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.