That’s been a pure mess, trying to edit and finish the latest video I shot about my dad’s IROC-Z.
First, editing the video on my Macbook turned out to be a hassle without a mouse. So I tried to complete the task on my work computer. It became incredibly slow and quit on me. I lost all of my work.
So I rebuilt it using this different work build we are now using. I was having incredible difficulties being able to open any Adobe applications, and got no help from any of my co-workers on the subject. I figured it out though.
I seem to become a blubbering idiot when I film myself. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve never been a fan of video, or being in video. I’m slowly becoming more comfortable. I started this for two reasons; the kids in my life who are hopelessly addicted to YouTube and to remember my father. He was a man who loved the art of film-making from when he was young. I have large boxes that are filled with his Super8 films.
Here’s my old man, doing what he did best
I’ve primarily used Youtube to watch music videos on, I miss my MTV. I’ve learned through these kids though, and I think it makes them happy to be a part of the whole process.
Winter has come in southern Indiana, and so I’ve put the car away for the season. I have many things to upgrade however. Primarily the brakes and the suspension. I’ll also be taking the driver’s seat out to be repaired by my uncle Ed, a god in my eyes for many things.
I’m not sure how long it’s been since I’ve written about my health issues. Today I had surgery to replace the battery on my Vagus Nerve Stimulator. It’s primary function is to control my epilepsy, and has been the only thing that has kept my seizures under control.
This is the 3rd time I’ve had this surgery, as the batteries last on average between 5 and 7 years. The surgery went better than I had expected it to. I actually woke up from anesthesia this time without any issues, which surprises me. I really like the stuff. The biggest difference is that they did not suture me this time, and instead used derma bond, which is essentially superglue. I have basically no pain.
The model I now have is upgraded. It has on board diagnostics and even monitors my heart rate and activates automatically if a seizure is detected.
By textbook terminology, I am a cyborg because of this implant.
I had quite the adventure yesterday. My high school sweetheart and mother of my eldest daughter, asked me if I wanted to go out-of-town with her. She and I are on really good terms and due to my situation I’m always looking for a reason to escape. So I agreed.
Her niece, who will always be a niece to me was in some trouble. She was practically being held captive in her baby daddy’s parents’ home. They took her car keys, shut off her cell phone and even made it so she couldn’t access wireless internet from within the home. She was made a prisoner from within the home she’s lived in for the past year.
She has a daughter and is pregnant with their son’s child. Her relationship with him has been on the rocks, and they gave her an eviction notice, effective November 1st. I can’t even comprehend this fully. Is this how you treat the mother of your grandchildren?
When my ex and I were together, it was a tradition of sorts for her and I to watch her (she was under 10 at the time) every NYE. It was weird to be a teenager and feel at ease to play family for a night, but they are fond memories that I genuinely cherish.
She lives almost 4 hours away, so we left my house at 8am and started on the journey. We had lots of talks and connection between the 2 of us. We’ve had our ups and downs but we’ve smoothed them out over the years and are really good friends and co-parents. We still struggle with some things our daughter does (or doesn’t do), but we are proud of the person she has become on the inside. If she would only bring those amazing qualities out for the world to see.
So we get there, and get a uhaul truck and drive to the location where K is staying. I’ll keep her name is as that. We pull into the driveway and one of the homeowners tell us to get off the property, so we oblige. My ex and the homeowner then get into a somewhat heated shouting match. I’m not there to do anything but move stuff, but it’s even stressful on me.
My ex calls the police, and they show up. The guy is from Bloomington and graduated from BHS (when Bloomington only had 1 high school). He then tells us that he knows the homeowners. K comes out, and they lock the door behind her, at first they refuse to let her get any of her things.
Again, I don’t understand.
After a standoff of sorts, things start to come. At first I wasn’t sure how little or how much we would get. We eventually filled an entire uhaul truck. I was kinda shocked at the amount of stuff she had.
We then quickly unloaded most of it into a storage unit K had purchased and then went to dinner with K and the on again off again boyfriend and her daughter. My ex had them do a birthday thing for me (which embarrasses the hell out of me) but it was quick, and she’s fun. She bought me dinner too, I’m appreciative.
By this time it was 6:30pm and the ex and I were on our last bits of energy. We were tired and still had almost a 4 hour drive home. We got to the place where K was going, and had to unload the rest of the truck up 3 flights of stairs. She and I were ruined by that. We dropped the truck back off at uhaul.
I made a big mistake when we dropped the truck off. I had found an 80’s station and this infectious tune came on. I cranked it up and it took all the pain and frustration from the day away for me. I had turned the cab and cargo area lights on so my ex could clean it out, locked the doors and forgot to turn them off. She put the keys in the drop off and we had no way to turn them back off.
We then finally made the journey home. I made it home right around 11:30pm, and took a shower and went to bed.
The lesson here? I had a full day, and I accomplished something. It was selfless, it was for someone I love. I’m starting to really feel like an adult (weird to finally think that at 35, I know). Don’t worry, be happy. It’s a new way to look at life.
To give props to Ice Cube, I haven’t had to use my AK because today has been a good day.
