Photography Obsession #1 - Rails to Trails

Ok, so I am going to kick the logo word marks project to the curb for now (it had been since May after all and there has been little clamoring to continue it, and by little I mean none) so I thought I would post some photos (of my new obsession). I got a new Nikon D90 camera back in the spring and have been having a great time playing with it. I definitely need some more time working with it and learning about it, but here are some of the results.

This was a bike trip that Owen and I took on the Rails to Trails in Parkersburg. It was a beautiful day, the weather was cooler and the trail was amazing and peaceful. There were even some remnants of the Railroad from days gone by.

Here is Owen taking a rest (which he did a lot of):





Train signal. I love the shadowing on this one and how the light hits it.


Same signal but 2 different angles:




I was so proud of myself for finding this. It was a concrete marker for the railway and was slightly askew. I don't think that the "W" means West cause we were riding East, but who knows:


I am happy with the composition of this image, I like that it is black and white, I just wish I had some more contrast, and if I had all day to wait for the lighting to be right I think there would have been . . . eventually



Cool Tree:


Ok, so there is first of a series and I will share more photos in the coming weeks, I promise!!

Creativity-Project 3

Ok, this was a tough one. Heidelberg just changed their logo and went to something new and they added a new wordmark that contains, what possibly could be, the longest mascot name ever. SO I took some liberties with this one (I can, it is MY project afterall) and just included their nickname (changed back to what they used to be called). If I had more time I would have figured out how to incorporate "Heidelberg" in the logo but that could have taken all day.

Creativity-Project 2

So here is the Capital University Crusaders. As far as I can tell, they have no "official" wordmark, believe me I did some research trying to find anything that looked like they knew what they were doing. There is some debate over what is there actual logo, either the one displayed above or a version that has the one displayed above but on a shield with swords. Anyway, I present to you the Capital Crusaders.

Creativity-Project 1

So one of my friends, Christina, decided to do a "project-a-day" to help her be more creative and I thought that was a great idea, so I decided to play off of her project a little with one of my own. What I decided to do is start with the OAC Conference and create wordmarks to go with their athletic logos. I started with Baldwin-Wallace and quickly realized that I have to put a time-limit on these or I could spend days with each one. I don't know if this will be daily, but I will work my way through the conference.

Winding Down and Up

ahhh take a deep breath and enjoy the end of the semester. Another school year gone by, another set of graduates getting ready to head out into the "real world." Things have been freaky busy these past few weeks, more freelance, finishing up my teaching for the semester, starting golf league . . . you think it would slow down, but something else pops up. For some reason I think that all of these things just 'happen' to me, but I am now starting to think that I seek out busy and must need it, otherwise what would I do?

Draft Status

Owen asked tonight if it was football season as I had ESPN on the TV and they had some of their draft coverage on. Renea told him no, but this weekend was the NFL Draft. Owen asked, "What is the draft?"

Renea wisely looked at me and said, "You want to take this one?"

So I did my best to explain to Owen that players that were in college, like Pat White, at West Virginia, could be picked by professional sports teams like the Steelers. I told him each team takes their turn in picking players from college.

Owen looked at me and said, "Daddy, you know what? The Steelers could pick you to be on their team."

I said, "Really? Why do you say that?"

"Cause Daddy, you are in college. You could get picked by the Steelers."

He might not know exactly what I do, but he does know that I work at a college.

New workout

You might have seen the infomercial, if you happen to have cable on at 7 a.m. or any station at 3 a.m., it is a program called P90X. It is supposed to be a program that you do at home, following the DVDs and working along with them. I ordered the DVDs a few weeks ago (off of ebay) and I converted them all to be played on my iPod, so now I can do the videos at the gym rather than home. I have already watched the first DVD to get a feel for what I am getting into and it looks very intense and almost a little scary. I will have to plan a little extra time in the mornings to get through the entire workout as the first one seems like it will take 1:15. I will update on the progress made and we will see how this will all shake out. I am not sure what day I am going to start. This week is busy and I would have rather started on a Monday. Part of me wantes to take a week off and come back on Monday ready to go, but another part of me wants to make sure not to let what I have worked for up to this point waste away by not working out. I imagine that by tomorrow morning I will have made a decision . . . and since my workout bag is already packed . . . that decision seems to have been made.

