The Usual Susspects

Maegan had her birthday at Ray’s Splash Planet, a small indoor waterpark. Maegan and a bunch of her friends had a blast on the water slide, the lazy river, and especially “The Vortex”. After swimming we had pizza and cake in a party room.

I found this blog post which explains the inverse correlation between the number of people involved in a design and the quality of the end result. This post is specifically about web design but it can easily be applied to any creative work. Click here to read the entire post.  

Pugs have literally been bred to be pampered. According to Wikipedia: “Pugs were kept by [Chinese] royalty and were pampered and spoiled, and the expectation of such treatment is a characteristic that seems to remain with them to this day.” Our Pug puppy, Hobo seems to be no exception to these characteristics. He often flips on to his back and stretches out as if demanding his right to a belly rub. Well it appears that the Boomer has learned to take a page from young Hobo’s book of how to make humans pamper you. Boomer (a hunting breed) has never just flipped over and asked for a belly rub before but he’s done that several times this past week. I guess he recognizes a good thing when he sees it and learned to follow the puppy’s lead.

Patty and I each bought inexpensive (downright cheap) mountain bikes this weekend. I doubt either bike will ever see an actual mountain trail but now we can finally go riding around the neighborhood with Maegan.

I’ve been waiting for this day all year. No, not the premiere of the movie I’m in – the opening of the new Super Target at River Gate. Hooray! River Gate is a new   60,0000-square-foot  shopping center being built just a few miles from my house. There’s not much in the way of retail shopping in the immediate area and funny as it sounds, Patty and I really have been counting the days until it opened. The Home Depot (yea) is the other anchor store, with Best Buy (yea), PetSmart (yea), and a bunch of new restaurants (yea) to open soon.  

This is one of several billboards put up as part of a promotional campaign by WCNC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Charlotte, NC. They are promoting the accuracy of their newscast’s weather with the following text: “It’s not that they are  wronger … We’re  just righter .” P.S. Incase you’re wondering… No, they don’t have any weather talent named Righter.

Last week a  former colleague returned to the station  for a visit. This week the trend continued with another blast from the past. Mr. Eric Gross (on the left in this photo) was in for some corporate training from our sister-stations in Oakland. Eric was our station’s graphic artist when I first began in ’98 and we’ve done a lot of good work together. We reminisced about everything from former co-workers, to old Christmas parties, to a missing boomerang, to his powder-blue porsche that won’t die. It was good seeing him again and hearing how things are going well for him in California. I also realized just how long I’ve been working here as current co-workers I’ve known for the past six-plus years kept walking by and saying hello to me but Eric didn’t know any of them.