I would like to begin today’s post by thanking my good friend Nick Warkentien.  It’s a good friend who can, without ego, remind his friend to keep humble.  Out of twelve races, I beat him at one, and that one was close.  I will say that on our second round of races, I panicked and picked a very slow vehicle, which really did me no favors.  Also doing me no favors that round: constantly getting shrink clouds while being half a lap behind because my bike was so daggone slow.

Milly had not a wink of sleep today.  She behaved just fine, but it made work a little difficult for me at times.  She did do a lot of cute things.  She was playing with Amanda’s iPad and somehow turned on Photobooth and got the thermal image setting turned on.  She really liked looking at things (mainly herself) through that filter.

Later in the day she was doing something then abruptly dropped to and said, “Gonna ride Cobb.”  She then went over to our cat and tried to sit on him, but he wouldn’t hold still.  She gave up and decided to go sit on Harvey instead.

Speaking of Harvey, Amanda decided that if Milly wasn’t going to sleep, she should at least have some Milly time along in her room with the lights off (a half-assed attempt at getting her to take a nap), but she let Harvey stay in the room with her.  Amanda heard Milly talking over the baby monitor when she asked Harvey, “Wanna wear the pretty dress?”  Later we saw that her princess dress was on the floor, so we’re guessing that’s the one she wanted Harvey to wear.

Milly also had some alone time with Bruce when I tried to put her down for a nap before that.  When I first got her up, Bruce darted into the room, which Milly thought was fun.  He came right back out a minute later and I noticed he had something in his mouth.  It was a piece of bread!  So yesterday when he destroyed Milly’s Yo Gabba Gabba bag, he had brought his prize upstairs and probably hid it in Milly’s big play box.  I’m surprised he wasn’t scratching at her door all night long.  I took the bread away from him.  Poor guy, he’d waited all night to get that piece of stale bread.

Amanda and I also took turns hiding from Milly.  Amanda tried to get her to hide from me, but when she saw me walk past her into the bathroom she ran out  to me.  She’s taken up saying “boo” and “peek-a-boo” a lot lately and she asks me to lie down with her pretty much every time she goes to sleep now.  I really can’t resist.

We were out of dog food and I didn’t feel like going to Costco or PetSmart, so I walked to the grocery store this evening.  It was a little muggy, but it had cooled down from earlier in the day.

Some time back I had an idea about a web design company where you tell people the complete upfront truth about their websites.  For example, “I”m sorry, I know you built that site with Homestead all on your own and you’re very proud of it, but it sucks.”  Okay, maybe not quite like that, but nonetheless, I wanted to be able to talk to people with them having the expectation that you’re not going to pussyfoot around about their designs or their ideas.  With my current job, I feel like I have to make sure not to offend people while still getting my point across.  This new idea would be sort of like the restaurant Dick’s Last Resort.  The difference is that the point of it wouldn’t be to be rude for entertainment, it would be to be to the point so as to not waste people’s time or effort.

I’ve worked on the idea on and off over the past six or seven months.  I got a design finished maybe a month ago, finished the content a few weeks ago (pretty much) and have lately been working on the guts of the site.  Scott’s been working on some support ticket and billing things for me, which is really awesome.  I’ve got such a great boss.  I mean, how many bosses will help you start up your own business in the same field of work?  He obviously trusts that it won’t affect the work I do for him, and it’s nice to have someone have that kind of faith in you.

The really cool thing is that I’ve got clients already.  I’ve got three who are paying, two that are solidly lined up to start paying and two more who are pretty sure things in the not-too-distant future.  All of that is with hardly trying so far.

Exciting stuff!  It might be a while, but ultimately I’d like to make enough for Amanda to stay home (and help out with paperwork and such).

Zach Dotsey