FantasyFootballRomp--I've played fantasy football for many years, but never have the pan-fried pierogies (as my team is affectionately called) had the kind of weekend as October 1, 2006. 196.3 points. That's enough for 2 weeks. Are YOU ready for some football?

FishStory--Last week I took a fishing trip with guys from my family including my dad, father-in-law, uncle Terry, uncle Neal and Duane. We drove to the Cabonga Reservoir in Quebec for 3 days of fishing. The catch of the week was this 13 pound Northern Pike. I've done a lot of fishing, but this was by far the most exciting catch of my life. We had gotten off of our boats and onto 2 large rocks. As I reeled in my first cast of a Little Cleo (the blue and white beauty in the upper right corner) and only 3 feet from pulling the lure from the water, this giant swirl suddenly peeled out 30 yards of line and bent my pole into the water. After raking on the fish for 10 minutes I got my first glimpse and I knew it was huge. A Northern does not like to see a net or a fisherman so away he went. We fought the fish for another 15 minutes, dancing around the rocks, praying that he wouldn't saw through the line with his razor sharp teeth. I tired it out and Duane took one mighty swoop with the net. The beast was landed - barely. The net was not really big enough, and an extremely angry northern tore a nice hole right into it. A day after we had lost a stringer full of fish because of equipment failure, we took another 5 minutes just trying to get 2 stringer hooks into his mouth.

Anyways, words hardly do the experience justice, but the reward was taking in the record Northern so far this summer at Cabonga Lodge. As a matter of fact the previous night I had caught a 10.6 pounder which was the previous record. What a joy it was to beat my own record by over 2 lbs! There were many amazing experiences on this trip, not the least of which was spending it with my dad and father-in-law. I hope I can go again sometime.

InnovationDeBunked--So, cool story of how I networked with LinkedIn to someone who went to my same college (UB) with the same undergrad degree (Communication Design) and followed a similar path as I did to usability away from pure Graphic Design. Well, she has a consulting firm now called Sylver Consulting and I helped bring her in to Hudson to help us research our intranet usage. Well after Brianna Sylver and my team visited Pittsburgh to do our research she revealed the good news that she had an article published in BusinessWeek online. It's an excellent piece addressing the meaning of innovation in the lexicon of different companies. She rightfully points out that the term is so overused within corporate culture that you need to do research just to understand what that word means at a company before developing anything truly innovative. Speaking as someone who has "bring innovative marketing solutions to the business" on his personal objectives, there's a lot to be said for simply understanding the meaning of the word in my company.

iPodTalent-- I have a lot of respect for Dave Lefkow. We worked together at TMP, and we both made the jump to another company at about the same time. I went to Hudson Highland Group - a staffing firm to work on recruitment marketing for one company. He went to Jobster to work on building a whole new type of recruitment marketing for many companies. He also writes articles for the ERE. I like his latest piece; a well-researched article on the talent behind the iPod.

DanaGooglewicz--Hey you know what, blogging is fun. I haven't done this since May. I always suffer from a "who the hell reads this", "I'm bored, but I'd rather read Yahoo news than blog", "What's the point?" mentality. And I suppose so many people out there go through the same thing. By and large it IS pointless. Especially for a married man that now works from home, puts in his time, and enjoys poking around with his kids for 90% of his daily entertainment. What do I have to say? My brain is burnt on work. For someone who never so much as wrote in a journal for more than 3 straight days in his life. For someone who latches on to VERY random interests at any given point, my blog is pointless. One day I'm interested in the Buffalo Bills, the next - in bowhunting. But, come to find out, there is some intrinsic value to this babbling.

My friend that I haven't talked to in a while was able to find out what's up, just by Googling me.

Dana Deskiewicz is doing really well in his budding Creative Director career and took the time to give me a shout out, cause of one little blog post of only 6 that I have accomplished this year. Well done man!

2Stories--Our new house is coming along so quickly. Tonight we drove up and found that the builder had already framed in the second story exterior and interior. We were able to actually go inside and get a feeling for what it is really going to be like. This was helpful as we then went onto the kitchen place to choose our kitchen counter tops and cabinets.

ForSale--Tonight we listed our townhouse on the market. Over the past few months as we had actually considered a move within Illinois, we already started the fun process of "de-cluttering". Much of the extraneous crap in our house is stored in a little storage garage down at Storage Mart. We re-painted our funky colored loft area complete with kooky plastic IKEA lights and bright green kid paint into boring, neutral beige. We have taken every hint we can from Designed to Sell (our current favorite show) and now we just wait for the big Open House. I think that our house will sell fairly quickly, but you just never know. It is definitely sad to think that there will be a for sale sign tomorrow on the place that we built in 2001 and had our 2 kids in. I put nine months of blood sweat and tears into my "Jazz Bar" basement remodel, complete with wet-bar and bathroom. Hopefully the next people will appreciate it.