Chris Mitchell Music

2010
Chris Mitchell : Blog | 2011

Merry Christmas!

12/24/2010 03:00 PM Filed in: Blog
Merry Christmas everybody! I hope this holiday finds you healthy and wise. Sorry it's been a month since an update, I've been busy at Pladd Dot with all of the Christmas adventures that go along with owning a retail shop. Pladd Dot is open until 7:00 on Christmas Eve and I'm currently writing this from Detroit. Brian wanted to work today since he didn't have family plans until tomorrow. You know you've got a good working environment (and your employees love their job) when they'll volunteer to work on Christmas Eve!!! I'm traveling to visit Ashlee's family this Christmas and as I write this, there is snow on the ground. I'm having a white Christmas this year.

December 28th:

Not only has it been white, it's been C-C-C-COLD!!! Last night we went out for Chinese and when we got back in the car, I swear my Jeans were frozen. Wisconsin is covered in a blanket of white and it's beautiful. Leave it to me to go away for Christmas only to leave Georgia snow. What's up with that?

As always, it's been a good Christmas. Pladd Dot was able to donate a good bit of toys again this year for Toys for Tots. After dinner, the store employees packed up to Wal-Mart and we bought a bunch of toys to give to Toys for Tots. We weren't able to buy the same truckload that we were able to buy last year. Last year was pretty unique because one of our toy vendors had an amazing sale and I was able to really stock up. The cool thing is this year we balanced out the toy giving in the girl's favor. Last year we had a truckload of boy's toys. Read More...
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Happy Thanksgiving

11/25/2010 03:17 PM Filed in: Blog
Happy Thanksgiving everybody! I hope that this holiday finds everyone safe, happy, and thankful for the many blessings. Sorry that I haven't written a blog in a while but Pladd Dot's been wearing me out lately. We've been really busy and I just haven't had time to write a blog. Trust me... I'm VERY THANKFUL for that! Nonetheless, it's a great day of rest and I thought I'd take some time to get caught up with the blog. Things are starting to shape up with the duties of our e-bay store, the warehouse, the shop, and the band instrument program so I'm hoping to have a little more organized schedule this year. We'll see.
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Halloween Begins

10/06/2010 10:30 PM Filed in: Blog
It's that time of year again. The zombies are rising from the grave... the goblins are hiding in the shadows... the werewolves are on the prowl... It's almost Halloween!!! This year I've got a lot of things planned. As you may have read in my last blog entry, I'm doing 9 days of Halloween activities this year. I actually changed it to ten days. It may actually be a little more... I added decorating the Pladd Dot windows (an annual tradition that I LOVE!!!) and I added Hagan's Haunted Forest and Haunted House. That makes 11 I think... I don't care, the more days the better!

Anyway, this year I bought extra decorations (as I always do) and decided to see what I could get on the cheap. Most of the places I went had some pretty good stuff. Some of my favorite new pieces are resin skulls I found at Big Lots. They looked great and were pretty cheap. I got them for about nine bucks each. I also like the cut off hands and feet I found at K-Mart. The mould is shockingly good and the paint job is pretty nice too. They look a little pale but it adds to the "not receiving blood from the heart" kinda look... Read More...
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It's About Time

08/22/2010 09:37 PM Filed in: Blog
Back in July I wrote about my affinity with electric cars and being free from the burden of foreign oil. For two years now I've been following an electric car company out of California aptly called Tesla Motors. After visiting the website today I discovered this Gem; the Tesla "S" series. It's designed as a luxury car and it's completely electric. Of course, I would be missing a major point if I didn't say that it's sexy and fast. The "S" series goes 300 miles on a single charge. It's got a spacious interior large enough to seat 7, it goes 125mph, and it gets a full charge for five bucks. Did you read that oil barons? FIVE BUCKS! The other cool thing about this car is that it's a LUXURY car for about $49,000. If you compare it to the BMW M6 coupe in the same class, it's 50,000 less. That's not too shabby. Now before you nay-sayers get all bent out of shape and write some ridiculous comment... remember that this is designed as a LUXURY car and not designed to compete in the same market as the Nissan Leaf. Tesla Motors plans to release a more affordable electric car in the near future. Read More...
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Going Greener

07/18/2010 10:18 PM Filed in: Blog
It's no secret that I'm a big proponent of alternative energy. Last year I went greener with my truck and started burning Ethanol. It made me about 85% less dependent on oil. The cool thing about my truck's source of Ethanol is that it's completely renewable. It doesn't come from a food source (like corn for food). Currently, scientists are even working on ways to use prairie grass, corn husks, and even cellulose. All plants make cellulose so it would offer a completely renewable source of energy to make ethanol. Henry Ford believed that the Ethanol was the fuel of the future.

