The Morning Routine

My friend Wes Molebash (Legendary Cartoonish of Legend) has a web comic which is most excellent, and a blog on said web comic that I find very worthwhile of my RSS feed.

So yesterday Wes posted a blog entitled "The Morning Routine" (which you can go and read by clicking the linky-thing there) and not only was the blog post entertaining and thought provoking, but the responses (22 at present) were also great fun to read.

I started to respond, and whilst typing in that general direction realized two things… 
1. that my response was getting terribly out of hand, and 
2. that I haven't blogged in a really really long time.

Thus I decided to take my long-winded reply and turn it into a blog-post of my own, which I will refer to in the comments of Wes's blog for anyone who cares to read my rambling.

if you've read this far and not lost interest…

1. I commend you

2. Here is the good stuff

The Morning Routine

I used to be a morning person…  I don't recall exactly at what point in my life this changed, but I suspect that my discovery of alarm clocks with snooze buttons during while at college had something to do with it…

I (like many people, I think) use my cell phone (read iPhone) as an alarm clock.   I set three alarms, beginning at least 30 minutes before I need to get up, just so I can smack the snooze button a few times.   The times these alarms need to go off depends on whether school is in session, because I have to get up earlier and leave earlier if I have to drop Ellie off at school before getting to work.


The times pictured here are for summer, they are all 30 minutes earlier when school's happening.

I have different ring-tones set for each of these too… the first one is a very soothing, subtle, water trickling kind of noise, that if I'm sleeping really hard I don't even hear.   
The second one is a little less subtle, and the third is, well…  kind of like the alarm sound you think of if you're being warned of a bomb about to off in your general area.

This third alarm (the one that means business) prompts me to actually pick my phone up off of my night-stand, turn the ringer off, and reset all three alarms for the next day…  


So now with phone in hand, and alarms silenced, I can proceed to the checking of email and twitter before I ever toss the covers aside.

At this point I now have approximately 50 minutes before I need to be out the door… 


I grab my towel and head for the bathroom in the other end of the house where I go to the bathroom, and get in the shower.  


Now, unlike Wes, I don't subscribe to any particular shower routine…  I can typically wash my body, face, and hair in a about 10 minutes and that happens in whichever order I happen to grab the soap, shampoo, and face-wash out of the little cubby thing…  I typically take about 5 minutes also to just stand and let the water run on me because I just like those few minutes for waking up.

Following the shower I dry off, wrap the towel around me and head back to the bathroom attached to our bedroom (which has two sinks and is where we get ready, but no shower).I get out my clothes as a pass through the bedroom and put them on the bed, then finish drying off, brush teeth, apply  deodorant, etc and then back into the bedroom to get dressed.

at this point, mostly because it factored highly into Wes's blog (especially the comments) I feel like I need to have an interlude to discuss shaving…

I don't do it much. My beard (go ahead, laugh) doesn't grow very fast, and grows in mostly blonde…  I usually shave once a week on Saturday evening so that I don't look scruffy for church on Sunday, and I always shave my face when I shave my head (which is about every two weeks).   When I do shave I use a Gillette Mach 3 Power and shave cream in a tube from C.O. Bigelow for both my head and face.

Anyway… back to the morning thing… 

Once dressed I head out to the living room and my recliner which is the central location for the deposition of "stuff" when I come home in the evenings…


My wallet, pocket knife, rings, and fountain pen all get picked up from my coffee table and put back in/on the appropriate pockets and fingers.  My laptop, iPad, any cables, drives, etc I had out the night before go in my backpack, glasses go on my face and Silas usually brings me my shoes from by the door.  (Which sometimes lead to funny comments).

Shoes on feet, backpack over shoulder, I grab the keys from the hutch by the door and head out.

My morning commute is 35-40 minutes on non-school days.   I always stop at Tim Horton's in Waverly for an XL coffee with 2 cream, and an everything bagel double-toasted with butter.

I always listen to WOUB (our local NPR station) while I drive to work.

This puts me at my desk around 8:15-8:30 in the mornings where I unpack, finish my coffee, and begin tackling the day at hand…

So, what is your morning like?  Leave comments here, or on Wes's blog, or if you blog about it yourself let us know!

defined by function

I was sitting in my chair this morning when my nose started to run and itch.

Silas was playing on the floor in the living room so I said "Quick Silas, get me a tissue!"

