Yawn

Edited my boss's tape from the children's play this morning, as well as shot the pet of the week (I just knew it would be kittens, too), shot the final bit of a tennis camp-thingy, and got chastised for not taking more photos of the special needs kids I'll be shooting tomorrow at the bowling alley. By the lady who runs the place. I can be righteously indignant at her annoyance quietly ... and, if I were mean-spirited, which I am not, I could put unattractive pictures of her in the gallery. But I'm not mean, I'm a nice guy who will indeed finish last but with a clear conscience.

I was considering getting a start on editing the "Day in the Life" that my boss shot of the DNR Conservation Officer, but just looking over the tape makes me queasy. Not just because the shots are everywhere and tilted and jumpy and such, but because there's so bloody much (an hour and six minutes, to be exact). There's not really a good opener, not much of a closer -- bunch of nice stuff for the middle, though, and the threat of a montage of smiling kids is growing quietly in the back of my mind -- and there's not really much in the way of b-roll. Copy and paste, click and drop, rinse and repeat. Such is video editing.

Kittens:

Pet(s) of the week; also posted just in case my professor's reading this because he adores cute animal photos.

More kids

More little kids playing tennis. And tomorrow I'll probably shoot challenged kids doing arts and crafts and swimming. And puppies, tomorrow morning for the pet of the week bit. Puppies, kids ... I just need old people and sunsets and I'm golden.

Sigh.

Oh, yeah

By the by ...

A video on the New Echota historic site. I have no idea how to work the audio in Adobe Premiere, so the interview is mainly left speaker, and the ambient is both. So, be warned. Also, it's longer than I would want, but then again, it's not really a story. It's ... sigh ... sort of an advertisement. Just something to put up to point people to, because NEHS is just about the biggest thing around here.

And ...

Cute kids playing tennis (or trying). Shot for the sports editor, and I figured I'd make a gallery of it. SnapHappy still, so, again, you've been warned.

Ciao.

From the weekend til now

So the weekend was nice. Saw "The Incredible Hulk" with my parents on Friday night in Cartersville, got an AJC (we're suffering from our lack of newsprint since our subscription ran out), and got dinner at the new Fuddruckers in town, which happened to have an extremely cute girl behind the counter. Who was more than a little annoyed by the family of three who appeared and delayed their leaving the store by ten minutes.

Saturday started out slow -- puttered around the house and yard, yadayada, then drove to Chattanooga to check out a used bookstore, then drove to Trenton, Ga./Rising Fawn, Al., to join Aunt Bob and Unka Jerry to go to a big hippie gathering/art council/pot luck dinner/drum circle/general debauch on top of the mountains about twenty minutes away. Mostly folks from my parents' generation, and the two girls who were about my age didn't seem too inviting and I wasn't really looking to be especially cordial with anyone, despite the encouragement from various members of the party to take the initiative. I think they're just worried about their Artsy Sapien species dying off and are encouraging breeding. Besides, I find myself attracted to very go-getter-girls, not the come-get-me-girls. It's no fun if I'm the only one in the chase. It's also ... eh, never mind. If you want to know my thoughts on dating and relationships and what not, figure it out. Or ask me.

Got good and sauced for a while, enjoyed the fire, drummed a good bit, talked alternative energies with a guy named Bill who reminded me of some good family members, listened to Mary talk about New York, and to Bob about Istanbul (not Constantinople, which is nobody's business but the Turks, apparently), and to some random guy about West Virginia jokes.

"So we ended up outside and I pulled my razor and I would have cut him good if I'd'a been able to find some place to plug it in."

The next morning, Bob was quite hungover and Jerry and I were just tired out from the night. I hadn't drank that much or stayed up that late in a very long time -- outta practice, which makes me a sad excuse for a college student. Late, late breakfast, then some Bill Hicks with Jerry, and then digging with Bob in the dirt to retrieve some nice looking potatoes. Never dug for potatoes before -- both a learning experience and a good deal of fun.

Oh, shit -- I'm leaving for Birmingham on Saturday. It's just sort of sneaking up on me.
No more dogs ...
No more "real" bed ...
No more frie- ... actually, scratch that, the friends I had around here don't seem too interesting in hanging out ...
No more parents being supportive and loving ... well, not readily available, at least ...
No more knowing exactly where I'm going by feel ...
No more running at Ooky in the evenings ...
No more seeing people I knew in high school but never really liked ... well, maybe, we'll see ...
No more not worrying about bills ...
No more relaxed job at the paper where everything's basically optional ...
No more small town ...
No more yardwork ...
No more ... well, Calhoun ...
...sigh... No more Chana, I guess, at least, not just an hour away ...

