Highlights from my past two weeks of travel:

• At the HOW Design Conference, I learned some new tricks, saw some awesome design work and ate deep-dish pizza and drank numerous beers with friend/former coworker Michael. I cannot wait to get back to work with renewed creative enthusiasm only to have it crushed in a matter of seconds when I am given four pages of copy and told to “make it work” on a one-sided direct mail postcard.
• Caught a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. The future wife and I soon discovered that our alcohol tolerance is much higher in the Midwest that at altitude. I spent the entire game covered in sweat due to high humidity and a broken air conditioner on the El-Train ride out to the game that was packed butts to nuts.
• Visited the Art Institute of Chicago and saw some amazing work (Picasso, an orgy of impressionism) and some atrocious work (minimalism and American Gothic). Best quote while looking at the Georgia O’Keeffe collection: “She is very vaginal.”
• The future wife and I took a beautiful sunset architectural tour of Chicago.
• Visited future in-laws in Eugene, Oregon. I found out that Eugene is almost identical to Boulder, minus the sex assaults, random rioting and the Flat Irons.
• Animal House was filmed at the University of Oregon so the future wife’s cousin took us on the Animal House tour at U of O, showing us the infamous frat house (currently vacant) and the cafeteria where the food fight scene took place.
• Drove up the Oregon coast on Highway 101 that is incredible for scenery, shitty for traffic and great for fried seafood joints.
• Spent three days in Long Beach, Washington in the heart of Lewis and Clark Country. We did the tours of various Lewis and Clark outposts, forts and landings, learned that the proper pronunciation of Sacagawea is Sa-caca-we-ah and ate a cut of fresh fish the size of our heads in Oysterville, Washington.
• The closest I got to the ocean was dipping my feet in the 42-degree water. The oceans surrounding the Columbia River are some of the roughest and most treacherous in the world. Mix that in with the fact they are as cold as an Eskimo’s vagina so swimming is not ideal (unless you are white trash parents laying out on towels “watching the kids play in the water” while smoking cigarettes).

Sidenote: After months of procrastination and toil, I finally got Broz Design up.