The dragon's lair

The lovely and talented Adrienne Palmer from Susan Palmer Designs in Honolulu sent me a photo yesterday in the hopes of getting a rise out of me. It worked. Wow. Here it is.

I'll ask you what she asked me: how does something like this make it into production? This faucet's made by a big player in the world of specialty faucets and these things don't come cheap. But really, who gets an idea at a brainstorming meeting and shouts, "That's it! We need a dragon tub filler! It's perfect!" Then somebody else agrees with the original guy who thought it was a good idea. So much so that the dragon gets designed and produced. Then it shows up in a showroom and somebody buys it. Who are these people?

I've hauled my share of existing swan faucets and tub fillers out of homes I've renovated. Somebody thought they were pretty once. Chances are though, she thought that in about 1968 and her house is being renovated because she's dead and her kids sold the house to somebody who hired me to de-old lady-fy it. Can I say that? Let me tell you, it's a very special kind of a person who buys a gold, swan-shaped faucet.

Believe it or not, I once talked someone out of buying a dolphin-shaped tub filler like this one.

But a dragon? Honestly, I wouldn't know how to react if a client introduced that thing as an idea.

Well, I suppose that there's something out there for everyone. But I'd rather not know about some of that stuff.

A requiem of a sort

My bestest friend moved to New Orleans last week. He moved there on the heels of another good and great friend who moved to New Orleans about a year-and-a-half ago. Sigh. It's starting to feel that the spell cast by the Crescent City is taking my St. Pete friends away one by one. I'm thrilled for both of them, though life around here will most definitely be a lot less animated.

I have visions of them sitting in the dim light of louvered windows on a sweltering afternoon as they sip lemon cokes with chipped ice à la Blanche Dubois. That is when they're attending the many festivals, parties and costume balls the people of Nawlins throw to keep themselves entertained. Ho hum, and here I am stuck in work-a-day Florida. Poor me.

I got a phone call on Sunday morning that detailed their plans for an exciting Sunday. They were planning to go to town to go to a food festival and then to take in as much high and low culture as they could get their hands on. I hung up the phone and went back to scrubbing my floors. Scrub. Scrub. Scrub.

I have an idea about what their lives look like over there on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico and it looks a little something like this.

If this is not what their lives look like I don't want to know about it. Allow me this fellas. Please.

Family Hack has yo back

Lynn Taylor is a residential designer and a speaker on topics as varied as energy efficiency, urban infill housing, historic preservation, good construction practices and cottage developments. You can find out more about Lynn on her website, Taylor Made Plans, or you can follow her on Twitter as @taylormadeplans, which is how I know of her.

Lynn tweeted a link to a website called Family Hack yesterday and the link led to this incredibly helpful video. This is the fastest, smartest, I-can't-believe-this-never-occurred-to-me method to retrieve an object dropped down a drain I've ever seen. Watch this:

That makes so much sense I can barely stand it. Thank you Family Hack guy and thank you Lynn Taylor.

Family Hack is written by Michael Davis and Hannah Russell-Davis. Holding their own are kids Khymi, Susan and Jackson. The Davises write about how to travel the world with three small kids, how to work from anywhere and how to feed, clothe and educate their three junior staffers. They also love smart shortcuts, saving money and cool stuff. And speaking of cool stuff, I think Family Hack may have given me an excuse to get off my high horse and go to the new Ikea in Tampa.

A well-designed, fully-functional storage system for under five bucks? Now they're singing my song.

Spend some time with the Davises, you'll be glad you did.

A year in the life

A year ago today, I challenged myself to write at least one blog post a day for a year. Out of those 365 days, there was just one day that went post-less. I ended up writing 537 posts in the last year and that far exceeds what I thought I was capable of, even if I missed a day. I did it for the exercise of writing every day but at the same time, I wanted to see what would happen if I really threw myself into this medium.

I've made a couple hundred bucks (thanks to my sponsors!), met and befriended an entire community of people who have grown up around this thing, I've had great interviews with people I admire, I've been flown across the country to go to meetings at companies like Google and GE (Google! I can still barely believe that one), I've had posts translated into Italian and Polish and run in European web sites, I correspond regularly with people around the world, I've landed a couple of freelance writing gigs (more please!), I've been reprinted in major newspapers, I've picked up a few design clients, I've advised a number of new bloggers; and most importantly, I can look back over a year's work and be proud of it.

When I jumped into the blogosphere, my plan was to put together an online resource for my design clients. I had no idea that any of the benefits I just listed were possible. I knew nothing about HTML or sitemaps or backlinks. I don't think I'd ever actually read a blog before I started. Pretty shortly after I committed to daily blogging though, I noticed that my traffic started to increase. They were some heady days, let me tell you. I think I had 500 hits last July and I thought I was the king of the universe. If I don't get that in a day now I think some thing's terribly wrong.

I've been looking forward to this anniversary and for a long time I viewed it as an end to my commitment to write every day. I've toyed with the idea of cutting back to a five day a week gig, and I may do that some day. Just not today. Over the course of a year, writing every day has become so ingrained in my schedule, so much a part of me, I'm not real interested in going without it.

I am making some changes though. Eventually, there's going to be a revised layout around here. It's slick and clean and very much still under construction. I'm also going to start running guest posts from time to time. Franki Durbin's going to take over when I go on vacation in August for example. Guests posts are open to anybody who's interested though. Have something to say? Want to say it in front of an audience? Let me know and we'll work something out.

Anyhow, many thanks to all of you for reading my screeds and rants. Keep coming back, there's more fun stuff to come.

And the winner is...

I dumped all of the entries into a spread sheet, printed it out, cut the individual names out, folded them each four times and then dumped them into a bowl. Then, from the lofty heights of my balcony, in front of all of my neighbors and amid a chorus of wild parrots, I reached in a hand and pulled out a name.

The winner is Kathleen! Kathleen left a comment time stamped at 10:09pm on 12 June. Congratulations Kathleen. Please drop me a note with your contact info and I will pass it along to All Modern. All Modern will ship your beautiful kettle to you directly. Use it in good health!