Snow Storm & Short Film

We got our first snow storm of the winter yesterday. Now that the shoveling is done and the snow is sticking around it should make for a fun weekend.
We went sledding this afternoon, we shot some video which I'll try to get up later. I think we need another sled though. Two kids, two sleds.
Tomorrow starts the mommy and daughter swim lessons. I think Drake and I will go sledding while they are swimming. Should be fun all around.


Also, I finally got a cut of my short film out to a festival, we'll see if it gets in. Lots of other film projects on the horizon. I'm feeling motivated to get moving on some personal projects. Time will tell.
Here's the trailer for the short film that is going out:

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.

Winter Wonderland

Well, just in time we're getting some good snow for christmas. And it looks like its going to stay cold enough for it to stick. Maybe some sledding tomorrow. The holiday festivities are beginning, my wife's brother and his family visited today (more on that later), we went to a christmas party hosted by one of my wife's colleges and we finally got pictures for our holiday cards done (so late that they're going to be New Year's cards this year).
So now it's time for a cozy night at home with some sort of mini-marathon of television shows.

Finally, I was impressed by my son's restrain today. With the visit of my brother-in-law's family we did a mini-present exchange. And though he did ask if he could continue opening the rest of his presents under the tree, only had to be told once that we were waiting until christmas day to open the rest of our presents. That being said, he has also developed his own victory dance. It's funny but also vaguely taunting with it's usual accompaniment of either "See I told you. I was right, Uh huh, uh huh, huh huh." or "I beat you, I win. Uh huh, uh huh, huh huh." Here's two movies one with him celebrating making it trough a snow tunnel (no taunting on that one) and one after winning the race upstairs at bedtime (some taunting on that one):

Still Winter, Thanks

We had a nice snow yesterday that resulted in work getting canceled and also has me thinking of skipping SCA practice this week (long drive + dicey roads). But it did given me a chance to get ahead on some production work, play in the snow and watch a movie.
We also spent about a hour playing the snow as a family; made a snowman and went sledding in the back yard.
I guess February is going to have a relaxing end. And then it's on to serious work and training as March comes in like a lion.

The movie we watched was Crash. Overall it was a good movie and would be an interesting conversation piece. But I think as a whole the movie tried too hard to connect too many people and ended up feeling a little artificial as a result. I am big fan of events drawing diverse characters together, like Thirteen Conversations About One Thing or 11:14 or even Traffic. But in this case there was no event to link the the characters, as in Conversations or 11:14, but more of a theme like Traffic. Both Crash and Traffic have serious social themes, racism and drug abuse respectively, but while Traffic wove a tapistry of characters together into one story whose themes were expressed through use of lighting and color, Crash felt like it had scenes more set up to talk to the audience then to create a narrative, and used conicendience to force the viewer to look at themselves rather than organically reaching a new understanding, which I think would have been more powerful.
End result: enjoyable, important, but could have been better and done more.
3 of 5 stars.