The Mundane Life of a Fightdesigner and Family Man

The twins now have their eviction notice: they'll be kicked out next Wednesday, and will likely spend the next few days in the hospital with their mother (who will likely have four days or so to recover before they send her home.

That's the most newsworthy update, anyway!

Ended up trading in my old Honda towards our new Mazda5... which is now going to be C's primary transport, as I take over custody of the Forester.

C's still ostensibly on bedrest, but ignoring that more as the dangers involved in bringing on labor decrease. At this point she's been told if if starts, they won't try to hard to stop it- but it would probably mean a C-section, due to baby positioning. Her sister's in town for the week now, keeping A. entertained- fortunately A. seems to be over her fever of the last week or so.

Things are mostly in a holding pattern for the moment, with occasional bursts of panicked activity as we try to figure out where to put baby stuff, how to downsize and sell the house, what week we won't have any chance of family assistance so is therefore most likely to coincide with childbirth or other crises, etc.

So really, not anything of interest to report I guess... just saying hey, we're still here, Howdy LJ world.

Looking to sell my 1996 Honda Accord LX some time in the next month or so... have to trade up to a bigger car due to family changes.

It's a stickshift, black, a few cosmetic dents but runs just fine. Haven't tracked mileage lately, but it does pretty well, especially if you take full advantage of the manual transmission and pop it in to neutral when coasting, etc.

Blue Book value shows at around $3,000




...and while we're talking improbability, anyone want to buy a house, too?

More a shopping list than a proper piece of writing here, so apologies for that. Too long for Twitter/Facebook, not appropriate for my industry blog on MySpace (still need to move that some time), and not really literary enough for what I like to think LiveJournal holdouts enjoy, but so be it. That's life.

Didn't win the contest- was number four after the judging. Results surprised a lot of people (including me).

Results are here:
http://thehunted.tv/main_frameset.htm
Apologies to my family for the expenses I genuinely thought I'd recoup. Still, response and feedback has been good, and I think my volunteers are still all glad they participated.


Seem to have developed this in the last half a year:
http://allergies.about.com/od/urticariahives/a/coldurticaria.htm
Been trying to figure out what the heck I was having occasional skin reactions to. Something in my shop, metal or wood shavings on my hands and bottoms of my feet last winter? Vegetables I've been washing? Water from the Puget Sound? I think the outside of a cup of ice cream was the thing that finally made me decide there was no way in hell this had anything to do with an allergen, and was just cold. Haven't been able to determine any cause or cure or suspected duration or anything, though. Cold's a pretty lame-ass thing to be allergic to, I've got to say. You'd think that wouldn't really matter, especially after moving to Richmond, but think about not being able to splash cold water on yourself, hold a cold drink, etc when it's hot. Lame lame lame.

Fortunately it doesn't completely preclude participating in stunt burns, which are usually done using very cold gel. The team here made a few minor accommodations and it worked fine:

I'll be doing safety on a film burn gig this coming weekend.

C's getting a bit stir-crazy on bedrest, and is often in pain, but is holding together admirably and still generally healthy. A's adjusting. The reality set in last night of just how daunting a task it's going to be to try to sell our house, move across the country, and have our family of five in a two bedroom or so apartment for a couple years while I'm in full time grad school... the house-prep/sell/move part all having to happen while C's either on bedrest or we're dealing with newborn twins. Remind me again how the hell that's all supposed to happen? I must have forgotten that part of my grand plan.

Oh yeah, that wasn't a part of the plan.

As our friend Sunny used to say, MIRACLE OF LIFE!!!!! Yeah...

So- we'll probably be trading in my Honda towards a Mazda 5 soon- the closest to a proper minivan we can afford and C is willing to drive. We'll probably be selling off a lot of stuff soon. And we probably won't be emerging from our house or my work until it's time to move.

So yeah... this was far too much of the last month or so of my life:

http://www.youtube.com/user/thehuntedtv#play/user/EB2331F998F04276
Edited to add: Hang on... that's just the channel link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhafrYj6GZs

Watch. Rate. Your vote may or may not be incorporated into the contest judging, but it can't hurt! Locals can play either variant of the drinking game "Spot the SeaGoth" or "Spot the local stuntperson".

Putting out the call- might have to get a new person to do foley & audio for the short video project I'm entering in a competition with a deadline of this Thursday... might be just not sleeping this week and trying to learn audio post-production, but short of (and better than) that, anyone know what they're doing and want to help out?


UPDATE: Think the F/X guy's got it covered!

Well, C's been on official bedrest pretty much since that last post. It's wearing all of us a bit thin, but I think A. and I are at least starting to adjust... things were pretty actively harsh that first week or so, and seem a more mellow kind of suckage now I guess.

C's at 30 weeks now, so we're just holding on as long as we can. I've been taking time off work as I can- had a bunch to use up by the end of June, but the clock's re-set now, so I'm having to ration it a bit more.

