I am on a plane to Paris.  I waffled on what to blog about.  Why I need the vacation, the gut check I got in accounting this week, how we are working on our emotional intelligence, why the foot tall stack of taxes I signed this week is annoying, things designed badly, good design, romance, networking, investment decisions, being instead of doing, and the trial and tribulations of small business ownership all came to mind.  Given our celebration of 20 years of business and the gratefulness I have for being on this plane, I thought I’d go back to some of the early year stories.

Looking back on the early years at the kitchen table and in the garage seem so romantic.  We started in an old traditional two story farmhouse that had a cool history.  This seems appropriate given that we are in the history business.  We generally used the whole house for the business.  Even one of the two upstairs bedrooms was used by one of our out of town subcontractors.  We had employees working at the kitchen table.  Our first designers had to share a computer.  The front room was very open.  We sometimes moved all the furniture aside and played hockey with a resin filled mayonnaise bottle lid.

Once we ran out of production space in the garage so we renovated an old chicken coop.  You had to duck your head to walk in and the ceilings were pretty low.  All in all it was a nice renovation job.  We used the loft of the old barn, too.  Sometimes my horses, Charlotte and Smokey, would hang out below in the stalls.  Eventually, our landlord offered to build us a real production space.  We had already taken over his whole farm, so this was a generous offer.  It was great to have an entire building to paint murals, build giant fish, cast fossils and create great work.

I remember ending some of our days by grilling out on the back porch and having a few beers with the staff.  Once we didn’t clean up well and had to hide the bottles quickly as a client pulled up.  We, of course, didn’t want to make a bad impression.  Occasionally, employees had to jump in and help unload some hay before the rain came in.  Our company cat, Jack, would sometimes bring mice up from the basement.  This tended to interrupt the design process with lots of hubbub.  We would often open the back door and wack the mouse out with a hockey stick.  I think the mice probably just ran right back into the basement.  Jack was a good mouser.  Sometimes there were complaints that Cancun, our company German Shepard smelled.  He was a great dog.  He could open the door himself to greet whoever.  He especially liked the postman with his treats.

By 1994, I had resigned from the last real job I had at MicroPace.  It was a tough decision.  I had been offered a raise and a promotion.  I earned about a third of that pay for the next several years.  Sometimes it was difficult seeing my professional friends with nice homes, something other than garage sale furniture and nice stereos.  My jam box got us by for a long time.  We had some good times and the usual start up stresses.

Let me know what you would like me to blog about.