Pouring!

Karen’s unfortunate timing with the weather hasn’t gotten any better. Here it is her first day off in six days, and what she really wanted to do was work on the trailer. And it poured. Buckets. With lightning and thunder. The boys’ swim lessons even got called off. We did treat ourselves to brunch out at our favorite hole-in-the-wall hangout, and we spent some time in the library, so the day wasn’t a total loss. We’re hoping for better weather tomorrow, at least for part of the day.

The boys discovered a program that I’ve had on my computer for a long time that allows them to do animation, and they’ve been having fun with it. Maybe the results will be on YouTube soon. It reminds me of Thomas playing with the Amiga computer many years ago. I’ll have to try to recover some of that animation and convert it to a modern format so that we can look at it. I remember being pretty impressed with what Tom could do at nine years old.

I don’t think the boys realize what a magical age they’ve been born into. When I was there age (now wait, I’m not trying to sound like an old fogey), if I wanted to make a movie I had to spend a lot of money and there were some things I just couldn’t hope to do, like sync sound and any kind of special effects. Now there are so many resources, so many tools that are a part of our everyday lives, and so much free and low-cost software that money is no longer the limiting factor in making some spectacular media. Now all it takes are hard work and patience.

It remains to be seen if my boys will devote enough of that to create some amazing movies. I’ll let you know.

Off the Stage

My run in Pittsfield is done. The set is gone, the cast party is past, and goodbyes have been said. I'll miss my Pittsfield Players theater family. But it's time to get back to home projects before New Hampshire's winter creeps up on me.

And, of course, creative work. I have a couple of short stories, some videos, and several songs that I haven't had time to do much which since rehearsals started.

Evernote, a service and a set of applications that let me write from wherever I happen to be, helps a lot this time of year. For example, I'm writing this blog entry using my phone while the boys are swimming.

Lessons this week. We're only doing two weeks of lessons this year, because the cost went up, but the boys are good swimmers, and the lessons are mostly to keep them safer. They spend a lot of time in the water during the summer. I don't think they know how lucky they are.

But I think they'll remember this fondly when they're all grown up. Which seems as if it's coming up tomorrow.