Epic Weekend

Last day of Basketball = Trophy.
Lights are up on the house (no pictures of that).
Got in a nice sword fight in the falling snow (no footage of that either)
Tomorrow, lots of work to do. Yeah!

now, more T-day vacation videos:

Aquarium

Starting to get the Thanksgiving videos together.
more later.
If you can't see you tube at work, can you still see embeded movies like that one? If not, I'll start uploading to blogger again, youtube is just easier for the "home movie" stuff out of iMovie.

and we're back

Okay, Facebook killed the blog for a while, but I'm going to try and post here regularly again.
And we will start with the new mobile baby.

Soccer and Movies

So this whole weekend is going to be Soccer:

And working on a television episode / short film. Here's a test shot from a location scout:

Music Festival

Finished a project tonight. 30 second commercial of a Youth Music Festival next month:

sleep now.

Does anybody have a bionic elbow?

So I aggravated a long-term minor elbow injury at he beginning of the month. Though oddly hitting people seems to make it feel better. And by that I mean there is no pain when I fight and then less pain for a day or so afterwards. I'm trying to just get it to remain functional until October, fight in Crown and then rest it. Here's a clip from last week's Thursday practice: (I'm the one in blue and green)

And here's my bread and butter combination at half speed.

Time to get serious about Crown Tourney if I want to win this time. As I was told at Pennsic, it is all abot the flat snaps and leg wraps. We'll see.

Mommy's back at work

Well, maternity leave is over. So I'm full time with both the kids now. Most of the scheduling is working out except for my exercise schedule, that's totally shot this week. Lots of production underway: commercials, music videos and promotional videos. I'll post some when they're through post-production (can't post the music stuff until the record is out).
Kids update: Tuesday is now Soccer practice night. I'm an assistant coach and working with a dozen kids who seem to have a very low average of exposure to kicking balls in a controlled setting. It's great so far, we'll see how the games go.

On the other hand, anybody else think that people should be paying my new baby to be a advertising model for their products and services? She could be be pointing at something for you to buy right now.

Back from Vacation

Back from the annual week in a tent. Trying to get back into the swing of my schedule. Tons of video work popping up, which would be great if my wife's maternity leave didn't end Monday. Oh well, back to the juggling act.

So, is it too early to buy Xmas gifts?

My son has been eagerly awating the release of the new Devestator. If you want to know about it just ask him, he's telling everyone all about it.

Well, at Target over the weekend he found it. But with a $100 price tag, I think it's a wait until the end of december before he gets it. But I would like a buy it while it's still in the stores. Hopefully he'll still want it in 4 months.

Fight Club

I don't know if it's the summer weather or that I'm working during the day, but nightly wrestling sessions are getting closer to a Fight Club than horseplay. Here are some examples of what I'm dealing with:

And now for a longer portion of the fight, though not nearly a full night's match, trust me. Note my lovely wife encouraging our son about halfway through.

Rock Out

So can you rock as hard as a 4 year old?

Now, time to get some sleep.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Well, the weekend went well. Got to see a bad movie with the family (land of the lost) and get some housework done. I think I could use one or two more of these before I start to go stir crazy. Though maybe I should just work in more production time, I'm sure I'll get on that when these early summer morning wake-ups are over. Though last night I was able to put together a quick highlight reel from the Monster Truck show my wife's parents took us to. Well, not the baby, too loud and she's totally not into Monster Trucks anyway. Honestly was going to try to put a little more production effort into it, but I've got actual projects I should be working on and I ended up editing on the lapop. Which for HD footage is slooow. So here's what I ended up with:

No Plans Weekend

Attempting a relaxing weekend at home. Let's see how that works out. So much work last week and when I'm home my son is literally climbing all over me for attention.
On the work side, I'm getting more comfortable taking more creative risks with what I'm delivering to clients, which is more fun for me. Here's an example:

