Watts Consulting

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A Slow Week for Blogging, a fast week for everything else

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Update: just posted some of my favorite photos from the trip to my flickr account.

Haven’t really been doing a lot of posting this week. Have been doing a lot of work. Trying to wrap up an annual report for the Alabama Association of RC&D’s, picked up a nice new client this week, took a trip to the Black Belt to work on an Antique Trail along Highway 14–a three-day festival in the fall that I’ll be developing a website for. To many irons in the fire….

Here’s the Greene County Courthouse in downtown, Eutaw, Alabama. I do find the Veterans monuments in each county interesting–I consider the one in my home county of Marengo to be one of the better ones I’ve seen so far in my travels–but I may be a bit prejudiced. The courthouse is in disrepair and surely needs some love. More photos to come.

A Departure, but great for Traveling to the Gulf

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gull-1.jpgWell, I don’t normally do this sort of thing, but I’ve been reviewing applications for National Scenic Byway Designation over the past week + and just really wanted to share the itinerary that my friend Colette Boehm at the Gulf Coast Convention and Visitor’s Bureau has put together to highlight the great experiences someone can have on a trip to Alabama’s Coastal Connection.

There are many ways to enjoy Alabama’s Coastal Connection, but none offers more scenic views than our Connecting with Nature itinerary. Take two days and experience the beauty and variety of the natural assets of Alabama’s Gulf Coast and the interpretive facilities that help visitors understand their connection. Spring and fall are the best times of year to enjoy this itinerary, and completion times will vary depending upon the degree of interest in hiking and/or biking along the variety of trails.

Start: Dauphin Island Audubon Bird Sanctuary

After beginning your drive along the rural farmlands of Mobile County and by the scenic docks of Bayou La Batre, continue across the Dauphin Island bridge onto the island. Arriving at the Dauphin Island Audubon Bird Sanctuary, you’ll find parking and picnic areas and interpretive signage describing the habitats and birds to be found here, and along the Alabama Coastal Birding Trail, on which the sanctuary is a stop. Explore the 1000-foot handicap accessible boardwalk from the parking lot to “Gaillard Lake” or the raised walkway through the Tupelo swamp. The sanctuary encompasses more than a mile of trails through a variety of intact habitats including preserved maritime forest.

[Read more…] about A Departure, but great for Traveling to the Gulf

A Week of Newsletters, Among Other Things

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This week has been pretty busy, including last weekend. I sat down to work up the January 2009 issue of the Alabama Sierran that I do each month only to discover some unforeseen problems with my new laptop. Really not so much a problem with the laptop as it was a problem with an older version of QuarkXpress I’ve been using to design the newsletters and much of the other print work I do. It just wouldn’t work with the new Mac operating system. After about 2 hours and 20 crashes, I read up on it and discovered that it really wouldn’t work. Thus, a forced migration to an admittedly better program, Adobe InDesign. All is better now, but it did force me to recreate the newsletter and start recreating an annual report I do each year. Anyway, I’m off to Centerville, Alabama this morning to talk with the Bibb County folks about tourism and their upcoming website. Here’s what the Alabama Sierran turned out like:

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A Slow Posting Week

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Wow, I just haven’t been keeping up with my blogging lately. I guess I’ve been busy. I have added some new content to my Your Town Alabama blog (www.yourtownalabama.org/blog) and I’ve added a few new pictures to my Flickr account. Mostly, I’ve been trying to churn out some work. Rode to Montgomery with someone from the Regional Planning Commission here in Birmingham yesterday to work with the Alabama Department of Transportation on developing signs for tourism destination, particularly scenic byways stuff. I set up another twitter account in adddition to my personal account for business (smartgrowth oriented) in an effort to keep up with some new marketing ideas.

I’m hurriedly trying to wrap up an annual report for the Resource Conservation and Development Councils of Alabama (RC&D), a newsletter for the Sierra Club and another for American Mining Insurance Company.

As a result of that, I really haven’t been doing much cooking and even less scanning of old photos or writing. Oh well, hopefully some time this weekend will slip in. (Oh, I did post a couple of old photos from a trip Jonathan Merkle and I took years ago onto my biography page–itself always a work in progress).

Some Recent Design Work

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Not much to say today. Getting busy for Thanksgiving. Just picked up several pounds of beautiful, fresh gulf snapper at my favorite fish market–Snapper Grappers.

Here are a couple of things I did a week or so ago. the first, my usual monthly newsletter for the Alabama chapter of the Sierra Club. The other, a cover for a program manual for the Alabama Communities of Excellence.

Where Does the Time Go?

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Seems that I can’t catch a minute to do anything these days.Worked hard all day on Monday until a friend from high school (Walter Smith) came by Monday night for a quick visit. He was in town going to St. Vincents. Yesterday, had to drive to Montgomery to give a presentation on scenic byways–small world. Kathryn Friday was there–my high school English teacher. Hadn’t seen her in years and I’ve seen her a dozen times in the last year-and-a-half. Small world. Today, another byways meeting, this time about directional/wayfinding signage for byways through the Alabama Department of Transportation. There is certainly a need for more effective signs for tourists. We’re working on it!

Oh, and the usual work on my monthly Sierra Club newsletter, AIA Christmas party invitation, CAWACO/Five Mile Creek updates and more. I’m tired…. At least no meetings tomorrow!