Today I spent a lot of time editing my dissertation. Tonight I made Banana Bread. Toss in the run I went on and that makes me a Renaissance man.

I decided that every once in a while I’ll add  a piece to this blog I will call "How much I saved today."  A bunch of years ago I bought my first Entertainment Book and it changed my life in a good way.  Basically these books are a huge collection of coupons for food, entertainment stuff and nice restaurants. There is a card that you keep in your wallet that can be used one time at a bunch of different places.  I received my 2009 book in the mail last week.  It cost me $25.  Yesterday I used the first coupon at a restaurant I went to for lunch.  It was a "buy one meal get one free."  It saved me $12.   So I’m almost 1/2 way to paying for the book with one coupon.

Lot’s of people buy the books and don’t use them.  I tend to keep it in my car but I’ve also found leaving it on the living room table works too.  Danielle and I usually look through it before we head out to dinner.  It’s introduced us to some new great restaurants.

I don’t always remember it but when I do it pays off.   By the way I’m not selling them.  I don’t even know of any group this fall that is selling them.  I bought mine online.

Saw this today and couldn’t stop myself from passing it on. I think that David Crowder does an amazing job of connecting with culture while at the same time doing it pretty lighthearted.

Scary Neighborhood gang.

Today was pretty interesting.  Probably should be honest and say it was a little bit of a disappointment that ended up well.  Rhett and I hopped an early flight out of Dallas on Southwest Airlines.  Flying Southwest is a little bit like jumping on a Greyhound bus.  They never fly direct and it feels like you are just stopping all over the country on your way to where you want to go.  At one point I joked that they should have a button on your seat that you can press to tell the plane to stop just like they have on buses. We got here and checked into our room.  We’re staying at the Wynne which on the map is right next to the convention center.  The map doesn’t take into consideration the construction though so it was a bit further away. After lunch we started walking to the convention center only to be stopped by a closed sidewalk. I had the idea that if we walked through the hotel we’d probably find an exit on the other side.  We made it to the other side and came to a door that said “Emergency Exit only….Alarm will sound”  I busted straight through that door assuming it wasn’t true.  Just beyond that door was another door that said “Any Wynne casino employees using this exit will be terminated immediately”  Since I wasn’t an employee I assumed it didn’t apply to me so we busted through that door.  Next thing you know we’re walking on the golf course and heading towards a construction site.  I told Rhett to just act like you belonged there and we walked down into the construction site.  Immediately we were out of place as everyone had white hard hats on and we had no hats and only flipflops.  After walking past several cranes, dump trucks and other construction looking stuff we had a security guard come up to us and ask what we were doing.  I told him we were trying to get out of there.  He radioed in that he had two people he was “escorting” to the front of the casino. Rhett looked nervous but I struck up a conversation with him.  He walked us out the front and we were back to where we started before the adventure.  The next step was us walking to the convention center. It was a bit further than I had anticipated and we both got blisters from our rainbow sandals.  Once we got to the Blogworld convention we realized that really nothing was open for a while.  We found some people we knew and hung out.  On a good note we got all checked in which will be difficult tomorrow morning.  After a ride back to the hotel we chilled for a while before heading to dinner with the Godblog folk to the rain forest café.  Quick note that is a bad place to go if you are trying to have a conversation.  It’s raining inside, loud and every half hour there is a big thunderstorm.  Still it was a good evening and we connected with some good people.  After a long walk back down the strip we made it back to the hotel and crashed.  The schedule tomorrow has us starting at about 11am for the first part of the conference.  I’m looking forward to some good dialogue with folks about new media and how it can affect my life and my job. On a good note I explained to some folks the ideas behind RelevantPew.com tonight and they were super supportive of it as a necessary concept.

I’m heading out of town tomorrow to a conference my staff likes to call the "Gathering of the Twittertards"  In reality I’m going to the GodBlog conference which is probably a name not much better than the one they gave.  I’m looking forward to wandering around the convention center and seeing what is new and come down the pipe for online stuff.  Looking forward to connecting with some new people too.

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