So much has happened in my life since my last blog post. Nothing too exciting, because I like to think that the mediocrity of my life provides stability for others. And I just don't do a lot besides working anyway. But, things have happened.

Last Friday, March 20, I went to a concert put on by some high school students at the Liquid Highway on Butler Road. It was a good time.


I knew most everyone there and spent most of the time talking to my friend Robby about life. I also pretended to run the sound board, because I'm awesome like that.


I worked most of last Saturday (the 21st) at the church, getting things ready for Sunday. I had to finish up some video rendering and I also set up the sound system again for the youth room. They took most of the system to the Liquid Highway concert and didn't hook it back up in the room. Me being the guy that I am, I hooked it up for them. It wasn't hard except hanging the speakers by myself was a little difficult since they way at least a hundred pounds each and I had to hang them on some cables attached to the support beams of the room. Good thing I have a strong back.

Last Sunday was great. We had a busy morning with a full ensemble of singers and lots of different solos. I took some cool photos from the catwalk.


I helped with camera direction and did some switcher work but for the most part, I just observed and helped keep the team on task.

Sunday evening, I went downtown and met Jami, Rachel, Dan, Dustin, and Brandon at Mellow Mushroom. We had a good time. We all ate dinner together and then Jami and I walked around and took some photos in downtown. I took this not-so-exciting picture of a tree. That was really all I took pictures of. Sometimes, I just don't feel like taking photos, I guess.


Monday was good. I slept in late, met Zack for lunch, hung out with him at Gamestop for a while, without buying anything. We went to Best Buy and played the Rock Band setup there. It was fun. We drew kind of a crowd. I guess that happens when you're awesome at it like me.

I went to work on Monday. I know I wasn't supposed to. But I did anyway. I wanted to clean my office and get ready for the week. I ended up not doing any work. Some people came in to my office to talk. I ended up talking to Tommy until 5pm. Monday was his last day on staff at the church. We talked a lot about that. I left around 5:30pm and went to Rodrigo Rodriguez's house to meet up for a bit. I've been helping him pretty much every week to get some more of his videos digitizes and put onto YouTube.

I stayed at his house for a bit and then left. I drove straight back to the church. I had nothing else to do. I found Tommy and Tyler upstairs playing pool in the youth room. We talked for a bit and then I invited them to my house to play some rock band. I also grabbed my "learn to play the piano for adults" book. That's right, I'm teaching myself to play the piano. So far, it's going well. I'm also learning to read sheet music at the same time. Some of it is confusing. I guess I've given myself some bad habits over the years from just hitting random keys with whatever fingers I wanted to. The good thing is that I'm already learning chords and harmonic intervals and it's easy for me to hear the notes and know what they are just by hearing them.


Tyler and Tommy came over and we played Rock Band until almost 1AM. It was fun.


Tuesday was such a long day. I came in for the worship planning meeting, which went well but was very short. I went to Quizno's for lunch with Matt and James. I ate one of the new "Toasty Torpedoes" and it was fantastic. One of the best things I have ever had from Quizno's. I actually used to eat there ALL THE TIME when they had this sub called the "Honey Mustard Chicken" on Ciabatta bread. I swear, my friend Rex and I ate there all of the time and enjoyed that sub very much. Then, one day, somebody at Quizno's Corporate decided that they'd stop serving the sandwich on Ciabatta bread. And I stopped eating there frequently. I mean, they had the perfect thing going, and then they stopped.

Anyway. After lunch, my main project for the day was to tape some voiceover talent for the Vapor Golf Tournament coming up. We had a ministry highlight scheduled for this Sunday. We had originally planned to script and shoot a video but somewhere along the way, somebody decided it'd be "quicker" to just do a voiceover and take a still photo and animate the mouths of the people in that photo, making them talk about the golf tournament.

Recording the voiceover took some time. Josh, Chris, Nate, and I provided the four voices while Ruthie and Laurie watched.


I voiced a character that sounded like Louis Armstrong, so I had to talk like that for like 30 minutes while we did multiple takes. It pretty much wrecked my voice for the rest of the week, but I guess that's the sacrifice I have to take to do things with excellence.

I worked on that project the rest of Tuesday and left around 6:30pm to go home. I ate at Chik-fil-a (by myself, sigh) and then went home. I spent the rest of Tuesday evening practicing the piano (or, trying to, anyway) and just relaxing.

On Wednesday, I met Andrew early at the church (at 9AM) so we could set up a green screen in Room 202. I had to tape a lot of different projects this week. We wanted to set up the green screen to interview some people in the choir (and some church staff) for a video we're going to make for Palm Sunday. We also took advantage of the setup to film some other segments for Easter Sunday. When I got there at 9AM, we couldn't start setting up because there was a Bible study meeting in Room 202. So, we couldn't do anything except pile all of the equipment outside of the room. I ended up setting it up by myself Wednesday afternoon.


I worked late at the church until about 10:30PM, videotaping interviews and whatnot and then came home. Jami came over and we hung out until past midnight just talking about life and playing some Halo. It was fun. I went to bed super late and then came in Thursday around 11AM. I picked up Matt at his house on my way in because his car was out of commission.

