We passed by this building on the way to lunch at Tip Top in downtown Columbus, and the brass work was so amazing that I had to stop and snap a photo. It makes me so happy to see old buildings that are properly looked after, though it’s too bad they haven’t restored that cute little clock.
Also found downtown: This awesome Mr. Peanut neon sign.
This sign in the Jimmy Johns window in Syracuse made me smile and remember the good ol’ days … of smelling. I haven’t had a sense of smell in over a year and have spent gobs of money at the ENT trying to fix that (and other probably more important things.) Perhaps one day the smells will be free again.
Helping judge the annual SND awards was one of the most awesome things I’ve done in my professional life, despite the fact that it’s done in a 1970s-era golf course club house in Syracuse.
This is a bad photo, but it sums up the actual judging process pretty well. Entries are laid out on tables with a pair of plastic cups. Each judge has a set of single-color bingo chips and walks around voting for each entry – blue cup for “yes”, red cup for “no”. If three of the five judges on the team vote yes then it gets an Award of Excellence. Four or five yeses and it’s held for a later medal discussion.
There were 21 judges and more than 10,500 entries that needed judgin’. It was epic.
This was my first trip to Syracuse, and I know you yankees will find this shocking, but boy is there a lot of snow! But it doesn’t seem to faze anyone there or slow anything down which is awesome.
I stayed at the Sheraton on campus and was amazed to see that the bathroom sink had the exact same faucet handle my grandparent’s 1974 Texas ranch-style house had. It was nostalgic and oddly comforting.
A nasty non-flu virus wiped out a third of our office, and in typical Michael fashion, I seemed to have it worse than most. I love that this new thermometer lights up red when you have a fever (green if you don’t.)
I make exactly one cassoulet a year using a modified version of Julia Child’s recipe. It’s amazing delicious, but it takes at least two days to make and you can really only stomach to eat it for at most three meals. Basic recipe here.
Redesigned marketing e-mail template with social media links. Used mostly for award or event-related messages.
Detail image after the jump »
Turns out it’s amazingly difficult to pull focus manually. Or maybe that lens was never meant for such things. Or both.