Nice ad

Marketing Summit

The first weekend in February I have been asked to be a jury member for a marketing competition / marketing summit at Wake Forest University here in Winston-Salem. The event is sponsored by Pepsi Cola and the 6 finalist marketing teams were asked to also tackle a social responsibility/sustainability issue facing the sponsor. The first part of the challenge is already handled but the second part will be given to them on Thursday evening next week and then they'll have to present it to the jury on Saturday morning.

Best restaurant in Winston-Salem

We have been in Winston-Salem, NC for almost 6 months now and have tried all kinds of restaurants, coffee shops and diners. Our favorite restaurant so far has been Mozelle's on 4th street and we would enthusiastically say that they have the best food and service in town.

New toy

Still getting it all figured out and set up, but it is very neat.

Barack Obama day

The 44th president of the United States



Barack Obama's signature




Obamazing

Very sweet

I think I may have said it before, but if so, I just must repeat that the Lotus Exige is oh so sweet. It also looks like a perfect family car. :-)

Guerrilla Marketing fame

A recent cool advertising ad by Ontario College of Art & Design featured lots of famous folks and adrants.com found it quite interesting too. Just like me. :-)

A few more pics ...

I recently found out that the kitchen in our new home is featured by the cabinet makers in their portfolio. They basically took a few very nice pictures of the kitchen and that makes us even more eager to get in the house. But we first need to get some work done in the house.

Stop, look and listen or ...

This British PSA uses scare tactics like some older books used to do. Nice.

Three kings day

Yesterday was three kings day and that brought up some good old memories from my youth in Germany. As a young impressionable boy I was a catholic altar boy for quite a few years, and a few times during the time I was selected by our priest to be part of a "Sternsinger" group on three kings day (Epihany). Basically this is how that worked. Several groups of 3 kids (mostly altar boys in our town) were dressed up like the three kings Gaspar, Melchior and Bathasar and then were sent from house to house in a specific neighborhood to bless the homes by writing the initials of the three kings C + M + B and the appropriate year over the doors of the homes they visited. Not only do the letters stand for the initials of the kings, but of the phrase christus mansionem benedicat, which translates as "may Christ bless the house."

The home owners usually were quite grateful for the blessing and offered the "three kings" candy and other goodies. Since it is usually quite cold and nasty on January 6th in Southern Germany, some home owners then offered to warm us up with liquor. Mind you that we were about 14 years old at the time and while I have never liked alcohol, some fellow kings were not so shy about it and at the end of the tour of homes, some of them were quite wasted. :-)

Ah, the good old times.

No image of the author was available, so this google image will have to do

Running of the lights New Year's eve run

Amy and I started the new year by taking part in the "Running of the lights New Year's eve run" at Tanglewood in Clemmons, NC. The race started at the stroke of midnight (with a live feed to the countdown in New York's Times Square) and as we ranthrough and past all of the light displays, a fireworks display went off above us.

It was very cold with temps hovering around 25 degrees, brrrrr.



Mime or runner? A few minutes before the start with the warm jacket still on.



Amy had a great run despite just getting over a cold.