Glimpses of the morning so far...

- mike lee - cambridge, md

We fianlly arrived at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge (1) a little over an hour late, but dinner was still in full swing. After dinner (2, 3), Karen, from our in-house Organizational Learning and Performance group, asked each of us to talk about the object we were assigned to bring that represents a story about our web team. While Karen extracted themes from the stories and took notes (5), the objects were placed in a memory basket (6) that will carry the themes for discussion throughout the day tomorrow.

- mike lee - cambridge, md

It has taken almost 90 minutes for us to get from my mom's house to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which should have been 45 minutes. But on the other side of the bridge, we're moving at a steady 60 on the last 40 miles to the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, MD. Most of the rest of our co-works are starting dinner without us; we'll gladly eat at the bar when we arrive.

I also got a chance to look at the thumbnail images of Natasha (1) on the fire escape earlier. They look fantastic.

- mike lee - on rt. 50 on the eastern shore of md

I did a quick test shoot today of Natasha, a grad student and aspiring model. Natasha is a blue-eyed natural blonde russian who is not only beautiful, but quietly carries intellectual depth. We made some images in the window light of my living room (1-4), and then went out into the gorgeous weather for shots on our new deck (5-7) and on a fire escape (not pictured). Sorry guys, that's her husband holding the reflector for me (8). He's the nicest guy imaginable. I'll definitely be working with them again this summer.

- mike lee - baltimore, md

... I'll be at the midnight show of Star Wars Episode III at the AMC theater at Union Station in Washington, D.C. This is just a few blocks from work, so I'll leave the office, grab dinner, and get in line.

Yes, tickets are on sale online and here's a list of the theaters.

- mike lee - baltimore, md

Dinner at Tamber's diner with Mary after an afternoon of house cleaning and packing.

- mike lee - baltimore

It's a brisk Saturday morning at the Waverly Farmer's Market. The Sun is burning off the last whisps of nighttime chill to make way for a beautiful weekend. Today we're packing up the last of the loose stuff around the house as it goes on the market next weekend.

- mike lee - baltimore

This is a nightmarish tank full of live tilapia fish at a Latin/Asian grocery store near my mom's house. I wonder if they would go into a feeding frenzy if a hunk of raw meat were dropped into the tank.

- mike lee - langley park, md

My sisters-in-law work at the same firm that is designing our office space. Since I had a meeting with one of their co-workers about some details of the emerging floorplan, I got there early to have lunch with the sisters. They showed me around the office, which I hadn't seen in a few years. On display was the Tokyo project (1-3), a room designed for an extreme makeover. In the second photo, I'm holding Hello Kitty slippers. Along the hallways elsewhere on the floor were some nice team culture tools. Crea8 is a gallery space showcasing staff art pieces created to an assigned theme (4). Another installation consists of a large roll of paper suspended up high onto which various bits of design thinking are affixed for public view (5). Two autopoles are used to suspend a large sheet of clear plastic in front of the roll paper (6). People are encourged to write comments on the plastic using whiteboard markers. Special gripper rails in each studio area (7) provide an easy way to share news clippings by just jamming the top edge into the rail. Specifying cool fixtures like these will be the fun part of planning our new office space.

- mike lee - washington, dc

I was doing some reading in my childhood bedroom at my mom's house tonight and dozed off for a while. When I awoke looking at the books on the upcoming last installment of the Star Wars epic (Making of... and Art of...), I had a brief flashback to 27 years ago when I was in this very same room reading the first editions of these books for the original movie. It's unbelievable that almost three decades have passed. The biggest contrast you see in the behind the scenes stories of the film's production from 1977 to today is the shift to, and full realization of, digital filmmaking that enables George Lucas to put on screen *anything* he can imagine.

Other readings tonight: The premiere issue of Make magazine, The Futurist issue with an article on scenario thinking and the May issue of Metropolis magazine.

- mike lee - langley park, md