Silas seems to have a runny/snotty nose all the time, so we have him pretty well trained to find and fetch the tissue box, and he's pretty good about letting us wipe his nose and will even blow it himself when he's really snotty.

Well, he jumped up and ran into the kitchen (passing the tissue box, which was on the couch) and brought me back a cloth napkin from the napkin basket.

I said "No no Silas, get me a tissue buddy".

He looked at me quizzically for a second, unfolded the cloth napkin and honked his nose into it quite loudly as if to demonstrate the point that it would serve the same function and I should stop being picky.

Then he patted me on the leg, stuffed the snotty napkin into my hand and went back to playing on the floor.

That's my boy.

Random - Manscaping

I couldn't resist playing with Schick's Manscaping tool this morning after seeing Marko's post about it.

Considering my long frustration of having no mustache growing ability what-so-ever, I found this fun and pretty funny.

Oh, and the animation is not only "intriguing and a bit weird"... but also completely freaky.

With that, I give you... Roogles - The biker.




(again, HT to Marko at his blog)

Called out...

This morning as I was getting ready to pull out of the driveway for work I twittered (tweeted?) as I often do...



This afternoon Corrine (a fellow twitterer, blogger, and Third Day fan) fired this at me...



Love it!

Here was the rest of our exchange...




I wonder if something gave me away... (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.)

Thanks for calling me out Corrine! Made my day!

(ht to Corrine and Twitter)

Look what the boy found...

Jenn left for water aerobics this evening, and I was in the kitchen fixing some dinner...

Ellie was in the living room in my chair, and Silas was wondering around the house playing with toys, talking to me, and trying to sneak snacks out of the pantry...

Silas started to make a commotion in the kitchen right in front of the sink and when I turned to him he had a lethargic field mouse cornered up against the counter.



Not sure why a mouse would be wandering around in plain sight in the kitchen I grabbed it with a dish towel.

My best guess is that the mouse had been into some D-CON mouse goodies which were stashed back underneath the kitchen sink and was so far gone that he wandered out into the kitchen...

I let Ellie & Silas get a good look at him and then took him outside for a boost up to mouse heaven.

Interesting evening.

I can see this...

Well... That's a relief... I was afraid I might find out I was Stanley.

What NBC "The Office" character are you? Your Result: Jim Halpert You are the kind of person that everyone likes. You are funny, laid back, and not bad looking. You love practical jokes and having a fun time with your friends. However, because you are so laid back you often let the things that are most important to you get away. I miss Dwight. Congratulations Universe, you win.
Toby Flenderson
Ryan Howard
Pam Beesly
Dwight Kurt Schrute
Kelly Kapoor
Angela Martin
Michael Scott
What NBC "The Office" character are you? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

"Because right now, this is a job. If I advance any higher, this would be my career. And if this were my career, I'd have to throw myself in front of a train."

~ Jim Halpert

(ht to Evan Courtney on his blog)

Arrr! With the Pirates again!

Yarrr!* So if was a pirate, this is what ye'd be callin' me!

Take yerself over yonder and meet ma' brother... Captain Harry Rackham.


( Again, I be hat tippin' ta the Marko and Marty )

---

* - I actually prefer "yarr" to "arr"... Personal preference only.

Yarrr!

Just want to jump on the bandwagon to remind everyone that today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

erm... I mean.

Yar me hearties! Just wanted ta be lettin' ya know that we be talking like pirates terday!

Get yerself over ta be lookin at the TLAPD website if ya be havin any questions.

Be lookin' at this here instructional video if ye needs ta learn some pirate speak!




Ummm.... Thanks to Marko for pointing out that the video is possibly rated PG-13.

(ht to Marko's blog, and all the tweeps who have mentioned TLAPD this morning).

Plank... Just Plank.

Marty pointed me over to the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator this morning.

So here's the scoop.

Eli Jenin, if you were born to Sarah Palin, your name would be:

Plank Castle Palin

Who knows, Plank Castle Palin you just might be president one day!

That's right... Plank.


(ht to Marko and Marty).

Link Love

While reading blogs this evening I came across two that were just too good not to share.

I am a regular reader (if seldom commenter) of both of these blogs.

1. Travis Spencer had some weird animal issues.
   
   I literally laughed out loud when I read this one, and the poll at the end is great!
   
   
2. Terrace Crawford made an observation about the difference between men and women.
   
   Although I don't shop at GAP, I still found this observation fairly accurate (and funny).

Great stuff guys!

On shaving the yak.

