Day Five - The Tooth, The Whole Tooth

Had a kind of crap day which turned into a good day.

I woke up with the intention of spending the day in bed watching movies. But the kids needed something from the shop before school so I got dressed and did that. Then Mia's bus didn't show up, so I had to give her a lift in. I took the USB plasma ball to PC World and it was working fine. Go figure. Ate a sausage and egg McMuffin on the way back.

Got home with about 15 minutes to spare before my appointment at the dentist. I figured two or three fillings and the extraction of the stub of tooth left from when my cap broke off. Yeah I dunno if I mentioned this... after I took the kids up to my sisters the other day, I
chewed a sweet and the whole top of the gold cap I have in the back of my mouth broke off. Apparently the reason I've had problems with that tooth is because it was half broken and completely undermined. That's why I've been having bad breath. I had a rotten tooth and didn't know it.

So anyway I get to the surgery a little late. The session lasts about 40 mins with the dentist screwing the tooth out like it's a rusty nail in a floorboard. They say I look really pale when they're done, would I like to sit down before I fall down? Yeah I'm pale, that was hands down one of the most horrible dental experiences I can remember. Not their fault, but mother of jesus I had to stedy myself against furniture, doors and hedges and cars till I got back to my own car.

When I've recovered my composure and driven home I can't do anything. McNulty tries to talk to me online but I feel like refried turds and I need to lie down. I slip a few DVDs in the player and watch them one after the other. "Four Eyed Monsters" was really good, perfect sick boy viewing. I hope my films will be that good. Really nice job of filmmaking although I find autobigraphical movies to be a bad start on the whole. What do you do next? You either go on telling more of your story or you have no ideas. I hope these guys come up with something good.

"Inland Empire" by David Lynch on the other hand is not a film I would recommend to sick people who are in pain and on the verge of endorphin induced sleep. Now don't get me wrong, I love David Lynch, I think he's a genius, but sometimes his movies are more art than cinema... I kept nodding off to be woken by a blood curdling scream and opened my eyes to Laura Dern grimacing horribly into the camera. I don't have a single clue what the movie was about. Must watch it again some time when I don't feel like a car backed over my head. It was mostly shot on HD it seems to me, but I have to check that. Some really interesting things, but also some things which made me say out loud, "you had me with you there David for a while, but the people with the rabbit heads? I dunno..."

Finished the day watching stuff with Hattie "Farce of the Penguins" and a bunch of the US version of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" which is one of our favourite shows. Ted was in his room doing his own thing. He's going through a bit of a solitary phase. I guess we'll see him later.

X

Day Four - Thursday of the Gods

Managed to get my computer sorted out. I got a new Mac Mini to replace the old Mac Mini which was only supposed to be a temporary computer but I liked it so... had a lot of trouble doing what I though was going to be a two hour job MAX. Turned out I burned most of the day and half of my wits. Very frustrating as the migration assistant software wasn't working properly... I had to repair permissions and format the new Mac again. Got very agitated. This is too much like work.

Ah well. But it turned out okay because getting the computer sorted out and Final Cut and Cubase LE installed was one of my goals. I transferred the data from my crabby old Lacie drive to the spanky new WD MyBook Pro and now I have a powerful and yet portable system which can do anything anywhere. Unlucky for me I never go anywhere.

Shot some nice film for the movie - woke up and it was misty and lovely in the garden, then later sunny and Autumnal. Shot way too much footage of grass swaying on lovely full res HD.

Later on I watched "The King Of Marvin Gardens" on DVD. Wonderful. I forgot how good those old Jack Nicholson and Bob Rafelson movies were.

Finished the day shooting footage for the "UnFrozen" video with Hattie wearing a black feather boa and a cloak in the foliage in the back garden. Seems a bit half-assed. Maybe we'll do a better job of it tomorrow when we have more time.

Day Three - The Banks vs. Snouty vs. Madonna

Woke up around 6.30am. Decided to cram more into the day by working my usual schedule. Tiring. How on Earth do I do this all the time?

I did however weed the paving in the back garden which has been bugging me for ages. Now it looks great and not like some suburb in Vietnam.

Most creative thing I did all day was make a mashup/remix of Madonna's wonderful "Frozen" called "UnFrozen". (Click on the link to hear it.) (Note this is a not for profit, fan produced tribute to Madonna and in no way a money making scheme, so please don't sue me, Madonna! I mean I'm practically your neighbour...)

I may actually make a video for this later down the week and upload it to YouTube. I might use it in the movie, but I might leave it out in case I get clobbered... mashups are supposed to be "fair use" but in practice they don't take that view... (The video is on YouTube now, so check a later post and you'll see it...)

What else... I bought some Lime and Mint flavoured juice, like a Mohito without the rum. It tastes like inflatable plastic pool water. Really horrible. Actually I kinda like it.

And also I was referred to this site by my broker, my debt management guy, and even my mum, Money Saving Expert. It's a VERY cool site that tells you how to reclaim your bank charges and lots of other useful money saving schemes. Wonderful. HSBC must owe me about £50,000. Let's hope so. he he he

Anyway, there you go. I'm sure I did more stuff today, but I can't really remember what it was. I'll come back and flesh this out, perhaps tomorrow when I'm a bit more compus mentis.

Toodles, poodles.

xxx

Day Two... the Oxbow Incident

Today didn't go nearly as smoothly as yesterday, although I did end up being pretty productive.