Happy Bastille Day

So after making the same 3 hour drive 4 times in 4 days (Friday, Sunday & twice on Monday) what I want now is a weekend at home and a nap.
More on the exciting weekend later, but I am tired and the baby is sleeping on me, so I think I'm done for the night.
Now here's to french independence:

Trip to Toga 1

So we went up to Saratoga for the holiday weekend. It was great to see family:

And we had a "meet the new baby" picnic which was a lot of fun.
Just before we left we had some family pictures taken by a friend (and professional photographer). She was great, rescheduling the first time because of rain and then shooting in the rain the second time. Some of the pictures are up on her blog. Toss up between these two for my current favorite, though really they're all great.

Well, I have to get up early and go to work tomorrow, so that's it for now.

Speedy Week

Wow, the last week went fast. Hopefully the summer will slow down soon so I can enjoy some of it.
Last weekend was an SCA event, rain forced the fighting indoors. I did very well, actually won the tournament. Day started out with fights like this:

And as the day went on the fights got longer, better opponents. I fought through Master Wolfstan the Unshod and Sir Murdoc Bayne, fights I don't usually win. Then I was in the finals and took two fights there to win the tournament:

Maybe it is a harbinger of good things if I can keep up my physical raining and get to some more fighter practices.
July is going to bring a ton of work, mostly instruction, but it will mean a chance to kind of play executive producer on some documentary projects. Hopefully I can get some traction on some personal stuff too. Do some writing, start some editing and finish at least one short film. Time will tell.

#@%!*

Okay, my productive work day turned ugly when as I was plugging in my laptop to do some dual computer work (logging footage on one while editing on the other) my knee hit the USB cable to an external hard drive, pulled it to the floor and caused what sounds like a "head crash" or dead drive. On the plus side the drive had 1 active project on it, with the footage on that one on another computer at the client's site, and archives of past work projects. So I may have done some damage to my demo reel (though I think I have some of that on a drive at another site) but I didn't loose anything of sentimental value. Just a 500GB drive and the 2 freak-out hours I spent trying to retrieve the data.
But I did get some other projects out the door:


Oh well, deep breath and try to get some work done tomorrow. Bonus, I got my HD Handi-cam working. It shoots 1080 to a SD card, so I'm guessing from now on the home movies won't all be shot on the digital still camera. Here's my test movie:

Bitter Strawberries

So we have a wooden barrel planter at the top of our driveway with a strawberry plant in it. Last year we lost about half the crop to birds, deer and squirrels. So this year we've put a net cover over it, it seems to be working as the first berries are ripening. It's nice to see my son picking the fresh berries and eating them, though I'm not getting many berries for myself. Also, the weather has been great and my son has taken to running off to play with the neighborhood kids. It makes me happy we got his house.

Okay funny story. We were out shopping Sunday and as we arrived at a store I took our son in while my wife got our daughter out of the car. After about 5 minutes in the store, no wife and daughter. So we looked back outside to see the driver's door open, a clear sign of a diaper change in progress. Then my phone started ringing, it was my wife calling for help. My son and I ran out into the parking lot to discover a half changed baby and my wife with splattered poop on her shirt. Apparently she had started changing the diaper after "one push of poop" and was surprised but a stream of projectile poop from the second push. And without the diaper, well, she got sprayed. Nothing I had ever seen or heard of before. On the up side; newborn breastfed baby poop has almost no scent, we had a shirt in the car we were going to return (too small for me, but big enough for the wife) so we had a change of clothes and finally it wasn't me that got sprayed.
On a totally different note, I'm trying to figure something out. I am very busy production-wise right now, but when I see other companies or individuals get work locally it makes me mad. It's not that I need more work right now, but I guess I still want a shot at every job I see. It has made me want to focus on getting production work lined up for the summer, hopefully get a short film done too. Or at least widen my network of contacts so I know more of what's going on around here. It's that or try and pick up some distance editing jobs from NYC. Actually that's not a bad idea either.
More later, should be video posts of completed work next time as I'm going to take tomorrow as a work day.

