December 13, 2003

• Christmas Tree

  Companies that sell things frequently have contests among their salespeople because that improves sales. Delia has a contract with Givenchy. Givenchy decided to ask their contract sales promoters to compete in producing the best Givenchy Christmas tree.

  Delia got to build her tree in the Robinsons-May store in Mission Valley. The store even provided her a little tree. It was a pathetic little thing, slightly over three feet tall but with the longest of its thin, widely separated branches being only about eight inches long.

  Delia has been saving the decorative tops from the tester bottles of fragrances she has used in the store. She got out the hot glue gun and glued wire hooks to the bottle tops for decorations. She also used a variety of samples, tied to hooks with red ribbon, for decorations. Some of the samples that come in little glass tubes looked like icecycles. She cut out letters from gold-colored cardboard and I hot-glued them to a wire to spell out the company name. She took all of her decorations to work with her this morning and, when she had the tree ready, she called me to come and take pictures.

  The tree was in an awkward spot for photography, behind the display of a competing product and in bad light. However, I did manage a series of photos, some capturing the tree close-up, some the tree and display and a few that included the people involved.

  When I finally arrived home, I removed the memory card from my camera and placed it in the printer. Then I printed off an index sheet and a set of larger low quality prints. I also printed off three full sized glossy prints that I knew Delia would want. When Delia arrived, not much later, I found out what she wanted and ran off an appropriate set of prints for her to submit as her contest entry. I also wrote up the following little description: "A spindly little Charlie Brown type of Christmas tree adorns our display, decorated with samples, fragrance bottle tops, several Houses of Givenchy and a small amount of tinsel. A length of sheer Givenchy ribbon serves as a golden garland. A bottle of Very Irresistable Givenchy serves as an angel at the top, its golden wings spelling out G-I-V-E-N-C-H-Y."

  All of the printing was done by the printer alone, without the computer being involved. One of these days I'm going to get my memory card reader working so I can read the photos into my downstairs computer (where I'm writing this).

  For the moment, though, you'll just have to take my word for it: the photos worked out pretty well. I would guess that Delia's funny little tree stands a good chance of winning.

  • 04:45
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