Free smells

Photo / Feb. 8, 2011


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.

SND judging

Photo / Feb. 5, 2011

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.

Snowy Syracuse

Photo / Feb. 4, 2011


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.