I woke myself up this morning via my alarm clock. Something I haven’t had to really do in many years, as my wife preferred to wake me up. It was nice to feel her hand touch me to let me know the morning was here, time to get ready for the day.
I’m starting to appreciate the things that I no longer have. It hurts my soul tremendously.
I came to work, and it’s been a good day so far (still have 4 hours). I have a couple of errands to run after. I’m not stressed, I’m not highly emotional. I’m in a state that’s hard to describe at best.
The best thing I can do at this point is remember the good times, and try to forget the bad ones. I’m losing the best thing that has ever happened to me. They say when one door closes another one opens. For me, this has never been true. It’s always been a situation where I’m trapped in that room until I can find a way to get out of it.
I’m trying my hardest to not be trapped. That’s what has made today a good day.
UPDATE: Of course I was being way too optimistic in my post. I ended up getting my theoretical AK out, and we had a full on argument. I think there is much built up inside the both of us, and knowing the fact that neither of us like to argue – we go all out over IM. The wise part of me knows that no healing will begin until we get those frustrations out, whatever the outcome may be.
Tonight I finished the renovation of our master bathroom that I wrote about previously. There’s still a little bit of touch up painting to do, but the real work is over.
I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Here’s the highlights.
This bathroom is mainly used by my wife. She picked basically everything, I’ve got to give it to her on her choices. The finished room really looks nice!
The floor I installed was one of those “easy tongue and groove” systems. It was not easy by any means. I had to literally install it one way and then remove everything and install it another way.
I reused the toilet, but converted it to dual-flush. It’s amazingly green.
Now it’s on to planning and preparing for “the big one.” A complete demo and remodel of our main bathroom. The pressure will really be on for this one as I don’t see my wife being happy with using our shower, which is located downstairs.
I wanted to do something big for my 30th birthday. The original plan was skydiving, but I weigh too much. My fabulous wife found something almost as good, a guy in Madison Indiana flys people in his open cockpit bi-plane. With him you can just fly, do some aerobatics, and even take “the stick” and fly the plane.
Unfortunately with our hectic schedule, making this a reality became too much for us to handle and that idea was eventually scrapped.
Fortunately our airport often hosts airplanes that travel the country and offer flights. These are not just cessna’s, but historical airplanes. Last fall we checked out the WWII B17 bomber. While I would have loved to, we could not afford the flight as the $450 price was just too much.
It’s an amazing piece of avionic history. We actually climbed through the plane, which has very tight quarters. It was made even more difficult by to us carrying a 1 year old through it.
Last month a Ford Tri-Motor came, and this time the price was very reasonable.
This plane was one of the planes that started commercial aviation, just to have the opportunity blew me away. This was also the first time I had ever flown from my local airport.
Our flight path was simple and took less time than I had expected. We flew to the south side of Bloomington, near where old 37 and new 37 meet. We then turned north and headed to 2nd street where we flew between 2nd and 3rd street back to the airport.
Due to the proximity of my home to the airport, I got a picture of my neighborhood(if you look at the hi-res version you can see fires & tree damage from the tornado)! We see planes take off and come in for landings all the time, but I had never got to see the plane’s perspective before.
Planes today hold hundreds of passengers, this one only held 9. The cabin was tight, but I felt more comfortable in this plane than in our modern counterparts. I was sitting in the very back, a seat that was reserved for the “steward” was the only thing behind me.
I was busy while we were in the air. I had my camera and an iPhone; I was utilizing all of their capabilities. I even tweeted mid-flight!
I say this often, and I can’t reiterate it enough. Without the past, we have no future. I have to give thanks to the EAA AirVenture Museum for giving me this opportunity. I greatly appreciated it.
I’ll leave you with our landing. If you notice when we touch down, the wheel on my side doesn’t touch for a while!
Those are the words my mind tricked me into believing were true. I heard a fireman say something that sounded like that on the night of May 25th, the night a EF1 tornado touched down very close to my home.
My wife, a person who is always concerned with the weather told me that the night was going to be a rough one. I hear this on a fairly common basis, but something told me that I should stay on alert that night. She had radar from WRTV 6 up on her computer, and we had a combination of the local weather and The Weather Channel on our TV the entire night.
I remember the exact moment when I knew we were going to be in for something. While watching the TV, they were showing all of the tornado warning/watches in Illinois. The state was covered in red; meaning the state was covered in tornado warnings.
Around 10:19pm our power went out, and almost instantly after that our weather radio went off; it was a tornado warning for us and we knew that this was serious. My wife headed for our basement and told me to grab Amelia from her crib if I thought it was appropriate. While I knew this was a serious situation, I had to see it for my own eyes. That’s when I picked up my flashlight and looked at the large maple tree in my backyard. It’s large canopy was swirling in a clockwise motion, something I had never seen before in that large of a tree.
I immediately ran to grab Amelia from her room and rushed to our utility room where Rachel was waiting. Even though I had experienced a similar event when I was 12, I had never felt the urgency or threat that I felt at that moment. It was the first time we had ‘ran for shelter’ from a storm. While in our utility room, we could hear the intensity of the storm. There was no sound like a train, rather the sound of a large volume of air moving at a high rate of speed. It went away after a minute or so, but we decided to stay in our safe place for a few minutes, just to be sure.
