As I’ve mentioned before, my mom owns a small restaurant in my hometown. It’s name is Byrd’s (the original owner’s last name), and it’s fairly popular for its size and location. She and my step-dad did a really good job over the years making it into a great little eatery.

For a couple years, they had a second restaurant inside a convenience store, on the other side of town from the first location. Although it was supporting itself, it was just too much work for them to keep it up. They found a buyer for the location and equipment just before my step-dad passed away. The new owners had an agreement with my step-dad (verbal, “gentlemen’s agreement”) to not use the Byrd’s name and to not serve a tenderloin biscuit (a signature menu item).

Unfortunately, after his death, that agreement was apparently dismissed. Not only do they serve tenderloin biscuits, but their new sign uses the same colors as the Byrd’s sign and logo. (This situation is what prompted the move towards trademarking everything, which I mentioned in an earlier blog post.) Other things, that I won’t go into here, proved to us that the new owners were willing to be at least a little underhanded, despite any earlier agreements. At first glance, it looks like Byrd’s is still in that location.

Recently, my mom asked me to write copy for an ad she was going to run in the local newspaper. I got the information on the ad size, and I asked exactly what she wanted to say.

She wanted to thank the customers, and at the same time she wanted her customers to know that the other restaurant was no longer affiliated with her Byrd’s. Originally, she wanted to state directly that the old second location was not Byrd’s, but I explained a better marketing strategy. After discussing the plan, which she agreed with, I wrote up the ad copy I thought would convey the concept she wanted to get across.

I wrote the text within the size restrictions, and told her to let the newspaper ad department put any graphic-artist touches on it they felt would work. I’ve worked with graphic artists many times, and I respect their abilities as much as I understand my limitations in that area. (Look at this site, for example: lots of text, very little graphic design.) I emailed the Word document to my mom, who forwarded it on to the newspaper ad department.

Here’s the text I wrote (within the actual size of the ad):

Here’s the ad as published (the discolored splotches are from the reverse side of the paper):

I think the ad turned out very nice. I didn’t see the graphic results until I saw the published ad. On my first read through, I noticed two errors.

The “G” in “best tenderloin & Gravy,” shouldn’t be capitalized. Looks like they retyped in my text; I wonder why they didn’t just copy and paste from the Word document? If they did copy and paste, how did that typo get introduced?

The Saturday hours say “6:00 am-11:00pm,” but it should be “11:00am.” (The restaurant closes before noon on Saturday.) Embarrassingly, this mistake was in my original document. Just goes to show, a writer needs an editor to at least proofread everything. I noticed this error immediately upon looking at the ad, but I never noticed it in the three drafts I wrote before sending it off.

The newspaper added the store phone number, probably at my mom’s request. That was a good idea — I should have thought of it.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I was very busy with work all day long, and I went to my gaming group in the evening. Between 6:30 a.m. and 1:00 a.m., I had been home less than 30 minutes total. These kinds of days happen, sometimes. It was a decent day at work, and it was a really fun time gaming, but I had no time to write a blog post.

It was late, and I was tired, so my post was relevant and truthful. At least I didn’t write up a dream I had, or prose classic songs, or ramble on about nothing. I went straight for clarity and honesty.

I write this blog for the fun of it. To keep in practice even on days when I don’t otherwise get to write anything creative (or anything at all). Sometimes it’s hard to come up with something to write about, and sometimes it’s hard to figure out the best way to express what I want to say. Sometimes the subject and words just leap right out of my head and onto the screen. Sometimes I just have nothing. And then, once, so far, It’s just too damn late, and I’m just ridiculously tired to try to write something.

I’m not complaining — I’m just explaining. I hate when I miss a day of posting. My goal for this blog, when I started it, was to post every single day. But, sometimes stuff happens. So far, the only times I haven’t posted on a day have been because of situations that physically prevented me from posting — like being technologically or geographically disconnected from the Internet. I have never just passed on posting because I didn’t feel like it, or didn’t have time, or otherwise personally failed. December 14 is the closest I’ve come to not posting for any reason other than technical difficulties.

But hey, I posted. It counts. Sure, it’s silly and short, but I’ve written plenty of serious and long posts (see December 13), so on average, I’m covered.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

ZzzzzzzzZZZzzzzzzZZZzzzzz.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Our county school board is trying its hand at social engineering. It’s just announced a proposal to rearrange the school assignments in our area. There’s a new school being built in the area, and the board is using this situation to “make things fair.”

We live in an “above average” town. It’s not like Hollywood, or Palm Beach, but the populace has above average household incomes, is diverse (internationally), is well educated, and generally upper-middle to upper class. The streets are clean, crime is low, and the schools are good. (“All the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average,” as Garrison Keillor would say.) We chose to live here because of these facts.

When we were looking for a home in this town, six and a half years ago, we specifically looked for a home in this school zone — the elementary, middle, and high school in this neighborhood are excellent. For about a year now, we’ve been thinking about moving to a bigger house, and the one thing that Cowgrit and I are in total agreement about, with regard to our next house, is that it must still be in this school zone.

The elementary and middle schools are literally half a mile from our house. Driving on the road, they are less than one mile. They are within walking distance, and many kids in the area do walk to the schools.

The elementary school’s statistics are excellent. Phenomenal even. They should be: we pay higher taxes for the school and many parents volunteer at the school. All the good numbers for the school are among (or are the) highest in the county, and all the bad numbers for the school are among (or are the) lowest in the county. This is all why we chose to move here.

Now the school board has proposed to reorganize the school zones, and to bus students from other, distant zones to our school. (You have to see the zone maps to really understand the absurdity — blocks of neighborhoods separated by many miles, in different cities are zoned together for the same school.) The school board says things like “measure of diversity,” and “healthier schools,” and “make more comparable.”

This area has voted to increase their property taxes to pay for the schools, the families support their kids in school (this makes for good students), the parents volunteer at the schools, and the school population is extremely diverse (from 22 countries). But now some of the students are being taken out of this school to be sent elsewhere, and other students from elsewhere are being sent here.

That’s the typical school board-mentality solution to having poor schools and great schools: don’t work to make the poor schools better; instead, mix things up so the great schools weaken. Don’t raise some up, cut some down.

The school board “announced” this proposal quietly. They just posted it on their Web site, right before the Christmas break. Only because the parents in this area are on the ball with regard to their children’s education did it get noticed. Any responses must be submitted by January 1. Now, the issue is all the talk of the neighborhoods. The families have started banding together to respond to the proposal, and there’s only a few days before the proposal is approved. Cowgrit is all over this, as is every other parent in our neighborhood — even those not zoned to change schools. We just wrote our letter to the school board members, and we’ll be emailing it to each, individually, tomorrow.

I fear that no amount of negative response will change the school board’s decision, but I hope they develop severe headaches from the roar of enraged parents shouting about this issue. Before I had kids, and specifically moving to a good school zone, I would never have imagined caring at all about school zone rearrangements. But I’ve never liked bureaucracies, especially when they start playing social engineers, and telling everyone it’s for our own good.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com