Shane Life

A couple months back, a friend of mine at work came to me with a project he’s been working on in his spare time – Kansas City Dining Specials.

What is KCDiningSpecials?

Visit KCDiningSpecials.com daily to discover new restaurants to try for Breakfast, Lunch, Happy Hour, and Dinner. It’s a website created for the Kansas City Metropolitan community to share their favorite local restaurant dining specials.

Kansas City Community – Useful

Visit KCDiningSpecials.com to quickly find dining specials for today, tomorrow, and well… any weekday at any location that is important to you. We hope that you’ll find the specials listed on the site so helpful that you’ll continue to visit, spread the word, and contribute by “Adding” your own favorite specials.

Kansas City Community – Driven

That’s right… YOU can contribute. The idea is that it’s community driven; Kansas City Community Driven. Who knows the best local area restaurant specials? YOU! Quality, taste-tested, patron approved specials can and should be provided by the folks who know.

Bet you didn’t know…

Every time you visit KCDiningSpecials.com you’re presented with the current day’s specials at every named location available. Click the location links on the right side of the page to view only the specials at the locations that are important to you. Create a bookmark once you’ve selected the locations that are relevant. Every time you visit the bookmark you’ll be presented the “today’s” specials at your favorite locations!

Congrats to Luke for his work on this site. I designed the logo for him and gave him web design consultation along the way, but the programming and Ruby on Rails ninjary is all him. I suggest you check out the site. If you know of specials in your area, add them.

This upcoming weekend is shaping up to be a doozy. (What is a “doozy”?)

Obviously most of it will be devoted to setting up Alli’s show (which all are invited to attend) – we’ll be at Terrace on the Green much of the weekend setting up, but tomorrow night we will be getting our first look at the new Sprint Center for the So You Think You Can Dance tour. Mom and Dad decided we should all go and check out the show that we follow more adamantly than American Idol.

I’m really excited to see the new arena and the show should be a lot of fun.

Then on Sunday, no Chiefs game – something much more important – Alli’s Art Show!

Just as a reminder, here are the details:

My lovely wife is having an art show on Sunday, October 28 from 4-8 p.m. The show will be held at Terrace on the Green in Leawood (Google Map) and will feature some of her latest paintings as well as a few works that can be found on her website.

Anyone who lives in Kansas City knows how tough it is to be a sports fan.

Sports Illustrated just ran a photo essay called “10 Cities in a Sports Slump“. Here was their list:

1. Philadelphia
2. Atlanta
3. Buffalo
4. Cleveland
5. Minneapolis-St. Paul
6. New York City
7. Washington, D.C.
8. Los Angeles
9. Seattle
10. Cincinnati

Look, I can appreciate how frustrating it must be for New Yorkers to have unlimited means at their disposal and to have their baseball team win the World Series only once every 3 years, but…no wait…I CAN’T. Kansas City is perennially disappointed when it comes to sports, both professional and collegiate. The Chiefs haven’t won a playoff game in almost 15 years, the Royals are…well, THE FREAKING ROYALS, and our college teams take quality basketball teams (I’m talking only THIS side of the state line here) almost there, but never all the way.

My last post was a rant about how coastal bias keeps the Midwest out of a lot of consideration and I think this is just another example of that. Why else would LA and NY be included in the list? Poor LA. Only 2 NCAA football titles, 3 Final Fours,  1 National Basketball Championship, 3 straight NBA titles (2000-2002) and that’s only since 1995. New York’s arrogance is proven by what SI had to say:

Even though there are some winning teams, the headlines are filled with the Knicks’ front-office issues and the Yankees’ bloated payroll and their recent split with Joe Torre. The Mets had a historic collapse this season, the Rangers are struggling despite spending lots of money in the offseason, and the Jets’ collapse balances out any success the Giants are having.

Apparently their successes are outweighed by their failures because they have SO MANY TEAMS. Must be rough.

And SI’s reason for including Atlanta: “The Braves made the playoffs for the last 14 years and missed them the last 2.” Really? That’s your argument? OK, I’ll let it slide because of Michael Vick and the Hawks, who have sucked since they lost Dominique Wilkins and Spud Webb.

Is it comforting that we aren’t on this list or is it just another slap in the face, telling us that if you aren’t a major market, you don’t matter? You decide.

Here’s what I like about what KU and the Chiefs did this weekend – they won games they should have. Neither did it pretty, but it doesn’t matter because they still won. They went on the road and won games they should have. Now, granted, the Chiefs should have beaten Oakland by more, but we missed another chip shot field goal and our corners are old and our safeties are young. Old corners + young safeties = getting burned on play action.

