La akvo estas dolĉa.

So I suppose it's been almost a week since my first "it's almost been a week at my job" post. What I didn't factor in was that Monday through Friday to not make a week in advertising; Monday through Sunday do.

That means we missed our beloved Flug Tag on Saturday. On the plus side, we've gotten some really good stuff done. We had another check-in with our CDs on Friday and then again on Monday, and both went incredibly well. I spent a lot of the weekend writing TV scripts for really the first time. The best part of that is stopping to think in the middle of it, "Oh wait, this could actually become a real spot that gets produced and shot and edited and run on TV. Cool."

Doing web stuff is also another realization. It's not school where you can just come up with a funny URL and said that this kind of content will sort of be on there and make a landing page and call it a day. For the first time I'm really having to think about the content, navigation and technological possibilities a lot more. But it makes it more fun too.

Our project is super wide-open at the moment (and with no set budget) so it's been pretty cool to just from one thing to another: TV, print, microsites, guerrilla, posters, in-store, promos, banner ads, virals, non-traditional. It was almost overwhelming at first, but now it's just really exciting.

We've also been doing a bit of design as well with Andrio around. That dude is mad talented. Unfortunately (for us, not him), he's leaving for vacation tomorrow for a week and a half. He'll be back for a few more weeks after that, but we'll miss him. Basically, he's been making us look really good.

But in general, stuff with Starbucks has been going really well. Our campaign has really coalesced within the last few days, which is pretty exciting. The senior freelance team left yesterday, and Andrio leaves tomorrow morning. So, it's basically just Karen and I on stuff for a little while. We haven't even seen any of the other team's stuff. The good news is that our CDs seem really stoked on what we've done so far. So, who knows. Come March you'll hopefully be seeing our stuff plastered all over every Starbucks in the US, UK and Japan as well as on TV screens, subway cars, laptops and whatever else. That'd be pretty rad.

It's unfortunate that we don't get to see Joe and Monica (our CDs) that often. They're amazing to talk to, but they're so busy that we see them for maybe two hours max a week. They've also been pretty stressed with other parts of the account recently so that's had a lot to do with it. The good news is that I think they like us. Someone told us that after our check-in yesterday one of them commented that, "[Those guys] have done more work in three days than [names of senior creatives] do in months." So, that feels pretty good to have made a good impression in our first week.

Other than work, life's going pretty well. I moved into my new apartment on Monday. It's way too nice for me. It makes me feel like a upwardly mobile adult which I'm not really into. It's on the 11th floor of the building right next to Wieden. I'd be an incredible view of the whole city and surrounding area if the stupid Art Institute of Portand wasn't directly across the street. It's totally ruining my view. It's OK, I'm going to get back at them. They're going to see a lot of me naked in those offices over there.

Portland's way hippie. Here's how much their into conservation. The toilet in my apartment has two buttons: one for liquid, one for solid. It saves water that way. It's starting to rub off. (The conservation, not the poop.) I saved my bags from Whole Foods to reuse next time I go. Speaking of, I paid $90 for groceries the other night. It was two bags worth. Whole Foods is crazy expensive. It's all just crazy. For some reason I thought it'd be a good idea to buy Organic Golden Flax Flakes as breakfast cereal. They actually managed to make it look pretty good on the front with some milk and sliced peaches. What the hell was I thinking? I regret every second of that decision. I'd throw the box out if it didn't cost me a whole day's wage.

The only bright spot is that Oregon doesn't have sales tax. It takes a bit getting used to, but it's kind of fun at the store because everything really does end up being $4.99 or whatever. I think the state will be taking a pretty sizable chunk out of my paycheck though. Hmm . . .

What else? Oh yes. I decided today that I'm going to learn Esperanto. If you don't know what Esperanto is, it's an artificial language created by a German linguist in 1887. It's intended to be a universal language, one that all people can learn to communicate with one another. In 1965, William Shatner starred in Incubus, a film entirely in Esperanto. Supposedly it's very easy to learn because it's based on a number of languages and has no irregularities in it. Already I've learned a little bit. I bought a book on it tonight at Powell's (the country's largest bookstore that just happens to be two blocks from my house). The reason this all came up was because of a spot we were writing at work. We wanted to us a foreign language but were worried that people may take it the wrong way and see it as offensive. After much (MUCH) discussion I remembered the wonder world of Esperanto. It seemed like the perfect solution. And hey, it's just pretty funny. So, maybe the next post you read will be in Esperanto.

That's enough for now. There's more, but I shan't bore you with the details. If you ever want to come out to Portland, I've got plenty of room and sweet view of AI Portland waiting for you.

Bonan nokton!