That being said, Ashlee has been going greener with her car as well. Last year she got a Smart car and it gets about 40 mpg in town and 50 mpg hwy miles. That was a big step. Compared to the Accord, that's a 30% increase in fuel efficiency. This means that she'll use 30% less fuel this year than she did last year. That's like gas costing $1.73 a gallon. Not bad. Read More...
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An Update

07/13/2010 11:13 PM Filed in: Blog
Sorry about the month delay for an update. I've been pretty busy with the guitars, stands, shipping, blah blah blah...

Anyway, I just thought I'd take a while to post some pictures of test shots I've taken with the Digital Elph and the light tent I bought. As you can see, it does an amazing job diffusing light. The Indy shot was pretty dark because I didn't put an extra light on it. Still, not bad for a point and shoot. The whole purpose of the tent and toy photos was of course to help take photos for the new pladdtoys.com website. It's up and running and we're getting toys in now. If you know anybody that wants to get really cool toys for Christmas AND help the community, shop with us!
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Grandma 1918 - 2010

05/21/2010 05:43 PM Filed in: Blog
I wrote a eulogy for my grandmother this week. I had to deliver it on Thursday. Here's how it went.

Grandma

How do you sum up a person's life in such a short amount of time? I can assure you that no matter what I say to you today (or Brother John), we will not even scratch the surface of my grandmother's awesome life. Even this week I've learned a few things about grandma that I never knew–and I've known her for 35 years. For example, I learned that Grandma never made it past the 7th grade. Aunt Jan told me this on Tuesday. She said that Grandma felt like her clothes weren't as nice as some of the other kids and she didn't want to go back to school. So after 7th grade, her mom allowed her quit school. I grew up around grandma's house all my life. There were many nights where me and my cousins spent the night over there. Yet I still didn't know that until this week. I assure you that had I known it, I would've thought of a lot more creative ways to try to skip school the next day. I would've pointed out to Grandma that I was just trying to skip one day–not my entire high school career. Read More...
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Logos Part I

04/22/2010 02:40 PM Filed in: Blog
After reading my friend Justin Samples' Blog about the blatant misuse of the Papyrus font, I can't help to blog about something that's been on my mind for a while–logos. Most people that know me know that I do graphic design from time to time. It's a hobby that I picked up in college. I'm sure it spawned from a drawing obsession in Middle and High School because I used to draw all of the time. All of that led me to really enjoy graphic design and ultimately making a little money at it. I'm not the greatest graphic designer in the world but I know when I've done something right (and wrong).

Logos are one of those things that I love. I've always found it fascinating how a company or brand will summarize their entire existence with one image. Think about the Nike "swoosh", the ubiquitous Coca Cola script, or Apple's "apple". All of them are examples of great logos. They're easily recognized and can't be mistaken for anything else. They're also very classy and memorable. That's what goes into making a great logo. Read More...
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A Proud Methodist

03/24/2010 12:25 AM Filed in: Blog
It's been a long time since I've been proud to be a methodist. Over the last ten years, I've either called myself a "Bad Methodist" or a Christian Exestentialist. Either way, I don't always fit the rank and file march of anyone's religious norm (especially in this neck of the woods). I realize that statement is somewhat ironic considering I've lived here all of my life. I'm not going to get too political here but I will say that I'm happy about the passage of the healthcare bill and I'm glad that the United Methodist Church supported the bill. Many of you know that Ashlee is a brain cancer survivor. I never really thought much about healthcare until I started dating a cancer survivor and until my mom was diagnosed with leukemia (they both happened at the same time). All I can tell you is my experiences and here they are: Read More...
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Sebastian's 10!!!

03/22/2010 11:38 PM Filed in: Blog
It's really hard for me to believe that my little guy's ten years old! It really doesn't feel like it was that long ago when I brought him home. I read an article in the newspaper and went and picked one out of the litter. Needless to say, he was the feistiest one of the bunch! Ten years later... He still is. His determination to get what he wants goes far beyond anything that I've ever seen before in a cat. He lets you know what he wants, he speaks his mind, he plays, and he does a good bit of napping... What else do you expect from a cat?

Anyway, today is his tenth birthday and I thought I should give him a shout out for being the coolest cat ever! Happy birthday, little buddy! Read More...
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The New Website

03/21/2010 01:39 AM Filed in: Blog
Okay... I'm a tinkerer... Yes. I've been delaying the blogs for a couple of months now. Sorry about that to all of you out there that have been reading. Actually, the cool part is that the site will be much better now that I'm using RapidWeaver (the company's logo is to the left). First of all, you can now post your comments on my blog. I like that. I didn't have that feature with iWeb. Sure, it's offered to MobileMe (Apple's web server), but MobileMe is so slow that I couldn't stand the download times. Read More...
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