T-Ballin'

Owen's first t-ball game was yesterday and it was a lot of fun. Kids enjoying the game of baseball (for the first 2 of 3 innings and maybe for the last time in their lives.) No score is kept, and each time a team is at bat, all the players get to hit, also all players play the field. I coached 1st base and helped guide the kids around the bases, I also helped with the right side of the infield, guiding wayward fielders and showing them where to get the outs. Owen did well hitting. I thought this was all about hitting off a tee, but they actually throw the kids 3 pitches (from a coach) and then if he/she doesn't hit it, then they put the ball on the tee. Out of Owen's three times up he hit the ball from the pitcher (coach) twice and only on the last time did he have to hit off the tee. In the field, it was a different story. He was scared of the ball when hit in his direction, so we have to work a little on the fielding skills, and once he and another player were fighting over a grounder. I enjoyed it. It did last long for me as well as them. I had the first basemen of the opposing team ask me 8 times, in the second inning, if the game was over yet. These kids have a very short attention span and if things aren't moving, they are losing interest. No one got hurt and a good time was had by all, you can't ask for any more than that.

Perfection

I consider myself a bit of a fan of advertising and marketing. I pay attention to commercials, tag lines and logos and I am extremely interested in how companies position and market themselves. To steal a line from "PTI," how companies "protect the shield" so to speak. Meaning how they present and defend their brand.

I try to keep up-to-date on the latest in advertising and in doing so I ran across this ad. Very rarely do you find a commercial that is effective, humorous, and does a good job of branding. This one does it all.

Thank you Easter Bunny! Bock Bock

I already linked to this commercial on my twitter, but thought I would do it again here for the twitterless.

Quick story from church today. I was explaining to Owen about communion and I said, "When Pastor gives us the bread and says 'this is the body of Christ,' he is talking about Jesus." Owen said, "Cheese its?"

"No, Jesus."

"Cheese its?"

"Jesus!"

"Oh I get it now, Jesus."

I guess because of the bread he had snacking on his mind.

Bock! Bock!

Simple dinner

I have been craving something off the grill all week and while I was sitting at work today I was trying to come up with something to make and then it hit me, Shishkabobs. I went to the grocery store after work and picked up beef, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, asparagus, zucchini, and redskin potatoes. All I did was put some olive oil, salt, pepper and Worcester sauce on the beef, and vegetable oil, salt and pepper on the veggies. Placed them all on the grill and cooked away. So simple. We dumped everything in a big bowl when done and then you just scooped out what you wanted. It was delicious. So simple but so, so good.

Love/Hate relationship

We have a few really big projects that we work on each year, and one of them is our alumni magazine. Full color, 34+ pages, and over 20,000 copies mailed out. When it comes down to the last couple of days it gets a little crazy and I sometimes second guess the decisions I have made as far as color choices and where things are laid out. I have come to realize that most of the time these moments of irrationality come from working on it too long. Staring at the pages for hours on end trying to come up with the right positioning. Then all that changes when I print out one of the last copies for us to review, and suddenly the changes I was fretting over don't seem so large, and I actually like what I see. I have to admit, it is a love/hate/love relationship when I hit these last few days before sending it off to the printer. There are only a few more changes (I hope) and then we can send this to bed and can move onto the next relationship, er, I mean job.

da Weather

Ok, it is April and there is snow on the ground. This is not good. Where is the spring? Where is the warm weather? I know a lot of people complain about the cold and the snow, but I HATE it, and hate is a soft word, my feelings toward snow and cold weather is 10x harsher than that. I am miserable in the winter. Miserable in the snow. I complain about it all the time and curse Mother Nature via twitter. Can we catch a break? Get a little warm weather and let it gradually get warmer as the spring progresses? I would prefer that over these "teases" we get with a day being 65-70º and then it goes down to 30º and snow flurries. I am tired of it. Please let's just move on. Obviously the cursing hasn't worked, so I am not begging and groveling. Let's get to the spring and warm weather.

