THURSDAY THIRTEEN #138

THIRTEEN OF MY FAVORITE

"MAD MEN" QUOTES

I love Don Draper. I love the 1960s. I even love "the ad game." So naturally I love Mad Men, and therefore am sad that the new season isn't set to premiere until March 2012! This TT is designed to help me as I jones.

#1 Don and Peggy

Don: It’s your job. I give you money. You give me ideas.

Peggy: But you never thank me.

Don: That’s what the money is for!

#2 Roger

“Well, I gotta go learn a bunch of people’s names before I fire them.”

#3 Don on his secretary, Miss Blankenship

"I would have my secretary do it, but she's dead."

#4 Roger

"Remember, every time God closes a door, he opens a dress."

#5 Trudy Campbell on the events of 11/22/63

"I don't care what your politics are. This is America! You just don't shoot the President!"

#6 Peggy seeks creative inspiration

"I'm Peggy Olson and I want to smoke marijuana."

#7 Don seeks creative inspiration

“What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons.”

#8 Bobbie Barrett

"Pick a job and become the person who does it."

#9 Joan waxes philosophical

"That’s life for you. One minute you’re on top of the world, the next minute some secretary’s running you over with a lawnmower."

#10 Don

"If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation."

#11 Don and Midge discuss their future.

Don: Maybe we should get married.

Midge: You think I'd make a good ex-wife?

#12 Don and Pete discuss their future

Pete: I'd follow a guy like you into battle blindfolded. And I wouldn't be the first, would I, buddy?

Don: Let's take it a little slower. I don't want to wind up pregnant.

#13 Don's way of getting past calamity

"Move forward. This never happened. It will shock you how much this never happened."

To learn more about the Thursday Thirteen,
or to play along yourself, click here.

August Happiness Challenge -- Day 24

Being known so well. Out of the blue, my best friend sent me a work-related memo to critique. Since we no longer work for the same agency and consequently don't know each other's projects backward and forward anymore, it took me a little time to figure out what it should say, and then to revise it so he's presenting his point-of-view in the clearest possible way.

We used to do this all the time. He has good, sound ideas, but he's not terribly visual. A little bold here, a few bullets there, breaking up his single seemingly endless paragraph helps. And I was happy to be of service. He hasn't asked me to help like this in a while.

When I sent it back to him, he responded with: "Thank you. Now was that a distraction?"

So he knew how tough days like yesterday are for me, he knows that if I'm left to my own devices I'm just going to obsess, and he was trying to keep my mind off my future surgery. It made me smile.

A better day here at the ranch

Today we have achieved just the right amount of busy for this old Gal. Client input came in reliably, turnaround times are reasonable, we're reviewing new creative internally at 4:00 ... It's not as maddeningly, deadly slow as yesterday was, but not as frantic as I feared today would be because our Thursday in-person presentation has been scaled back to a conference call. That means that, instead of needing everything in the world done before 6:00 this afternoon, we have until sometime tomorrow.

Image: graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net