There is a chapter in one of my favorite books... I won't mention the name of the book here out of the simple desire to not have my solar plexus caved in by an atomic elbow...

Anyway, there is a chapter in one of my favorite books in which the two main characters, Joshua and Levi, are living in a monastery, and the abbot is giving them instructions and the following occurs...

"Monk Number Twenty-two," Gaspar said to Joshua, "you shall begin by learning how to sit."
"I can sit," I said.
"And you, Number Twenty-one, will shave the yak."
"That's just an expression, right?"
It wasn't.

A yak is an extremely large, extremely hairy, buffalolike animal with dangerous-looking black horns. If you've ever seen a water buffalo, imagine it wearing a full-body wig that drags the ground. Now sprinkle it with musk, manure, and sour milk: you've got yourself a yak...

The yak provided just enough milk and cheese to remind the monks that they didn't get enough milk and cheese from one yak for twenty-two monks. The animal also provided a long, course wool which needed to be harvested twice a year. This venerated duty, along with combing all the crap and grass and burrs out of the wool, fell to me. There's not much to know about yaks beyond that, except for one important fact that Gaspar felt I needed to learn through practice: yaks hate to be shaved."

So, that is where this whole thing started (for me at least)...

The dismissive to "shave the yak" became sort of inside joke among my close friends (especially the ones who are also fans of this book).

Conversations would end with telling one another to shave the yak, emails and notes would bear yak shaving dismissive, and more than one time I have advised someone to shave the yak when what I really meant was that I wanted to be left alone.

How was I to know that the phrase "to shave the yak" was not only in common use among computer geeks and technophiles, but that the phrase actually describes an activity in which I am almost a daily participant.

During a random google search a few weeks ago I discovered that The Urban Dictionary offers the following definition for yak shaving.

Any seemingly pointless activity which is actually necessary to solve a problem which solves a problem which, several levels of recursion later, solves the real problem you're working on. origin: MIT AI Lab, after 2000: orig. probably from a Ren & Stimpy episode

Seth Godin on his blog, expounded on the concept of yak shaving with this post...

Don't Shave That Yak!

The single best term I've learned this year.

Apparently turned into a computer term by the MIT media lab five years ago, yak shaving was recently referenced by my pal Joi Ito. (Link: Joi Ito's Web: Yak Shaving)

I want to give you the non-technical definition, and as is my wont, broaden it a bit.

Yak Shaving is the last step of a series of steps that occurs when you find something you need to do. "I want to wax the car today."

"Oops, the hose is still broken from the winter. I'll need to buy a new one at Home Depot."

"But Home Depot is on the other side of the Tappan Zee bridge and getting there without my EZPass is miserable because of the tolls."

"But, wait! I could borrow my neighbor's EZPass..."

"Bob won't lend me his EZPass until I return the mooshi pillow my son borrowed, though."

"And we haven't returned it because some of the stuffing fell out and we need to get some yak hair to restuff it."

And the next thing you know, you're at the zoo, shaving a yak, all so you can wax your car.

This yak shaving phenomenon tends to hit some people more than others, but what makes it particularly perverse is when groups of people get involved. It's bad enough when one person gets all up in arms yak shaving, but when you try to get a group of people together, you're just as likely to end up giving the yak a manicure.

Which is why solo entrepreneurs and small organizations are so much more likely to get stuff done. They have fewer yaks to shave.

So, what to do?

Don't go to Home Depot for the hose.

The minute you start walking down a path toward a yak shaving party, it's worth making a compromise. Doing it well now is much better than doing it perfectly later.

Hah! Who knew?

Where I work we tend to refer to yak shaving as "putting out fires", but regardless of the phrase I spend an incredible amount of time solving little problems in order to find solutions to the big ones. Often times we will intentionally break a large problem up into smaller ones just so that we can tackle it little bits at a time without getting overwhelmed by all the things that need done at any given time.

So, any other yak shavers out there?

If so, give a shout. I'd love to hear your yak shaving tales.

The Adventures of Friday the 13.

First of all some back story... Who would have dreamed that it would be so difficult to get American currency changed into Canadian currency in Southern Ohio??

In preparation for the RVCC Summer mission trip, the Youthworks staff has suggested that we get as much of our money changed to Canadian before we head into the great North. Local banks gave us very mixed responses about changing currency, which mostly went along the lines of "It is too much hassle, so we'd rather not".