Friendship

I ran into an old friend Saturday night at Curt and Jen's reception. It was the first time I had seen Jeff since his wedding reception about 10 years ago. I was in Jeff's wedding as an usher, and you would have thought that we would have stayed in contact over the years, but that was not the case.

What happened? It actually is pretty simple. Jeff came to me at about 3am and 4 days before he was to be married, in tears and having a sever case of cold feet. He talked about not wanting to get married and that he wasn't sure he was making the right decision. I agreed. He hadn't known his fiance that long, and rushed things. Hell, I had only met her once before and we lived in the same town. I suggested that if he really felt like he was making a mistake that he could call off the wedding. He wouldn't have to break it off completely with his fiance (I can't even remember her name) but they could postpone the wedding, no one would care, they just wanted Jeff to be happy. He left my place still not sure what he was going to do, but it seemed to help him that we talked out his options.

I still hadn't heard from Jeff a day later and I was concerned about him and his state of mind. he had no cell phone, so I emailed him and asked him if he thought more about what we had discussed and where his head was. Well his fiance read the email intended for Jeff and shot one back to me telling me to mind my own business and worry about by own marriage and that if I didn't want them to get married then I shouldn't be in the wedding.

Well last time I checked, Jeff came to me, I didn't seek him out and try to talk him out of marrying her. He asked ME for the advice and I was just following up with him. I didn't write her back and just let it go. I went to the wedding and did the whole "smile and wave" thing. At the end of his wedding reception I told Jeff that all I ever wanted for him was to be happy, and I hoped that he was.

That is the last time I talked to him until Saturday. I ran into him walking into the Brewery, and I was the bigger man, I shook his hand, told him it was good to see him and moved on. I don't hold a grudge with how both Jeff and his wife treated me, nor will I apologize for giving advice that was asked for. Not a word from him in 10+ years. I think it is pretty clear where he stands on all of this, he obviously chose his wife over me, and I am ok with that.

If he would like to fix the friendship, all he has to do is apologize. Apologize for letting me dangle in the wind. Apologize for letting everyone think I was not behind a wedding that he himself was concerned about just 4 days before. Apologize for treating a friend that had been by his side, through the ups and downs for the 7 previous years, like a stranger. Honestly, I have moved on, forgotten about it and moved on. I hold no hard feelings although the last sentence my sound different.

So Jeff, if you ever run across this blog, and you would like to fix our friendship, it is an easy fix. If it is never fixed, that is ok too. I have had plenty of time to live without.

Easy as riding a bike

So today was the day for Owen. One of those steps you take as a young boy that moves you closer to being a "big" boy. Today we took the training wheels off (literally) and learned to ride a bike. This morning in church Pastor Steve had talked about learning to ride a bike, and how it wasn't easy, there are falls and scrapes and cuts and very rarely do you learn to ride without "suffering" some of the pitfalls of riding a bike. (BTW he was comparing this to hearing the whole Passion story and not just the celebratory parts that come with Palm Sunday and Easter). I was hoping Owen wasn't paying much attention to the children's sermon as he knew we were going out later to ride.

So we got Owen all ready. Knee pads? Check. Elbow pads? Check. Helmet? Check. Backpack full of more medical supplies than a small clinic? Check. We went to a elementary school that had a large flat play area that was paved and we thought this would be a good place to start. We got the bike out of the car and Owen climbed aboard. He was a little wobbly at first, but we had lowered his seat so he was able to get his feet down quickly as he wobbled right or left. I was the one holding Owen and keeping him balancing and Renea was camera girl manning the video camera.

I tried holding onto the back only, and he didn't like that, so I moved one hand on the seat and one on the handle bars. A few wobbles and he was grabbing my arm. I told him not to grab my arm as he would pull us both over. So we did about 3-4 runs where we started out with me holding him up, letting go and him going about 10 feet before putting his feet on the ground. Then we did a run where I let go he peddled and went 20-30 feet (pretty fast, realizing the faster he went, the easier it was to stay up) and he forgot how to use his breaks and pulled a Fred Flintstone and put his feet on the ground to stop. It was that easy. He picked it up so fast and with hardly any major crashes. We spent time on making a turn and learning how to get started, but as far as the actual riding and moving forward on the bike with no training wheels he has it.

