TGIV

It's been a long, long week. I made some minor changes to the Incidencia Democratica website, tweaked the email design, and have been working to get our Daily Report online as early as possible. Today, in fact, was a record... at 10:25 am the report was "out there."

In addition, I had to prepare for a current events analysis this morning for a friend who works for Nisgua here in Guate and her family, visiting from Canada. (Terrific folks, by the way!) On Wednesday evening I have yet another presentation for a visiting delegation.

I also unilaterally decided to start enhancing our daily reports with photo-illustrations. 'Cause I didn't have enough to do already. Sheesh.

Actually, it started innocently enough. Our dearly departed Dania (she left us for the Guatemalan Forensic team) wrote an analysis about the ex civil defense patrollers (aka: paramilitaries) who are demanding compensation for their counterinsurgent efforts during the civil war.

"Hey" I thought "I've got a photo I could use with that!" So, after some quick editing, I uploaded it to our page. And waited for the compliments to roll in....

And they did. Kind of.

"How come Dania gets a photo with her story?" "You always liked her best!" "It's not fair... I want pictures too!" etc. etc. etc.

"Holy cannoli, what have I done?" I sighed. So, to silence the demands I agreed to create an illustration according to theme of each new analysis. I'm such a fool. Because once that can of wiggly worms was opened... there was no going back.

Talk about brain sprain. Coming up with the photo of an ex patroller to illustrate an article about ex patrollers wasn't exactly Einstein-esque. But how do you illustrate free trade agreements, multiculturalism, or retired people and their social security funds?

And how do you do that without leaving the office?!? I definitely didn't have time to zip across the city doing on-the-spot photo shoots. Sigh. So I had to hit the archives and "repurpose" some old pics. Those of you who have spent waaay too much time looking at my photographs will surely recognize parts of these new illustrations. I'll put them on my site this weekend.

Well, our Weekly Report just went online, and that means my work week is over. As they say here in Guatemala: TGIV... thank god it's Viernes! (ok, not really.)

Have a wonderful weekend!