Friday, August 24, 2012

Back In the Saddle

I'm making a movie! It's just a little one, about ten minutes long, but it has real actors in it and everything, and I've shot about 80% of it. It's called I Dream In Color and I expect to have it done in about two months (with most of that time spent tweaking effects and sound). I'm very excited, and I'll post a link here (and everywhere in the world I can post a link) when I release it.

William went off to a Boy Scout camp for a week at the beginning of the month, and while he was gone we took Daniel off for a couple of excursions so that he could have some special time with his parents. These included a trip to York Beach, Maine, where they have a little amusement park and, as the name might suggest, a beach. We also visited a local boat museum that we hadn't seen before; Karen and the boys have lately gotten a boat-building bugs, and this museum gives classes. The boys are still a little young, but maybe someday.

Meanwhile, back at camp, William had a great time. He got to shoot a .22 rifle (which he did very well with) and use a bow and arrow. He did a lot of swimming, and he said the food wasn't what he expected—hot dogs and hamburgers every day—but really very good. Especially the desserts!

School is coming up shortly, and although the boys are a little sad about the end of summer vacation, I am ready to have the house mostly to myself during the day so that I can get some work done. This year will be the first year in two years that Daniel and William will be attending the same school, and the last year for four years after that.

And starting in the fall of 2013, they won't even be riding the same bus; William will have to get on an hour earlier, something that will continue for the rest of his career in the school district. Ugh! We hope that William and Daniel will, by the time they are both on that schedule, be as good about getting themselves to the bus as Tom was at the same age.

Once they are gone during the weekdays, I plan to get back into the full swing of making craft videos with Karen (in addition to finishing my movie) and selling off Karen's vast surplus of miniatures, bears, and craft kits on eBay. And looking for a job but probably not finding one, save for a few weeks here and there of temp work.

And then, of course, there's Karen's unending efforts to turn me into a builder. The current project is the front porch/deck, complete with a pergola, which Karen is going to encourage grape vines to grow on. I have been (gasp!) pouring concrete (a misnomer if ever I heard one; pouring concrete is like pouring mashed potatoes or thick oatmeal, with rocks in it) for piers. Here in the Northeast, those suckers have to be four feet underground so that they won't shift when the ground freezes. It takes as much as 290 pounds of concrete to fill one ten-inch-diameter pier. I'll put up pictures of the deck in progress as soon as there's something more to see than a ten-inch-diameter circle of cement with a threaded post sticking out of it (not a terribly exciting picture).

It's bound to be an interesting, busy fall season, if not a terribly profitable one. But who knows, maybe something we're doing will catch on, and get us back on the right track.

I know I'm not giving up.