Friday, March 07, 2014

Saturday 9

Saturday 9: Theme from Peyton Place ("Wonderful Season of Love")

Unfamiliar with this week's song? Hear it here.

1) Spring, summer, fall or winter: which season do you consider most wonderful? I'm a fan of fall.

2) Crazy Sam learned this song when she played flute in the high school orchestra. Did you participate in many after-school activities? I wrote for the school paper and was a member of Spanish Club as a freshman and sophomore. Then when I got to my junior year I quit them both. I realized how little I really had in common with my rah-rah classmates. I really didn't enjoy high school very much.

3) The flautist next to her in the orchestra was Jeanne Pepitone. After a little Facebook spying, Sam learned that Jeanne is now Jeanne Moran, a nurse with a husband and a daughter. Sam shot her a "friend request." Do you keep up with your high school classmates? Only my oldest friend. I've known her since kindergarten. Though interestingly, we weren't close at all during high school. She put the "rah" in rah-rah back in those days. She loved high school!

4) When she performed with the school orchestra, Sam was required to wear gray slacks and a black sweater. What are you wearing right now, as you answer these questions? Jeans and a coral sweater.

5) Sam was especially dedicated to the school orchestra because she had a crush on Mr. Hanley, the school's musical director. He was the dark/thin/sensitive type. Tell us about a teacher you remember, and why he or she stands out. My high school English teacher had a wild mass of black hair and was (gasp!) Jewish. You have no idea how exotic that made him in my white-bread little town. He also really loved Shakespeare, and helped me see it as vibrant, relevant and sexy. He left that high school after just two or three years and, last I heard, is teaching drama at an Ivy League university. I was lucky to have him.

6) Because Sam was so crazy about Mr. Hanley, she was desperate to attend his band camp. Her parents wouldn't allow it unless she could pay her own way, and so she didn't get to go. Were your parents strict or permissive? If you have children yourself, what's your parenting style? My mom handled the day-to-day discipline and she was pretty lenient. My dad would swoop in when something made him mad, and since he was motivated by anger, he always handled it badly.

7) Sam liked Fridays because her favorite food, fried rice, was served in the school cafeteria. When you eat Chinese food, do you use chopsticks or a fork? I just had shrimp fried rice for lunch on Thursday. It was yummy, of course. And I used a fork.

8) When Sam was a little girl, a new box of Crayolas could get her pulse racing. Now she loves her Sharpies. Do you enjoy shopping for school/office supplies? Not especially. Though I do have a particular fondness for post-it notes.

9) Do you have any plush toys? Or did you give them all up when you left childhood? I still have my beloved Lassie dog, my mainstay when I was a little girl, and a polar bear my mother gave me for Christmas a few years ago. (She sponsored a polar bear in my honor from the World Wildlife Fund.)

 

Hail! Hail! The Gang's All Here!


We had our regularly scheduled team meeting, but this morning it was unusually well attended. Because we knew the president of the Chicago office was going to speak about how our account would be managed "going forward."

Gulp!

I am pleased to report that, despite all my fears, the news was all good. Even better, after listening to the president, I'm looking at my job through new eyes.

Our client is a nationally recognized brand. You know them. Everyone knows them. And yet we have historically gotten precious little love within our agency because it's perceived as rather dull (like Hallmark or Avon or Tupperware). If they sold beer or fast food or cars, we'd get attention.

The new president said he's impressed by how much we do, across so many platforms. TV, digital,* outdoor and mail.* That we're an example for the rest of the agency, both in Chicago and (gasp!) New York. 

He also said that he was trying to come up with a new way to bill our client, that our long-standing contract might not be the best way to "monetize our relationship." That makes me nervous. But those conversations are scheduled for "the back end of 2014, maybe 2015," so I'm trying not to freak out.



*My areas

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net


March Challenge -- Day 7


Day 7 -- What's the next movie you want to watch?


The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, starring Gene Tierney with an appearance by a very young Natalie Wood. I DVR'd it a week or so ago and really do want to watch it. I've never seen it start-to-finish, and the premise -- a widow falls in love with a sea captain who just so happens to inconveniently be a ghost -- sounds quite romantic to me.

Play the March Challenge along with Kwizgiver.