Establishing a Routine

NOTE: edited to add sound to movie

Well, we're a family of four now and I think that for the time being we're getting a rough schedule worked out. Something that will be blown apart when my wife goes back to work this fall.
But for now I'm back to work, old school. Which means video shoots on nights and weekends and editing during the day. This last weekend it was a Bar Mitzvah where I discovered that today's 13 year olds dance like 5 years olds play soccer, in a big clump that would be much more fun if they knew what they were doing. Speaking of soccer, I'm going to be an assistant coach on my son's team this fall. So I'll be helping the 4 & 5 year olds to not clump so much. And the extra running around should be good for my son, who seems to have extra energy reserves now that we're up to two kids. Here's the second half of the third song in a four song dance routine he did tonight:

Not to be out done, here's his two week (okay 13 day) old sister in one of her daily tummy time sessions:

I have a feeling that my wife and I will really have our hands full in a few months. But for now I'm going to try and get as much work done as possible. I'll post some as pieces are finished.

A Weekend at Home

We had a nice weekend at home. My brother came to visit. He was a great help easing my son over the transition to having his sister at home. That's the on going goal, to establish a stable routine so that everything goes smoothly between the new siblings.
Along those lines it was back to after school play-dates with my son's friends.
Today we went to Iron Kettle Farms. A nice little place that's a very popular source of pumpkins in the fall. In the spring they sell flowers and such, but you can still visit the animals and play on the wooden vehicles. We got "spoken" to twice, once about the kids getting on top of a wooden plane, though that did produce a nice picture. And then for playing with the engineless train. It was on tracks and my son was pushing the other kids around in it. That go the train forklifted away to the barn. But it was still a fun day.
Tomorrow I'm going to try and get some production work done, though my desire to rush back to the SCA is still low, I really want to get back to editing especially with the new computer

Ready to get Out

Okay. I'm ready to get out of the hospital and back to trying to get a summer schedule put together, as is my son. He may have been a bit tired, but tonight was the first time he wasn't really okay going home with me and his mom.
As far as the production schedule, I'm confident that I can handle editing over the summer, it's the instruction and production shoots that I'm worried about. Well, I guess time will tell how things work out. But it would be nice to make enough money over the summer to finish the upgrade to an HD production suite and still have time for the family.
My thinking is that the HD equipment looks like it will be vital in the near future, but I still want to have time for this:

Baby 2 Day 2

Another night in he hospital. Going to try to get some work done tomorrow, just a little.
Baby & mom are still doing well.

New Baby

So, we are now a family of four.
6/02/09 - 5:28 pm

Daughter #1
6 pounds 4 ounces
19 1/2 inches

So it's at least one night in the hospital for me, probably 2-3 for mom and baby. Then we'll see how much I'm going to be able to do (and want to do) as far as production and SCA goes with the new family size.

And in closing, big brother and little sister:

Back to Blogging pt. 2

Okay. I can't believe it's been a month since I've written anything on here. I'm going to start trying to get back to posting here. Things are going to get crazy, but I think that getting back to writing out what's going on and what I'm aiming for will help me get more done during what is shaping up to be a craziest summer ever. New baby tomorrow. As much production work from BU as I want. More opportunities with the city shaping up. And a new workout routine and practice regime to put us in shape to make a serious run a crown tourney in October.
More tomorrow, hopefully . . .

