Regan Norton

Claire and I welcomed a new member to our family this week. Jack is a ~3 month old (maybe) puppy who was cast off by one of the vagrants that populates the park by our house. We think he is a German Shepherd. Maybe some Collie. Whatever he is, he’s adorable. We all had a fun night last night helping him get acquainted with his new diggs. We were also up wickedly early this morning. I’m pretty confident that he will be the center of attention around our house for a long time, so be on the look out for more photos as he grows up.

More photos of Jack

Lately, we’ve had a rascally dog wandering around our neighborhood. I’m pretty sure he is harmless, and he actually seems playful and goofy. He sure is strong and jowly though. Luckily our faithful neighbor cat is guardian of our yard. Sweet as she is, she faught off this barking beast. Check out more here of the dueling here…

Bad dog

Around Indianapolis, today was the first perfect spring day that we have had this year. It was the kind of day when Claire and I could agree that the temperature was just right: she was not too cold, nor I too hot. I marked the exodus from winter with a time honored tradition: the first smoothie of spring. The delicious treat served as perfect accompaniment to planting bulbs in our front yard and starting work on an ambitious gardening project in the back yard. I’ll keep you posted on the afore mentioned flora as things get growing.

Fear not, faithful readers, I am back! I have taken an extended break from tending to my blog to tend to some big-time life changes. The biggest new change is that Claire and I got married on September 2nd. And it was the greatest day of my life, I don’t mind telling you. Everything went off without a hitch and Claire and I had a great day all around. A very heart-felt thank you to all of the wonderful friends and family who were with us in person or in spirit on our big day. Check out some pictures of the day here:

http://stuff.regannorton.com/wedding

In other news, we also bought a new (to us) house! I know, how many major life decisions can we make in the same month?! We will be moving, on September 29th, to a lovely neighborhood surrounding Garfield Park. The house is really quite stunning, we are going to be very close to good friends and much closer to downtown for work and play goodness. So, very exciting times! Stay tuned for pictures of the new house and renovation progress photos once we dig in and start getting our hands dirty with all of the joys that will surely come with owning a new home.

I am usually pretty behind-the-times. I tend to let my friends be early adopters, letting them tell me if a new technology or product is good, bad or otherwise. That said, it should come as no surprise that I only recently upgraded to OS 10.4 (and now we are just months away from yet another iteration of the Mac OS). In addition to lots of useful features, OS 10.4 also added Dashboard - an application that allows you to use widgets, little mini web apps that run over the OS. There are a couple of useful widgets out there, and a ton of less useful ones.

All of this is old news to anyone to whom any of this matters. I had a spark of renewed interest in widgets today because I discovered a widget related to a local organization close to my heart: The Heartland Film Festival. The widget is fairly simple - it just counts down to the beginning of the festival and has an event list on the back, but hey, it’s a widget for a local organization. Unlike other widgets, it isn’t just floatingout therein the webisphere (word? not a word?). So, all my Indy peoples show some love.

Well friends, here it is. It’s inevitable that all blog authors will eventually turn the attention of a portion of their blog to their physical fitness. Usually the addition of this topic corresponds with a major life change event (impending wedding, old age, President’s physical fitness test, etc). In my case it’s the wedding that I will be in, as the groom, in three months. According to the good doctor my target weight is 170 pounds. I am currently a smoothe 200 even. So, my self-imposed challenge is to drop thirty pounds in three months.

I’m using a great, free tool called fitday to track what I’m eating and how much I’m moving each day. If you are interested in knowing what you are really putting into your body each day, I recommend giving it a try.

Stay tuned for progress updates. Anybody have any good tips or stories to share?

Dear readers, my most sincere apologies for my lack of posts lately. I have been all consumed by another online techno-toy: Flickr. My photos are now integrated into my blog: the world is a beautiful place.

I’ve also been occupied by big work changes. In the last couple of weeks I have left my cushy day job and have decided to pursue design as a free agent. As a designer-for-hire I have a lot going on already: thinking up a name to operate under, making collateral for myself, etc and there is nobody harder to make stuff for than yourself. I’m very excited about this new venture. Look for big things here in the near future!

I have been wrapped up recently in a big ol’ CD production project for a medical device developer. The production of the CD is finished at long last - it was really only a couple of months, but it seemed like more. Anyway, this was the first “major” project that I have headed up from start to finish. Since the CD includes video, voice over, animation & a user-interface to tie all of those parts together I got to be a part of some really cool production stuff. Here’s an image of me “directing” with Mike Yonts, the videographer for the project:

In truth Mike is so on top of things that I really didn’t have to do much at all during the shoot. Managing the efforts of many people can be overwhelming, but having highly-skilled people who know and love their craft makes the job much easier. This image sure does make me feel like a cool dude, though.

Valentine’s day was great fun. I was visited by a new friend:

Super sweet. ‘nough said.

Little needs to be said that this image doesn’t say all by itself. Claire has been working on this lovely item for quite some time, and it is finally complete*.

Now if we only knew someone named Mr. Higgs to give it to. If you have any suggestion, please leave them with the comment-getter.

* At press time the backing and ninja star pockets still needed to be added, but the knitting was finished… and that’s the hard part.