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.

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.

Why is the snow burning my face?

So we went sledding yesterday. The first pass was not so much fun or my son. Here's a picture of us before our first run. It's how we went sledding in our backyard last year. But this time we went to a bigger hill and there was fresh powder, the result was a lot snow spraying up in his face. He was very unhappy about it. So the second run, I went down by myself, face first in the sled. No snow in my face, so my son wanted to tray again that way, with horrible results as can be seen in this video.

At this point my son was ready to go home, but I talked in him to one more run, with me sitting in front to black the snow. This went much better and we ended up sledding for about half an hour, or until he was to tired to walk up the hill and I was to tired to carry him up. After we got home we ended up playing outside with the neighbor kids. Then coming inside for some Sunday football. We put on our jerseys, my son's is a Dolphins jersey (#23 RB Ronnie Brown) that was an early christmas present from nana and papa and mine is my jersey from high school.

On a football note I have just discovered that all the Sunday night games on NBC and all the Thursday games on the NFL Network are simultaneously broadcast on the internet. That's right, at the same time. Actually the internet broadcast is better, because it will let you cut between 5 different camera shots of the game. What I want to know is why nobody told be about this earlier. I could have been watching lots more football. Well, at least I got to see a good game last night (good being defined by an exciting finish and the Panthers loosing).

Well, more later. As we're down to 3 days until Santa.

The only thing worse than a diet . . .

. . . is a diet that works. I'm in a weight loss contest with my brothers and I've started my secret diet for the last three weeks. I hate the diet, but I'm dropping weight too fast to justify anything else. Why can't exercise have this effect?

I've entered another video contest, but they haven't posted the video yet. So, I'll post the direct link when it's up.

And finally, two pictures of my son. One in normal clothes and one in his current superhero phase.

Halloween Week

So this week is going to be mostly Halloween prep.

Tonight was Pumpkin carving. I carved an Optimus Prime for my son and a Megatron for myself, as my son gets to pick what goes on the pumpkins. So this years theme is Transformers. The carving was interesting, because my son lost interest when we got to the pumpkin gut scooping, a little too messy for him. And his excitement about watching someone else carve a pumpkin was understandably low, and since he's three he's not allowed much unsupervised knife use nor is he ready to carve a transformer face into a pumpkin. So there was some friction over him not wanting to be a part of the family pumpkin carving. In the end a Halloween episode of Go, Diego, Go! that could be watched from the carving table solved most of the problems.
So now we have to get ready for Friday, which is his day to bring snack to pre-school, and then perhaps three rounds of trick-or-treating. There will be piles of candy by the time we're done, but not for snack at pre-school, they sent home a note asking us not to send in candy for the class.

On a side note, my goal is to enter 1 web video contest a week for the next 4 weeks. Updates here as a meet or miss that goal.