Turn down the heat please

Okay, where did this heat wave come from and when's it going away? I was outside Saturday at an SCA event and it totally destroyed me. And seriously dented my confidence about crown tournament. I'm considering calling in sick to work to get in an extra practice this week. Mmm, perhaps not a thought I should post on the internet.
On the production side, the more I work that harder it is to eat well, or perhaps the easier it is to eat poorly. I'm going to try and fix that over then next couple weeks, or at least cut out the fast food. I'd skip the soda to, but I'm tired and as previously mentioned it's too hot for tea. However, here's my first editing project for my newest client:

And finally, here's a quick video of my son and his cousin at the Discovery Center:

Update Time

Time to upgrade my editing suite. I found a nice looking tutorial on-line, but I couldn't do it because it needed a more recent version of Motion to do it.
On the plus side, I'm getting enough production work right now that I can justify buying the upgrade. Plus I'd like to invest in some hardware upgrades as well: an HD deck for logging tapes, a blue-ray burner (now that the HD disk war is over), a new faster computer (to reduce the load on the laptop and aid in multitasking) and eventually a new camera (though I really don't need one right now)
On the down side, I'm so tired. I'm trying to squeeze in all the work I can now, because as fast as it's all shown up it could all dry up in a couple of months.

And now, bubble fun:

Music Video

So last week I got footage for a music video to edit. I cut together two versions. One that was kind of a story, which is what they said they wanted. And a second version which was a hodgepodge of effects with no real theme, just something to give them an idea of what was possible. After review they said they'd like a third video, one with a story but more effects. Like Joey from Friends would say: "Put your hand together."
It's okay though, more work is more billable hours, its just that my schedule is getting full. It's good, but with the baby 2 months away I'm a bit nervous about staying on deadlines. And I might be picking up a new big client, but more on that if it happens so I don't jinx it. When it rains . . . well, if it gets too much I could always hire an assistant.

Anyway, here are the two videos:




And now, my son doing a puppet show for his mommy. It's a little morbid, if you can't understand him the puppets are saying: "You die!", "No, you die!" back and forth.

Learning, Always Learning

So, I decided to try and tackle learning Apple's Motion software. The program in Final Cut Studio that I haven't really seen a use for in my production projects to this point. But over the weekend a friend was walking my through some things he was working on and I decided that knowing how to use Motion would, at the very least, be a good back burner skill. So, I tried out some basic tutorials, with moderate success, and then tried a basic (very basic) rotoscoping project based on this tutorial which I found off a blog about the program. And while the matting is much easier in Motion, I still have much better success keying in Final Cut.
Anyway, here's the movie I was playing with. It's very rough and has no visual effects on the second half, mostly because it takes a long time to rotoscope in the effect (one frame at a time) and I have actual work that needs to be done. Also, I feel like I'm ready to move on to the next tutorial now, thanks.

Turtle Song

Laser Gun Fight

Happy Square Root Day

03.03.09, you only get a couple of these each century. It's also my son's 4th birthday. So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
The conversations that are sticking with me from the birthday party are the ones about the activities the other kids are involved in. Is 3 too early for ice skating lessons, dance, gymnastics or soccer? The stories you hear about the standouts in most fields involve becoming dedicated at a VERY early age, but on the flip side there's the older brother of one of my son's friends who at 9 has "hung up the skates and retired from hockey." I guess providing the opportunity is okay, as long as you don't push too hard, but then you run the risk of a kid just siting and not participating or getting burned out on an activity that they could be good at later. Tough choices, still I we are thinking about a soccer league for our son this summer / fall.

No pictures or video of party yet.

Poster Contest

So tonight I found this contest on the Internet. It's hard for me to believe that the Simpsons have been on TV for 20 years, makes me feel old.
The weekend was full of birthday stuff for my son, cleaning Friday followed by the party Saturday. It went very well again his year, lots of fun & lots of people. We even had a few neighbors over, which is nice. 4 years in the house and just now having them over. Then Saturday night and Sunday were full of what I can only assume was food poisoning from an egg salad submarine. The up side is that I wasn't sick with anything long lasting and I was the only one who ate the sandwich. The down side was, well the effects of food poisoning. I'll do an actual birthday post tomorrow on the actual birthday.

