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We’ve been busy. Isn’t life awesome! After soccer Saturday before last (I’m SO behind!) we went to Lucas’s friend Marlaina’s 6th birthday party. For three years running they’ve had the formalities (cake, gifts) in the Veteran’s park outside the Zoo and culminated the party (with the folks who care to stay) touring the Zoo. Marlaina’s a huge animal lover. We got there early and just looked around. The weather was just too good to pass up. It’s nice to see green.
Lucas was absolutely delighted to see his Mama Jane! We all were, truth be told. Life gets busy and you lose touch with people that are just down the road. We’ll certainly head over to her house for some outside play as the school year comes to a close. Can’t let so much time pass next time.
Lucas beheaded the pinata. Maybe we should strongly urge him to reconsider playing baseball.
Somebody loves his Mama. Forever picking flowers for me. I sincerely hope he does this when he’s thirty. I mean, he can do that for his wife too, but I don’t need store bought flowers. Maybe he’ll draw them for me and send them in the mail. I relish these days.
Lucas with his newly budding teeth and “treasure map,” the zoo map. You can tell this isn’t my shot. Too much head room for me! But still awesome!
I didn’t get a shot of a polar bear last trip because some dude saw my camera and fancy flash and wanted to talk “photography.” I still didn’t get the one I wanted this time because it was too crowded, but at least it was something. This fella was so playful. He kept swatting at the glass, the kids would laugh and then he’d do it again. So fun! The seals were out and about too!
They just love being together. They spent the better part of four years of their lives together at Mama Jane’s. Katia and I have vowed to do anything we can to keep them connected though they’ll be at different schools across town. There’s something to be said about having a history with someone. Sometimes it’s not so good, but most of the time, it’s family.
We got home and put the boys to bed for a few minutes, then Shelby came over to hang out with them so I could check out a student of mine who was playing with some other students I know at a famous venue in town.
It was a big deal for them and I have had numerous connections with his family over the past three years, plus I figured it was a good excuse to get down to Beale Street for one of these:
Easter Sunday was quite nice. We did the Easter Bunny thing and the egg dyeing thing…only problem…not such good pictures. I think the batteries are crapping out on the flash and I didn’t have time with Easter dinner, dyeing eggs and an at home egg hunt to worry about the pictures. Too busy building the natural memories.
I’ve always been a huge fan of Fall. Looks like Spring is giving Fall a run for her money!
There’s a whole heaping lot of stuff going on around here and it’s a real challenge to remain sane much less update the blogs and visit those of my friends. I assure you, I will more than make up for lost during during the sweet summertime.
Just a recap:
Grandma is still in the hospital. Sunday will mark two weeks. There have been differing reports of how much longer her stay will be as well as what her immediate future care needs will be. To say that this has been a constant source of frustration for my mother would be a serious understatement. She’s exhausted beyond belief and stressed to the max. Grandma is getting grumpy about the whole deal and she is just so incredibly weak that any movement at all is a strain.
I’m staying late at work nearly every day. Meetings for this committee and that committee. Senior video in its first “final draft” is due on the 17th and we are scrambling. As the quality of our productions increases, so do the requests (and demands) for our services. I’ve got to get a handle on how to best organize it all, but the time for that, unfortunately, is not when we’re right in the thick of it. Senior Video will be shown and delivered to the senior class the day before we pack up all our gear for a remote shoot to tape graduation which we need to finalize and burn for all who purchase it within a week. The good news is that exams for my classes are projects and I finally moved the due date up. So, I’ll not be dealing with exams on top of all the other stuff. They were due April 3rd. I have very few turned in and after tomorrow, students will lose 10 points per day it is turned in late. I’ll add a cut off date to the mix tomorrow. I will not accept them after the 16th. At that point, the best they could score with a nearly perfect project is a 50% anyway. Ah, a problem solved. This is another reason why I write it out.
We had a whirlwind week organizing and taping the Mock Car Crash and now editing it. Tomorrow we tape the Talent Show and edit that. The thespians want the archive copies of their productions for their banquet, which are all on DV CAM tape, not mini DV, so we have to convert all that. We taped Student Government speeches, only someone messed with the settings and we didn’t get video. Reshot those today. And so on and so forth. We’re in talks with the Chamber for a service project as well as the middle school for an orientation video. I’m also trying to write a grant. So much learning happening I think my head might explode.
