Biz-Z

Hello faithful readers. This is just a quick note to let you know I'm swamped with work this week and probably won't be writing a formal blog entry for a few more days. I haven't forgotten about you; I just really need to concentrate on making some deadlines right now. We had a fun weekend that I can't wait to tell you about. I've got some photos to post and the whole works. Stay tuned.

Reflective

Guess where we found ourselves again over the weekend--in Minnesota, of course, celebrating at our final wedding of the year. This time it was one of R's friends from college getting married. We spent both nights at a hotel in downtown St. Paul, a few blocks from where I used to work. Fall is a few steps ahead out there; the city seemed notably quiet and gray. We didn't see any family over the weekend. Ironically, R's sister was waiting for us here on the east coast, and her mother is flying out tomorrow to visit for a few days. Anyway, I had a lot of fun at the wedding reception. We ate a lot, drank a lot, and danced up a storm. My stomach didn't even give me problems until the skyway walk back. You can bet it felt good to plop down on the Sleep Number bed that night. Yeah, I said Sleep Number. I couldn't decide how firm I wanted it, so I set my side of the mattress to 50. That's pretty typical of my middle-of-the-road personality.

My employer bought a popcorn machine--one of those big, carnival-style popcorn machines--and they set it up in our break room. I don't think they thought it all the way through, however. There's been a huge mess of popcorn crumbs on the floor every day since.

Speaking of work, I've been about as busy as the poor janitor who needs to sweep up all of those crumbs. I think I'm developing some good habits on this job, like how to focus, for example. There's always a commotion going on around me (remember how the low cube walls are supposed to facilitate communication?), but I'm getting better at tuning it out. With having so many things to do and time always against me, I don't have a choice but to concentrate on the task at hand. The days speed by, which I guess is good and bad.

I was thinking the other day about how the older you get, the tougher life gets and the more you appreciate the little things, like a cup of coffee at your desk or a walk in the woods or relaxing with your spouse on the couch. When you're young, you don't believe those things will ever be enough. And maybe I'm not old enough yet to not fully appreciate them either, but I see this starting to take form. Maybe some of the excitement of living drops out and the little things stand out more in their new relativity. Maybe the excitement of new experiences is eventually passed on to the next generation and the familiar is welcomed by weary parents. No, I'm not done living yet. I'm just appreciating free time and thinking about what it might be like to one day be a father. Don't read to far into that statement. I'm not hinting at anything. Seriously.

Trailer time

Wow. Talk about an exciting week on Jeblog. I have another video to share with you. This time it's the trailer for the movie on which I worked over the summer. It can be seen here:

http://www.jackofclubsmovie.com

Yes, the card-playing metaphors in the narration are a bit cheesy, but doesn't the crispness of the lighting look nice? This should be a bright, colorful kids film. It was a lot of fun to make, and it might be a lot of fun to watch, hopefully for adults as well as kids, although I give you no guarantees.

R and I were at the director and his fiancée’s condo last night for a dinner party. That guy really knows how to tell a story. He's an exciting guy to listen to, and he has this way of generating buzz for this projects. According to him, there are a total of five premieres planned for the movie in April 2007. One of them will be a formal event with a lot of Wilmington's movers and shakers in attendance because of an appearance by one of Delaware's senators in the movie. I'm sure they'll all be driven to tears by my masterful performance as a customer in a tuxedo shop.

That's all I have time for right now, folks. We need to run up to the airport to pick up my sister-in-law who will be staying with us for a while. She will be our first guest since moving to Wilmington. It could be fun to have somebody here who we can show around a bit.

PC vs. Me

Without any further ado I am finally posting my new web video. After all the build up I’ve provided you with over the past month and a half, you’re probably expecting the next Lord of the Rings. Well, please set your expectations a bit lower. This is a modest little movie, the first I made specifically for the web.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the future of television and home video lies on the Internet; the idea of needing a disc to watch a movie is already starting to seem old fashioned. Everything is changing: marketing, distribution, the studio system. I’m excited to witness this merging of technology and to be able to participate, at least a little bit, in such an early stage of the transition.

