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.