My beautiful, wonderful car has been in the garage for going on three weeks now. It’s getting fixed up after a show-down with a pushy Chevy on the way to work a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, the “you should see the other guy” did not apply in this case, as my Nissan took a beating and showed it. I’m exaggerating a bit, but it did leave my car bottomless with a nice indent on the passenger side and a trunk that wouldn’t close.

I spoke with the mechanic last week and he assured me that the Nissan is returning to all of its glory. As, the other driver was at fault, all negotiations are now between my garage and the insurance agency, so I know very little of what’s going on and what additional damage was found. On one end this is good, I tend to be a “spare me the details, give me the end result,” type of girl, but on the other end I worry if my car will return to me in the same state as I found it. I have no way of knowing what it looks like now.

This is why DDA’s process for every project we undertake, from medical website design and development and graphic design to video production and animation, is so valuable for our clients. When we take on a project, whether it’s on the corporate side, or part of our full-service medical division, which caters to the healthcare IT and broader medical fields, there is complete transparency from day one. Each project is broken down into many small steps and the client is given plenty of opportunity for review and revision on every piece along the way. There are no guesses or nail biting, wondering what it is that’s going on over at that place. As one of the writers here, it’s my duty, and that of the four other writers, to keep our clients informed and provide them with continuous feedback and updates on their project.

Illustrations, trade show displays, brochures, and custom programming projects result in exactly what our client’s want and need.

I know I can’t expect to receive daily e-mails from my mechanic with pictures of the repairs just made looking for my approval to move forward, but a little more control over it would be nice; but I guess instead, I will just have to wait and bite my nails to the nub and trust that the Nissan will return as fabulous as it once was.

Twice this week I was able to have dinner prepared before breakfast. Let me explain this. I spent some time online last week looking up casserole recipes, then went shopping for the specified ingredients and planned out this week’s dinner night by night. Since Monday night’s dinner called for chicken I was able to kill two birds with one stone and cooked enough chicken to eat then and also have ready for tonight. So this morning, I was up dressed and putting together a casserole for a family of five before my little ones even opened their eyes.

So now I feel like I got so much accomplished at home and can focus on website optimization. As a search engine optimization specialist, I get a sense of accomplishment when I see the rankings of my clients’ websites increase in the search engines. Watching PageRank and Google cached pages numbers rise is also a nice pat on the back for all of the website optimization efforts we implement over the months in our SureThing Optimization Program.

And once I leave DDA for the day, I will be excited when I am asked, “What’s for dinner?”This is a welcome change from my normal reaction of wanting to throw my hand up in the air and then standing in front of the fridge staring blankly at its contents.

Today will be my last day with a shorter, though still not under 30-minute, commute. My family is moving to a new house and it is back where I used to live before we moved into the current rental that we reside in. Luckily, we’ve only been in this rental for a few months so I don’t have much of an emotional attachment to it. In fact, there are a couple things that I can’t wait to get away from, mostly the lack of a modern convenience we all know as a dishwasher. The worst part has got to be the physical process of moving. All the carrying I had to do from 3 months ago is suddenly fresh in my mind again, and my back is aching in anticipation.

I remember when DDA moved last year too. At least then the furniture carrying was left to the professionals, while we only had to handle our own computers and workspace items. It was a move needed for growth since it was getting quite crowded in the previous building. I think the most memorable sign for needing to move was when we were told not to chew, type, or move loudly during a video shoot in case some of the noise would be picked up by the microphone. This was basically because we were working mere feet away from the video shoot itself! We now have plenty of room for all the videography projects we do thanks to a much larger in-house video studio. I am now free to type away as loudly as I want on any programming project and we now have a kitchen were we go to eat. You can chew as loudly as you want there, but if you’re too loud you may still get some stares from other eaters. Our copywriting team has the whole upstairs to themselves, while programmers, graphic designers, animators, and everyone else are disbursed throughout the offices downstairs.

Both moves I’ve been in are necessary. At DDA it’s now easier to be productive during a video shoot because you can again concentrate on the work in front of you instead of wondering how loud your keystrokes are. You can come see our new place anytime you want if you schedule an appointment. Just go to our website at www.zeroonezero.com and contact us. Sorry, but the same does not go for my family’s new house.