not dead yet

I've been listening to the local radio station in Grand Haven. It's small-town and full of delightful little nuggets that you just don't get at the big stations. I worked on the air for about 12 years and I fondly recall the goofy things I had to do. Some examples from my career:

• weekly psychic/astrologer call-in show
  
• remote broadcasts in the mobile studio van...
  
• at a car dealership, from 5:30-10 AM, and the dealer didn't open until Noon
  
• at a TCBY for an entire week
  
• in a city park on Saturday night from 7-Midnight
  
• at a movie theater, in a mall, from a pay-phone, on a Tuesday night
  
• commercial for a Mexican restaurant featuring blatant racial stereotypes
  
• horrible commercial read live on the air by a business owner

However, yesterday I heard something new. It seems that my local station includes the reading of the obituaries column as part of their news broadcast. If that weren't creepy enough, here's what I heard yesterday:

Well... there are no new obituaries to share with you today... so... we'll be back with more news after this:
(commercial) "Would your family be properly cared for if something happened to you?..."

Then I had to pull over as the rest of the life insurance commercial played.

And then that happened

And then that happened

My office isn't the best place in the whole wide world right now and yesterday the ceiling started to cave in.

Seriously, right in the middle of a meeting and right on cue as Andy said something with just a tinge of despair. Andy's usually a very positive fellow, but this was priceless. We all stared at the can-light hanging from the ceiling by two slender copper threads and then just exploded in laughter.

It kinda helped.

The other day though...

Jon started making some crack about Genesis (the book, not the band) and after an awkward silence asked,

"What? We're not joking about creation?"

Luke just smirked and muttered,

"Too soon.

I nearly hemorrhaged.

Stop - The Agency Treatment

Thanks to Paul for pointing me at this gem


Anyone been at a client meeting like that?

Can't start soon enough

The Arena Football season is drawing to a close and that means NFL isn't far behind, and that means Fantasy Football!

I placed 5th last year - right in the middle of the pack with a group of friends. The Fightin' Amish will live to fight another day, but since I've moved to Grand Haven, I thought I should come up with some other potential team names. So - with my apologies to David Letterman (and other mis-users of the top-10 list) here are my top 10 rejected Grand Haven Football Team names:

10) Beacon
9) The Loyal Townies
8) The Retired Beachcombers
7) Hey I'm from Chicago too!
6) I just came in from GR for the weekend
5) I'm sooooo drunk
4) How do you get to the beach from here?
3) The Lousy Tourists
2) The Mighty Coast Guards (thanks Sylvia)
1) The Disappointing Musical Fountain

Rotten things part 2

Things that suck

Whilst installing an upgrade for an operating system, I inadvertently closed my laptop, putting it to sleep. I honestly forgot it was going on until I was half-way home. When I tried to fire it up again the computer was pretty unhappy.

So, I tried to rescue the OS with the install CD. After about 90 minutes, I got this message in the picture:

That was not good.

So, I tried a few more things for a while and finally did a clean install and restored the data from a week-old backup. Not horrible, but not great either.

Also, the fan makes a horrible noise.

Rotten things part 1

into the shredder with you

My office is not a fun place to work right now. In an attempt to get some funding together, I worked with our advancement (a goofy word for fundraising) staff and came up with a wiz-bang of a letter to a select audience.

Then things changed again.

Then we couldn't send out the letter. So, we had to shred them. Jon came up with the bright idea to feed them into the shredder en-masse. He used this funky little staple-less stapler to connect all the letters together. Then we fed them into the shredder in a big-ole paper train.

That made the office fun again for a while. I hear we might be getting ice-cream sandwiches soon.