Of course you know that Lucas is participating in Spring soccer, so we do that three days a week, weather permitting. Sometimes I’m grateful when it rains. Anyone ever been there? I used to be disappointed that I spent that $80 and he missed a practice. Now I think it was a lot cheaper than therapy. He’s also graduating from pre-school next month so we’re ordering gowns and taking pictures for that. Oh, I keep forgetting to call the elementary school about that pre-registration I saw on the sign! Tomorrow’s the last day. Do I need his birth certificate? Social security card? I just ran downstairs to get those before I forget again. Don’t have a shot record. Ugh.
Matt insisted we have a garage sale, even though I wanted to cop out & just donate to Goodwill. I figured it’d be roughly the same tax-wise, but I’ve never been good with figures. Anybody have any answers on that one? I just think that if we make $300, that’s all well and good. I could use it. But how much was that actually…you know per hour of my life that I will never get back? So…that might be happening on Good Friday. That’s when Grandma’s birthday falls this year, by the way. And she gets to spend it absolutely miserable.
Did I mention that Matt also decided he’d like to paint the playroom? I bought the paint and supplies per his request. Guess who has taped the room. Go on, guess. I love that man, I do. But if he gives me another job I’m going off the deep end. Did he tell me to tape the room? Did he ask me to? No. That is just my personality. I am a GO-GETTER. I make lists. Actually, I’ve started to grow out of lists to some degree. If I can take care of it immediately, I do. Saves me the time of putting it on a list, moving it to another list and eventually crossing it off. Even though the crossing off feels so very rewarding, I’m learning to just love the actual accomplishment. Plus, paint settles after a while. It’s really best to use it when it’s been freshly mixed at the store.
Evan turns three very soon and we’re gonna throw him a party. He didn’t have one at two (Lucas did, for the record), so this is quite exciting. I’ve been shopping for all things Thomas the Tank Engine and filling out invitations begging people to RSVP. That’s next weekend, by the way.
I am taking the time, in the midst of all of this, to connect with long lost friends though social networking sites (as well as keep up with current ones). It’s so cool. Amazing how the passage of time just disintigrates under the bridge. I am truly blessed to have such good people in my life. We strive to build eachother up and help one another along this journey. I wish I knew sooner how important all this really was in the grand scheme of things. Maybe I could have changed some things, I dunno. I still maintain that everything happens for a reason and I guess my spiritual journey is right on course.
Life IS so very good, and my goal is to figure out how to enjoy just a wee bit more of it! Matt and I are going on a date night Saturday (this happens twice a year!) and I bought us tickets to Wicked today for late June. It was a splurge, but we deserve it.
Over and out. I’ll see ya when I see ya. For real. It’s day by day this time of year.
We were also in one of the local papers! It’s always exciting when someone notices something cool that you’ve done! I’m very excited about what this does for the credibility of my program and the work that I’m doing there. A really cool thing about this is that the reporter was just scouring the web and ran across something that was out there and called the school board to see if we could do a last minute interview. The principal and I had asked the media representative to look into some press coverage, but that wasn’t how it all shook down.
more about "Ah, some recognition!", posted with vodpod
As I mentioned already, I spent my Spring Break with 15 teenagers. I missed my family when I had a chance to, but I stayed so very busy, as you might imagine. I can honestly say that I feel a little bit like I actually had a vacation too! I worked incredibly long and strenuous hours. I was usually up until about 2 a.m. and had to wake by 6:30 most mornings. I have had a lot of trouble adjusting to six hours of sleep, isn’t that crazy?!
My students were so amazing. I wish every trip could be this great! Seriously, I cannot rave enough. I am still recovering as I mentioned, so posting will continue to be light for a little while as I decompress and explore some of the resources I learned about while in Orlando. After all, I was in breakout sessions with the likes of Al Tompkins and Les Rose, industry pros! In addition, I got to network with TV teachers from across the US and I have come back to work completely recharged. I know that teaching TV/FILM is where I want to be and now I have even more tools with which to do it. I am pumped.
Oh, and we won some contests too!
I’ll update this post Monday with the pictures that are on my school laptop. Of course we’re in The Bartlett Express (cover!) this week and should be in The Commercial Appeal tomorrow!
I am giving up my Spring Break to attend the 6th Annual Student Television Network Convention in Orlando Florida with 15 students. I have mixed feelings about the trip. I worry that I will be totally ill-prepared for the remaining 9 weeks in the studio and that I’ll miss my husband and children terribly.
