Recent trips, part 1: Washington state

We recently took two trips, and I've been wanting to write about each individually, even though at this point they are both starting to feel like old news. In fact, I've got a back log of about five blog entries and counting that I'd still like to write, so bear with me if I end up a month or two behind real time.

If our second trip this season took me out of my comfort zone, then the first trip was squarely in it. We traveled to an area of our country that has appealed to me for a long time: the Pacific Northwest. My interest in this region has sort of manifested itself over the years in the form of Twin Peaks, but it didn't start there. It began during a trip to Washington I took with my parents while I was in junior high. The place was inspiring to me then; it's inspiring now; and when I discovered Twin Peaks sometime in between, the mystery and the mood that inspired me were directly tied to the location.

R was attending a conference in Seattle at the end of May, so we decided to extend her stay and fly me up for Memorial Day weekend. We spent our first full day exploring the city (Space Needle, Pike Place Market, underground tour) and the two days after that in and around Snoqualmie, a small town where "a yellow light still means slow down, not speed up". This is where they filmed much of the pilot episode of Twin Peaks and quite a few exteriors that were used throughout the series. Keep in mind the show was made over 20 years ago, so things have changed a bit. It's also a little deceiving when you recognize the outside of a building and then you walk in and realize an entirely different set was used for the interior scenes.

I am proud to say we spent two nights at the Salish Lodge, pictured at he top of the waterfall above, which is a key spot in the show. And, as cheesy as it sounds, having a cup of coffee and a piece of cherry pie in the Double R Diner (called Twede's Cafe in reality) was an absolute highlight of the trip for me, despite the changed decor (Tweety Birds hanging from the ceiling?). You could say being there was the realization of a dream for me.

It's hard to complain about the weather in Santa Barbara, but maybe I needed a change because I found myself welcoming the rain we experienced in Washington. It was more of a steady drizzle that bounced off you than any sort of downpour. It enlivened the greens and provided the tree tops with some haunting mists. We saw a lot of this during a hike to Rattlesnake Ledge on our last afternoon up there. R once again impressed me by handling the four mile round trip and 1200 feet elevation gain quite well at about 19 weeks into her pregnancy.

As usual, our photos go into much more detail than I could ever describe. Check them out here to see more about our weekend getaway.

We're having a girl!

Here's the first of what will likely be very many photos of our daughter. We have some 3D images as well, but I'm not sure I'm ready to share those with the world yet. I kind of like the classic ultrasound look of this one. I have it on my bulletin board above my desk, and I'm enjoying thinking about who this new person might be and what her life will hold.

We're trying to keep the ultrasounds to a minimum, so this was our first of R's pregnancy at 21 weeks in. It was such a relief to hear from the doctor that our baby appeared perfectly healthy. We saw her in heart in action, measured her brain, witnessed her flexing legs... At one point she even reached up and rubbed her eye with her hand. There's a real, live human being in there!

We watched the whole ultrasound, but there was one thing the doctor noticed that we did not: the baby's sex. He wrote it down for us and sealed it up. This all happened first thing in the morning, so it was a long day of wondering what was in that envelope. Our day finally settled down around 8pm. R wanted me to look first and let her know, so that's how it went down. It was an absolutely magical moment.

R to the thirtieth

The other big milestone this spring is R's 30th birthday. As a matter of fact it's today (Sunday)! The clip below, from 2003, is my attempt at embarrassing her. One of the things I love about R is that she is always willing to help me out with one crazy shenanigan or another. It's difficult to find people willing to act goofy in front of a camera, but I can always count on her :-).


This weekend was probably lower-key than a 30th birthday weekend should be. I wish I would have planned more. Our original idea was to celebrate with a vacation in Paris, but the scheduling didn't work out, so we're going to be there a few weeks too late. We did go out to dinner at a French restaurant, Julienne, on Saturday night as preview of the trip to come. And today we took some good friends (pictured below) out to brunch at a place on the beach. Afterward we made a stop at the luxurious Bacara Resort, where R was treated to a pre-natal massage. It was a good weekend, but, seriously, the celebration has just begun. We are really looking forward to our trip!