Tim Grunhard had someone call in to his show this morning and say that the offense is struggling because we have played some of the best defenses. Chicago, Jacksonville, Minnesota – definitely good. Oakland, Houston, San Diego – maybe. Cincinnati – not so much. There’s something to that theory, but you can’t ignore the fact that our offensive line has more holes in it than…well…something with a lot of holes. Damon Huard is not going to survive the season.

Someone posed the question this morning wondering what it would take for the Jayhawks and Chiefs to get any respect. Moreso, they were wondering: if the amazingly unlikely scenario plays out that the Jayhawks finish the season undefeated and beat Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game, yet LSU manages to win the SEC with only one loss, will KU be in the BCS title game. I think that they would (and then they’d get destroyed by Ohio State), but others don’t think so. It brings up an interesting point – are our college and professional teams at a disadvantage because of their geographic location? Obviously our market size is a drawback for the Royals because their TV deals can’t even sniff the air of larger markets, but it causes problems for other sports too.

Respect is an interesting thing. There are those out there that believe that Larry Johnson might play better if he felt he was being respected more. I think it might just help if our offensive line didn’t fold at the drop of a hat (did anyone else see the play that Huard got sacked while both Brian “Overrated” Waters and John “Steroids Didn’t Help Me” Welbourne stood and watched it happen?).

Even so, you can’t help but believe that Peter King’s ranking of San Diego as THIRD in his Fine Fifteen list is a slap in the face to the Chiefs (who are ranked 14th on that same list). When will people start ranking performance instead of potential?

It’s been almost 8 years since I graduated college with an English degree.

I spent the first year or so out of college as a writer, but as the company I worked for grew, my role changed and morphed and in time, I became a graphic designer. I didn’t do it on purpose, it just kind of happened.

I enjoyed it for a long time because it made me feel creative, but over time, the doubts creeped into my mind because I wasn’t trained as a designer…I was trained as a writer. I have confidence in my abilities with the tools — I’m a proficient user of Photoshop, InDesign and the whole suite of Adobe products that designers hang their hats on, but I often doubted my ability to actually design.

I eventually (and maybe only recently) overcame that belief that I just wasn’t a good enough graphic designer. I know now that there were negative forces who caused me to feel that way and I’m fortunate that those forces no longer hold any power in my life.

However, as I’ve embraced my role as graphic designer, I’ve lost touch with my writing background. That’s what this blog has always been about, really &mdash an outlet for me to tap my fingers to the keyboard and see what comes out. And while I thoroughly enjoy the blogging process, I’m finding that in my new job, I’m being called upon more and more to develop content (which is business-speak for “write”). I still can write perfectly servicable copy, but I am struggling to regain my voice as a writer. It’s as if I’ve gone hoarse &mdash the words are there, they just aren’t emerging with a lot of clarity.

Lately, I’ve been working diligently on a couple of projects that are very important to me. Neither are work projects and both are requiring to write a considerable amount of content. I’m finding myself grossly inadequate right now of accomplishing that writing and it’s really frustrating.

If this post doesn’t make any sense, it only proves its point.

Finally, I get a different one than Emaw. I’m doing this, but I want to make sure that all still understand that I Hate Halloween. Why does it have to be a girl werewolf?

You Are a Werewolf

You’re unpredictable, moody, and downright freaky. You seem sweet and harmless, until you snap. Then you’re a total monster. Very few people can predict if you’re going to be Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. But for you, all your transformations seem perfectly natural.

Your greatest power: Your ability to tap into nature

Your greatest weakness: Lack of self control

You play well with: Vampires

What Kind of Monster Are You?

The Office has been nails this season.

I don’t know about you, but I’m loving the extra 30 minutes of the Dunder Mifflin crew, if only for the extra Creed time. Tonight’s episode had everything you could ask for in a situation comedy. It had situations and they were all comedic.

Seriously, who thinks up this stuff? Dwight and Mose running a B&B! Michael with a second job! You know how you laugh so hard sometimes that you start to cough? No? Well I did tonight. What a great episode.

Some awesome Office links:

Dwight’s Blog, Schrute Space
Creed’s Blog, www.creedthoughts.gov.www\creedthoughts
Dunder Mifflin Infinity

My lovely wife is having an art show on October 28 from 4-8 p.m. The show will be held at Terrace on the Green in Leawood (Google Map) and will feature some of her latest paintings as well as a few works that can be found on her website.

I invite all readers to come out and see.