#405- CEO Giraffes

Up at six thirty this morning.

I agreed to attend a breakfast meet and greet with the CEO of the company along with about a dozen other staff members. We were set to meet at the studio by eight thirty and that had me leaving the house half an hour early to catch a train that would get me to Toronto by at least eight.

The things I’ll do for free pastries and coffee.

I went to bed a bit early the night before knowing this was all coming. And I am glad I did because I felt pretty good, all things considered. I have also started drinking my AG1 supplements again and that might have had something to do with my good vibes this morning as well.

I was able to get out of the house before seven and got a great parking spot at the train station, right up at the front. A train arrived and left just as I was parking, but another one was less than fifteen minutes away. I got a good seat and was able to write the whole way there, and that was amazing because it let me catch up a little on my word quota.

I had a decently productive writing session before the train arrived at Union Station.

I started walking along the Esplanade as usual, but I started to worry that I might be late for breakfast. I headed up to King Street and caught the next bus going in my direction. I only rode it three or four stops before getting off, but that was enough time to buy me a nice leisurely walk the rest of the way. And I didn’t want to arrive dripping with sweat.

I fobbed my way into the studio and put my bags down at my desk. The meeting was upstairs in a meeting room called Parliament. It faces Parliament Street.

Some of my colleagues were gathered upstairs already, and we loitered for a bit until the CEO arrived. He was easy to pick out amongst the crowd because he was wearing a full body giraffe suit. Yep. A giraffe suit.

It would come out in the meet and great that he and his friends have giraffe weekends, where they all wear giraffe costumes and might go for a wine tasting for example. I think it’s fair to say the CEO of our company has a good sense of humour.

We had muffins, fruit cups and yogurt with granola along with coffee, orange and apple juice.

The talk varied in topic from, “What is a giraffe weekend,” to, “The State of the Animation industry.”

I learned my CEO has a charity that is there to make sure our democracy continues to function in way that benefits the people of our country. Nothing wrong with that.

We chatted for about an hour and there were plenty of laughs along the way as well. By nine thirty we were saying our goodbyes and heading back down onto the studio floor to start our workday.

I had a meeting at three and nothing else booked for the day. That meant I could prepare for the meeting and do the rest of the approvals and revisions. I sent back two revisions to the artist who painted them. He had been away yesterday, and I thought it made more sense for him to make the corrections. It’s also important to let them know what is being called so they knw not to do it in the future.

With those off my plate, I spent half an hour going over some things with the current supervisor so I would know how to do them and where to find all the relevant pages or data. With that done, we all headed over to George Brown College. They have a culinary program and a little cafeteria where they sell some of the food they make.

Some of our teammates have been eating there every Thursday and so we all decided to check it out. It was a nice sunny afternoon for a walk either way.

It took about ten minutes for the dozen or so of us to get there. And they had no food. The shelves were all but bare. They only items available were baked goods and cakes. I bought some homemade vanilla and cinnamon marshmallows to bring home Robyn.

Luckily, I had half a burrito that Robyn never finished from last night’s dinner, and I was happy enough to eat that. It was pretty tasty afteralll. Those of us with lunches from home headed back to the studio while the others went in search of other sustenance.

We ate at a large table in the studio kitchen. There were plenty of baked good to go around from the College. One of the girls bought a full-sized black forest cake that she shared with everyone at the table. Another had a box full of cookies and tarts.

After Lunch, I approved the revisions I had requested and then spent some more time getting ready for the next meeting. I had to go through some paintings from the start of the show and see what needed to be changed. The style of the show changed from episode one to two and we needed to update the paintings to the new look to use them for this new episode.

The meeting started and it went really quickly for a meeting like this. They are usually much longer. But this is the first episode that is reusing a lot of paintings we already did in other episodes. It will give all the departments a chance to get caught up.

I did an hour of prep work for an upcoming episode until about five. It was already dark and stormy looking outside and made sure to walk swiftly to the station.

A train was boarding when I got there and I hopped on. It was standing room only and I was a little disappointed that I had to stand the entire way and that I wouldn’t be able to get any writing done on the ride.

That close parking space came in handy, and I was home in no time. The house smelled of roasted vegetables and breaded fish. Robyn had dinner already and I was grateful for the hot meal.

We tried the cinnamon and vanilla marshmallows and were surprised at how good they tasted.

After dinner, Robyn left to pick up the kiddo and I got to writing.

We settled into our room to watch some Seth Myers and do more work on our laptops.

Overall, it was a good day, and I felt as good as I have in a while.

We ended the day by watching a bit of comedy television. Robyn went downstairs and did some schoolwork and I layed down and listened to my audiobook. It was eleven thirty and I was surprised to see how late it was. And it should have been no surprise since I was up early at six.

Once again, ending the day listening to an audiobook put me in the perfect head space to get a good night’s sleep.

Until tomorrow.