zutroy.net

So we’re getting ready to go to our first trade show. I only have a million things to do to get ready for it so what am I doing? I’m sitting here writing on my blog listening to Pandora. Among the things I have to do is: write 3 brochures, design 3 brochures, reserve things for our booth, buy some swag to give away at the show, design and order the display stuff. The good thing is that there are a bunch of things already done: Get the website re-designed, write new content for the website (mostly done) get the booth reserved, create a plan to make our booth cool and memorable without having guitar hero or rock band on the big screen, design a special table for our contest, get the table ordered, plan our swag and materials.

We finally got a new design up on the Main10 website. I am also working on re-writing all the content. You know, so it focuses a little more on Internet Marketing and not so much on the Web Management, Web Design and Web Development. We also decided we wanted to create a page with Bio information on everyone here. So yesterday I gave out the assignments to have everyone write up a short bio on themselves and give it to Andy so he can make them sound good. That is turning out to the hardest part. I have about 9 starts to mine so far. And I still don’t really like any of them.

So this is supposed to be the part where the creative juices start flowing and I get some inspiration and just write this really cool, slightly offbeat, slightly humorous blurb about my self. Hmmmm, it’s not working.

Maybe I should just post some incomplete thought. Hmmmmm, that’s probably a bad idea.

So Jonathan’s big birthday bash went off without a hitch. Except that getting nine 8-year-olds to listen to you when you send them after pirate treasure with a treasure map can be a little… how you say?… Impossible?

So the kids started showing up before the pizza, which was supposed to kick off the party. Jonathan even had his old friends from Orem show up. That was cool. And to keep the kids entertained until the pizza and pirate hats showed up, we played the Rock Game. Especially when you get some kids that are moderately competitive it can be quite a useful tool to keep the kids still/quite. We only played 3 rounds and that managed to fill the 20 minutes until lunch arrived.

And I am ever impressed with the ability of kids to inhale pizza when they have friends to impress. Yes, I used to do it too, I just forgot exactly how it works since I’ve learned to slow down and enjoy what I’m eating.

Then it was off to chase the pirate treasure. I gave them two clues: “You don’t have to go past that street there, and this street here. And you don’t have to go in the mud, SO DON”T GO IN THE MUD.” What I should have said, is “If you go in the mud, you have to walk the plank.” and had a real plank there to show them that it’s not a good thing. So they managed to stay out of the mud for about 2 minutes. And then only 4 kids went in the mud. And only 2 of those lost their shoes.

Finally we matched up all the clues and landmarks and one of the kids found the treasure. Then you see the greedy/piratey side come out. HOLY cow! One of the kids managed to get about half the loot into his bag three times before I could get his attention again and again to tell him that pirates divide things up equally.

Then the best part; a Jolly Roger cake with lots and lots of black frosting. If you have never eaten black frosting, don’t. It doesn’t taste any better than any other color and it makes your face look like you just died. Not to mention what it does to your teeth.

And then it was over, the parents showed up to get their kids and a big storm showed up to make sure no more treasure hunting could be done outside. And they were all gone. Just like that. So we spent the rest of the day playing with new Transformer, Lego and robot toys, until we got tired of that. Then we played a couple rounds of Pirates of Fangor. I would say that Pirates of Fangor is about half way done. It’s turning out to be quite fun.