But the truth is, I’m going to be incredibly busy. Having been a chaperone when the Convention was held in LA a few years back, I know this. I also know that I will learn so much that will help my program. I will have a great time and my students will be wonderful, so I don’t know what I’m getting all bent out of shape about. A little trip here and there is good for everybody, right?
I won’t be around much in the blogosphere, if at all for the next week. I’ll be posting via my iPhone here.
Happy Spring Break! Wish me luck!
My student, Graham, is so creative and talented. During his first year with me (as a sophomore) he had an interview with the people whose house was used for June Carter’s house in Walk the Line (which was filmed largely in and around Memphis, as you know) and he managed to replicate an exact shot of their porch that was used in the film from his visual memory. I knew then that he’s just got a great eye for framing and what not. He’s since done trailers for upcoming plays as well as other projects for our TV Production class. He’s now a senior and still producing quality work every time. When he approached me about being in his latest big idea, I was thrilled. I don’t get to do much by the way of acting anymore (it’s been YEARS!), so I was delighted to be a part of his production. Of course, I had to watch The Devil Wears Prada first to completely understand his concept, but it was a lot of fun, even if we didn’t get to spend a bunch of time on it! Evan’s rotovirus kept me home from school three of the four days we had allotted to work on it. I look forward to joining the theatre and film communities here in town as the boys get a little older. I realized how much I miss it!
more about "The Devil Teaches Film", posted with vodpod
So, after wringing my hands for hours last night, I watched the pictures in a slideshow on iPhoto once more while, chanting, “there must be a way, there must be a way.” And, my friends, there is. Apple never intended for me to spend hours importing, dragging and dropping 66 photos into iMovie and relentlessly searching for a song that equaled exactly the 4 minutes and 35 seconds that the movie lasted (I wasn’t successful anyway. The song I wanted was about :45 seconds short and of course no other one would do instead, so I cut a clip from another song as an intro~more on that later.) There is a button I discovered that tells iPhoto to adjust the length of each slide to fit the show within the length of the song. See?
So, lesson learned. iPhoto will EXPORT your slideshow as a movie!
Annnd as long as you have a DRM free song in your iTunes, you can add it and then post it. You can use Digital Rights Management Protected music, but you’ll get a warning that says basically unless a machine is authorized to play the song, the viewer will hear no music. Of course I know this because the one song that will work happens to be from one of the only three albums I have ever purchased through the iTunes store. It figures. So…I tried to pay the .30 cents to get the DRM-free version, but it is not yet available. (Yes! You read correctly, one must pay to get full rights back on the music they have already paid for~I won’t rant much about that as I knew what I was doing when I bought the music in the first place, but some poor saps did not and have large collections of this stuff that they have limited use of, it’s true. A little more on DRM at the end of the post.)
Do not despair. I found a suitable copy. My slideshow is now being uploaded to Vimeo as I write and I shall put it on my Vodpod later on (that’s that little video box on the right hand pane). The slideshow will be up later tonight along with the story of the :45 second intro that ended up on the cutting room floor.
**For those of you who are curious about this DRM stuff: It’s well, you know, that mean thing Apple did (and is now reniging on thanks to Amazon.com’s nudging in the marketplace) that prevented one from using the music on more than 5 machines or burned more than 7 times. You can read more about it here.
Gathering stories. Talking to people. Being genuine.
It's crazy. And so relaxing.
It's going to be a great year. I love being where I am and I have great faith that this is the year I really hit my stride.
Good gum too, by the way.
I am really behind with my scrap booking (that’s an understatement) and I am also behind on the things I wanted to be sharing on the blog. I am leaving for an unexpected, planned trip to Chicago. Imagine that?! Confusing, I know. We were planning to go, but then plans changed due to a death in the family, and then they changed yet again.
I created an album a while back and I am now ready to fill it with pictures. Black and white?
I am so excited to be spending time with my pictures again. I’m about to do a test print for the first time. In black and white,even.
Wish me luck!
Oh yeah, stumbled upon this picture of Evan (before the stitches, but after the cousins!).
Of course I cried when my students surprised me with this at our Second Annual Film Fest and Vision Awards this year. It makes it all worth it to hear them tell me such lovely things. It is I that has been blessed to know them. I am not their teacher, but their student as well.
