Good news and (kinda) bad news.

Bad news first. If you haven't heard, my scrappy little VW Golf was rear-ended at high speed the other day, with me inside. I was waiting for a turn arrow on Lakeshore Drive when a guy clipped my rear-right corner and ripped the wheel off the axle.

It's only "kinda bad news" because of three things. 1. I wasn't hurt, other than a little soreness for a few days. 2. Neither Karen nor the baby was in the car. 3. I wanted a new car anyway.

Insurance has promptly totaled the VW and cut me a check for almost exactly what I bought the car for a few years back. (Well, it'll be equal once I get my $1,000 deductible back in a few months.) Now I get to go car shopping. Thinking a larger hatchback or a smaller SUV like Karen's Honda CRV. Let me know if you hear about anything.

The good news is, I've got a new job. A month or so back, my boss and I started getting serious about planning a full-time social media gig for me, and now it's culminated in the creation of our first-ever Social Media Strategist.

I'll still be doing quite a bit of writing, but I'll also be planning ways for the agency and our clients to better use emerging technologies and trends like mobile applications, social networking, micro-blogging and so on. To avoid boring most of you, I'll leave that stuff to my other blog.

New day care, new blog, new big-ass shed.

With my usual apologies for a dearth of updates here, I wanted to fill you guys in on a few things that have been going on around the Griner household:

1. Allison finally got into a great day care. She's now in the new infant room at a local Catholic church, which we were amazingly impressed with when we toured it several months back.

After our previous run-ins with bad day care, it's nice to have a place that's so attentive to her. But we do think it's strange that they've called us twice with concerns about her health: once because she was sleeping too much, and once because she wasn't peeing. I'm waiting for the panicked call where they tell us her poop smells entirely too good.

2. As you might know, I've started a new blog for work. It's dedicated to all things social media (blogs, social networks, messaging, etc.). I don't know if you'll enjoy it as a normal human who's not into marketing or the evolving Web, but I'm trying to write it in a conversational tone anyway. And every Friday I feature a "Cool Tool of the Week" that you might actually find useful.

3. We're almost done with the large garden shed in our back yard. I can't imagine how long it would have taken without the intense help of several friends and, most notably, my wonderful parents. They all even came over and got much of the work done while we were out of town visiting Karen's family. Thanks again to everyone who pitched in; the shed's going to make a big difference in our storage situation.

Here's a shot of the shed as it is now:



You can see a whole gallery of the construction on our Flickr page.

As I said, we're "almost done." Really the only major tasks left are getting rid of the extra construction materials and painting the exterior (once the Alabama summer humidity dies down a bit).

Right now we're thinking the shed will be a pale yellow. But if you want to stump for chartreuse or something, now's your chance.