I received an interesting email today - a woman from a video production company in the Valley (no, not THAT kind of video production company!!) emailed me requesting use of some of my images (Santa Prassede's Zeno Chapel mosaic, the "Blue Colosseum", the Sistine Chapel ceiling image and a few more). It seems they are doing a documentary on the Vatican and want to use my stuff.



I asked her to send me a fax of the release and tonight I emailed her a few other low-res scans of some stuff she might like. Along with those I commented that I was willing to give permission for use in that production only - I needed to retain rights for my own uses, though. We'll see how well that goes down!



I also had a fun date with the new person yesterday. I like her; we may have something going here.

The plan:

Lose weight (use "the book."). Ride the mountain bike twice a week to the Coaster and then to the office and back. Buy a new road bike in the spring. Finish the book in time to have a book release party for the summer party this year. Finish the entry way paint scheme and put one more piece of art on the wall. Play the office holiday/year-end party for 2004.



John sent me every one of his photos from the Rome trip a lot of them are not useable but are still good memories.



I had a good coffee date on Sunday and we agreed to meet again this coming weekend.

Thanksgiving was a huge success. Everyone had a great time. We deep fried a turkey this year, went down to the pier and ended the evening with some limoncello.



I've bought some art for the entry way and have been pondering how to mount it on the wall, since it's about 6 feet long by 4 feet high and weighs 100 lbs. I'll be painting the wall it mounts on a silvery gray color, too.

Today we had a "Thank You" lunch from the marketing department for our big rock and roll extravaganza. They presented us with 5 custom engraved metronomes, each with a brass plate that says, "You can't always get what you wnat" a song we played and dedicated to our customers. I was very touched. They are a good group or folks. It's a nice metronome, too.

So.. been a while, eh?



In the interim I've gigged on the boat again this year, taken my folks to Rome and had a fun Halloween here in the tract.



Boat Gig:



Once again this year we played the Motorola BCS User's Conference Evening Boat Cruise. Picture are at Rock and Roll Photos. It was a train wreck as far as I'm concerend but everyone else seemed to really enjoy it so I suppose that's all that matters. The big boss came up to us after two or three songs and told me he'd gone below decks and told everyone to come up. Turns out he had "enjoyed" the show a lot and he kept telling us. Over and over. And over. Our payment this year: a pretty cool Mot brnded USB memory stick (64 MB).



Rome:



I took my parents and my aunt and uncle to Rome and I think they had a good time but for me it was slightly mixed results since I felt obligated to show them a good time and it wasn't as good a time as I had hoped. Pictures at Rome, October, 2003 Photos. We had a great time with the Italiani, though, so that was worth it, anyway.



Halloween:



The street likes to do things for Halloween and Christmas. This year was no exception. The guy up at the corner had his coffin and graves and scary guy in a jumpsuit and the guy next door had his smoke machine and lasers and I had the 400 watt PA blasting sound effects at full volume for 2 hours. The neighbor with the smoke machine said he could hear up at the end another street, which is at least a quarter mile away. Pictures later.

Rehearsal was good last night except my playing wasn't up to snuff. We came up with a really fantastic way to begin "Keep on Rockin' In the Free World," which we have determined is our encore song. We're gonna sing a slow tempo harmony-rich a cappella version of the chorus, hold the last note and let Vinh count us in to explode into the rocking version of it. It sounded great. I gave everyone the notes they were supposed to sing and we actually pulled it off, Vinh and Chris, even. I couldn't play "What's So Funny (About Peace, Love and Understanding) at all tonight and everything else when i had to sing was a little loosy goosy, I'm afraid. Oh well, more practice on my own during the week, I guess.



I had to avert a family crisis today since my aunt was wavering about whether she wanted to stay in the apartment or not. Mom sent me an email outlining the situation but I didn't understand so i called the house and talked to Dad who filled me in. Then I called Eleanor but she wasn't home so I left a message. She called me when John came home from work, we talked about it for while, I assured her everything was going to be fine and so now she's back on board. I swear, as I told Dad on the phone, the email I sent inviting everyone to Rome was entitled "A Rash Proposal" for a reason.

The pressure has been on for a few weeks now at work. We are expected to make our mass production date in time to support the rollout of this brand-new satellite service we've been working on since the beginning of the year, which is Oct 1. Last weekend I worked on Saturday, helping out the development team do some upgrades to some of the existing boxes and then all week we had daily morning status meetings. The VP described it as "We're jumping off a ten story building and hoping that the guys on the ground can assemble the trampoline before we hit the ground."



Personally I think we're going to splat into the sidewalk.



The band rehearsed with Mark now that he's back from vacation on Friday. We played a long time and were exhausted when we finished. I think we'll get it together in time for the boat cruise; so far there are 300 people signed up for the user conference (which the boat cruise is a part of). We decided to stretch out one particular song to allow the audience members who want to play along with us to do so under controlled situations and not just do a pointless jam that bores everyone to tears (like last year, except mark and I went to get beers while it was going on.).



I went for two bike rides during the week last week and then worked on the yard yesterday and went to the beach for a swim late this afternoon.



I attended my first of 4 sessions on "Creative Photography" at the Encinitas campus of Mira Costa College. I am not very impressed though. First, the class catalog says you MUST be familiar with your camera and its settings, but a lot of the people there had new cameras (because they decided they wanted to "get into" photography, probably) and had no idea what they were doing. Nice cameras, too, nicer than mine in a LOT of cases. There is a couple in the class who have matching very expensive digital SLRs but they at least talk a good game. As for the instructor, well, I have yet to decide if I have any respect for her. 1. She is French, which by and of itself is not a problem except for; 2. Our first class was Thursday, September 11, 2003. During a discussion of when we want to do a field trip she actually asked the class, "What date is it today?" Also, while we had a discussion of f stop and shutter speed and film speed and the like, there was no discussion of the physics of what is going on. Why does the depth of field change with aperture? Well, who cares, we just need to know that it does.



I hate that kind of approach.



The field trip is going to be to Horton Plaza, but she also said we don't have to go. I immediately decided I wouldn't. Since Horton Plaza is private property and so we have to get permission from the management but there's always one asshole security guard who didn't get the memo and with my luck he'll find me first. So I'll probably go to O'side pier to shoot my stuff.