death by salsa

Last weekend, Kerri and I took a few days to head to Myrtle Beach, SC, with some friends. For dinner one night, we went to this massive entertainment/shopping district called Broadway. After dinner, we strolled around the shoppes and just enjoyed the evening. One place we went into had a massive collection of salsas and dips, with quite a few available for sampling. Needless to say, we sampled.

The range of sauces was amazing; from sweet to hot, they had it all. Just before leaving, however, I saw this one called "Death by Salsa" and had 3 X's on the label. I inquired as to why it had XXX as I've never known salsa to be pornographic in nature. Her response was simple: "It's the hottest salsa we carry," at which point my wife asked me if I was going to try it. Heck yea I'm going to! I'm a man's man, right!?

With some hesitancy, I dipped (not scooped) my chip into the juice, took a bite, and all was fine.



For 15 seconds.

And then death hit. I have never felt so much pain in my life. Okay, maybe not, but you get the idea. My mouth was literally on fire, and with every breath, the air that passed over seemed only to mimic the Santa Ana winds of the California wildfires! It only got hotter and hotter. I was literally crying. Obviously, I was done, so I walked out of the store to get some fresh air - like that would help.

I ended up going into a restaurant two doors down and asked the host, crying all the while, for some sugar packets. Thank God for sugar. It took about 15 minutes for the pain to finally subside. And all this was from only dipping the chip into the juice. I cannot possibly imagine who would scoop that salsa for pleasure.

So what about you? What's the hottest thing you've ever eaten?

why i love google!

About 6 weeks ago, the passenger-side automatic sliding door on our van stopped working. Put simply, with three boys, that was a pain! I've been dreading taking it to the dealership for fear of an astronomical repair bill. Something in me always likes to say, "I can fix it myself and save hundreds!" Well, tonight, I had to move the van in our driveway, which brought on the other major annoying side effect of the door not working. For some reason, even with it closed, it didn't send a signal, so the warning buzzer constantly sounds whenever you put the van into gear.

So, tonight, I decided it was time to fix it. I did a simple google search and lo and behold, I found a forum of threads all discussing this very topic. I read on about the $999 bill from one dealership, the $150 diagnostic fee from another, and so on. Needless to say, I was not excited and quite discouraged. UNTIL...until I found a posting from "Steve" whose only advice in the forum was to remove a specific fuse (clock backup, mind you) for 30 seconds, then replace it. What followed were dozens and dozens of happy satisfied people who found this post and it worked! Loaded with excitement, I ran outside, pulled the fuse, waited, put it back in and........nothing.

Dejected, I went back inside, as if I had overlooked something. I read it again. I hadn't missed anything, so I figured maybe it was the wrong amp fuse or something. So, back out I went, opened the fuse box cover, checked to make sure I had the right one, and realized that I was off one. So, I found the correct #13 fuse, pulled it, waited, put it back in, and YES!!!! My van door works again!

Who's the man? Who's the man? Who's the man? (Repeat lyric in your head with a syncopated rhythm while imagining me doing the cabbage patch). It's a great night!

barack obama mash-up

if only i had the time to do stuff like this...

modified logo

I recently had a local Hispanic church contact me about "updating" their logo. With a little hesitancy, I agreed to take a look at it. As it turns out, it was a color copy of a hand-illustrated logo that someone in their church had done. Thankfully, they finally asked me what I thought of their original logo, and I gave them some suggestions, which they readily accepted. So, in the end, I'm very happy with the logo, but they wanted to keep the dove from the original version even though I offered a half dozen other variations of it. Anyway, here it is. Your thoughts?

ecu campaign

Okay, many of you have been asking about the campaign for East Carolina University that I mentioned a few months back. Well, if all goes well, it will be completed this coming week. It has been a great honor and privilege to do this. I was told that the Director of Marketing for ECU recently saw one of my pieces and commented to the department chair how much he thought of it and complimented the designer!! That's me!

So, I'm really excited to see if this opens up new opps at ECU with other departments or something. so we'll just have to wait and see. But once I get everything finished, I'll upload a featured section to the main site and post the update here on the blog.

Also, I ran into a VP from a local ad agency this week...he said he had been on my site recently looking at my work. Don't know about you, but knowing that some guys from another agency are checking my work made me feel quite good!

i heart atypical church clients

I have some of the best clients in the world! I really love working with the churches that I do because none of them take a typical approach to things and they like to push the envelope as much as we can together. I'm really excited about the new ad I just did for Reimage Church that is going to be in The Pirate Preview (a pre-release newspaper for ECU's The East Carolinian). This paper goes to every incoming freshman/grad student/xfer student (and maybe returning students). Anyway, I've seen other church ads in there, and we knew we didn't want to take the expected approach. So, thanks to Brian Maciaszek, aka Assistant Sthlye Director, this is the result:

mac virus