Twittering

I doubt I will ever start using Twitter. It is hard enough to keep up with Facebook, this blog, e-mail, let alone an old fashioned phone call or face to face get together. Adding one more way to "stay connected" seems like too much.

Then, too, there is the fact that some people who are using Twitter are using it in much funnier ways than I ever could. Case in point, Christopher Walken. Yes, that Christopher Walken. And when you read these, use your best Walken imitation.

UPDATE: And it turns out, it was not really him at all after all....

So — for the following months I quietly posted my “cwalken” posts for my amusement and as a subtle prank — not a prank on the world but a brotherly prank on my buddies at Clusterflock.

Something happened a couple of weeks ago and everybody showed up. Now it’s a little weird and would appear to be a “hoax” on a much larger scale. And maybe it is now but it wasn’t supposed to be.

Some days don't you just hate the Internets? (Though I do have to give props for one hell of an imitation.)

Final Vacation Blogging

The weather our last few days was picture perfect, so most of our time was spent on our little secluded beach, with a few breaks up at the cottage where it was cooler.

The cottage worked out pretty well, although it was clearly designed for hot weather and our first few nights were pretty cold. Once it started warming up at night we were paid regular visits by a little friend.


Loved that he ate the bugs; hated that he chirped half the night. We spent all day Saturday traveling, making it home late that night. And it was an early morning Sunday, so we could bring Gracie home.


Slowly settling back into the old routines and the tans are already fading, but it was an incredible two weeks.

Vacation Blogging, Part 4

The weather Sunday, Monday and today has been amazing. It has been very hard to tear away from our secluded beach even to come into town for groceries or a wi-fi hit. Not many pictures taken since mostly we are on the beach or on the lanai. Here is sunrise from our lanai. 

Tuesday was not a great beach sitting day so we hiked the Kuilau Ridge Trail.


Nice easy going hike. Apparently when it is clear, the mountain is spectacular. We had to settle for views of the lush valley. 

Along with a stop at Wailua Falls. 

Not sure if we will take the time for another wi-fi hit before we leave Saturday morning. In the meantime, you can check out more photos of Part 3 and Part 4 on Facebook. 

Vacation Blogging, Part 3

The weather here has been... well not the ideal you picture when you picture a Hawaiian vacation. Not bad, but not sunny and hot. We took advantage of the overcast to explore a couple towns and shops, including heading back to Hanalei and its New England style church. 

We also went out for a night out with Jessie on his last night in town. Sadly, Trish and I both crashed well before Jessie, who ended up out on his own. 

Saturday, we checked out of the condo and found some sun on the north end of the island at Tunnels Beach. It was glorious - everything you would picture when imagining a Hawaiian vacation. 

Said goodbye to Jessie at the airport


and headed to our beach cottage on Anahola Bay for our last week. More rustic than we had anticipated, but it works very well when the weather stays good. Like it did from sunrise into this afternoon.

The rest of this week is getting played by ear. We are going to try for another hike and some more snorkeling, but if the sun is shining, it will be very hard to leave our secluded hideaway.  

Vacation Blogging, Part 2

A few more pictures from the past few days. The weather on the east side of the island, where we are staying has been kind of crummy, so we went in search of a good spot to snorkel or swim. We ended up at Lucy Wright Beach Park on the west side. No chance for snorkeling there, but plenty of fun in the surf.


We did get some snorkeling in at Larsen's Beach on the east side of the island. And took a little time to relax afterwards, too.


Then we explored the north end, specifically the town of Hanelei, where we found a scenic spot and good sushi.


And the lovely Ha'ena Beach Park.


Today we went back to Hanalei to kayak the Hanelei River.
 



Sadly, Jessie tipped his kayak and he, his phone and his camera went into the river. We are hopeful the memory card from the camera can be salvaged. If you want to see more photos, I have posted almost all of them on Facebook. If you are not signed up to Facebook, you can still see the photos here and here.

Vacation Blogging Part 1

The view from our room balcony our first night in. 

One of the falls in Waimea Canyon

On the trail with Jessie 

At the Waipo'o Falls in the Waimea Canyon

And away we go

So the final reason it has been so quiet around here recently, more than the video projects, more than the dog, is that the hard won equilibrium I had found around infertility issues has been lost, and how.

I am not going to go into detail now. The nutshell version is that in January it really started to look like we had conceived the old fashioned way and that was pretty damn incredible. When it turned out not to be the case, I kind of, well.... I hit a bit of wall. And I am not sure what to do about it.

So we are going on vacation tomorrow. We are taking a month off from trying to conceive. No IUI, no timed sex, no conversations about what do we do if. Just vacation in the sun. Well, actually at the moment, it is raining pretty steadily in Kauai, but I think we will manage quite well. Worries and problems are being left in Seattle and will be re-looked at sometime after we get home.

Our first week, our room should have wi-fi access, so we will post a few pictures during the course. Not sure about the 2nd week.

Oh, and speaking of pictures, Todd has a few stills from the Duo shoot posted. I have seen the rough cut of the short and it looks great. I'm excited to get the other chapters shot.

Issue #0

Last year, we finished the pitch package for the feature film Duo: A Geek Tragedy and, sadly, have not been able to find financing. Not a huge surprise considering the current economic conditions. But we really wanted to work on it, 'cause it is a good story and will be fun to shoot. So we got creative.

Todd wrote a series of 4 shorts that act as back story for the main characters. Or in comic book parlance, he wrote Issue #0 with 4 chapters. Which is why we are calling it Duo: Issue #0 (we're clever that way).

We shot our first chapter on Saturday (which is actually Chapter 2, but is the first one we shot), and it went extremely well. Especially when you consider our crew had never worked together before (some of Todd's people, some of my people, an intern and an artist), we had not been in the space before (generally something to avoid, but it was unavoidable in this case), and we had to tear down a real artist's studio in a space too small in which to shoot and build it again in the shooting space and then reverse the process when the shooting was done. Heck, even Todd and I, for all our work together over the past year, had never worked on a set together. But a little independent-no-budget-film creativity (who needs a ladder with such great producer supervision?), and ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom, we are out by 5pm.

Todd will start editing Chapter 2 while Trish and I are on vacation. We will post it when it is done. We are going to try and shoot the next chapter on the list (which I think is Chapter 1, but I don't remember; we're not super linear) on or around the Emerald City Comic Convention in early April. Tight schedule since I will be out of commission for two weeks soaking up sun, but Todd should be able to manage.

Mainly, we are filming Issue #0 because we want to work, but we are also hoping we can turn it into marketing tools as well. In the meantime, we have submitted the the feature to the Netflix Find Your Voice Competition. Beating the 1,999 other films that submitted and winning this would give us a good chuck of our budget and distribution through Netflix, so keep your fingers crossed. Semi-finalists will not be announced until May 1st.

Oh and if you were wondering about the public service announcement competition, they have not yet announced the finalists and they have pushed the final decision date back into April.