Immediately, I went outside to inspect for damage. The first thing I noticed was that a large limb from one of my trees had broken and fallen on my neighbor’s fence. I called him to let him know, and that was when my mental state took a dive that it hadn’t had in a very long time.
He told me that his daughter had called him and by listening to the scanner, she had heard that the trailer court right next to our neighborhood was completely wiped out. I felt a tremendous urge to go see what I could do to help. I got in the Kia and discovered that a war zone now existed less than 1/4 mile away from my home; I was also trapped in our neighborhood.
I discovered another one of my neighbors outside, I asked him what he knew. He said that there were several children trapped in one of the trailers. He told me that he offered his assistance, but they didn’t want anyone who wasn’t trained in search & rescue to help out of the fear that they might also be hurt.
I then heard those words that I couldn’t get out of my head, “the little girl is dead.” I had to run back home, I couldn’t help and I could barely hold my tears back.
Out of what seemed to be pure survival instinct, I started tweeting. Besides our land line, it was my only way of communicating with the outside world at that point. Here they are:
I’m a prisoner in my own neighborhood and there are people dead less than 1/4 miles away from me
Trailers stacked on top of trailers, it’s a sickening sight! If I only had a line to the outside world besides this
I can’t sleep knowing that my poor neighbor children lost everything, almost their lives tonight. I also confirmed with the fd, no death …
I now wish it would stay dark so I cannot see the remains of what was #didthisreallyhappen
I’ve only lost a few trees, which I loved -I feel bad for mentioning it, but I think it should be noted.
Please put the children who just lost everything in your thoughts and/or prayers. They really didn’t deserve this
You never realize how much you appreciate freedom until that freedom is taken – quote me
I then went back and found a larger group of my neighbors. One of which had a friend over who is a policeman. We went back and actually did some searching with the fire department. I snapped some photos on my phone, but due to the atmospheric conditions, they didn’t turn out too well.
I went back home and told Rachel that I couldn’t go to sleep, and that I was going to leave as soon as I could. I felt disconnected from what was happening, I needed information. Around 3am, I started seeing headlights from cars driving around our neighborhood – the road must have been finally cleared. I packed up my laptop, phone and associated cables to charge everything and headed into the unknown. My destination was the IU Wells Library, but I wasn’t sure if I would make it. I had to try.
The journey is only about 6 miles, but it seemed like 50. The entire west side of Bloomington was pitch black. No stop lights or street lights. When I finally made it to campus it was even worse. Trees were down everywhere, what is normally a somewhat linear route ended up to be a criss cross puzzle.
I finally felt okay. I sat with some of my TCC co-workers and briefed them of the situation. I logged onto a computer and started my hunt for information. I printed every article I could find, from the Herald-Times, to the Indy Star to even MSNBC.
Once everything was charged, and my search for information was complete I headed back home. Little did I know that the drive home would be even more treacherous than the drive in.
Still no lights or businesses open. It was daylight now, I what I had feared was true; it had to have been a tornado that came through. While there were spots here and there in town and on campus that had tree damage, there was a defined path of destruction starting just west of Curry Pike/Leonard Springs Road on Highway 45. This defined path followed me on my journey home, and that’s when I encountered the sheriff’s deputy blocking the road to my home. “And where do you think you’re going?” he asked me. “Home” I passionately stated. He let me through.
The next day we left on a planned vacation to Michigan. We felt it would be better to leave the sadness and destruction, than to stay and be constantly reminded of it.
It was an amazing trip. Rachel and I have both came to the conclusions that the stigmas regarding New York from the “old days” are still around, at least where we live. We felt safe at all times, and only saw a handful of homeless. I saw many people out trying to help the homeless. They seem to have people on every block asking for donations.
The first day we arrived late in the day due to plane delays, so we just walked around a little bit and ate dinner. Our hotel, the Marriott Marquis is located right in the heart of Times Square. We could see a sliver of the new years ball from our hotel room.
Enjoy the slideshow containing all of our pictures from the trip!
I’ve restarted this adventure I started over 3 years ago, by working full force on season 1 of ROX again. I was working on 2 seasons and I believe I got way over my head. There were just too many problems to handle at once.
I started over the weekend by transferring what I only had on VHS onto my computer. I then worked several hours on the first episode of season 1, Special Mish-Mosh Episode.
One of the reasons I had abruptly quit working on the series was the amount of heat damage (i believe) associated with many of the episodes. I tried to correct this issue using Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Sony Vegas, but only came up with juvenile results. I started posting questions and viewing others’ questions on a forum that specializes in just these sorts of things, videohelp.com. It has helped tremendously.
I have uploaded 1 minute segments of episode 8, so you can see the differences made. This episode had a vast array of problems, from over saturation, to needing color correction in the worst of ways and needing some sharpening. All of these fixes added together make for a “better end product” I believe. I still have some work to do on the audio, as I want to normalize the volume and filter it to remove tape hiss, etc.
I’ll leave that up to you though, please let me know what you think.
