Amy's Blog

Our conference room is being transformed into a make-shift theater as we plan to gather tonight to watch Bedtime Stories with our fellow co-workers and their families.  All donations collected at the event will benefit the Make-A-Wish foundation, which grants wishes to local children as they face health challenges.  I can't think of a better cause, and I hope I can manage to schlep Steven back and forth and squeeze a meal in there to boot before the festivities begin.  He can be so high maintenance these days. 

 Professor Thump, c. 1990-ish. Try not to laugh too hard.

The brown bears are far and away my favorite animals to visit at the zoo. Unfortunately, most times they are sound asleep, but Friday we were treated to a good-natured frolic between the two youngsters.  Although it didn't look like a frolic.  Or good natured.  In fact, it looked downright scary.  Turns out these two bears were orphaned in Alaska last year after officials were forced to kill their mother, who had been involved in several maulings.  It's nice to see they've found a good home.

Oh, and the zoo has Klipsch outdoor speakers at their commissary.  Yay, Klipsch!

After nearly a 5 month hiatus, the ducks were spotted at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, absorbing some culture in the form of a giant spoon and 1200 pound cherry.  No word as to whether or not they had whipped cream with that.

photo courtesy of wuzzzer

Next stop:  Cabot, Arkansas!

Today's blog is coming to you via automation, since I'm finally taking a day off Friday to go to the zoo.  By the time this posts, I'll be beside myself wondering why I'm getting fresh air on a weekday.

This new logo sculpture, made brilliantly by our mechanical technician out of 3mm rolled steel, is hanging in the reception area of our terrace level engineering center.  I'm told the rust effect was done with a super secret formula provided by one of our mechanical engineers.  It looks way cool, and I love how the track lighting casts a Klipsch shadow on the wall.  And how it's hanging by speaker wire. 

Nice work, Jay and Scott!

This morning a few employees were able to gather in the Klipsch Cafe for coffee and doughnuts to watch The Ellen Show.  We don't normally do that, but our new Image S4 headphones happened to be featured today as the prize for guest Kevin Nealon saying the "secret word."  It was fun to watch, and even more fun to see a moving display of our headphone boxes roll out onto the stage like a giant birthday cake.  Well done, PR department!

I'm trying to recall when I first heard the Cowboy Junkies, and I'm going to have to go with when I saw the creepy, disturbing, and utterly fantastic Natural Born Killers (has it really been 15 years??) back in 1994.  You can hear this song, originally done by The Velvet Underground, during Mallory's poem recital to Mickey in the desert in an early scene.  In fact, the entire soundtrack is perfectly selected, not to mention diverse, and does a fantastic job of creating just the right mood for every surreal moment.  

After hearing the song, I immediately headed over to my local Karma record store and purchased the Junkies' Trinity Session.  This is easily the most mellow album in my entire collection, and I listen to it on auto-repeat on days meant for chilling.  Or sleeping.

Today was a freakishly busy day...so much so that I just realized I didn't post my daily photo.  And it's almost 8 pm.  As my brother would've said years ago, "Smooth move, ex-lax!"  So here I am at home, having just finished mowing my yard into bales of hay, determined to post something before days end.  So you must settle with something I have on my home computer.  Which 99 out of 100 are going to be, yes, the most photographed kid in the universe.

Last Friday evening, we made a pit stop on the way home to a nearby artesian well at Flowing Well Park, Carmel, Indiana - my hometown.  I remember going to the same well with my dad back when I was about Steven's age, and the town was a mere a speck on the map.  The outing was always a big to-do...gathering up as many empty milk jugs as we could find and filling them all one by one in the strange spicket that came out of run-down concrete wall. 

They did quite a bit of remodling in the early 80s, transforming it into a cute little park complete with picnic area and walking trails. People come from all over to get their share of the continuously flowing delicious water.  I even saw a woman there recently with a Flat Stanley taking some landmark photos with the cartoon cutout, which I find endlessly amusing.

Steven loves stopping by there, much like I used to.  We encountered his first snake while walking the paths - a treat for him, but certainly something I could've done without - threw some rocks in the creek, and got bit by a few skeeters.  Just another little detour off the rush hour highway. 

Classic inside cover to a classic brochure:

The vampires basement workers were able to get out into the sun to allow me to take this picture.  They look pretty happy to be released. 

If you try really hard, you may be able to distinguish the engineers from the marketing folks.  I call it "Where's Waldos."

(apologies to any terrace level dweller who was not rounded up for this spur of the moment photo. It was not intentional to exclude you)

LaScala ad published in Rolling Stone's Audio Supplement, 1975, which featured the Paul Klipsch interview:

This classic photo shows former Klipsch president Bob Moers and what we believe to be a Klipsch dealer rockin' the 70s pants back in the day.  You can read a bit about Bob in the beyond cool Rolling Stone PWK interview, c. 1975.

Yesterday we were lucky enough to spot what I later discovered to be a circumhorizontal arc, which lasted for all of 5 minutes.  It felt like a gift from Mother Nature herself on a day just for mothers.  This is not my photo (can you believe I was without my camera for one second), but close to what we saw:

As we stood watching it from the parking lot of the park, people were coming and going in all directions around us - unaware of what was going on in front of them.  I wanted to shout, "Hey, obliviots!  Stop moving and look up for crying out loud!"  But I refrained. 

Maybe I should have yelled.  Maybe some people need to be snapped out of their tunnel vision haze in this age of technology. I've literally seen people on their laptops with Bluetooth in their ear and web cams affixed to their monitors while their kids are learning sports on Saturdays.  It makes me very curious to know what is so important that they can't leave home without being "hooked up" when they probably haven't seen their kids all week.  Are they cracking a terrorist plot on Twitter?  Are they on the verge of the cure for swine-flu on WebMD?  Are they rescuing orphans in Somalia via their Facebook page?  I'm so tempted to loom over their shoulders to see what it could possibly be.

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but more and more it seems to get in the way.

And it's not that I'm a helicopter parent, hovering over Steven to make sure all his needs are met.  That is equally annoying.  But I do take time to show him the world around us, whether it's a couple hundred ants building a nest, a twig floating downstream, or strange colors in the wispy clouds.  Things that just aren't the same on YouTube. 

From the archives:

Most clever entry wins a Klipsch prize!  Deadline = Monday, May 18

Update:  Congrats to fenderbender with the winning entry!  

Phil, with the camera, and Don, belting out a tune on Rock Band (and I mean belting) from last Friday's Uno de Mayo party: