The end is near

Back in the spring and summer I stated that I thought school would be relaxing compared work and moving and all. And I said to people back then to feel free to laugh at me for thinking so when I got to December and finals. Well, here we are. It's December and everything left to do is due tomorrow. And you know what? I feel great.

re-energized

The best teachers help you reach your potential. I have one of those this semester. The thing about Debbie is that whenever we talk, whether it's in class or in her office hours I always walk away feeling energized and excited and impatient to get back home and start writing.

I love shooting

Killer is coming along nicely. I got a rough cut done over the weekend that was good enough to send to the composer and he sent me some music Sunday night. I'm really excited because I think the film is living up to its potential. But one of the things that came out of the rough cut, and particularly the rough cut review last week, was that I needed to make the ending more clear. So I got in touch with Lynne Lori, who is playing Molly, and she came out tonight and we did some pick ups. Really there was one shot that was a must have and then three others that would be worth doing since we were out anyway.

We spent about an hour at the bus stop and a good third of that was waiting around for the right bus to show up. But still I had so much fun. It helped that it was way warmer than last time we were shooting. But regardless I am always happiest when I have a camera in my hands. The last shot we did was Lynne Lori getting on the bus and the bus driving down the road and it worked out that she could sit by the window and I could see her as the bus pulled away. It was perfect.

I'm still kind of bouncing off the walls, but I think that has as much to do with the caffeine I had late in the day. Anyway, on to editing.

the difference between a film and a job

I think I'm still looking at assignments the way I look at jobs. I got my grade and feedback for the second film project (Printing a Shirt). The grade was good enough, but not great. I wouldn't care at all except 1) I'm inherently competitive with myself and I got straight As in Ithaca and 2) I need a minimum GPA for my scholarship. (Not in jeopardy, I'm fine.)

watched this in class today

An Oscar nominated short from 2006. It was very good.

Circle of Confusion

Thanksgiving has come and gone and now the mad sprint to the end of the semester commences. Tomorrow we have our first final. None of my professors put their finals in finals week to save us from having to do everything at once. Guess what.

So here's what I have left to do in the order it is due:

Killer - lessons learned

I am a firm believer that on every shoot if you haven't learned something you aren't paying attention. So this morning waiting for class to start I wrote up some notes from last night. Over all I think it went well. I had fun. The new actors were good to work with, and I think it's good for me to learn to work with strangers. It's a bit easy to just keep working with Esther and Eric all the time. I skimmed the footage and it's all there and looks good, but I am slightly nervous about what I'm going to find myself wishing for when I get to editing it.

Seen on my morning walk

Maybe I'm easily amused, but this really entertained me.

Printing a Shirt

It was raining and nasty today and all I really wanted was to stay in bed with the dog, a cup of tea, and the screenplay I've been working on. Sadly that was not an option. On the other hand, I was wildly productive today.

why I make a bad film student

I suck at actually remembering films I've seen. We're critiquing people's scripts in screenwriting and we're supposed to include references to films we've talked about in class, or in other classes, or just seen ourselves. It's not just for the sake of proving we can name films but to help the writers learn from how other people approached similar situations or challenges.

The problem is I can't write "This reminds me of that film. You know, the one with that guy. It was kind of spooky. And that thing kept happening and you weren't quite sure what it was. You know, that film." I can almost see it in my head but I have no idea what film it was or who "the guy" was. All I can think of is Sixth Sense, but that's not it. I hope someone else comes up with the same one in the discussion later today or it's going to drive me crazy for days.

Things are coming together

My talk on Wexler went well this morning. I knew enough about him. I had a good outline to keep myself on track. I had fun clips. And I talked. I'm good at talking, at teaching people the things that I know. And I think the class found it more interested than probably most of you did. I actually had someone leaning forward in his seat. Yay me. Onward. I need to write a 10-12 page paper on the same topic (well doesn't have to be the same, but I've done all the research) by the end of the month. Should be just a matter of writing up the talk in a more scholarly way than I did here, though I'll stop by the professor's office hours next week to see if he wants me to spin it one way or another.

