The Evil Eyebrow

Griffin is doing his part. Are you?

Griffin and I went out to shoot off some compressed air rockets. He was a great helper.

We also spent some time in Marietta Square last weekend. He had a great time shaking the Christmas tree branches and getting himself wet from the rain remnants.

And he’s just a cutie pie.

I’ve given up trying to understand the United States Postal Service system of mailing packages. I’ve bitched before about some of their rules which strike me as odd, and about the fact it took me until I was 40 to really understand the difference between Priority Mail and First Class Mail (actually, never mind, I still don’t really understand).

Today I dropped off a package at the service counter and said, “Parcel Post, please.” The USPS employee measured it and said, I’m sorry, you can’t send this parcel post; it’s too light.”

Too light.

I was friendly and responded with, “Just send it however is cheapest.”

Thus another leaf in the story of How Are Mortals to Understand the Post Office? If I were a USPS user every day, sending packages priorty, or not, of different sizes and weights, I might eventually grok this whole thing. Alas, at this point, I’ve given up. What I’m reduced to doing is going to the post office, handing them a package and making the employees go through my options of delivery time and cost, then choosing the one that best meets my needs.

While that seems like a reasonable way to approach it from the customer’s standpoint, it can’t be very efficient for the USPS system. I honestly want to help them out by knowing before I show up how I want to send it and how much it will cost me. Then there won’t be any back-and-forth, just a payment and I’m off. Counter time recduced by at least 50%.

Doesn’t that seem useful? Wouldn’t that help out the post office? Or am I just dreaming?

In all honesty, the Eyebrow has become a place for me to highlight pictures I’ve taken, and not a whole lot else. From an internal perspective, it’s interesting to see how my internet publishing model has changed as the years have gone by and things have happened. “Things” like the RISE OF GRIFFIN and others.

Not that I won’t occasionally write here, but if you need to follow my “what’s going on” posts, you should follow me on Twitter (@bruhsam). I do not post new content to Facebook despite having an account there.

Look for things here, but twitter is the place for more stuff.

Here are three weeks of doodles that I do during our Monday staff meetings.

They exhibit a lot of similarities.

This is actually Griffin at one year plus 3 weeks, but who’s counting?

Tomorrow we head to Salvo, NC for vacation. If you don’t know where that is, it’s part of the Outer Banks, about 40 miles south of Kitty Hawk. Our plan is easy: relax. Hopefully we’ll be successful.

I’m bringing some new photo toys along to play with. Hopefully that will be successful, too.

I have that most precious of commodities: A spare Dragon Con hotel room in one of the main con hotels. Two actually! We got five rooms last year (because we expected to use them, we’re not hoarding) but turns out we only needed three.

I was tempted, briefly, to put one of these rooms up for auction at my recent professional conference Scholarship Charity Auction. However, I wasn’t convinced that my fellow roadway professionals would understand the value of what I was offering. After all, it’s not the hotel room, per se; it’s the effort and stress it takes to acquire said hotel room.

Right now there are five main Dragon Con hotels. The Hyatt Regency, the Marriott Marquis, the Hilton, the Sheraton, and the Westin. Every single one of the rooms available to Dragon Con attendees sells out within minutes of them going up for reservation. Last year, I put together a team of six people in geographically diverse locations to help me get rooms. Their instructions were to just GO GO GO and make reservations until I told them to stop. Six people, hitting the website of the Marriott reservations system furiously, only managed to acquire five rooms. That should illustrate for you just how difficult this process is.

That is the value of a spare Dragon Con hotel room.

There’s no need to ping me if you want one; they’re probably already gone. I’m getting rid of them as I type this. There is no shortage of takers when an announcement is made that a hotel room has come available. There are groups dedicated entirely to the finding and trading of Dragon Con rooms. It’s never a problem to find people.

Twenty-two days until the Con!