Month: November 2010

The Weekend before Thanksgiving…

I’ve had a very nice weekend. Yesterday was just lots of fun and today was somewhat productive. And then I have a two day work week and then 5-day weekend. So yay me! (And if you’re wondering what possessed me to use my “Spring!” icon, it’s cuz I had one of my windows & back door open today. Lovely weather!)

I wound up heading to mom & dad’s on Friday evening in order to help dad with a computer issue (trying to copy a DVD we’d made before). He offered me free supper in the form of Hothead Burritos, so of course I said “yes!” 🙂

After dinner, mom and I made plans for the next morning. I’d wanted to see the new Harry Potter movie during opening weekend, and the folks were willing to come along as well. (We’re all fans of the movies and dad and I enjoyed the books as well.) We decided on the first showing of the flick, which would cost us only $4.50 each at the theater in Piqua (which is nicer, or at least has nice seats, than the one in Troy).

So Saturday morning, I didn’t sleep in as much as I usually do and was at the folks’ by 10am. We got to the theater an hour or so before it began (it was an 11:15am showing), but the theater itself wasn’t open yet. So we stood in line with the other folks who were there. It was foggy and chilly, but not really unpleasant.

After half an hour or so outside, employees finally opened the door. Dad paid for our tickets (yay!) and mom bought popcorn & drinks (yay!) and we got seats about 4 rows from the screen. The place was full, but the audience was respectful. I, apparently, was the loudest laugher in the theater. At least mom claims the people in the front row looked back whenever I laughed… (OK, so I’m used to going to movies which no one else attends…)

We all enjoyed the movie. It apparently works well without having read the book before since mom found it comprehensible. I thought it did a great job of including as much as it did as well as gearing us up for the final part. I may catch it in the theater one more time before it moves to the small screen.

Lunch was at the pizza place formerly known as Cassano’s. Piqua’s Cassano’s was one of our family favorites, (the only Cassano’s we liked) but it is now Beppo Uno. We ordered the deluxe (now classico) with half no onions. It was yummy, but not quite the same as the pizza from Cassano’s. Their breadsticks were wonderful. So we’ll keep in on our list of restaurants to visit. (Oh, and for you folks keeping score, I contributed moolah to the purchase of lunch – I’m not a complete moocher! Well, actually I am a moocher, but I’m a generous one.)

Next was our trip to JoAnn’s where I was looking for a number of things, some of which I found. I got curtain rods for my bedroom (even though I haven’t finished putting up the ones for my living/dining room), some craft supplies for Christmas gifts, and something to use in my Advanced Science class (Styrofoam cones, if you’re curious). We popped home so mom could check e-mail in case Amy sent her a list of books she wanted for Christmas. No e-mail, but that didn’t stop us from heading off to the Bookstore.

Each late autumn, Jay and Mary’s Book Center has a 20% off sale weekend. And this weekend was the one. I found my children’s Christmas Book for the season (I’ve been buying one each year), a gift for my cousin Braden, and something for another relative which I won’t mention more details about. I’ve also figured out what I’m getting my little cousins (who aren’t so little any more) on the other side of the family.

I eventually made my way home with my purchases and vegged for the rest of the night. Then this morning, I slept in a bit to make up for yesterday. I got laundry done, including my bedroom curtains, swapped out the sheets on my bed (from winter flannels to Xmas flannels), listened to the latest Big Finish audio (mmmm, Sylv!), put up the new bedroom curtain rods, ironed the curtains, then hung those too. I also edited together the chemistry videos from my students into one DVD for showing this week. Phew – that’s a lot of work for lazy ol’ me!

So that was my weekend before Thanksgiving. I hope you folks have been having a nice time as well. 🙂

Bachelor Dad Weekend

I’ve had some family intensive weekends of late, which is a good thing in my case. Last weekend, Amy was visiting for a brief spell. Mom, Amy and I spent most of Sunday playing cards around at my Aunt Becky’s, which was a blast, and got quite a bit of quality Amy time. She left on Tuesday and then mom headed down to Florida with some of her friends on Wednesday. So I’ve had Bachelor Dad to entertain since then.

