Halfbrown

This was too cute, so I had to post it. Kimberly had just finished giving Evan a bath so he’s got his towel covering him, plus he’s standing on his big-boy potty/step-stool while brushing his teeth:

When I first made my way into the field of Web design/development I stumbled across a design firm that became an inspiration to me: Vivid Studios. They were so much of an inspiration to me that I even bought their book “Careers in Multimedia”.

Sadly they are no longer in operation (vivid.com now belongs to the XXX company Vivid), but every now and then I check out some of their former-employee’s personal sites (like Nathan, Val, Drue, and others) to see what they are up to these days.

I was doing just that when I saw a link on Nathan Shedroff’s site to vividstudios.org; and what did I find but what appears to be a snapshot of Vivid’s final site design!

I used to visit their site constantly to see what the Vividians (as they called themselves) were up to in part because their culture of fun and creativity at work seemed like a refreshing new idea, but also because I secretly wished I was a part of their team. In fact the Vivid business strategy/methodology section of their website is what first piqued my interest in project management, design specs, and the like.

Thank you, Nathan, for bringing back the Vivid website.

In no particular order, here are some of the silly things I’ve done to make people laugh:

• Worn orange foam “horns” on my forehead, attached with suction cups. Following that came two weeks of wearing a hat to cover the “hickeys” that developed from a little too much suction.
• Having severe pains in my nether regions after painting a happy face down there with my wife’s nail polish… for her amusement only, of course.
• Smacked my bare ass with a wooden spoon; progressively harder as the laughter grew. Eventually I had a wooden-spoon shaped welt and a matching bruise which also bore a wooden-spoon shape upon my buttocks. For those who have eaten at our house have no fear… the spoon broke on my butt before the night was through and was promptly tossed in the trash.
• Danced in my underwear outside of the bathroom door to make Kimberly not cranky at me any more. After about 30 minutes of doing said dance and making up a song about what I’m an idiot I am a burst of laughter came out from behind the door and I knew I was forgiven.
• More to come as I think of them…

Read a post on Metafilter this morning about a game called “Petals Around the Rose”. I love games so I checked it out… and it kicked my ass for several hours. In a way I feel good because they say the smarter you are the longer it takes you to solve it, but now that I know the answer I feel like a dumb-ass for not seeing it in the first place!