"Miami" blip

I feel like posting something that has nothing to do with my personal life tonight. Previously, I mentioned (warned?) that there would be some remnants of my recent backdrop video work continuing to appear on the blog, and this is an example of that. It's a remix of the food coloring experiment I originally wrote about in this entry. Since I didn't have a clip to show at that time, I'm posting one now.

The video is a little sloppy. You can see reflections in the glass and the editing isn't as transparent as it could be. The original, set to an unreleased ThreadSpinner song, was slower and the imperfections weren't as perceptible when it was played on the lesser-contrast theater screen. In the clip above, I swapped the music with a song by U2 ("Miami" from their Pop album), condensed the run-time, and re-organized things a bit.

This isn't going to forever change the face of Internet video or anything. Treat it as a doodle similar to the Silence blip from a few months back.

An exclusive first look at...

... my pregnant wife! There have been some requests to see how things are progressing, so here you go. She's definitely showing, whether she wants to admit it or not. We have another photo where she's purposely sticking her stomach out as far as she can, and let's just say I don't have permission to post that one. It's a preview of what is to come.

Changes are underway. Maternity clothes shopping has begun. Time speeds on.

Five Years

Five years ago I watched the most beautiful woman walk down the aisle of a church in Alabama. We locked teary eyes and stood together in front of our closest family while we exchanged vows. I'll never forget the fiery love I felt on that day and in the time since. Today we celebrate an anniversary, but one day is not enough to express what this relationship means to me. I've been chipping away at it, at least a little bit, each day... and I fully intend to continue.

Yikes! Sorry if my posts have been on the sappy side and not terribly modest lately. Life is good right now, and I'm proud to report it. I realize something like the announcement of R's pregnancy isn't "the biggest news" in everybody else's life, but it is the biggest, most life-changing news in ours and this blog is about our lives after all. Moving to California was big news; Having a child required a grander statement. That's all I meant with the title last time.

We're hitting a bunch of milestones this spring. Come back in about two weeks for another one...

The biggest news

I would like to announce, with so much joy and excitement, that my lovely wife and I are expecting our first child in October! Yes, I really typed that. The last few months have already been an emotional thrill ride, and it looks like there will be much of that to come.

R is doing well. She had what seemed to be a pretty typical case of morning sickness, but is feeling better, if still more tired than usual, these days. We've been trying to eat better and get enough exercise. We're both reading books about pregnancy and how to care for a child. It all sounds rather intimidating at this point, but we're going to take it one step at a time. I'm very anxious to meet this new person, but I desperately need this time to prepare and also want to make the most of life without the weight of fatherhood while I can, so I'm not exactly wishing these nine months away. The stork will arrive soon enough.

We learned the news ourselves on Valentine's Day morning while we were in Sonoma County. No, it wasn't the best timing for a weekend getaway in wine country. R had to skip the tasting part of our weekend, and I... had to cut back a bit :-). It also explains the conspicuous absence of a wine glass in the photo in this entry about the weekend. You may have also noticed my write-up was rather spare on details. I feel like the secret we've been carrying (pun somewhat intended) has put a bit of a wall between me and you, so it feels good to finally make the information public. This opens up so much more to tweet about too :-)

Among other decisions, I have to make one about the future of Midnight Toast (the blog), regarding how much detail to include about the pregnancy and our child's life. Safety and privacy are suddenly a higher priority. Maybe I'll start a limited-access family blog and reserve this one for my creative projects. Maybe not. One way or another I'll be taking a ton of photos and video, and some of them will be available in one place or another. I've already started recording a series of video interviews with R about her pregnancy and will continue with those about once a month until this baby is born. Something like that probably won't make in online, but I have a feeling our little family will enjoy watching them in the future.