Obviously he isn't going out tomorrow and riding in the Tour de France, but it certainly didn't come with the traumatic episodes that I think Renea and I were planning for. The wheels are off!

Congrats to Curt and Jen

My college buddy Curt and his wife Jen both got married for the second time today. Jen is the nicest person and I am happy for the both of them. We went to their reception tonight and had a good time. They spared us all of the formalities of a first wedding by just having family and friends to the wedding and inviting close friends to the reception. If you are going to get married again that is the way to do it. Small and informal.

Facebook Posts

"Blanky Blank Blankerson is hanging with my grandparents, cousins, and the rest of the family. Life could not be better. The saying of "Family is everything", truly does ring true. The weekend keeps getting better and better. Love you all."

This is a status post by a "friend" on facebook. I read this post and I had an urge to comment "Screw You!" Why is that? Why the hate? I am not a hateful person. I consider myself a pretty nice guy, but posts like these on facebook aggravate me but I am not certain why. Maybe it was the day, maybe I just pulled a Daniel Powter and had a bad day? I dunno. I love my family. I agree with that statement wholeheartedly, so that isn't it. I guess it is just the proclimation on facebook that grates me. The outloud cyber shouting of this statement I think is what it is. The sharing of this with all of your "friends" on facebook, and the proclimation at the end that "Love you all." Really? Do you really "love" me? I mean we went to high school together and were fringe friends even back then and now you tell me that you "love" me? I think you might be moving a little too fast for me lady I like my status updates light, funny, sometimes serious and informative, but this is just irritating. Maybe that makes me a bad person? But I have a feeling she will forgive me . . . after all she does love me.

Had a great lunch today too!

T-Ball

So T-ball officially started tonight.  Some things I took away from the first practice.

• My biggest fear as a parent, especially for this parent, is that your kid will be the worst one. Owen is not the worst player, far from it. Out of 12 he is definitely in the top 6.
• I signed up to be an "assistant" and waited for my marching orders from the coach/coaches. There were none, so I stood there doing everything in my power to NOT take control of the entire practice . . . firing coaches, yelling at kids, getting them on the line and running wind sprints . . . then  I thought I could suggest taking half of the kids and working with them fielding grounders and the "coaches" could let the other half hit off the tee. So I made the suggestion, worked with half the kids, then rotated with the other coaches and worked with the other half.
• Kids love mud.  A little mud in the middle of the field . . . every kid walked through it multiple times and all the shoes were caked with it at the end of practice.
• I was going to post earlier in the day that the over/under for kids injured and/or crying sometime during the practice would be 3.  3 it was. PUSH.
• Owen is like his dad, very into the uniform.  Actually, secretly, I was hoping we got hats tonight and they were cool, but we got no hats and I am sure they will suck.

Damn it

I missed a day. Well there goes the streak. I had a nice little bloggin streak goin on to only have it interrupted by my Tuesday. My Tuesdays suck. They are long, involved, and tiresome. I workout in the morning, work all day, attempt to get my class prep done between work and class at 7, and then class from 7-10. Makes for a long day and does not leave much time to blog.

• New show that I am loving is trust me on TNT. It is about an ad agency in Chicago. This is the world I always wished I lived in. It is fascinating to me to get a "behind the scenes" look at the world of an ad agency.
  
• Logo Update: Still no word from the client.
• Weight Update: Now down a solid 23 lbs.
  
• Starting a new blogging streak today.
  

finally!

I have had this sweatshirt on my mind for a long time. I have been checking and checking NFL.com for what seems like years, waiting for the price to come down. The retail price, $75, and I am not paying $75 for a sweatshirt. So while I was doing my normal "stalking" of the sweatshirt, I came across a 30% off sale on NFL.com. I could now get the sweatshirt for about $20 off. Now it becomes reasonable. I placed the order last week and today my sweatshirt came. It is very comfortable (still not worth $75) and much darker than the picture indicates, but I could see why it was priced so high. Of course now that I have the sweatshirt, it guarantees that the weather will be in the 70s very soon.

Strep Throat

Owen has strep throat. To find this out we had to spend 2+ hours at the physicians care office. I am not a usual germ-a-phobe (I think Renea has made me that way) but the whole time we were there it gave me the willies thinking about all of the sickness floating around. When we finally got the call to move from one waiting area to the next waiting area I decided that it would be best to pass the time with a little game I like to call Latex Glove Balloon. Owen really enjoyed this, as did I. Renea, not so much.

Renea usually gets a little aggravated with me in Dr. offices. I have a tendency to play with the Dr. things, never hurting anything just to help pass the time and to lighten mood. Renea always thinks we are going to get into trouble. As Owen and I were passing the latex glove balloon Renea gave Owen and I a dirty look, so I had to bounce the balloon off her face. She never saw it coming and it gave all three of us a big laugh.

There are laugh out loud moments when you have kids, and it is true that they will say some of the darndest things. Owen said something today that reminded me of something his uncle Adam would have said about that same age. He found a dollar I had laid on the table yesterday. I was in our bedroom upstairs and he came up and said, "Dad, can I have this dollar I found?" "No." I said. Then in a sad little voice, his acting chops emerged. "But Dad, it will make my throat feel better." What a player.

Streak is alive

A whole week with posts. Not even in the hayday of blogging did I complete a feat like this. Let's see if I can keep it going. Watch out Cal Ripkin!

• Owen had swim lessons today. His teacher has been working with him on his freestyle and he is coming along well. They were working on his breathing and she was asking him to swim to the wall, then all of a sudden he broke out a breaststroke that I hadn't ever seen him swim before. They hadn't even worked on that in class. Needless to say his kick was close to flawless. Which, if you know anything about swimming, the breaststroke kick is the hardest for kids to get (unless he is a natural) cause they want to do a scissors kick. It must be in his genes cause I was a pretty good breaststroker in my day. I was floored.
• Before class Owen was sluggish before lessons and his throat was a little red. We asked him if he wanted to go to swimming and he said he did, so we went. Afterward Renea and I were going to Subway to get something to eat when Owen said his stomach hurt. Luckily Renea had the foresight to take home outside . . . where he puked in the parking lot. Crisis semi-diverted.
• While sick today, Owen has watched Garfield, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Bolt and now Star Wars. Thank god for the NCAA tournament.
• Took Lucie (black lab) for a walk today (3.5 miles). I swear that dog is nearly impossible to wear out.
• While blogging, just witnessed our cat Ziggy attempting to roll around on the bed and threw himself off the side and fell off. Of course he tried to fake like that was what he was trying to do.

Guilty Pleasure

Love my Sirius radio. Love the fact that I can listen online (at least until my subscription is up in December), and a couple of months ago I ran across Cosmo Radio, sponsored by Cosmo magazine and specifically the morning show Wake Up with Taylor. Taylor is a 26 year old female living in New York and she has 2 co-hosts sitting in with her, Victoria and Kenny. Now typically I like my talk radio more so than music in the mornings so I think this is one of the reasons I started listening. I know, I know, it is Cosmo and it's for girls. See that is where you are wrong. They definitely cater to the female demographic, but it is more of a "relationship" show that also has some pop culture discussions as well. Now there have been plenty of times where I have turned the channel when they discuss getting pedicures or shoe shopping, but for the most part I find them pretty entertaining and the male perspective provided by Kenny mirrors my thoughts most of the time. It is good entertainment and I find myself cracking up at least once a morning. Give them a try, it may not seem like the "manly" thing to do, but it is good radio.

A new low

Excuse #7,823 why I hadn't kept up with the blog:

Since the end of the summer when I was at my heaviest weight I have been ratcheting up the workouts, trying to eat more healthy and finally lose some weight. Today I was at my lightest down 22.5 pounds. What has helped? The book and program behind Cheat to Lose and also I really think by adding swimming 3 days a week to my workout. I was stuck at one weight for a long time after the first 15. Since then it has been a slow going, but I think the swimming has kick started things. If I use the weight I am right now and set a new goal, 10lbs would be it, although I would prefer 15. HA

Playing Catch-Up

One of the simple little perks in life is the DVR (covered before as one of the best inventions ever), and one of the things that Renea and I do with the DVR and our favorite show LOST is that we record it, and then start to watch it about half-way through the live broadcast in hopes that we don't catch up to the actual broadcast. It is like watching the show in the same amount of time (9:00 -10:00), but never having to sit through the commercials. I am not sure what makes this fun, the thrill of maybe getting away with something, or just trying to play a mini game of "keeping the triangle behind the green line." Either way it is a fun little game that adds to watching our favorite show.

Now to clear up some confusion of the earlier post:

1. No, the drawing is not what my student came up with as a logo, it is just an example of what the client thought her logo looked like (it didn't look anything like that)
2. We haven't given new designs to the client, so there are no updates.

Brutally Honest

So I have a student designer working on a logo for a summer camp/thing. The camp is for kids in high school so we thought it would be good to create a "fun" looking logo that would appeal to the high school kid. Well the initial draft was sent to the client and was returned with the comments that the logo didn't look classy enough and needed to appeal to 15-16 year-olds (which is tough to do . . . classy but appealing to that age group). So I emailed the client to dig a little deeper, to find out what exactly they didn't like about the initial attempt by my student. This usually helps to get a little closer to exactly what the client wants . . . well, the response was:

"To be blunt ...They didn't look classy. They looked very elementary - like they were drawn by an 8 year old in about 10 minutes."

Well I am glad she didn't sugar coat it. I appreciate her honesty, but again, not much to go on. Did she hate the font? Did she hate the sun with the logo? Did she hate the colors?

This is the problem I have with people critiquing work. Give me specifics. Not just, "I don't like it." or "I don't like that color." Why don't you like it? Why don't you like the color? You have to have reasons to not like it, just as we had reasons to design it that way.

So currently we are in the process of giving her just "classy" and we will see where this leads us.

I will keep all three of you reading this blog updated. I am sure you will be on pins and needles.

Free Stuff

I love when you stumble upon free things. One of the things I got this morning was music and I didn't even download it illegally (because downloading music illegally is morally WRONG and is something I would never, ever do).

Barenaked Ladies is one of my favorite bands and recently their lead singer Steven Page, got into a little trouble and then quit the band. Well they played a concert at Universal Studios a few weeks ago (a free concert), their first as a foursome and put the whole concert up for download on their site.

Just a little bonus this morning. Gotta love the free stuff.

This is hard work

Ok, so I am feeling guilty about this dead blog that keeps popping up in the back of my mind. One reason is my Aunt Jan.  Apparently the only person who has missed the continuous updates that I used to post. Every time I see her she gives it to me about not having a new post.  "Someone hasn't updated their blog since October." I told her to follow me on twitter. She didn't like that suggestion too much. See she likes the old blog days, when I had time to write and something to say. I have a lot to say, but it just doesn't seem to make it here to the blog. I have the podcast, the facebook, the twitter and this blog.  The blog, unfortunately is last. I like writing, I like updating, but the activity of actually doing it is keeping me from keeping it updated.  I think it might have to be with my standards for the blog. I somehow feel like I need to write long winded stories to justify a blog post, when in actuality it could be a couple of lines. So I need to drop that mentality and just blog already! Lately (and I mean in the past year and past 4 blog posts) it seems like I write more about me NOT posting something that actually posting anything. Ok, so enough.  From the magic show we saw last night at Marietta High School.

• We took Owen to the magic show last night.  It was a good time, although it lasted waaaay too long (2+ hours). Owen seemed to enjoy the 90 minutes, then he kept asking, "Is it over?" 
  
• Two of the three magicians were "ok." One was very good. Obviously we aren't talking big Vegas production. But it was entertaining. 
• Out of the three of them, the host may have been the worst of the three. He had one assistant who had to be in her late 80's (no I am not exaggerating) and the other looked so unenthusiastic you would have thought she was doing community service.
• The good magician, I believe his name was David Kaplin (and a quick Google search confirms that), was really talented, funny and worth seeing. I could have watched him all night.
• Owen tried to volunteer every time one of the magicians requested a volunteer, but never got picked. The kid is such a ham.
• On our way home, Owen called his Me-Maw to tell her about the show. In describing what he liked best, he said he like "When they cut a little boy's head off." Obviously no kids heads were cut off, but it is funny he remembered the illusion that way.