After a failed run to the Columbus International Airport on Thursday... ( "I'm sorry, we just ran out of Canadian Currency"... doh! ) I called the 5/3 Bank currency exchange center at the Cincinnati Airport on Friday morning and was told that changing US currency to CN would be "no problem" even in large amounts.

I was at work on Friday morning, because things at work always tend to be a bit crazy when I'm going to be out of touch for any extended period of time. By the time I touched base with Cincinnati and decided they would be our best bet for currency exchange, it was already 11 AM.

Jenn was pretty tied up in Chillicothe for the afternoon, so I decided to make the trek to Cinci solo, despite it being a crazy boring drive and at the minimum a four hour round trip.

Twitter to the rescue!



I wrapped up at work, managed to split by 12:45 and met up with Luke at RVCC.

That's when the real adventure began...

The drive across The App was relatively uneventful as far as drives go. Luke and I haven't had a lot of opportunity to hang out prior to yesterday, so the round trip to Cinci gave us an opportunity for epic conversation.

Down 32, around 275, enter Kentucky, nearing the air port.... no problems! Then BOOM! Crazy pouring rain started pounding on us, causing some quick brake application and the engaging of the windshield wipers. Well, that worked OK, until the passenger windshield wiper pealed off of the arm and started flopping around in a very dramatic way.

Thankfully the downpour was quick, and we made it into the airport parking garage safely.

Quick park, quick walk, right up to the counter at the 5/3 Bank.

"Hi, we would like to change some currency to Canadian."

"No problem, are you the guy who has been calling all day?"

Reassuring smile to persuade that I'm not a crazy person... "Yep that would be me".

Ten minutes later Luke and I were standing back at the van packing a large envelope of Canadian currency... It struck me as amazing that several days of stress had culminated in a less than 10 minute extremely painless experience, that was obviously no big deal at all for the girl behind the counter.

The exchange rate was $1.05 US to $1.00 Canadian. We started with almost $1200.00 American ( almost entirely collected from Youth going on the trip, who wanted their spending money changed ahead of time) and ended up with $1140.00 in pastel pink and blue bills.

Anyway, where was I...

Oh yeah, we managed to re-affix the errant windshield wiper and pull back onto the highway.

We had pre-decided that it would make no sense at all to visit Cinci without having Skyline Chilli. ( An obvious conclusion, I think anyone could agree ). Now that our main objective for the trip had concluded, our secondary objective [Destination SkyLine] was in high order.

No problem.
Punch up the NUVI.
Nearest Skyline, 3.2 miles.
Go there!

The NUVI, I've noticed since we've had it, really doesn't care how crazy or indirect the route is to get your from point A to point B. It has never really failed in getting me where I was headed though, so I tend to just trust it and move on.

An immediate turn off of the highway, and a crazy, curvy, steep, road through the woods brought us to a stop sign.

The NUVI says "Turn right".
No problem.

The NUVI says "Turn left".
No problem.

The NUVI says "Proceed 300 feet and board ferry".

WHAT??



Who knew that you could cross the Ohio River on a ferry? Luke and I certainly didn't know it was an option until yesterday.

Here are some other iPhone shots of our experience...





Although extremely cool, the ferry crossing was pretty uneventful. The lady in the car next to us was obviously a regular ferry rider and looked quite bored as she relaxed during the crossing. We surmised that she was probably on her way home from work.

Quick gas station stop. Skyline was right where the NUVI predicted it would be.

Half-a-dozen conies, a large three-way, an order of fries, and a few sweat teas later we were both quite content and ready to head back home.

The entire ride was filled with great conversation, and trying to get from the out of the way Skyline back onto the NUVI's recommended route home proved a little distracting to me. I missed several of our turns heading out of Cincinnati, but we eventually found our way back to route 32.

Traffic leaving Cinci was crazy around 5:30 on Friday afternoon, but great conversation prevailed as we made it back into familiar territory.

We tried stopping at the Starbucks in Batavia, but lack of electricity stopped them from being able to serve anything. A few miles later we tried a McDonalds to get a couple of coffees, but brewing a small, black, decaf proved too much for them and after having us "pull up to the curb", so they could bring it out, Luke finally had to go inside to track his coffee down.

We pulled back into RVCC a little after 8PM.

It was a great day, a grand adventure, phenomenal conversation, and a fantastic way to spend a Friday afternoon.

Luke, thanks dude for keeping me company, for the conversation, and going along for the ride.

Another hair post.

Hopefully blog posts about my hair will not become a normal feature on this blog.

It seems to be generating lots of discussion and commentary lately though, so why not roll with it.

It was suggested earlier this week, that when the humidity gets to me, and the product has worn off, that my hair (which is very bushy and wavy ) makes me look like Syndrome, the villain from The Incredibles.



I'm not sure I see it... I mean, the man has great hair, but it is
definitely going to take me a few more weeks (months?)

What do you think?



Once I've given the hair a few more weeks, does anyone know where I can get a black and white spandex suit?

Happy Pi Day!

Here is a screen shot from my laptop around 2-o-clock this morning...

I'm planning to grab another screen shot of my menu-bar clock at almost 2-o-clock this afternoon if I can remember.

UPDATE : I got the screen shot this afternoon!



Happy Pi Day everyone!

Some assorted links to help you cope with this little-known holiday.

What the heck is pi ?

Pi Day ? You're joking, right ?

The official Pi Day Website

A movie called Pi ( W's page on same movie )

a haiku

So... I was feeling artistic and wrote a haiku this morning... actually, after some research it appears that I actually wrote a senryū.

How fascinating....

Anyway. Here is it is for your enjoyment.

good for taking notes
reminders, to-do's, doodles
my thanks to 3M

To be truly appreciated, this particular haiku must be presented on the medium to which it refers... So I give you a photo.

Almost time to clean off the pike again...

As Dangerous as the Law Allows!

Well, I'm in San Francisco for Macworld. ( more on that later, probably ).

Today after we got our booth setup, we had basically the whole day to wander around and be tourists in San Francisco.

Whilst we were out wandering around, we scoped out Pier 39 down at Fisherman's Wharf.
( Think medium sized, sprawling, tourist trap mall on a pier... )

Snapped a photo of this sign while we were there, which brings up some of the following questions...



Just how "intense" does the law allow an amusement ride/attraction to be?

4D ?? What the heck ? Please read this... Wikipedia : Fourth Dimension

Needless to say we passed on that one...

More later...

Quote of the day

Jenn called me earlier on her way into town.

In mid sentence she stopped and said "I think the Blue's Brothers are walking towards me on the side of the road... " [ long pause ] "Oh, never mind.... It was just a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses".

Although I suspect it was a couple of the local boys from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and not, in fact, Jehovah's witnesses, the phone call still made my day.

Jesus Junk

Dan Kimball's book, They Like Jesus but not the Church, has a great chapter on Jesus in pop culture, and even touches on Marko's oft posted topic of "Jesus Junk".

Was out Christmas shopping on Dec 23, and ran across a rack of these guys at Border's in Parkersburg.



I really wanted one, but Jenn wouldn't let me.

If you read the fine print you'll even see that he has "poseable arms, and gliding action!"




Oh... and the best bit.... Jesus is not recommended for children under three years.

NYWC Atlanta - Day 3 - In Review

Well... After two hours of constant typing to get the blogs up to speed, the battery finally died...
I headed over to the LW booth to check the score and plug up for some power. With the Buck's ahead 14-3 I decided it was safe to leave my laptop on the charger in the booth and look for some lunch.

Alan joined Jenn and I for a walk over to HSUS chinese restaurant, which came highly recommended... A short snafu on the way over ( wild goose chase, by someone we wouldn't give cash to ) caused us to get a little lost, but we did end up finding it only about a block away from the HRC where we ate last night...

Unfortunately, despite our intel to the contrary, Hsus wasn't open for lunch... Bearing that in mind we decided to do Mexican at Mama Ninfa's, across the street from Hsus, in the Peachtree Center. It was good. Great tortilla chips and salsa, and Jenn and I split a monster nachos for lunch.

After lunch Alan had to head back to the booth, so Jenn and I took a couple of hours to wander around the city. We checked out the PeachTree Center, the MARTA, and the Atlanta Underground. Interesting sights... I've never seen anything quite like the Underground.

Check out Jenn's take on the MARTA and the Underground here.

Going down the escalator at the MARTA station at PeachTree Center reminded us both of descending to the subway's in Budapest and brought back happy memories... Except, of course, these escalators weren't moving at 20 miles-per-hour... Still, happy memories...

We headed back over to the Conference around six and set up camp in the "line" waiting to get seats for the evening general session.

Thanks to Jenn's mad running skillz, we got some excellent seats right near the center square stage. A prime location to see the talent, and Loui Giglio. Brent Longnecker is a really talented guy.

Family Force 5 was... well... wow... they weren't quite describable...



One amazing thing though... The lady who signing during the Family Force 5 concert was absolutely amazing. We hadn't been sitting where we could see the ASL interpreters up until this session, so I'm not sure if this particular lady had been there all weekend or not, but she was incredible! (side note: watching her, was also the only way I could understand the words to the songs...)



Then we had some stand up comedy. I think that Bill Arnold is hilarious. Subtle, but very funny. A new comedian I've never seen by the name of Jeff Allen was really funny as well... Jenn laughed very hard as his sketch, which was a little edgy I thought, but indeed very funny.

There was a really excellent presentation next about Compassion International, which included a (now grown up) Compassion girl sharing the story of how Compassion impacted her life. Marko got all choked up as she was sharing. We ( as a family ) have two Compassion kids... We decided right after Ellie was born that we would sponsor a child who's birthday was the same day as Ellie's, and then did the same thing again when Silas was born... Currently we send our money and Jenn sends them letters, but our hope is that when they are old enough Ellie & Silas will want to contribute to the communication for our "other kids" who share their birthdays...

I gotta say this about Louie Giglio... I have really really liked Louie when I've seem him in the past. I still remember, have notes, and use some of the teaching he shared at Icthus clear back in 1998 or 99 when I was there with a crowd from Rio...

[edit] I had a really long thing typed up about why I didn't like Louie's message, and why it really didn't connect with me, but before I posted this blog I actually got to talk to someone this morning who thought my issues were just me, being grouchy and argumentative...

So... I'll leave it to say that I really didn't like Louie's message. If you want to talk about why, or know any more than that email me or let's get together... From where I was sitting it was obviously very powerful for some people, and that it what's really important...

Anyhoo... Enough of that sort of thing... If you would like to share what you thought of Louie's session, I'd love to hear your thoughts.



The Comedy Late night with Jeff Allen, Bill Arnold, and Dave & Brian was hilarious!

We picked up a couple of Dave & Brian Cd's before heading back over to the hotel...



By the time we headed back we decided it was too late to find something to eat... so I worked on this and then crashed about 2 AM.

Sunday updates coming today as I get time...

NYWC Atlanta - Day 1 - wrap up

Ok... For those of you who were not aware of my general level of nerd-ness, I'm about to fill you in.

Marko ( remember him ) keeps a list of people who are blogging from the NYWC.

At the urging of a few folks on said list, he was kind enough to also list the links for those of us who are tweeting from the conference. ( If you aren't familiar with Twitter, look here first, then here, and then go get an account here ).

IF you are already familiar with Twitter skip ahead some....

The act of posting to twitter is referred to as "tweeting".

Well, for me part of the fun of having Twitter is following other people who are doing the same sort of thing that I am doing... I update my twitter and "follow" the people I'm following all from my iPhone using SMS messages. So basically when I want to update mine, I send a text that says something like "is eating pizza". And then everyone who is following me gets a text message that says "Eli is eating pizza".

Likewise, anytime someone who I am following updates their twitter from their phone I get a text message telling me what they are doing...

You can also view my twitter updates online here.

SKIP TO HERE! ( for the folks who skipped ahead... if you've been reading this whole time, just keep going )

Anyway... In addition to blogging from the convention, and updating my twitter I'm also following several other folks who are twittering as well. Some of the guys I'm following are also following me, some are probably not...

As I was wrapping up my last blog, and the battery on my laptop was dying a guy happened to walk up near where I was sitting and said "Hey, here's someone blogging from the convention." A quick name-tag glance later and he realized that it was me, who he was following on twitter.

And that is how I met Gavin, who is blogging here and twittering here.

Neat huh!

Gavin, having the presence of mind to have a camera with him, took a photo of the two us of standing with our backs to the exhibit hall, which I hope he will pass on to me so I can share it with all of you thus completing this geek moment.

This update on geeks at the NYWC brought to you by Twitter.

To wind up the rest of the evening.... I met up with Jenn when the HerStory conference was done for the day, bumped into Marty's fam for a couple of minutes, said "Good Night" to the whole gang and slipped off to dinner at Ted's Montana Grill, which was excellent.

We split the jumbo shrimp appetizer, which was amazing, and then had some bison chili and shared a burger, which was pretty good. The sweet tea was an A+.

Now, we're back at the hotel. Jenn and I are both tired and stiff from doing all the walking which neither one of us are accustomed to. We're both slinging blog updates now, and will be crashing shortly. Tomorrow will be here very very soon.