Painting Project

The painting of the flower fairy decorative windows got started last night. I got one fairy done in about an hour and a half. By my estimate it will take about 18 fairies to fill the 3 windows and then separate backgrounds for the windows will need to be painted. So with 15 weeks until the due date, it's going to be a little tight to get the project done before the baby arrives. But it's not a hard deadline, so if the baby's early or I'm late it should be fine. Anyway, here's an idea of how much space is left on each window, or how big the fairies will be on the windows.

Fighting Weekend

So Saturday was a full day demo at the Ice Festival in Scranton and Sunday was a regional fighter practice in Syracuse. I don't know how the Ice Festival was, as I spent the entire time fighting at the demo. But my wife and son walked around and they said it was small but the ice sculptures were nice. And I got to be in the local Scranton papers the next day. I've put up one of the picture's here, where I'm giving a flower to a particularly blood thirsty girl. I'd taken (cut off) one of my opponent's arms, so in keeping with SCA convention, he dropped his shield. I asked the crowd if I too should drop my shield, sometimes seen as the chivalrous thing to do, and the little 4 year old girl yelled "Keep your shield", the prudent choice. I won the fight and gave her a fake flower we had to hand out to on lookers. Overall a nice Valentine's Day.
My elbow was killing my Saturday night, but fighting on Sunday seems to have mostly fixed it. That's my second injury a full day of fighting has fixed, the first one being a badly wrenched back a few years ago. I was able to stay on my exercise schedule on Monday, so it looks like just some lingering pain, not a serious impairment.


So yesterday starts the cleaning for my son's birthday party. YEAH! Nothing like a two week cleaning schedule to make things fun. Plus I still need to start the trivia DVD for the party.
And we go a new digital camera over the weekend. To replace the one with the non-functional LCD screen. And I got to try it out last night when my son started putting stickers on my wife's back while she was watching TV. After a few pictures I tried to test out the video function and got the following reaction: he says "Don't do a video of me" then takes the camera and puts it back in it's case. I'd already started the recording though, so here's what I got:

Aftermath of new electronics

So the new television yielded a BIG box and a TON of packing foam, formed into pieces not the loose peanut variety. My son has just about gotten all of the fun out of them, without passing the excessive mess line. I took some video of him and discovered that the LCD on the back of the digital camera is cracked and nonfunctional. So I shot the movies with a kind of point and hope approach. Time for a new camera, because I'll be shocked if you can replace teh LCD screen for less than buying a new camera.
Day 1 - short video:

Day 2 - LONG video

New TV

My new television showed up on Friday. Of course working 33 hours over the weekend resulted in little time to enjoy it. But yesterday my son and I spent a little time relaxing on the couch and watching the new television. It's great, like being at a movie theater. Now I just need to finish hooking up the speakers and I'll be set.
I started training for crown, and discovered I'm much farther from in fighting shape that I though I was. I went to a large tournament in New Hampshire a few weeks ago and my endurance was okay, but I'm not sure I was doing as well as I need to against the top level of fighters. And that's who (in theory) I'll need to beat to win crown. Well, there's an event at the end of March in New Jersey that I think I will use as my next benchmark.
On a work note, I may have a line on a job running camera for a local minor league baseball team over the summer, but I'm not sure how that will work with my SCA plans. Winning crown comes with certain implied responsibilities, one of which is activity level. More production work is more money, which is good, but with a new baby scheduling may be difficult, after my wife's maternity leave is over that is. And I'd really like to get into running camera for sports teams, but baseball games are all the time and I think it's the weekday afternoon games that will end up giving me problems. I wonder if they have a cameraman rotation, or if they expect you for every game. I guess I'll try and get the job and then find out.
I'm sure everything will work out, I guess I just want too many things and I'm not really willing to choose which one to give up on. It's very disressing, like trying to walk around with 3-D glasses on.

Superbowl

Superbowl was great. Full day of fun & games with another great championship game. The end was a bit disappointing. I am a proponent of "if you need a last second play to win, then you had other problems", like not being able to stop a three man rush from getting to your quarterback in the Superbowl. But the game as a whole was great, and like last year really picked up in the second half. Here's my son at halftime:

I'm going to try and do an SCA update later this week, but I've got an all weekend job I've got to prep from so we'll see.

