Fort's Cancer Sux!!

Cincinnati's BRIDALRAMA! - Duke Energy Center
Spent the weekend fully appreciating the off the wall, far from traditional nuptuals John and I had a few years back. I worked the Bridalrama downtown for two days talking to brides and parents about the Cincinnati Railway Company. It was a fraction of the size and length of the hardware trade shows I have done for Ready Tools (Las Vegas, ATL, Baltimore) but it was a little different this time around for many reasons:

The hardware shows were at venues many times bigger....the photo above is of the Cincinnati Convention center...below is the Las Vegas Convention center.....Another good thing was the times and the length of the shows. The Bridalrama was Sat/Sun 11-5, and most of these hardware shows can go from 5-6 days and have some REDICULOUS times, like 8-5:30! UGH! Not to mention I was always staying at hotels for those which required getting up even earlier, cabs, and worse, having to sell product on the spot. When you're selling $10,000 trips, you feel an obligation to inform people but dont go home feeling unsuccessful if you dont book a trip. We didnt. It was a great marketing opportunity. Viva Las Vegas! Below is a picture of our booth....thats Chef Bill who worked the booth with me. He is the private chef that goes on all of the private railcar trips and also serves as a car attendant to deal with all the Amtrak switching that goes on a trip. He baked a big plate of cookies and had them out on the table.

The thing about these shows? Most people know what they're there for. Maybe they just need a photographer...or a caterer....or a reception hall....or all. Many will pass your booth and slow down only to grab a free cookie. Some will humor you with some small talk and then take their cookie. For a second there it was as if we had a sign that said, "FREE COOKIES" we were a "Free cookie booth" there for awhile. We had a few decent leads, although we were looking to sell honeymoon trips, but all the good leads were non-wedding related.

Before I treat you all to some more cute baby pictures of Emma & Annie from Saturday night, can I insult another group of humans? (Horse enthusiasts you're off the hook)...The convention center was serving a dual purpose this weekend. Also under the roof was a dance competition - what looked to be girls in the 5th grade through high school age?

Let me just come out and be blunt. If you are out there encouraging your daughter to get into these dance teams that encourage dressing young girls up like WHORES, and making a 12 year old do a dance routine that looks like it was stolen off the video for "Rump Shaker", you have a problem. There is an epidemic of girls who are being sucked in wanting nothing more for their future past a gig shaking their ass in a rap video, and the most pathetic thing???? THE MOTHERS WHO PERPETUATE AND MAKE IT OK.

Leagues of 13 year old wanna be Fergies and their spastic-overdone, high-maintenced mothers blowing wind into the sails of these mini ego trips. So sad. Hopefully they'll see the errors of their ways when they have to deal with a junior high girl dealing with date rape or pregnancy. Dont get me wrong, no DOES mean no, but if you're letting your young girls go out in public with their ASSES HANGING OUT of their skirts and enough makeup to make Tammy Faye cringe, you sure arent exactly saying its NOT OK....

And dont think for a second I dont know that it was those skinny-assed mothers in their ginormous SUV's taking up two spots in the parking garage.

Breathe!!! Arrrrggghh....does anyone else share this feeling? When I was that age, we were wearing Umbros and big I.O.U. Sweatshirts. Even the biggest whore in school had a more conservative dress code than some of these girls.

And if you're thinking to yourself, "Oh, you're just jealous because you're a fat jock"...well, I cant deny that either. But its still wrong.

NOW!!!! On with the Bee-Bees!! Emma is starting to talk...Bee-Bee, MaMa, DaDa, and coming soon, "FORT!" I was on the phone with Emma today and stacy Allllmost had her say it. you can tell she wants to, I mean, who wouldnt?

Alisa and David came into town for dinner and brought Annie. They were very well behaved and played so nice! Annie is adorable, she gets excited for no apparent reason and will be very quiet and all of the sudden let out a scream of excitement clapping her hands. I cant blame her, everyone gets excited when im around...
Ive got the grammys on and im watching that Corinne Bailey Ray (??) with John Legend and John Mayer trio performance...how awesome! Its nice that there are still some singer songwriters left in my generation and its not all studio-doctored lyrical CRAP-fergilicious-bullshit that you hear on the radio these days....OMG its still going on....is anyone else watching this??? ITS AMAZING!!!!!

Have a great week!!!
Are my questions of the day not that exciting these days?

How about a QUESTIONS of the WEEK???

(This question of the week is inspired by the "bulletins" on myspace where people post their answers to 50-some random questions, most of which, nobody gives a crap about and is done mostly stroke ones ego with the false notion that anyone CARES whether you prefer minty or cinnamon toothpaste. I have cherry picked three of my favorite questions. PLEASE ANSWER ALL THREE!!! )

1 - Do you have scars? If so, where? Why?

2 - Toothpaste? Minty? Cinnamon? Other?

3 - If you could meet one person from history, dead or alive, who would it be?