Being a dad will be a huge adjustment and full of challenges, but I'm looking forward to it. Life has a way of telling you when it's time for the next phase. And following those signs has worked out pretty well for me so far, so I don't see any reason to stop. R and I are happy... scared, too, but mostly just happy.

Video backdrop series, part 10: Closing thoughts

I put together a total of nine videos for the concert backdrop. For the tenth one, the band used the exceptional "Night Chorus" music video directed by Matt Walla. You may have read some praise from me about it right here. How fun was it to see the band playing in front of images of themselves from the music video? Very fun. The video was perfect. The energy in the room was perfect. The night as a whole was perfect. And I'm not just glorifying the past. I knew this would be a night to remember while it was happening.

Since the tenth video wasn't my own, I was originally going to use this final installment of my blog series to show some clips from my footage that didn't "make the cut" for one reason or another, as there is a substantial amount of it. However, I find myself wanting to wrap up the series sooner rather than later, so pardon me if I take some short cuts here. Instead of clips, I'm going to give you some stills.

One idea that didn't find a home was a series of nature shots I took at various locations over the course of the shoot. Each contained some subtle movement (e.g. a leaf dangling from a cobweb, ripples in a stream, bugs swarming around branches, a fading sun), but it may have been too subtle to work as a backdrop. We needed exaggerated motion and contrast in order for it to be picked up by the projector and remain recognizable behind layers of stage lights. Not only were these images a little dull, they were also too literal. It felt more like stock nature footage you see between segments on PBS than an accompaniment to a rock show. See for yourself:

Then there were some alternate shots -- for backdrops that did get made -- that just weren't needed in the final edits (or were, again, too literal). These probably don't mean a lot to you because you haven't seen every shot that I did use, but here's a little sampling of my B-roll below anyway. (A little trivia: the hand in the first one belongs to R and was meant to be her cameo as she "pulls back the curtain" between the sidewalk and the trail in "Waking World," but, alas, it was too cheesy to include.)

I also have a few unused time-lapses that I'm not going to post yet. These are just some experiments that will likely make an appearance in some future, unrelated entry on this blog. They need a little more distance from this project and the right choice of music before they will be ready for viewing.

That about wraps things up then. It was a lot of work to document all of this, let alone create the backdrop videos themselves, but now that it's done I'm really glad I have a written and visual record of the project. Maybe "work" is the wrong word because I had so much fun stretching myself creatively (and technically, for that matter) to stitch together this quilt of abstract images for the concert. (Hmmmm... Why didn't I call this "The Quilt Project" instead of the "The Sweater Project"? That makes much more sense.)

Finally, I'd like to thank ThreadSpinner one more time for giving me this opportunity and so much freedom to build my own artistic endeavor on top of theirs. They took a huge risk by asking me to help shape their image at one of their most important concerts to date. There were times when I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull it off, but I've come to the other side with more confidence in my vision and a huge sense of satisfaction. The band makes for an imagination-spinning muse, one I'd like to work with again in the future.

Minneapolis is my flash-sideways

Great photo by R, eh? It was taken on Figueroa Mountain on my 31st birthday. It's sort of a companion piece to the one in this post.

I'm in Minneapolis for work this week and have a few minutes for a quick entry from my hotel room, so let's do this. And let's do it without over thinking it.

I've been feeling a little out-of-touch with you lately, and there's a complicated answer for that. Life in general has been feeling more complicated than usual lately. It's complicated. It's a Meryl Streep movie. Yawn.

It feels like my brain is degrading.

It's more difficult to connect with people than ever before. For some reason I thought it would get easier.

I recently reopened my private, written journal, but after one marathon session it has been largely neglected as well.

I'm still thinking in terms of 140 max characters. I blame Twitter. So much for writing that novel.

I want to be here and there and nowhere.

This is what I get for starting a blog entry without much of a point. I'm all over the place tonight. Let's forget this ever happened.

But first, view this beautiful woman, partially shrouded by wildflowers: