Amazing 2010 Summer Road Trip Review – Atlanta, GA

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Georgia Aquarium
By far the coolest reason for stopping here, in two words: whale sharks!!!


Little did I realize that the aquarium actually has four of these monstrosities, and in fact the only ones in captivity in the western hemisphere. Even more amusing was the tidbit that the sharks were actually UPS’ed over from Taiwan to Atlanta – they had a short video which described the whole transport process and showed the containers, which I found really interesting. Overall, they were just really amazing creatures to watch peacefully swimming around – I could’ve sat there all day, which reminded me of the fascination that my cousin and I shared for watching sharks at SeaWorld when we were growing up. The rest of the aquarium had its moments, although it could definitely learn a thing or two about managing crowds.

It’s a comparison that we find ourselves making a lot – you don’t truly appreciate how well Disney actually manages its crowds and attraction queues until you’ve been pretty much anyplace else that doesn’t!

World of Coca-Cola
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this one, but it was right across the park from the aquarium and since Coke is clearly a big name in Atlanta, we kind of felt obligated to check it out! It ended up being a lot of fun, though – we got to see a walkthrough of how Coke is bottled, taste-tested some of their other brands from around the world, and of course, the highlight of the visit was getting our photo with this extraordinarily charismatic, little fellow…


Seriously, one of the most animated characters I’ve ever seen, and that’s comparing him to Disney’s entire arsenal, which is pretty impressive in my books!

Driving in Atlanta
Surprisingly not as bad as I was expecting, albeit we ended up leaving super late and didn’t get to our hotel until about 2am! I’m still sure it would’ve been a bear at any other time because the hotel that we stayed at was right downtown, but fortunately it was right across the street from the aquarium, so the only real driving we had was in at night and then back out late Saturday afternoon.

Next Up: driving up to Northern Michigan!

finally back home again!

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…and yet already ready for another adventure – go figure.

So the big vacation was, needless to say, amazing … as you would kind of expect from any cross-country, multiple-week excursion of this magnitude! Sara and I were taken aback multiple times on the road about, frankly, how cool this trip was and the unbelievable amount of stuff that we were doing and all of the places that we were visiting. For example…

  • The Georgia Aquarium
  • The World of Coca-Cola
  • visiting my hometown of Gaylord, MI
  • crossed the border into Canada (via Michigan’s Upper Peninsula)
  • Science North
  • Harry Potter: The Exhibition
  • Niagara Falls
  • Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory
  • visiting Sara’s hometown of Bloomingburg, NY
  • boating down the Hudson River around Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty
  • Hershey’s Chocolate World
  • the memorials in Washington DC
  • National Museum of American History
  • Walt Disney World

And the scary part is, that’s probably not even the complete list! It was really crazy that we got to the end and the things we did in that first week seemed so long ago – the trip went by both slow and fast at the same time. I did my best to keep work to a minimum, even though I’m sure at times it didn’t seem like it, but I think ultimately we both had a really great time and we’ll be telling people about little facets of it for quite a while…

That said, for my efforts on the subject, I think I’m going to start putting up some posts about the trip every couple of days and we’ll just go til we reach the end! I need to go through photos to post some online, too – quite the daunting task when you consider that we took some 1,700 photos over the course of those three weeks! I’m thinking that the easiest way will be to go through them at the same time I’m writing the blog posts and then at the end, I’ll upload a big gallery of them all purdy and sorted to our website. No clue how long that will take, but we’re going to Disneyland! in October for our anniversary, so before then would probably be good!

Ahhh, back to the grindstone already…

Things I’m Looking Forward to Doing on My Vacation… (writer’s edition)

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  • sighing in relief as I depart on Friday, knowing that at least the bulk of what I wanted to get done actually got done
  • maintaining an actual sleep schedule
  • not checking my e-mail every 15 minutes to see if I’ve gotten any new book orders (ok, so I’ll probably still do this one…)
  • not being up writing at 4:00am to meet a 6am deadline
  • actually having a “buffer” for my humor column
  • not having a checklist that looms overhead with tasks that I haven’t finished yet

Good grief, do I need a break!

