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| Paparazzi wore his life jacket to check out the flooded river. |
The flooding didn't end up as bad as was originally predicted, but it still came in as the state's fifth worst flood, cresting at just over 25' (flood stage is 17'). Fortunately, it stayed a few blocks from my house (see a picture here). The island in the river where our baseball field is also flooded, and you can see how high the river got over the sidewalk that runs along it here.
I did evacuate at the suggestion of my landlord, and I was graciously taken in by some of my coworkers living west of the city (the flooding largely affected the east side of town). They were really fun to hang out with, and I felt so relieved to be away from danger. They even took Paparazzi, and their young son loved his tail :) Plus, it was nice to have company over the weekend for once.
The only damages from the flood and subsequent temporary power outage turned out to be a slice of watermelon I didn't get to eat before it went bad and a delayed website launched at work, though we came pretty close to launching in the midst of a natural disaster (the client's approval came after people needed to evacuate).
My first and primary project, a 250+ page website for Mount Nittany Health System, officially launched Monday! It's one of the biggest projects andCulture has handled and it took a massive amount of effort from our team. You can see the finished product here; the majority of the writing work I did was for the Specialties & Services section, which is intended to explain all the different areas of expertise throughout the health system, but I worked on a lot of other aspects of the build out as well.
The underlying goal of the entire redesign project was to become more user-friendly, largely by providing relevant information to improve a patient's experience in the healthcare system (the site was previously focused only on the hospital because it just recently became a health system). Some pages for these specialties, for example, went from a single sentence to several full pages of content. I feel really proud that we were able to improve this site as we did! I also loved that despite how challenging this project was, people really stepped up to help: several people who weren't directly involved with the project even took time to help us when needed.
In other news: I signed a writer's contract with Bust magazine for a short freelance piece I wrote for them, which is kind of dream for me: I've wanted to write for magazines for a while and Bust is my absolute favorite! Nana's fettuccine Alrefrdo recipe is currently scheduled to appear in their December/January issue, so check your local Barnes & Noble to find a copy.
Anyway, them's the highlights for now. Paparazzi is still doing mediocre in obedience class and I'm still losing weight. This month's book club read is "Nasty Bits" by Anthony Bordain, which makes me want to eat in his restaurant in NYC or at least check out some of his local recommendations. I'm also trying to get a group together for the National Book Festival in D.C. at the end of the month. Ain't the East Coast great?
