Coffee Table Book

Attention Spartanburg, Upstate area bloggers

I have discovered that a couple of different people in Upstate media have compiled many local and regional blogs onto two different sites. Journalist and blogger Steve Shanafelt, founder of Spartanburg Spark (http://www.spartanburgspark.com/, soon to be a newspaper), compiles many Spartanburg area bloggers on his site Sparkle City Blogs (http://www.sparklecityblogs.com/). Mr. Shanafelt holds monthly meetings at downtown locales such as Interlude coffee shop and Monsoon Noodle House. I have yet to go to one, but it seems to be a great way for us to get to know each other. Shanafelt has also been having an election this week for who the best blogger is in different categories (funniest, most insightful, best design). Steve has a weekly blog report where he compiles different blogs and turns them into news stories; he also has Spartanburg videos of the week, where he showcases many of our fine filmmakers and videographers. Video stories range from news stories (one of his stories comes from WSPA-NewsChannel 7's Jonathan Carlson) to professionally made films, and he even showcases some area YouTube clips (one of which has been mine).



The other new blog site (more of a regional site for Asheville, NC-Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson, SC) is brought to us by WYFF-4 and is called Sound Off South (http://soundoffsouth.com/). The staff at WYFF4.com showcase blogs on the main page from Spartanburg, Greenville, Asheville, and Anderson. They also contribute their own blog posts to the site.

Just another day...

Hey guys...well today was a more lazy day for me than usual. I slept in until nearly 12:30 p.m., then got up, ate leftovers for brunch, cleaned myself, and watched a bit of tv (mostly reruns-"King of the Hill", "The King of Queens", "Two and a half Men", "Family Guy"). I went to the Olive Garden restaurant with my mom and had a delicious vegetarian soup (Minestrone), some breadsticks, and the Five Cheese Ziti al Forno (all were delicious!). I was also supposed to visit my friend Jared's (you know who you are) parents tonight...and totally forgot at the last minute! I went on a walk with my mom and it sprinkled some rain the entire time we walked. The most exciting part of my night (if you want to call it that) happened when I went downtown to return a couple of library books, and "lo and behold" I decide to check out Music on Main for a few minutes. The crowd was great for the East Coast music, and I walked around for a few minutes...then left. I went inside the library to return the books and do something else. I then headed over to Starbucks and had a couple of hot teas (thanks to my friend, Daniel)...I love hot teas now, by the way! I had the Earl Grey and the Passion. I sat at the shop and drank the Earl Grey while reading articles in the Spartanburg Journal, the Escape, the Link, the Root, and also was trying to fill out a job application (I'm reapplying for USC Upstate's Carolinian newspaper). I read a couple of interesting articles during my time reading and pondered upon a couple of intereting Link articles (one was about speed dating-which supposedly isn't for "losers" hard-up for a date-and the subtle "do's" and "don't's" of speed dating, and I happened across an article that there is going to be a new film school starting up in Greenville). I am particularly excited about the film school because I love making movies and messing with computer graphics occasionally, and I want to take some classes in this someday. I will tell you more about this stuff that is coming in an upcoming blog post "Total Randomness"...