I'm panting towards the new month with a bunch of balls in the air (at least it feels that way), and the air itself is beginning to fill with a fine dust, visible, tasteable, burn your eyesable, particulate, pollen. It mostly irritates my eyes and makes my nose, in fact my face, kind of burn, but it's the price we pay for our long and beautiful spring in this fair city built in a forest. It has only just begun.
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We're trying to renegotiate an existing patent license with our oldest licensee, a Pennsylvania direct marketing agency that's been "with" us since the very beginning of the product. They are rightfully fearful of the eventuality of our selling the patents, and with a substantial element of their business built on selling products protected by our intellectual property, they are particularly fearful that we might one day sell the patents to another party, a competitor who might be motivated to buy the patents, at least in part, to freeze them (our licensee) out of the market. So... (at least I am hopeful that) they are seeking some protection against that possibility, a license that will transcend any sale and pass with the patents upon assignment, so to speak. We've been working on this since the end of last year, and it appears that we're close to closing. The additional income would enable me to finally catch up on New Orleans son's "Katrina" rent, the rent his landlord is rightfully charging us, per the lease, for September - December, when we were unable to occupy the apartment, but which she is requiring in order for us to keep it, and it will also enable me to make arrangements for our family, in all of its disjointed glory, to travel to North Carolina in May for the oldest son's graduation from UNCW (this, an event that might make possible a meeting with Denise). After graduation, the aforementioned oldest son, wishes to fly, first to Wisconsin and then to Pennsylvania to pay a visit to both licensees, probably with his father in tow, to announce his formal arrival into these affairs, although he's always been involved, copied on every important email and we've never entered into an agreement without his complete understanding, as well as his strategic input. He appears, in the middle of his current search for a "real" job, ready to dive into these patent matters, head first. I am very, very pleased.
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Over at his blog, W has been talking about his dreams (and they were some doozies). I have gone through stages of my life during which I worked hard to pay attention to and remember my dreams although, not recently. However, I had the occasion this past night (or early this morning) to wake up in the middle of a puzzling one, and had the sense to sit up in the middle of the night and write down some highlights, so I would remember it in the light of day. It was odd. Now, I feel certain that this has nothing to do with our friend Zen, but the "protagonist" of this dream was a man of indiscernable identity, a vague mesh of Christopher Walken (Zen's current avatar), Hugh Grant and our attorney in The Matter About Which I Cannot Speak. When the dream commences I have just married him, which we all know is ridiculous because there is a small army of people who love me, sworn to shoot me dead if I so much as think about getting married again. Anyway, my new groom, whom I hardly knew, took me to this amazing house slung on the top of a huge hill, into the secret and invisible nether reaches of which he kept disappearing, while I sorted wedding gift cards made of large, beautiful and diverse flower petals, while wondering where my room might be. He reappeared suddenly (perhaps as a different person) and after a brief moment of rather comfortable (emotional, not sexual) intimacy, we both realized with shock that we didn't even know each other, so what in the world had we done, and I woke up. *sophmom shivers*
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I have made less frequent mention of New Orleans in the last few posts, not because it is any less on my mind, but because there were other things, not wholly unrelated, that I felt needed saying. While our discussion of love, for which I want to thank my readers for their incredibly insightful input, doesn't appear on the surface to have a thing to do with New Orleans, Katrina or the Gulf Coast, in fact, it does, because the love that we seek in our personal relationships comes from inside, from our spiritual source and it carries into our entire existence and how we treat each other, obligating everyone in this nation to continue to remember our fellow citizens fighting to rebuild, even fighting for just enough safety to get started rebuilding, to look at the coming hurricane seasons, from which they know they cannot be really protected, and find some glimmer of hope, some small sign from the federal government and/or the Army Corps of Engineers, that, in time, enough money and attention will be allotted to this to enable the beginning of rebuilding to not be an act of total erroneously placed faith. Whether I get it done this weekend or it takes me into the beginning of next week, my next post will be about New Orleans within the context of Alan Gutierrez' Link Think New Orleans, a viral linking campaign so beautifully described by Mark Folse in his Monday, March 27th post at his Wet Bank Guide entitled "A howling in the wires" (to which I could not link directly, at least not at this time). My next post will have the direct links required by this innovative use of viral marketing technique, but I wanted to post a reminder today that there are really some amazing blogs coming out of the Gulf Coast region right now, and encourage each of you to visit the New Orleans links in my gutter from time to time. Your eyes will be opened and your heart will be moved by what you read at the Wet Bank Guide, as well as these amazing blogs: b.rox, Tim's Nameless Blog, and People Get Ready. The good folks down there, living and working in the city and, of course, closest to my heart, its universities, cannot forget that Katrina happened. We shouldn't either.
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The weekend is nigh. Peace. Out, ya'll.
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Edit: Just a note to say that, in typical Zen fashion, he has a new avatar, and Christopher Walken is long gone. I was just getting used to him. *sigh*
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