Things are a bit strained at work, but I suppose Summer's not a bad time for all this to be going down.

Video short is all in the can- post-production hopefully going well, but since I'm not personally doing effects or audio, I feel a bit out of touch with it at the moment. Might be re-recording some audio this next week. Contest deadline was bumped back to the 16th.

Had an only slightly edited down article I wrote appear in the current issue of the SAFD's journal "The Fight Master". Sadly their new website doesn't include electronic versions of that (at least not yet), and our scanner's on the fritz, so sharing's a bit tricky. Kinda the least of my worries right now, but it'd still be nice to feel like something's been accomplished. Submitted that article more than a year ago, so it's a nice little bit of closure as well.

Feeling like half-time worker, half time primary caregiver, with another quarter time career thrown in for good measure. A's been doing swim lessons or "Camp Summerific" (run by one of the preschool parents in her back yard) weekday mornings, and we've started bringing in a neighborhood teenager to provide afternoon assistance. They spent much of today at a Seattle Storm game, using tickets C bought months ago, thinking "it's just July, I'll still be fine!". I know we've both been worried about how that will go... C. dropped them off and picked them up, which is more activity than she really ought to be doing, and I know she was too worried to sleep in the interim. Hopefully she's getting a respite now.

We've also been watching a neighbor's dog, so A & I will be doing that when I get home, after dropping off the kid-sitter.

Life goes on. What else can you say?

Been a while. Trying to think about what all's happened, and that just makes it seem a longer damn while. ISMAC workshop, a short video written/directed/mostly shot, SAFD singlesword class finishing and a test (done last night via video, since the class is testing on Sunday and I have to work commencement then), A's preschool ending for the year (and leaving their current building), my grad school cohort I was with for a year (last year) finishing up with their symposium earlier this week, saying goodbye to co-workers who are leaving now, having been pushed out in the political upheavals at my work... lots of endings this week.

C's on self-enforced modified bed rest, as just the stairs up to our house can bring on contractions, and sometimes just sitting up can cut off circulation to her legs. Makes watching A a challenge, but we're just full of those these days.

Running a pretty big sleep debt at the moment, but might get to catch up on some of that now that things are having to slow down in my second job. Maybe that'll help... contrary to how it probably seems to the rest of my family, I really don't enjoy doing things like yelling at my daughter.

Catching folks up on my life is much like living it; too much, not sure where to start, don't want to indulge in self-pity but still somewhat in mourning over the thought of having to give up having my own projects for what could be a long time, since those are often what keep me going. On the other hand, that's meant keeping me going at 2am, if that's the only time left, so maybe it's a healthy trade-off.

Since I'm at least a little more regular there, those with interest might prefer to follow me via twitter or Facebook. LiveJournal's been for longer and more personal postings, and I'm not sure how much of that I feel like doing these days, or have time for.

Figure I really ought to try to post monthly, at least.

So.

Work's a bit crazy, but we're all making adjustments. Entering the 3rd full week officially under my new boss, and maybe, slowly, approaching some sort of new stability. Sorta. Lots of institutional changes going on right now, with essentially a 2yr old president and 3 new (under a year) VPs, all of whom are looking to shake things up a little.

Workshops mostly wrapped now, with the exception of a version of the firearms one I'll be doing for some video game animators next month. Lessons learned include: get deposits ahead of time, plan much smaller (never made it through all I'd hoped to), find someone else to run camera if at all possible.

Rental business keeping steady, but no choreography gigs this month. Been pretty quiet on that front lately. Not sure why.

C's nausea is much reduced, which is good, but other complications are picking up in their stead. Hoping there won't be months of doctor-ordered bedrest prior to labor, that there won't be a complicated labor/delivery/surgeries/NICU time, etc... lots of hoping, and not a lot to back that up at the moment.

Fighting off both allergies and a cold, but that's been the case for about a month now. Officially declared myself sick yesterday, missed a singlesword class, and let myself sleep in a little this morning.

Back to the busy...

Overdue for an update, sorry.

So, catching up:

As most of you have already seen elsewhere, my wife is pregnant. With twins. This is the cause of some panic on our part, as well as a difficult pregnancy on hers- there's a reason I'm not doing the more modern "WE're pregnant!" thing, because I'm not constantly ill, tired, and somewhat broken. Which is good. I need my functionality these days. WE need my functionality.

As such, I've deferred admission to VCU until Fall 2010. The prospect of moving, and affording grad school, has just gotten that much more... interesting, but at least I have more time.

Business is busy but not bad- day job facing the ubiquitous financial crisis, film and theatre work doing fine (rentals, a new small play choreo gig, some video gigs, teaching some workshops, taking a class, won a scholarship to attend a workshop Memorial Day, etc).

Sleep? Sleep's something that happens to other people. Sleeping's okay, I guess; Been there, done that, mostly over it now.

Sick? Been there, done that, hopefully getting over it.

Not entirely keeping up with all that needs done around the house and for A., but that's no surprise.