Things I’m Looking Forward to Doing on My Vacation…

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  • spending a ridiculous amount of time with my wife
  • seeing the whale shark at the Georgia Aquarium
  • returning to my hometown for the first time since 2008
  • finding out if some of my favorite foods from there are still any good
  • playing Wii at Lori’s house
  • making it through customs without getting probe-u-lated
  • visiting the science museum in Sudbury, Canada that I used to visit in scouts as a teenager
  • not getting completely soaked at Niagra Falls like everyone always does on TV
  • A Very Merry Ben & Jerry’s Birthday!
  • boating around Manhattan with my in-laws
  • playing cards with Sara’s grandma (and hoping she can beat Sara because I sure as hell can’t…)
  • “accidentally” falling into the river of chocolate during the Hershey’s tour
  • visiting the Smithsonian in DC (the last time I was in DC, I was six years-old and almost got hit by a cab)
  • TwitPic Book Tour!!! (more info on that soon)

Two and a smidgen days and counting…

Another Big Project Completed…

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This one being in the form of an entire website that I’ve actually been working on since about May – something that I put together for the D&D group that I play with every Wednesday…

It’s kind of hard to believe how quickly the time has gone, but I’ve been playing with these guys for almost a year now and it’s been really refreshing to find a group where everyone is on the same page as far as what they’re looking to get out of the hobby. I actually got back into D&D about six months prior and played with a different group on the other end of town for a couple of months, but after a while people’s priorities changed, you couldn’t count on people to show consistently, and for the last night I showed up myself, only me and the DM actually even attended (there were 5 – 6 players in the group total). It was a nice intro and it helped me get back into playing after a hiatus pretty much since high school, but now that I’m used to the mechanics and actually want to play, it’s nice to not have to worry about the logistics so much anymore.

So anyways, the website (tampadnd.org) is kind of my contribution back to the group to help get even more people involved with what we do. We had a definite need to have all of our group information (when and where we play, how to sign up, etc…) in a single location, so the site that I put together was designed to sort of serve as the official “face” of the group … an easy place to direct people to if they’re looking to learn more about our group and how to join us. Admittedly, it is a little self serving because I also included a little section to help collect all of the LFR Adventure Logs that I’ve been writing about our games and I think that it looks pretty nice, but more importantly, I hope that it will serve as a great landing page for other people in the area looking to play so that they’re able to find a game a little easier than it has been in the past.

You Want MY Autograph???

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One thing that’s been kind of weird getting used to since the book came out a couple of weeks ago? Signing autographs…

Well, not in the street or anything – so far I can still go to Walmart without getting mobbed, per se – but inevitably when someone I know buys a copy, they’re always very enthusiastic about wanting me to sign it for them … which don’t get me wrong, is very cool! It’s just something that’s going to take a little getting used to, especially considering that I’m still just trying to get used to the concept of people wanting to pay money for my work in general!

I know it sounds weird and I don’t really expect a lot of people to understand it, but being self-deprecating isn’t exactly uncommon when it comes to writers and artists, and I guess it’s one of those things that has both its pros and cons – the pro being that nobody likes being around an overly vain, ego-maniac, and the con that it’s tough to really sell something that you’re still unsure of yourself. It’s something that I’m trying to work on now because I’m actually starting to see the possibilities myself and it really makes sense if I’m more or less going to act as my own salesman with this business model, and I do have a feeling that it’s going to get easier over time … assuming that the book continues to sell, anyways…

I’m also working on making signature look cool because the chicken scratches that I’ve used to sign checks for years aren’t really anything to get excited over. Talk about an unexpected problem to have!

Come on, road trip…

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It’s hard to believe that the summer has been going by so fast, and yet here we are in August already and our big, road trip to end all road trips is right around the corner.

Well, technically it’s 9 days, 10 hours, 45 minutes, and about half a dozen seconds away … not that anyone’s counting or anything!

