T'giving

Hello, friends and family. Happy Thanksgiving 2007 to you. This was a rather unusual one for me as it is the first one I've spent alone. But please don't feel sorry for me. It was my own choice, and I don't have any regrets. I did get to see my lovely wife for a little bit this morning when I drove her to airport (at 3:30 am!). As I alluded in my last entry, she is visiting her sister, who is five months pregnant and living in the country of Honduras. R and I are looking forward to becoming an aunt and uncle to this new person when he or she arrives. It was sweet of R to make the trip down there to check in on her sis and to hand-deliver a big pregnancy care package. She's also hoping to find some time for the beach and to possibly see some Mayan ruins. R is adventurous like that. I'm more the type who likes to relax at home... as if you didn't know that already. The idea of eating my mom's turkey dinner today was appealing too, but I just couldn't deal with the hassle of travel right now. We'll be in Minnesota for a week at the end of December, and I'm sure I'll eat enough then to make up for missing this one.

My meal today was a steak off the grill, a salad, a potato, and some cranberries (see, I got into the spirit). I also enjoyed a jog, some editing time, and a movie. I've got a series of movies lined up for the next few nights that know R doesn't mind missing. Tonight, it was the ultra-bloody 300. Tomorrow, it's the widely-considered-scariest-movie-of-all-time, The Exorcist, which I somehow never managed to see up until this point of my life. And finally, on Saturday, I'm thinking it's gonna be Fire Walk With Me because I'm jonesing for some Twin Peaks but holding out until Christmas for the new DVD box set. Plus, it's going to sound killer on our new sound system.

Speaking of electronics, I am dedicating some effort this week to purchasing a new video camera. This is not an easy task for me since the camera I want is worth more than the current value of my car. All of the money I made from my video work during the last year (14 paid gigs in total) amounts to a little over half the cost. Not only that: buying a camera will end up snowballing into a bunch of other expenses -- a new case, a new wide-angle lens, an extra battery, etc -- all of which are of a professional grade and thus more expensive than I am used to. If I keep up the video work, a new camera should eventually pay for itself, but I still have to wonder if this particular one is more than I need right now. Am I ready to make the jump to HD, even though my current computer won't even be capable of editing it? (I'll have to shoot in standard definition mode until I upgrade -- oh yeah, there's another thing to buy, a new computer.) Even in standard definition though, with 3 CCDs, this camera will shoot better looking footage than I'm shooting now. It's like the difference between using a point-and-shoot versus an SLR in the world of still cameras. The harsh reality of the situation is, if I want to be taken seriously as a videographer, the Sony Handycam I've been using has got to go (or at least become my backup).

I should be thinking about gift ideas for everybody else, not myself. I can't believe the Christmas season is already here. I'm dreading the crowds this year; mall traffic is especially horrendous in Delaware. The lack of sales tax here draws people from all of the neighboring states. I'll make it my goal to do as much shopping as possible online.

Man, this is more than I was planning to write. I guess being alone today has left me loquacious. I have to remember the week is not done yet -- I need to work tomorrow. Time for bedo.

Another awesomely average weekend

The weekend has come and gone. This was another one spent in and around the area. Maybe you aren't interested in reading about an average weekend, so skip this if you want. I personally like to have a record of this stuff, and for that reason I will continue.

On Friday night we attended a surprise 30th birthday party for a friend, Chris, who you might know from his appearances as a host of four of the Bud Light videos. The party was a good time. I spent part of it shooting video that I will be editing down as a gift for the dude. Chris has done a lot for me upon moving to Wilmington, including getting me the connections I have with Out & About magazine. He does IT work for a few different companies and organizations around town, so he might throw me some additional web video work in the future. I look forward to the opportunities.

After Frisbee on Saturday, R and I drove up to Philly to visit Calumet Photographic, where I drooled over the video camera I've had my eye on, and Ikea, where we picked up some shelves and things for the house. We also went to a unique Mexican restaurant called Xochitl (pronounced so-cheet), which, as the name implies, didn't serve your typical tacos and burritos -- R ate cactus and I had steak. We followed dinner up with Blades of Glory on DVD at home, with sleep grabbing us about half way through.

On Sunday we spent a good chunk of time assembling our new shelves and re-organizing the living room. R also made some butternut squash soup that was really tasty, especially on the cool fall day that it was. Before we knew it, night was upon us. I've always had a love-hate relationship with Sunday nights: I enjoy our typical frozen pizza dinner when we get each other caught up from our respective phone calls to the 'rents, but I hate to see the weekend end as another long week looms. Oh well, at least I don't need to deal with Sunday night homework anymore. R, however, is not so lucky. Did I ever mention she's taking graduate courses in engineering at the University of Delaware? That's keeping her busy.

Coming up soon on Jeblog:

• R visits her pregnant sister in Honduras, leaving me to my own devices for six days.
• The first segment in a possible series of late-night written ramblings called "Zomething Different."
• The final Bud Light Film Crew video before I take at least few months off from them. And it's going to be about dodgeball.
• Plans for new video work I will doing during the aforementioned few months off.
• A 2007 year-in-review post.
• More weekend recaps.

With the lid off

A good friend / former roommate visited us over the weekend. He was in Tennessee for work and decided to take the 8-hour drive on over to Wilmington to kill some time when he had a few extra days. On Saturday night we went out to the Iron Hill for dinner and drinks, and on Sunday we showed him around Philly, with stops at the usual historic tourist sites. There was time for a little Super Nintendo in there too. We've been known to like to battle it out Mario-style once in a while. It was a good weekend. Meeting new people gets old; I enjoyed seeing a familiar face and having a history with somebody again. R gets along with the guy too since we all roomed together at one point post-college. I'm glad he made the trip over. Here's to you, L.

Bud Light Film Crew #11 - Censored

The shoot for the November video was our wildest one yet. It took place at the tailgating event before a University of Delaware football game, and the college kids there were wasted. There were times when they erupted into melee, spraying beer everywhere, throwing full cans in the air, dousing their friends. One gentleman took his pants off and attempted to get on camera. Everybody was willing to chug a beer... for a free beer. Unfortunately (and understandably), Bud Light and the university do not want to be associated with over-consumption, so my first cut, which included some of the craziness (but purposely not all of it), was rejected. I had to remove 20 seconds, perhaps the heart of the video, in order to appease the censors. That was painful for me. I have decided to restore some of the footage in the version that will be on my compilation DVD and possibly on YouTube after a while. Watch out for it. Until then, you can see the censored version here:

http://www.budlightfilmcrew.com/

Now's the time on Sprockets when we dance

There you have it -- we dressed as Sprockets this year. And there's our 3rd annual "mimic the pumpkin" photo too. In case it's not obvious, we carved a :-) smiley face into it. I guess the nose should have been skinnier. Anyway, the Halloween loop was a lot of fun last Saturday night. A few random people at the bar were able to identify our costumes without any hints, but most just didn't have the knowledge of past pop culture to figure it out. I mean, who doesn't know who Dieter is? My favorite costumes of the night: Teen Wolf and Dwight Schrute.

Gotta run. I'd like to watch a scary movie tonight, but I'm not sure if it's going to happen. Time is running short. Happy Halloween, everybody!

Spoon, man

R and I went into Philly last Friday night to eat dinner at a great neighborhood Italian restaurant and to see the band Spoon in concert. It may have been due to the opening act getting stuck in traffic and not showing up to perform, but the show started off a bit stiff and cold. However, by the time Spoon's font man, Britt Daniel, unraveled a freaked out, distorted guitar solo in "My Mathematical Mind," I believe the crowd was officially won over. The guy can wail, both on guitar and vocally. He can't be accused of lacking passion either. I never really took the time to get into Elvis Costello, but I have a feeling this is what he was like at the height of his powers. Spoon's timing was spot on. They have a way of performing such tight, punchy pop songs that each seem like more of a feat than some overly long, "epic" jam that another band might pull to waste 10 minutes of concert time. Spoon are masters of restraint and minimalism. Never heard of this band? I suggest starting with Girls Can Tell or Kill the Moonlight, but you really can't go wrong with any of their albums (with the possible exception of the less polished Telephono).

The other band I'm really digging right now is The National. I've only heard their latest album, Boxer, but it is currently blowing me away. I'm quite sure this is going to be my favorite album of 2007. Each song on it is chill-inducing and absolutely gripping. By the time a song is done I'm anxious listen to it again, yet I'm too thrilled by the next song to actually go back until I'm through the whole album. The lead singer's vivid descriptions, enhanced by the haunting textures and moods of the music make for a very visual listen. In fact this is the first set of new music I've heard in a while that makes me want to take out the camera and shoot a music video, probably one that takes place in the middle of the night. It's very inspiring like that.

More about the weekend: On Saturday night we attended a Halloween party thrown by a coworker of R's. Do you want to know what we dressed up as? If you can wait until next week, I'll post a photo. On Sunday afternoon we took a fun bike ride. R and I usually try to find paved trails to bike on, but it didn't happen this time. We were with two other couples and they took us biking on what was essentially a hiking trail. It was pretty rough riding, but we didn't mind the challenge for a change.