I spent most of Thursday doing rotoscoping/photoshop/animation work in Photoshop/After Effects for the golf tournament video. I had to redraw parts of the photo/faces in order to be able to animate them.

I worked until about 6pm and then went home. Tommy and Tyler came over again around 8:30pm and we had a movie night of sorts. We showed some old videos that I made in the past and some that Tommy had made and talked about them and just had a good time. And of course, we played lots of Rock Band and whatnot. Around midnight, we had to go on a run to Jack in the Box to get some food. I used my diplomatic voice and managed to get a free drink upgrade from a medium to a large. While we were waiting in the drive-through, we took several photos of Tyler, Tommy, and me doing crazy and frightening faces. It was hilarious but I think the people waiting behind us were less than amused.


Friday was another long day. I got to the church around 9AM again and got straight to work. It was a service-project day for some students at Southside Christian School, so Zack came to help me tear down the green screen setup. Some of the other students also helped carry down the equipment so that was nice and it saved me a lot of time. I spent the rest of the day working on the animation for the Golf Tournament Promo. I can't honestly say it took less time to make that video than it would have to just have scripted and shot a real video, but it turned out decently, so everyone was still happy.

I worked until about 6pm Friday and then I came home. I took a shower and changed clothes and then headed back out around 7:30pm to go to the movies. My friend Cheryl invited me to go see "Monsters Vs. Aliens" with some friends. So, Cheryl, Ruthie, Mike, and I met to see the movie. Cheryl is a non-movie-talker, and I stated that I don't talk during movies... but I really do like talking. It's one of my favorite things to do. I enjoy watching and focusing, but part of the movie-going experience for me is laughing to side-comments with my friends. I forced myself to remain quiet during the movie.

I thought "Monsters Vs. Aliens" was hilarious. I laughed a lot. Right after it was over, the four of us had no other plans, so we decided to take in a double-feature. We got back in line and bought tickets for the movie, "Taken". I really enjoyed that movie also. In fact, I enjoyed the whole night. It was nice to hang out with some friends and watch movies. "Taken" had some intense parts and I had a hard time believing that someone as old as Liam Neeson could fill the role he was cast in, but it wasn't too much of a stretch.

After "Taken" was over, we all hung out for a few minutes and then left to go home. I walked Cheryl to her car (because I'm a gentleman like that) and then went home. I ended up staying up late again and then slept in on Saturday. I slept in until like 12:30pm. It was awesome.

I had to go to work in the afternoon yesterday to finish up some animation for the Golf Tournament Promo as well as set up some camera stuff and get everything ready for Sunday. I can't say I love working on Saturdays, but it's not that big of a deal, I guess.

Here's the Golf Tournament Promo video, in case you were wondering how it turned out.



Tim and I went to Wal-Mart yesterday evening and bought some things. I wanted to have a hand-towel holder near my sink so that when guests come over, they could use a hand-towel for hand-washing and whatnot. I also wanted to get a new bath mat because I didn't like my old one. I mainly didn't like the color. When we got home, I installed the new towel ring and cleaned my bathroom. It looks spiffy.


Last night, around 10pm, I had a creative idea to animate Psalm 147, which Matt wanted to have put up on the screens during an instrumental solo during one of the songs for the worship set.

I worked until almost 2AM this morning on this.


Animating it was easy, but the layout took a while as I decided how I wanted it to look. Not my best work ever but it worked extremely well with the set today. The timing was almost perfect.

So, after not getting to bed until like 3AM, I turned around and got back up at 6AM. I got up but I definitely wanted to keep sleeping. I came in to church this morning and got everything going. I had to transfer the Psalm 147 animation from my Macbook to my workstation and convert it to a format that our video playback would work with, which took a little bit of time.

I helped do some camera direction this morning and then ended up running the forward camera during services today. I thought I did a pretty good job considering I didn't have an intercom headset hooked up. I just focused on getting some creative shots.

The stage set today looked pretty cool.


I took some time during the second service to listen to Brian's message and take notes so that I could lead discussion tonight with my community group, which met at my house. I came home after church and managed to squeeze in about an hour-long nap and then cleaned the house and got everything ready for people to come over. We had a good sized group of 9 people. I led discussion through the passage from this morning's message and we all talked about it. It was a good time. Some of us went to Perkins afterward for dinner, and I'm pretty sure "annoying Joe" made an appearance.

So, that's some details of the last few days of my life. You're welcome. I could probably provide more detail, but that'd only make an already long and boring entry that much longer... and I know that no one reads in full detail. Well, my mom does. But moms are supposed to do that.

I've been immensely enjoying my break from blogging. I have found that I take less pictures each day though. I guess it's because I have no need to... who would look at them? I'm liking not having to write each day. When I come home, I can just go to bed! No more staying up late writing entries that no one reads or comments on or probably even cares about. I'm still thinking through how I want to blog regularly again though. I love journaling like this but I have a few other ideas that might be better suited to public consumption that wouldn't just be completely long and boring. We'll see. Thoughts?

Later,

Joe