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Hi! Been awhile. Miss me? I recently returned from a shoot in Vegas. It went terrifically well, but it took me away from my family for five of the longest days of my life. I had a good time, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t know if, up til now, I had spent that much time away from Avery in total.

Our little family managed to connect for some FaceTime twice, which was like water in the desert for me. But usually I would try to peek in on my bunny right before my own bedtime. Success was rare though. Avery and Mum were enjoying the luxury of a whole queen size bed to themselves, so a monitor in Avery’s room wasn’t good for much. I got lucky a couple times:

Yep, like water in the desert.

I’m not a stranger to dealing with separation, but this is a whole new deal. I love my job, and I know it will take me away from time to time, but some of the shine has been stripped off. You know?

So much to miss.

It was a good shoot though. We were the videographers for L’Oréal Professionnel Foundations 2013, a high-end brand reaching out to evangelists throughout the industry. Lots of learning, lots of inspiration, lots of plans for the year ahead. The hours are long but it’s neat to be surrounded by that kind of distilled creative energy. Our mandate was to capture the sense of transformation as people buy in to the vision. They made it pretty easy.

So the rush leading up to the event paid off, with all the product and supporting video very well received. Awesome. And the two videos we built and edited while there also brought us some high fives and kudos. It was really (really) nice to be appreciated. That doesn’t always happen. The plan is to get the Big Finale video up online where it belongs. If that happens, I will point you in the right direction with a certain amount of pride.

I had promised myself I would take more pics on the job, but it’s not a practical project when there’s so much going on. I took these though:

 

The first is a fair approximation of how the days look to us in the middle of it all. The second is from just after wrapping the Grand Opening, and just before a well deserved beer.

The Grand Opening, well, there was a spectacle. Dancers, opera, sequins, models, clouds of hairspray. Oh yes, it was a glamoursplosion. People wanted to buy copies of the video as soon as the dancers froze in final position. We hope to be offered the budget to produce said video. Here are some screencaps. You should click on them for maximum glamfectiousness.

Nice work. High fives and low bows for Christian [I’ve lost his last name] for his superlative stage production.

And in the trenches through the whole week, deep appreciation for  J Thor (Hi JT!), Brian, Wayne and Jose for their capital technical production.

And I daresay Lee and I did a decent job of making it last forever. The boss boss previewed our Big Finish video (the transformation one) on the laptop and she liked it, but we didn’t get the wow we wanted. We put the headphones on her and oh there it is! So I will take that as a feather in my cap. Audio is half the movie, and don’t you dare believe otherwise.

So, exhausted and drained, we walked out of there feeling like we’d planted that touchdown. Mission accomplished. Checkered flag and winner’s circle. It felt good to come home though. Best hug yet.

Avery is 5 months now. She can hold her own bottle. She laughs if she thinks you’re funny and she smiles politely if she doesn’t quite get it. She still loves her swing but she loves sitting between Mum and Dad more. She’s chatty but sometimes she just watches. She’s commandingly confident grabbing things even if she isn’t quite sure what to do with them next. She still yells at Mr Octopus because she can’t get more than one tentacle in her mouth at once. And she’s wobbly, but she can just about stand on her own. With both hands on the couch. I wonder if she’ll walk before she crawls. At this point that’s where it looks like we’re going.

It’s good to be Home.

 

This is where I hoped to post a bunch of new pics and update the ol’ blog on what’s up, but because there’s so much to tell there’s no time to tell it. It’s so busy, I’ve had Avery helping out with the mix. She’s very good.

Huge production crush, Suz’ 50th b-day celebration, various and sundry all worth the telling, but it’s bedtime, yo.

May your Monday be super great.

 

That’s kinda how I see my girl whenever I look at her. Transcendant. Ethereal. Angelic. Pure magic incarnate. A wonder to behold. No glowing adjective seems hyperbolic.

She’s nuts of course.

I don’t know why I find it odd that she’s so comfortable upside down. She’s really spent more time upside down than she has breathing at this point. You know, counting pregnancy.

Last time I wrote, she was just starting to grasp things on purpose. Now she’s confidently reaching for them. She yells at them if she can’t fit them whole in her mouth. True for most things, unfortunately. It’s a vocal household, now. Happy vocal, to be sure but… I think this is how kids came to be called little monkeys. Howler monkeys, anyway. It really poses a quandary – ease her off the soother, or invest in publicly traded ear plug companies?

She’s thinking, “If only I had one more arm, I would rock that teddy bear’s world.” She hasn’t quite negotiated being on her tummy yet. She’s happy enough for a few minutes, but soon enough she wants to engage with the world, and both arms are all tied up. She lets us know she’s done with tummy time with grace and subtlety. If grace and subtlety are 11 and 12 on the volume knob.

But oh so adorable.

Possibly the funnest hat ever. Suits her perfectly. The hat that gets our official stamp, however:

We’re so subversive. Sticking an American girl in a Canadian toque. That’s right, I said toque. And she’s about the cutest button you ever saw, so there.

A pair of cute buttons, no less.

Meanwhile, in BC, Premier Christy Clark is ignoring the cries of the film industry to restore tax incentives to production companies they see as leaving town for greener pastures. 90% unemployment aside, that means about a billion dollars a year not entering the provincial economy. Yes, you read correctly. About a billion dollars. No matter how you slice it, that makes Clark’s administration a bunch of idiots. There’s just no way to justify it. Offer incentives, productions come spend money and pay tax. Don’t offer incentives, productions do not come, so no tax revenue, a bludgeoned economy, and a mass exodus of an entire industry. Sharp move.

I find myself thinking, “What the hell, Canada? Harper and Christy. Seriously.”

What does that say, that, living as I do in Americaland, I look north and have to shake my head?

Adrian Dix, leader of the NDP, took a high profile jaunt to Hollywoodland to meet with studio execs, assuring them that if the NDP wins the next election, he will look favourably on reinstating the incentives. Probably they don’t care, as they will cheerfully go wherever they can get the best deal for a workable location, but you can be sure the BC film industry took note. A tidy way to wrap up a hundred thousand votes. Considering the billion dollars of annual revenue at stake, that should wrap up an entire election. But we have the business sector with which to contend (banks and such), who have been pretty content to watch their province rot away around them while they reap comparatively meager rewards. So it falls to you, BC resident, with your single vote. Vote Liberal and continue watching arts, health and education get slashed, or vote NDP and hope it’s not too late.

Should be an interesting election. Who will the Liberals hire to produce their propaganda?