Well.

Good ::yawn:: morning ...

Stayed up a little later than I should have last night, and then my alarm clock failed to go off this morning, so I'm a little tired and was a little late this morning. Good thing about smaller papers is that things are a lot more relaxed, so I can wear (unripped) jeans and a tee with an over shirt and get away with it. Usually, I try to wear something without logos, but I figured I'd endorse my dearly-beloved Capoeira Athens/UGA this morning ... but I digress ...

... from nothing. Gah, I want assignments, I want stories to shoot, I want the hustle-and-bustle. I imagine next week will be a little better -- the Boss Lady's leaving on vacation to Michigan, I believe, and I'll be the only shooter here.

Having breakfast with Karmin, darling girl, who has been sleeping all morning, in a little while. I'm blowing out of here for about two hours because I don't have anything to shoot/do until 12 (more goddamned ribbon-cutting; I bet it'll be the same people with the same stupid cardboard scissors). Slow times at the Calhoun Times.

Ha, the life editor just got a shock -- an anniversary announcement for a gay couple. Their first ever. I get the idea that she and some others on the staff are of the "Adam and Eve, never Adam and Steve" mindset.

So bored -- at least I get to catch up on my news feeds. 17 girls in New England made a get-pregnant pact so they could raise their kids together; Eco-Friendly Nightclubs are on the rise overseas; and always make sure your tattoo artist can spell.

By the way, I'm kinda adorable. Or so she says.

Ciao, y'all.

Ooofa

My neck is sore, tight and, overall, killing me. I don't know why. It feels like a combination of ear ache, strained muscles, stress and a flesh-eating virus. Sucketh. Anyway, just finished editing my second video for the Calhoun Times, just rendered it, and now I'm exporting it into Windows Media format so we can then send it to Jim Alred in Rome who puts it up on the web for us. Little roundabout, but that's life.

Arrgh, I can't move without it hurting. Sitting down is tolerable, but it hurts to walk.

Sod it all, I'm outta here. I'll send the video tomorrow.

Hm

Well, this is ... interesting.

Muumil

That's as close as I can get in English to the Arabic pronunciation for "bored." I'm at work, and I did some running around this morning, but nothing really panned out -- the tennis camp for early this morning got pushed back a week, the Mohawk grant for the Coosa Valley Technical College Literacy Council was a five-minute, in-and-shake-and-smile-and-out affair, and today wasn't a good day to do a video piece on the New Echota historic site, apparently. So, by noon, pretty much everything had fallen down, gone boom.

I even went out on a whim to shoot a soccer camp, but they were already getting ready to call it a morning. I might have something for later -- a local abandoned plant of some kind near my house that is getting torn down very slowly by, like, two crews of guys. But there might be some legal ramification BS if I go shoot ... but hell with 'em, I'll probably do it anyway. So, yeah, boring day. Not much going on.

Makes me wish the local Kiwanis Club would start a turf war with the Calhoun Optimists.

Oh, and here's something for those of us who enjoy kidding ourselves into believing that the world is not the world we think it is. Just another little site devoted to public delusions, this time specifically for those who enjoy zombie movies.

On an up side, my family went ahead and bought another used car, a Mazda Protege, older model, 5-speed manual, gets about 33 miles to the gallon if you're nice to it, with working air conditioning and radio. The parental figures are refering to it as "Jake's car" though I'm fairly well convinced that it would be better served as "Dad's car" since he drives so much during the week. I've been justifying their rationale with the thought that I'll be on my own in Birmingham, and will be paying for everything and won't be mooching off them for anything. Thus, they still save money.

Yeah, I have a guilty complex when it comes to my parents. Started back when they offered me an extra cookie when I was three. Never got over it.

Screw it, I'm outta here.

Mmmkay

I was exhausted for some unknown reason yesterday, so I'm still kind of recovering from the whole effort of traveling to Birmingham, 'Bama, to find decent housing. My dear darling Chana drove us (well, I took over after a while) from Atlanta down to ye ole Magic City where we got a room for the night and then rose, bright and early by her standards though late-ish by mine, to make an appointment ten minutes away.