I woke up at 7am because Hattie needed me to go get her some things for lunch today. Mia was still asleep beside me, which meant she had about 5-10 minutes before her bus to Bath left from outside the house. With the best will in the world she was either the going to miss the bus or break stuff trying to make it.... I said what the hell, I'll take her in.

Fortunately we had a SModcast to listen to, a hilarious podcast with Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier which they upload every week and is ALWAYS a hugely funny if a little scatalogical listen. That passed the time amiably, and we had a good trip. I ate breakfast in McDonalds which was dry and a little hard to swallow, especially as the coffee was NUKULAR hot. McDonalds is right next to PC World and Currys in Bath, so I did a little early morning shopping, buying a USB driven plasma lamp in PC World (which didn't work when I got home) and a pack of DV tapes to feed the movie camera in Currys.

I was going to film my journey back for the film, as it was a nice sunny morning. I'd grabbed the tripod and camera on my way out of the house but forgot the camera bag, and the bit between the camera and the tripod, the shoe, was on the other camera in the bag... d'oh!

When I got home I talked to McNulty on Skype for a while, then a guy I know called Mick Dunk came over to talk about me refreshing his web site www.admodelmaking.co.uk. I like Mick, he's an interesting guy. Had a nice time talking about life and managed to finish up by 3pm. Spent the afternoon talking to Brent on the phone recording a new Swashbuckler Epiphany, which I'll upload as soon as I edit and upload the last three. While I was talking to Brent on Skype Dr Gaz called from Wales and I called him back when I was done with the Swash.

The kids and Mia came home and I got into roasting some vegetables for dinner. We clipped and washed the dog on Monday night, and I noticed that there were some clumps of fur on the carpet that I hoovered. Dang it. I'll have to to do it again on Wednesday.

And that my friends was the day, busy but not entirely well structured or creatively productive, although I did salvage it later by recording a Swash. Better luck tomorrow.

Adios muchachas and muchachos.

Day One - Vacation 2007

Alright, pop pickers?

Having failed miserably to do a blog at all in the last month I am serving a penance. I'm off work this week and I will use the opportunity to blog every day. I will even update the blog every day more than once depending on if I have anything else to say, so come back, I will be adding stuff all the time.

Chief among my concerns this week is that I don't waste the time spinning my wheels like I normally do. ADHD is a stern taskmaster and it dictates sometimes that I just spend my days walking from room to room getting five things half done. With this in mind I have given thought to how I might best use my time and what kinds of things I wanted to do this week. It's been a long time coming, this holiday, and although I'm too broke to go anywhere I intend this to be fun.

Long time coming? Apart from the fact that this is an annual event, I've been kept waiting for my holiday by none other than Dell computers. Yeah we ordered a bunch of computers from them and spent about £7000, then they delayed the delivery so much that we had to cancel the consultants we ordered in TWICE before they finally delivered the goods and enabled us to continue our schedule. I still haven't had a proper apology or any kind of compensation for wasting my time like that. I was intending to have a bit of time on holiday with my kids but because I've not be available they've had to have their entire summer holiday without me. Which sucks a lot. AAAAGH! Thanks a lot, Dell, you bunch of idiotic, inefficient, self important, time-wasting, penis jockies. I hope you all wake up one day as eunuchs. The least you could have done for wasting my whole summer was give me a bottom of the range computer. You suck........!

Sorry about that, everything went red for a second. Was I gone long? Now, where was I? Oh yeah holiday. So I made this list of things I want to have done by the end of the week.

Call all my friends for a chat.

Do my outstanding tax returns.

Shoot footage for my interstitial movie (see previous blogs).

Set up my new computer.

Make it ready for sound and video editing.

Copy some old tapes to MP3.

Copy some old videos to DV.

Transcribe the first Swashbuckler Epiphany tapes into a book.

Publish the book on Lulu.com as a hardback and paperback.

Do the same with my BLOOK. (although this is secondary)

Walk the dog every day at 1pm.

Wash the dog and give her eye drops at some point.

Hoover the carpet.

Record another Swashbuckler Epiphany with Brent.

And also read the stack of books and watch the stack of DVDs I got here, but only after I got at least one or two of the above done in a day...

So far this morning I wrote the above list of things to do, wrote this blog, shot some footage of plants in the garden and copied some old tapes. It's ten to one so I should walk the doggie soon. She was a little reluctant to get up this morning. She was kinda cute.

This afternoon I don't know what I should do. My tax returns are pretty important so I should do that before they charge me any more fees for late return. Once I've done them I could watch a movie or two, either "Blue in the Face", "Manhattan", "The Big Lebowski", "Four Eyed Monsters", or "Tajne Nikola Tesla". I watched "Four Eyed Monsters" or most of it on YouTube, but then decided I should contribute to the filmmakers debt and buy the movie. I paid $8 or about £5 to download a DVD resolution MP4 version. I hope in the fullness of time they return the favour with my film. Hehe. I've added a link so you can watch "Four Eyed Monsters" below. Remember to let it load a bit before you start. Go make a cup of tea and then come back.

***Okay this is later on. I walked the dog, did my tax returns, did half the hoovering and bought a harmonica. Okay that wasn't on the list but I needed a treat. I also switched the DVD player in the bedroom for one which doesn't interfere with the remote control signal from the TV. So a busy and productive day. Give myself a big pat on the back. Ow.

Laters patatas.

P