Paint Test

Here's the paint test for how we're thinking of decoration the new baby's room. I've got some larger wooden windows that I'll paint and then mount to the wall. Perhaps with some sort of back-lighting system and a some fake flowers in the space between the glass and the wall, to create more depth. We'll see.

Well, this weekend is the Superbowl. Here's hoping it's a close/high-scoring game, that will be exciting. Since I don't have a horse in the race, I let my son pick who we will be rooting for. GO STEALERS! Off to my brother's house to watch the game.

Snowed In

Snow storm this morning turned into an ice storm this afternoon. So it looks like I'm in for the night. I think I'll tackle a project, either doing the polish edits and foley work on my short film or do some painting on the test piece of glass to plan the decoration for the new baby's room. If it's the painting I'll post pictures of the progress.

On another topic, I found this video with some ideas we're going to try to incorporate into our family finical strategy.

Busy, busy, busy

Last week was very busy and the next two look to be just as packed. But I did get a mostly relaxing weekend at home, which I won't see again until the middle of February. Work last week was a rush job putting together a video to run during an inauguration party (up on my YouTube account), getting the score together for my short film, getting ready for the official presentation for the launch of the STAP media campaign, and helping a friend get a demo reel together so he can try and get a job at a local television station.
On the SCA side, I went to two practices last week. A bit closer to what I'll need to be doing for crown training, just different practices (need more challenging opponents). BIG tournament this Saturday, that will be a good measure of where I'm at training-wise.
Finally, we started the longest craft project ever. Okay a small exaggeration, the project was to excavate a plastic Brachiosaurus skeleton from a "plaster block" using a plastic knife-hammer and a small paintbrush. The "plaster block" could be better described as a brick. And the "tools" you were supplied with would be great if you were proceeding at a paleontological pace (SLOW) but if you were an actual child then the "tools" were mostly inadequate. After about 6 hours of work time, spread over 2 days, produced the pieces of the skeleton and a brick sized pile of dust spread over WAY too big an area. But we do now have a completed Brachisaurus skeleton and know that next time we should just buy the loose pieces to assemble, as that's what my son really wanted to do anyway. Here's a little video of the start and end of the project.

You want how much for that?

Okay, so I was putting aside money to get a new TV. Our 10 year old CRT is showing all the signs of being about to die. Well, the only retailer locally that sells the TV I want is Circuit City. And, assuming you're not living under a rock, you will have heard that Circuit City has gone into liquidation. So I figured I should stop by this morning and see what the situation looked like. It looked like this: Price of the TV goes up 11.7% and then there's a 10% discount. So the price has gone up due to liquidation, as was to be expected. Plus there was a HUGE line of people there to take advantage of the "deals". My reaction was to go home, find a good on-line retailer and buy the TV for 25% off the original price. Perhaps I'll spend my savings on a Blue-Ray player.

Today is the NFC and AFC championship games, and the time at home watching the games turned into cleaning up the last of the holiday decorations hanging around the house which turned into this:

I don't think that he's completely come down from the high of christmas presents. Well, 38 days until his birthday party and he picked out the theme today: Transformers (huge surprise there). I guess I should start thinking about the trivia DVD soon. Mostly thinking up the questions and drawing out the flow chart for how the game will work. I have some improvements in mind from last year, though that game did work pretty well.

Finally, here's a video of my son playing a puzzle game on the PBS kids web site. He's getting quite good at using the touch pad. Perhaps I should think about getting him a little mac book that he can fill up with his movies and such. You know, so that he's not tying up my editing laptop. Though my wife would most likely be fairly mad if the 3 year old got a laptop before she does.

That's all for now, and it looks like an Arizona vs. Pitsburgh Superbowl in two weeks (interpection returned for touchdown in the 4th quarter).