I'm in Madison once again this week for work. My first two times out here I was so hyped up on adrenaline that I barely slept. This time the work isn't as demanding and the newness and excitement of business travel is wearing off. So now it just feels more like work--work without the promise of going back to the comfort of home and eating dinner with my wife. It's also torture to not be able to edit the latest Bud Light video while I'm here. I still need to put a lot of time into it before the month ends. So far the highlight of this week has been our dinner out at Ruth's Chris Steak House (a national chain, but a good one) last night. I had the filet, and it was cooked to absolute perfection -- totally worth the two hour wait to get our food. Wow, it was good.

Commercial break, Lynch-style

I thought you might like to see this new commercial directed by David Lynch. It's only airing in Europe, but thanks to YouTube we can all enjoy it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOGNyV9ngMk

While we're at it, here's another favorite from a few years ago. It congures up Eraserhead imagery while advertising for the Playstation 2. Well done, if I do say so myself. And I do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msMehuZo3x8

And here's an oldie -- a public service annoucement from the talented Mr. Lynch. They don't make 'em like this anymore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSWv90msTUc

Finally, check out the trailer for the new Twin Peaks DVD collection coming out soon. This must be where pies go when they die.
http://www.movieweb.com/dvd/news/86/23686.php

Wilmington weekend

On Friday I received an annual review at work and it turned out to be the most positive of my career so far. I'm glad they seem to appreciate the effort I have been putting in. They gave me a raise too, which felt well deserved under the circumstances. I don't think they could ever pay me enough to make it worth missing out on time with my wife and my hobbies, but a little extra money doesn’t hurt anything either. We celebrated on Friday night with drinks and sushi. Afterwards we watched Ordinary People on DVD, which I liked quite a bit.

On Saturday morning, R went to her weekly Lego League session and I played some Ultimate Frisbee at Rockford Park. I'm hoping to make the game a fixture in my Saturday schedule, at least on weekends when we are in town. There’s nothing quite like running until you drop to make you feel better about being alive.

In the afternoon we attended the wedding of local filmmaker Gordon D. and his bride Cindy. I worked with the two of them during Gordon's movie shoot last summer, and the four of us have subsequently become occasional dinner partners and decent friends. The wedding was a good time. I was able to reunite with some of the film crew and hear of the some recent success stories (e.g. our key grip is now working behind the scenes of HBO's The Wire). We met some interesting new people too. It was an artistic, creative crowd. I tend to get along better with people like that -- people who think about things other than baseball or the ever-so-popular football -- so it worked out pretty well.

Sunday was relaxing, yet productive around the house. There's not much else to say about Sunday other than it capped a nice weekend. It's the normal, well balanced weekends like this one that I like best.

Man overboard!

As a reward for the extra work my team has been putting into a recent project, my company gave nine of us the afternoon off last Thursday to take a boat ride down to Chesapeake City, MD (via the Delaware River and C&D canal). We got there around mid-afternoon and proceeded to eat fresh crabs and drink beer at The Tap Room for 3 hours. It was a little before sunset when we pushed off for the ride home. That's when the day got interesting -- our boat stalled when we were about a third of the way back, and it didn't start again. A thick fog rolled in just as the sun sank, completely engulfing us. The next thing we knew we were surrounded on three sides by blackness. On the fourth was a river dredger the length of a cruise ship that was slowly swinging back and forth, to deepen the canal. It provided hazy light as we drifted dangerously closer to it before our anchor finally took effect in the 50-feet deep water. Once secure, we tried to arrange for a tow, hoping for one that would bring us all the way back to the landing from which we left. Over two hours of bobbing in place later the Coast Guard found us, with a little help from their GPS. They had called off our towboat because of the extremely poor visibility and brought us to the nearest landing themselves with only a computer screen to show them where to go. On the dock, as were waving good-bye and thanking the Coast Guard, one still-intoxicated member from our group started flailing his arms and reaching out to nothing as he fell backward into the water. "Man overboard!" yelled someone from the Coast Guard crew. Don't worry, folks, it turned out to be only three feet of water into which he was submerged. But that didn't stop everybody from panicking at first. The ex-lifeguard (current software quality assurance analyst) with us was ready to jump into the water to save the guy. Instead he dropped to his stomach and reached an arm out with a shout of "DOUG, I GOT YOU!!" Yes, it was easily the most hilarious moment of the day.

A crowded mini-van ride later we were returned to our cars in Port of Wilmington. We all managed to survive the reward trip. The technical problems and tardiness of our delivery were actually well representative of the project for which we were being rewarded. I didn't expect anything less.