I also want to take this opportunity to plug the band whose music you can hear in my video. They are a group consisting of my brother, my cousin, and my uncle; and they call themselves EmptyGym (one word, not two). This marks my first collaboration with them and definitely not my last. Having access to terrific-sounding, royalty free music for my movies is a treat. I hope they keep up the good work.

That's what I'm talking about

By the way, this is my 50th post since joining Blogger.com in May. I'd like to thank all of my loyal readers! Here's to you, Matt.

Home Dep-no

The above title is a play on Home Depot, in case that's not clear. It sounded good in my head, but I guess it didn't translate to text very well. The alternative title to this entry was going to be "We fought the garage door opener, and the garage door opener won," but since we were in fact successful at installing our garage door opener over the weekend, I guess such a title does not apply. That doesn't mean it wasn't a challenge. It took us about 7 hours and included several trips to the dreaded Home Depot. I have yet to develop a fondness for working on home maintenance projects, although I do enjoy the satisfaction of completing them. R and I make a good team. She's got the brains, and I've got the brawn (well, at least out of the two of us).

Speaking of the brains of this operation, she's going to be out of town again on Tuesday through Friday of this week. There will be no steak this time, but I've got a hamburger planned that's gonna kill me (although not literally, I hope). And as long as my job doesn't steal the nights from me, I plan to get some editing done, so keep your eyes open. I managed to get rested up over the weekend, and I'm feeling ultra amibitious.

Chester cheesesteak

My boss took me out for my first official cheesesteak on Thursday. I've had similar sandwiches at Subway and Quizno's, but I hadn't tried the real thing out here yet. Of course there has been some debate as to whether or not yesterday's sandwich qualifies as the "real thing" because it was actually made in Chester, PA and not Philadelphia. My coworkers further qualified that a cheesesteak needs to be eaten at 2am after a night of heavy drinking (that's one requirement that would be hard to fulfill during the work day) and it should be made at a place that refuses to serve you if you order it wrong. My boss is already talking about how we are going to drive into the city for our next cheesesteak. That's the plan as long as in the meantime we don't die of heart attacks from the first one.

Another weekend, another wedding in Minnesota

R picked me up from work on Friday, and we hopped on a jet plane bound for our home land. We spent that night and the following morning visiting R's mom, who was then kind enough to take us on a tour of our old neighborhood in St. Paul before dropping us off at my cousin's wedding. It was a very nice wedding and equally nice reception at the luxurious St. Paul Hotel, where R and I spent Saturday night. The next morning we grabbed breakfast with my parents and made our way up the 26th mile marker of the Twin Cities Marathon to watch R's good friend E pass by -- way to go E! We also met up with her and her family at the end of the race to hang out for a bit. Next, we had coffee with my friend L (are you getting tired of all these initials yet?), who later brought us to the airport. Yes, the weekend went by in a flash, but, man, it was great to see everybody we saw, and we really enjoyed the fall weather. Minnesota can be an attractive place to be when the weather is right.

Those of you still waiting to see my new online video, hang in there. I'm disappointed to say the magazine decided not to use it for their ad campaign. I might still work with them on another project, but the magazine staff "would like to have more say on the message that is going out there." Their response was pretty positive otherwise. In other words, they seemed to like the video, but it was not what they were looking for. That means I'm free to release it to the world on my own, albeit without the wide distribution it would have had through the magazine. I'll need to remove the magazine references from it before I post it on YouTube, so give me a weekend or so to do that. You'll be seeing it soon. I've also had some rejuvenated enthusiasm over the "Wrong Number" project during the last few days, so I hope to get that wrapped up relatively soon as well, although I know I've said that before. None of these projects require much time, but lately it's been difficult to find any time at all to dedicate to my creative life. Yesterday I didn't get home from work until 9:00pm! It also doesn't help that I'm addicted to a few TV shows (by the way, Lost starts up again tomorrow night).