Where did the week go?

Okay, I've been meaning to post about stuff all week. And I haven't even had time to put the pictures and video on my computer. So, I'll talk about work instead. I've just finished a video project for the Southern Tier AIDS Program's 25th anniversary media campaign. It's basically interviews that they're going to incorporate into their new web site for fund raising purposes. I've uploaded most of them to my youtube account as a playlist. Here's one I think turned out fairly well:


Well, it looks like the next moth is going to be fairly work heavy. But my hope is to get a short film done by the end of February. I am getting the score done for "Playing the Fool" next week, then that goes out to festivals. And I need to get a feature script done enough that I can get help with it from an editor.

Oh, well. At this point I just want direct a feature. Nothing epic, just something that runs about 90 minutes. I've got about 2/3 of a script for one done and an idea for another that I just have no idea how to start writing. The video contests (back in November) got me moving back in this direction. So let's say the goals are short film 1 is done and out to festivals by February 16. Second short film done by April 15. Feature at least in pre-production my May 2010.

That is if I don't get this job and move to Australia for 6 months.

Taking a Squire

So this is going to be a mostly SCA post. At Kingdom 12th night I took my first squire. This is something that I can do since my knighting in August. The squire/knight relationship is going to be interesting, its somewhere between teacher, mentor and advocate. It's tough to explain if you aren't familiar with how the SCA works, and if you are then I'm sure you'll have you're own idea of what being a squire means. I didn't have a lot of time with my knight, though I did have a number of surrogates, as a result I'm kind of modeling what I want the relationship to be off a number of influences. However, I realized that at the end of the day my expectations may be too high when taking my new squire's oath of fealty one of the things I responded with was "I won't ask anything of you I wouldn't do myself" which also means I may end up expecting my level of commitment and dedication from someone else, and I'm not sure if that's fair but I think that is what's going to happen.
For regalia I've decided to go with the traditional red belt, a silver squire's chain (more common in AEthelmearc than it was in Atlantia, but something I'm comfortable with), a spear (something ha my knight did with his squires that I really liked), my wife is making a fighting tunic and wanted to continue the tradition of giving the new squire's lady amber (something my knight did that she really liked) and finally I let him be gifted with sliver spurs (something that I hadn't considered, but am okay with). All things that are now kind of set as what I'll do for future squires. And now I know how to make a spear and a chain necklace. It was funny, while I was making the chain for my squire my son became interested in the links and wanted his own chain, so I made a shorter one for him, he wore it for about half the time we were at 12th night.
So SCA goal for this year is the same as the last two years, win the next crown tournament. There's 15 weeks until crown tournament. That should give me 3 weeks to finish general conditioning, then 6 weeks of strength work and fighting basics and finally 6 weeks of speed and conditioning work with as much fighting as I can get. I think I'll be buying a heavier kettlebell next week, it'll also help with my son's increasing weight and continuing insistence that he still needs to be carried and then falls asleep.
And now for those of you who need more pictures of my son:

Happy New Year

Well, we took a nice trip to NC to visit friends for New Years. It was great except for dealing with the airlines. They tried to leave us in Atlanta on the way back. Long story, but it worked out with some help from some great friends up here. Basically what happened was they cancelled our flight due to "weather" and 1)wouldn't refund us our money, 2) won't cover a hotel stay for the night, 3)wouldn't rebook us on anther airline (all of whom had flights back to Syracuse) and 4) couldn't rebook us to an airport outside of a 100 mile radius of our original destination. Well, I managed to get the radius expanded by about 30 miles and we flew back into Scranton. Plus, a friend came down and got us while the friends we'd left our car with in Syracuse drove our car back to our house for us. No fun, but it could have been worse. But no time for lounging, it's right back to work.
I'm going to set some goals for the New Year, but I guess I'll have to get to that later. For now I'll leave with this movie of my son, obviously the overwhelming crush of presents that christmas brought has worn off.