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.