Though I'm about to completely blow past the bit where the agent forgot about the appointment and we ended up looking at some place else before meeting her an hour late, everything worked out in the end and I've got a nice place in Birmingham that was built in the 1920s and still looks readily available as the set for a film noir flick. We cruised the city and checked out my future employment in downtown B-ham (which I have affectionately begun to call it), got some lunch at a cafe not too far from said employer (at just the right moment to avert disastrous crankiness from both of us), and spoke of many things, love and life and kittens and splitting the atom and such things of philosophers and madmen. Excuse me, "mad-people," for the politically correct.

I had a good time overall, though that may have been the company as well as completing my desired task. Also, seeing the city was heartening. It's a good size for a city, not too huge-mongous and not too crazy-small.

I'd post some of the few photos I have of the place, but I'm at work (though I'm not doing much work today -- just not a lot to do right now) and can't really get to the photos. Uploaded some photos, scanned some photos, corrected some photos, uploaded some video, shot a bunch of kids at the pool for a later article, took a half-friggin-hour to finally realize that there's some catastrophic issue severing all fax lines between Calhoun and Birmingham so I had to send something overnight to the leasing offices ... and skipped lunch.

Oh, yes, the day's been thrilling.

First online video

So it's not really the first video I've done, but it is the first video I've done by myself. Hindsight being 20/20 as it is, I would make a few changes to it, play with the sound a little more, edit it a little tighter, and, of course, I would have gone back and gotten some more shots and maybe an extra interview or two. But I'm working on it.

Damn "Snap Happy"

I'm hating on Snap Happy at the moment. Crappy galleries (apparently, any and all photos uploaded have to be smaller than 120 kb, though it screws up if it's anything over 80 ... and yes, kilobytes ...) that don't work worth a damn (screwing up photos, inserting seemingly random photos, not showing photos) ... just ... why? Why?! I thought I took some nice photos, and they've pretty much gone to waste, it seems. I'm willing to believe that it works for some people, just not me, but I still have to use it because the Calhoun Times insists upon it.

Awkward ...

I imagine this is what it feels like to run into the girl from a month-and-a-half ago, the one-night stand, after having tried to avoid her and having not returned her phone calls. Sure, there are excuses, but none of them are really worthy of being spoken. Or true, for that matter.

So let me recap the last few months:

-Weekend Workshop: Very cool, lots of fun, very busy, met some really nice folks in the business, including one Walt Stricklin, who offered me an internship with the Birmingham News in Birmingham, Alabama.

-Got a 6-month Internship: Again, very cool. Again, with the B-ham News. I'll start on June 30th, and I'm headed down to 'Bama to check out some possible accommodations tomorrow with Chana. Who is, by the by, quite pissed that I'm "leaving her forever." She knows I'm not actually leaving forever, and that I'll be back in Athens come January, but she's still not too happy.

-Got 2 B's, 2 A's: Big surprise, the same grades I always get.

-Completed a Final Project for JOUR5990 (in 20 hours): I was sick at the beginning of the week, finally felt well enough to get some work done on Thursday morning, spent most of the day dealing with class stuff/bureaucratic BS/gathering materials, and editing and created this between the hours of midnight and 5:30 am Friday morning. I didn't sleep, and the day was long and funny. In the "haha" sense. Everything was amusing.

-Had to Drop Out of the Rome Internship: I really wanted to do both, but Jim Alred at the Rome News-Tribune felt that seven weeks at his wouldn't be enough. Sigh ... I still feel guilty about it, and I got some (seemingly) joking ribbing from Billy Weeks of the Chattanooga Times-Free Press, but most folks have just said, "hey, that's business." Still, sorry Jim.

-Picked up a 3 Week "Internship" at the Calhoun Times: Initially, I was just offering myself and my little camera up for some freelancing, but they called me a week later (as I was about to take Chana hiking) and asked me to come in for a meeting. Before I really knew what was going on, they were hiring me on for at least 20 hours a week with their GPA internship money. So, cool, I'll have another internship for my resume, and they're paying me. Gnarly. So far, I've been to a meet-and-greet with some local officials (shot stills for print), toured the local jail (stills for print and an online gallery), watched high school cheerleaders babysit little girls (stills for print and gallery), met most of the local Kiwanis Club (...uhm, we ate lunch together), and drove to Fairmount to watch them replant the park (stills for print and gallery, and video for the 'net). I'm none too happy about the online gallery the Times uses, but hey, small town newspaper, whatever.

That's been the most of it. Folks got back from Alaska with stories and pictures and whatnot, but I've mostly filled my time with yardwork, reading, running one of the dogs and moving my crap out of Athens.

Whoo -- not so awkward now. So, uh, can I buy you a drink? ...