Clayton, you saved my life.
At work on Friday I got a terrifying assignment: Dennis (who is scary and also one of the partners) asked me to cut out the lettering for a silkscreen stencil. I guess we're printing in-house on this project because it's kind of an unsolicited "friend" thing, which means it can be shunted off to me. I am in no way qualified to do this kind of cutting, but I resolved to take it home for the weekend, buy a swivel knife, and summon a small miracle to make it happen by Monday. I fought with it all Saturday afternoon and then went to Rod's thing where I poured my heart out to Clayton about how all I want to do is make Dennis happy so someday he'll pull strings for me. Clayton (and he may or may not remember the details of this conversation) was like "Dude, photo emulse it."
..
Why did I not think of that? It will be infinitely faster and produce much better results than any stencil I could have made, even with $15 worth of Exacto knives. I'm still reeling from how simple that was and from the fact that in those two agonizing days it never once occurred to me.