So Wednesday night, dad and I christened things off with dinner at Applebee’s. We took Thursday off to be rested up for the weekend, then Friday evening, we went to LeDoux’s for supper. And both of us had leftovers. Mmmmm!

The major plan for Bachelor Dad weekend was heading off to a Jesus Seminar on the Road in Ft. Wayne, IN on Saturday. When mom’s home, we usually head to Ft. Wayne on Friday afternoon, go to the Friday evening workshop, spend a night in a hotel, then attend the Saturday sessions. With no mommy, we opted to just do the Saturday thing. So dad arrived around 7am on Saturday morning, then I drove us (in mom’s car) to Ft. Wayne with father’s excellent navigation. We got there with half an hour to kill, so I availed myself to Second Breakfast and chatting with some of the folks who’d been at the previous evening’s workshop.

Charlie Hedrick and Hal Taussig were the scholars presenting at this JSOR. They talked about Jesus’ quips and parables (I always likes me some Parable Talk) and stuff like that. Not a lot of new stuff for me. And I managed to make dad laugh a few times with my own quips, which I’d carefully written down in my scribbled doodles. My phone’s been being a butthead lately and I couldn’t keep myself on task by playing Bejeweled, so I did it by incessently doodling. (And when I stopped doodling, my feet started tapping, so it was good that I doodled most of the time.)

We found a Chinese Buffet nearby for lunch and returned for the afternoon sessions. But we arrived back at the church early and the doors were locked. So we stood outside (it was chilly, but still pleasant) waiting. A lady who had arrived for a do happening at the church later that day (in their art gallery) saw us head to the door and brought her box of stuff, only to be disappointed that we didn’t have keys. It wasn’t long before someone with keys returned, however.

After lunch, dad got to do his “Come to Jesus (Seminar)” talk and introduced Westar’s new webmaster – which is me. Not that I’ve done anything yet. But hopefully I’ll be getting them hooked up with a Drupal-based site. Make it much easier for them to do up-to-date announcements, etc. The sessions were done at 4pm, and soon after, dad and I headed back home.

We stopped in Celina on the way home and ate at Taco Hell for supper, then returned home in conditions as dark as when we’d left earlier that day. We had decided to meet for lunch at my place today (eating our cajun leftovers from Friday) and then go to the Model Train Show at Hara Arena. So that’s just what we did today. Yay, model train shows rock!

Usually when we go to the Model Train Show, we just look and usually don’t buy anything. But today we stayed for several minutes at a tool stall which had loads of nifty tools. And they had the exact same digital calipers which I bought for school, only at a third of the price I paid for ’em. So I bought two more and dad bought one for himself. Quite nice. Digital calipers for $20. They even gave us spare batteries.

Anyhoo, I’ve been back home for awhile and have been doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen, and that sort of domestic stuff. Dad will be picking mom and some of her trip friends up tomorrow evening. I’ll probably get to see mom on Tuesday – yay, mom! I had a very nice weekend with Bachelor dad, but it’s always good when mom’s back too. 🙂

Any video editors out there?

Dad and I recently edited a 25-year video retrospective for the Westar Institute, and this has garnered dad the opportunity to do more video editing for them. The art director who’d been doing the job says he uses Final Cut Express, which is a Mac program. But dad is Winders/Linux. The main thing he needs to be able to do is sync to videos using their audio tracks so that he can cut to one camera when someone walks in front of/behind a speaker or get close-ups from time to time. We both use Pinnacle Studios, which has been sufficient for YouTube videos and the 25-year retrospective. And it may be sufficient for this style of editing – we haven’t tried it yet. He’s been informed that he’d be reimbursed for software expenses, so we could buy something if Pinnacle won’t suffice.

So, you budding directors out there, what would you suggest? Adobe Premiere Pro? Avid? Anything else?