I’m definitely looking forward to this trip – Sara and I have kind of dubbed it our last hurrah before having a baby (not pregnant yet, but trying), and the sheer distance that we’re covering is kind of mind boggling.  I’ll throw up a more detailed post later, but it’s something like 4,000 miles covering 19 states and 2 countries, visiting both sides of the family and passing by a ton of cool tourist destinations along the way!  Between all of the stress of putting out the book and also just not getting to see the wife consistently due to our conflicting schedules, it’s definitely going to be nice for a good duration that’s longer than a 3-day holiday weekend for a change!

We can use the time together, and I can most certainly use the break from everything for a while!  And admittedly, sometimes it’s kind of tough for me to truly ever even “be on vacation” simply because it’s not like I can turn the creative half of my brain off and just fully relax.  If anything, it probably actually works harder when I’m on vacation because it doesn’t get mucked down by any of the mundane, day-to-day stuff – anyone who follows me on Twitter will vouch that I seem to post a hell of a lot more when I’m on vacation!  Still, all of that stuff’s actually fun for me, so as long as I can get out from underneath all of these deadlines and other obligations before we get ready to move out, I should still be able to unwind and finally breathe!

Pre-Vacation To-Do List (abridged version):

  • write 4 weeks worth of humor columns so that I don’t have to do them on the road
  • finish up other miscellaneous creative crap that I’ve been prolonging
  • buy gifts and presentses for various celebrations along the way
  • buy some new clothes because, well, just because…
  • organize all of the vacation house stuff like mail delivery, garbage, paying bills, and keeping my fish alive

Thin Post : Checkpoint

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I’m going to try to refrain from going on and on with this, but as I mentioned in my previous post, a lot of things fell to the wayside over the last couple of weeks and needless to say, discipline for my diet & exercise efforts was unfortunately one of the first to go. Of course, it didn’t help that just prior to letting go, my progress was non-existent and my weight was, if anything, slightly increasing.

That said, with the chaos now (hopefully) behind me and stress levels beginning to dissipate, I’m going to try my best to just dive back in and see if I can get back to what I was doing before. I’m not going to bother reviewing my last two weeks’ performance because they’re pretty pathetic, but getting back to the strides that I had going the previous weeks are probably pretty good and attainable goals for the near future. You can expect these posts to start popping up again as I start getting back into the swing of things…

I gotta believe!

Whew! (a life update of sorts…)

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I know I’ve been regrettably lax about posting here the last couple of weeks, but it’s been a little hectic lately for reasons previously hinted at…

The Book
So anyone who follows me pretty much anywhere other than here knows that Friday was, for lack of a better descriptor, huge for me. My first book went on sale that morning and ever since, I’ve kind of been a little high, between the excitement and the sense of accomplishment, and definitely a healthy dose of relief in simply knowing that the worst is now behind me! Well, I guess I still have to worry about actually selling the thing now, but at least it’s done!

I’ve got to tell you, after this project I most certainly have a new found respect for graphic designers, and even for editors, and marketers, and everyone else who would normally play a part in publishing a book in the “traditional” sense. A firm believer in the idea that a business model with as few middle men as possible has the best chance at succeeding, I quite literally put this book together all by myself! I wrote all of the content (over the last ten years), I learned Adobe InDesign and did the layout, I did all of the editing, I pushed myself in graphic design and even made the cover myself, and now that it’s all said and done, I’m going to do my best to market the thing on my own, too. Pretty much the only thing I didn’t do was the actual printing itself, and mostly just because I’m not willing to give up my side of the garage for a full-size printing press…

It’s a little scary, but also at the same time kinda of liberating because now more than ever, I really feel like the future of my writing career is truly in my own hands. Just like I didn’t have to shop my book idea around for three years waiting for some editor to throw me a bone, I don’t have to sit here wondering if my agent and PR person are doing everything they can to sell my work. It’s all me, which is actually kind of exciting because there isn’t anybody who wants me to succeed at this stuff more than, well, me!!!

The next few steps are going to be interesting because while I don’t entirely know what I’m supposed to do, I’ve got a few ideas already that I want to try out and I’ve been studying some other independent creators that I really admire to see if I can find some hints from them as well. I don’t want to jinx anything, but dare I say that this might actually be what progress is supposed to feel like?!

…and just under ten years in – it’s about time! 😉