.

I don’t think “billionaire street performer” will end up being as common a phrase. But hat’s off to Laliberte for making it happen for him.

“Once you’ve hit five years, your odds of survival go way up…Only two to three percent of businesses older than five shut down each year.”

Five years ago today, I officially opened my doors* as Red Beret Design.

The last few months have been the best, and I figure if I can do well in this crappy economy, I should be able to support myself through retirement…and if I’m anything like my father, I’ll be working until they pry the mouse from my failing hands.

There have been many lessons learned, some smaller successes and failures along the way, but all in all the future looks bright. I still underpromise and overdeliver, which is supposed to be a formula for success..although I’m not sure it’s the best route to profitability. But at least I charge more for my overdeliveries now.

Besides my client projects, recent pro bono work for Beaver Lodge Local 1504 and being president of the Independent Communicators Alliance, I have three joint ventures in the works, and have been been continuing to learn to develop web sites in drupal and wordpress. So even after five years, a lot of my hours are spent on developing the business that will be, not just earning a living with the business as it stands today.

The biggest challenge? Time. Not enough of it.

The biggest satisfaction? Creating. Not just creating designs for my clients, but creating the direction the business will take tomorrow, creating a role for myself. Also: the security of knowing I can’t be laid off. Yes, I actually feel more secure working for myself with zero benefits than having a “job”. Oh yeah, and also…working at home. I resisted for a long time, because I believed I’d present a more professional image having a studio elsewhere, but the advantages far outweigh the benefits.

Happy anniversary to me.

*More accurately, on this actual day I handed Mr. D. the keys to my office and drove 11 hours to Florida for a medical emergency, but that’s another story. But my lease and business license started on this day, even if I was AWOL for the first three weeks.

Found on a trail at West Point on the Eno.

Guess somebody didn’t take his cranky meds.

Piss off

How did I miss this? Just heard from my pharmacist that imitrex is now available as generic sumatriptan. Happy happy happy dance!! Since the nearly-$500/month I pay in health insurance premiums doesn’t cover a year’s worth of brand-name medications, this could save me hundreds of dollars a year.

Now, if they will only release montekulast sodium as a generic in the U.S., I won’t have to order it from Canada to be sent from India via Vanuatu. Although then I’ll miss out on their beautiful postage stamps.

The last of the hatchlings is dead in its nest. One disappeared yesterday—I looked under the Russian Olive to see if it had fallen, but couldn’t find it anywhere. I assume it fell out of the nest and succumbed to a predator, or one of the neighborhood hawks or owls plucked it right from the nest.

This morning, the last remaining hatchling is still in its nest, but it hasn’t moved. The mother fluttered in and out of the nest, sometimes sitting on the hatchling to keep it warm , sometimes just sitting on the edge of the nest, looking in. The father came by with some food, but the baby never lifted its head. At one point, the mother sat on the nest and sang her heart out.

The parents seem to have given up hope now. They’re not coming back to the Russian Olive, but I see them in the surrounding trees, and as I work, I can here them chattering back and forth. When they’re silent, I find myself going to the window to see if they’ve flown away, but they are still keeping vigil nearby.

Damn.

This snake picked the wrong nest for picking off baby birds.

Alas, he had killed one before I came to the rescue with a broom and used one of Mr. D’s old weights to ensure he wouldn’t go back for more.

The two other hatchlings appear to be OK.

I’ll preface this by saying that I don’t follow Sri Lankan politics and have no opinion about the Tamil Tigers, the Sri Lankan government, or their conflict, which at long last appears to be drawing to a close.

But damn, isn’t “Tamil Tigers” the best name ever for a rebel group? Maybe now that they’ve put down their weapons, they could start a football team.

Mr. D. and I were Tamil Tigers for a night, and we did not admit defeat. We reigned supreme. That was the team name we chose for a pub trivia contest at the Plough and the Stars, on Clement St. in San Francisco. Our plan was to stop in for a beer, then go down the street to the Java for the best spicy french fries in the known universe. But the trivia contest was just beginning, so we decided to stay. I guess the TT must have been in the news that day, and we chose the name for our own. It did result in some odd looks from the South Asian table.

Most of the teams were regulars, and some had 8-10 people on a team. But WE WON!! Because we both have brains that are filled to the brim with useless information. In fact, Mr. D. is UNDEFEATED in Trivial Pursuit. He’s taken on an entire room of people teamed up against him and still won. He’s like Buffy, but with little plastic wedges instead of wooden stakes. Once he got *really nervous* because I was two wedges ahead of him. But he no longer gets nervous no matter how far ahead I am, because he knows my Achilles heel is the sports questions. If it’s not about Scrabble or Joe Montana, I’m lost.

The Java was closed by the time we exited the bar, victorious, but we had our winnings in our pockets (I think it was $50), so we ended up having to resort to Max’s Diner on Geary Street. It was worth it.

The baby cardinals have been born!

At first they looked like no more than a wriggling bit of fuzz at the bottom of the nest.

Baby Cardinals

Then Mama Bird returned for a bit. She blocked my view of them, and would look over her shoulder if I so much as twitched behind the window. Amazing what having eyes on the sides of your head will do for your peripheral vision!

Mama cardinal looks over her shoulder.

When Mama Bird flew off, I could get a better shot at the hatchlings, who obviously wanted mom to come back with breakfast. You can only see two here, but later on, Barry saw a third.

Hungry hatchlings

I admire people who are slaves to routine. I really do. Up at 5am, morning jog, at their desk at 8:30am, blah blah blah fall into bed and fast asleep by 9:30. I suppose I have a routine, but it drifts like a fourth-grader’s attempts to sing on key.

Monday: Up before 6am. Work out. At desk by 7am, brief look at headlines. Work until 7pm.

Tuesday: Up around 6am. At desk by 6:30am, read some news articles, break for workout or walk mid-day. Work until 7pm.

Wednesday: Up around 6:30. At desk by 7am, read some news articles and maybe a couple on Salon. Work until 6pm.

Thursday: Up around 7am. At desk at 7:30am, spend an hour or so reading news articles and the comments on Cary Tennis’s latest column on Salon and watching videos people have posted on facebook. End day at 3:45 for allergy shot, dinner and movie with Mom.

Friday: Up around 8:15am, twiddle away an hour or so reading news and making a blog post.

Weekend: Whenever. Whatever. Work a few hours to make up for hours lost to migraines and allergy shots during the week.

Reboot.

Migraine is one of the hazards that throws a wrench into any routine. “Oh, you thought your were going to get up and run this morning? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Take 4 ibuprofen, 2 valerian root, and when your husband gets out of bed and hour and a half from now, ask him to make you a pot of full-caffeine coffee and bring you a cup. And if that doesn’t work either, take a triptan and go back to bed until 10.” That’s good for one or two days a month.

Another is that my natural sleep cycle seems to be 9 hours asleep, 20 hours awake, or at least something not in sync with a 24-hour clock. Even when I do succeed in getting up at 5am, I’m still wide awake until 11pm or later. So after a few days of that, the perkiness I felt on Monday morning fizzles until I can pay back the sleep debt.

I also have it on good authority from my husband that my sleeping sounds like an asthmatic dragon doing the breast stroke. So one of the joys in my future is a night at the Sleep Lab. Since an ex-boyfriend, a sleep researcher at Stanford, once speculated that I was “delta-deprived”, perhaps it’s time to find out if he was right. I wonder if they’ll read me a bedtime story?