Posted by Steven in Work on August 15th, 2009 at 08:21am
We totally redeveloped Bed & Breakfast Browser. The site that had been online since 2006 was “temporary”. This new version uses our custom CMS which lets users submit and manage content such as B&B listings, photos and reviews. Unlike other big B&B directories, this one is free for innkeepers, because we want every bed and breakfast, everywhere, to create and maintain hugely detailed listings. And on the visitor end, we want to build a huge database of uncensored reviews and user-uploaded photos.
Please give the site a browse and tell me if you find any bugs.
Thank you Sudi-Pie for encouraging me with this forever, for the writing and design insight.
Here are some pics from our garden at this point. We’ve have 300+ tomatoes and we’re starting to get some good cucumbers now. The peppers are few but tasty. Our sunflowers expired. The tallest one was about 9 feet tall. Fun to grow!
Posted by Sudi in General on July 17th, 2009 at 04:23pm
Earlier this summer, on May 14th, I lost a very dear friend/mentor of mine to cancer. I did not talk about it much. I shared it with Steven briefly since I had told him many times how much Joyce meant to me. For the most part my grief was quiet and very personal.
I wrote to her husband telling him what she meant to me. After her memorial service he made a careful compilation of all the memoirs he heard and recieved via letter and email, including mine. Today, I finally had time to read them all.
As I read, I couldn’t stop asking myself. How will I be remembered? If I were to die today what would poeple say about me? Who would show up to my funeral? What kinds of letters and emails would my baby-love receive, if any? Asking myself these questions gave my life a fresh perspective.
I hope I remember to ask myself that question everyday, hopefully a few times every day. Maybe that way I will live more intentionally trying to spread His truth, love, grace, wisdom and generosity, all characteristics I so admired in my friend.
We enjoyed an unforgettable 4th of July. Steven got me surprise tickets for a Concert & Fireworks Show at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens. We arrived at 5:30 and stood in line (we actually sat in our lawn chairs under the shade of a huge Magnolia tree) for an hour. At 6:30 the doors were opened. It was a very hot day, but around 7ish, the temperature dropped to a comfortable 97 degrees so the rest of the night was very enjoyable.
Two options for seating were offered, “lawn” or “tables”. Steven “the genious” got us lawn tickets and we got to sit front and center in front of more than 10,000 people. We really had the best seats (grass) in the house. We laid out our old La Jolla beach towels and enjoyed fun snacks and drinks.
The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra did the fabulous concert. All patriotic marches and good ol’ American classics like Yankee Doodle Dandy. The grand finale was performed by a soloist, a young soprano who sang God Bless America, a huge flag unfolded in the back as she sang and the spectacular fireworks began. We had the time of our lives.
Here’s the evening lightning storm footage I mentioned earlier. The second half is in slow motion. I’ll post another video tomorrow showing a rainbow, hail and part of the neighbor’s roof flying away. It was a day of sweet footage!
Here are thunderstorm pictures from late May. The dark sky shots were from a storm that barely clipped us. Amazingly it hardly sprinkled. The later pictures are from the 96 degree day with golf ball size hail and lightning striking a rainbow that I wrote about here. I was so lucky to get that lightning shot. Thank you Sudi-Pie for finding the rainbow or I would have missed both.
Later on in the evening we saw near-continuous horizontal lightning very far away. I took a gig of video. This weekend I’ll edit that to show the lightning branching out in slow motion. I think there will be 3 or 4 really cool sequences.
Here are some pictures we took about a week ago. Just try to imagine everything a little bigger. The sunflowers are about half way up the fence as of now. A couple are starting to grow flowers (I think) and the biggest one will probably be near the top of the fence in a week or two. Our radishes are ready, we have about 30 tomatoes, the cucumbers are flowering and some of the peppers are starting to show up. The green onions don’t grow as fast as I thought they would but they are thickening up. Homegrown radishes are spicer than the store bought ones.
I surveyed the wind and hail damage from yesterday. We only lost two tomatoes out of about 30 and possibly one sunflower out of about 20, but I’m seeing if its half-severed trunk will fuse back together. The others had their leaves pierced and a few were ripped off, but I’m sure they’ll be standing straight and tall again after a week of sunshine like last time. A periodic hail storm might even be a good thing. It sort of showed me which leaves to thin out and also provided some good soft organic matter for our compost bin.
I found our heavy-duty back doormat flipped over 10 feet away along with a sandwich bag and a tin foil dispenser. We didn’t lose any shingles and the pansies (they’re supposed to be dead by this time anyway) have again proven absolutely indestructible. Not too shabby!
We totally redeveloped Bed & Breakfast Browser. The site that had been online since 2006 was “temporary”. This new version uses our custom CMS which lets users submit and manage content such as B&B listings, photos and reviews. Unlike other big B&B directories, this one is free for innkeepers, because we want every bed and breakfast, everywhere, to create and maintain hugely detailed listings. And on the visitor end, we want to build a huge database of uncensored reviews and user-uploaded photos.