So that's all fine, but here's the fun part of the day:

What I know about Haskell Wexler

This is roughly what I'm going to tell people on Thursday in class. I won't read it out of course, I just wanted to sort it out in my head. Make sure I know all the things I want to know while I still have time to remedy any missing info. For example I have a copy of the MLA Handbook and of Kate Turbaian's Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, but as I got them both while I was in Ithaca in 1995 neither will tell me how to properly cite videos found on YouTube. For you for general purposes: I watched several of his films, I watched the documentary about him that his son did, I read articles in American Cinematographer and Film Quarterly, and our textbook covered a little bit about him. So if you're interested in Wexler read more.

I guess I guessed well

We got our mid-terms back for Masterworks. I only missed two of the clip identifications when I thought I missed at least half. And I only missed 1 of the multiple choice. So that's cool. I have to be honest though, it doesn't make me in a hurry to read the texts now that I've proved I can get by without. First things first though, presentation next week. That and editing my 2 minute documentary are my big ticket items for the weekend.

I also need to start pre-producing my final project for Production 1. I was looking at the calendar today to figure out when I want to shoot it and I realized that the first rough cut is due 11/28. Which means I need to shoot it the week before Thanksgiving because honestly that week will be a wash. But that means like 2 weeks from tonight I need to be shooting and first I need to find 5 actors.

The good news on that front though is that I'm planning to use my short script from screenwriting for it and we work-shopped that today. It was an interesting discussion. Generally well received, generally understood. A few good suggestions about how to keep the actual murder from getting gratuitously violent. And what I need to do now is re-write the script to turn it in later, but what I want to do is go straight to storyboarding it. I really really wish I could draw.

And I need to have the first draft of Ghost Tours in a couple of weeks as well. I haven't even started that one, but I know if I can get in the zone and get a hunk of undistracted time I'll be able to churn it out. It's a first draft after all.

If you haven't read it, here's the link to Killer.

How are we thinking about next semester already?

I registered for classes this morning. Next semester I'll be taking Production II, Thesis Preparation (I've no idea what that'll be about), Advanced Directing, and Cinematography. I think that's going to be a lot of fun.

In the meantime though I have to get through the second half of this semester. I have this weird feeling today of being ready and at the same time being sure it's all going to fly and I'll be rushing through everything. I still need to write up/sort out what I'm going to say for my presentation next week, but I finished all the reading for it so it's just a matter of getting my head together and I'm feeling good about that. This afternoon I finished reading the book I need to give a report on for Acting. So I have to write that up, but am largely ready for it. So most of what's left for the next 6 weeks is doing stuff rather than passively receiving stuff (if you know what I mean). That's great, I like doing. But a few of the things to do - particularly writing the ghost tours script, and producing the final project for Production 1 - are things I would have taken more than 6 weeks on even if they were the only thing I was doing.

I was talking to Debbie yesterday and said the best thing about school has been the concentrated creativity. In 3 and a half months I'll have created 2 scripts and 3 very short films (plus written a couple of papers and watched a ton of movies). I love not having a job. When I was working full time I would spend twice as long and get only one of those things done.

While I wait for the lights to go out

It's been a weird 24 hours or so. Everyone was preparing for the hurricane yesterday, so I did too, and a bit more this morning. And everyone I know up and down the coast has been off school and/or work today, which was generally announced last night. So I've spent all of this time trying to get stuff done before the power goes out. Now according to the Globe there are over 350,000 people in Massachusetts without power, but so far I've had a nice quiet productive day. It just feels a bit weird, like I've been rushing to get stuff done when in fact I apparently had plenty of time.

A Fresh Start

Well, the 600 or so  pages of reading and the 3 films that I never managed to cross off my to-do list can now be set aside and I have a new chance to not fall behind. Of course I didn't do any of the reading or watching for today because I was studying for the exam so I'm already behind, but not so far as to be unrecoverable.

The same but different

We had an exercise for screenwriting where we were all given the same backstory and characters and premise and then had to write a scene for it. Part of the point of the exercise was making sure we all know how to properly format things. And part of it was to prove a point: there may not be any new stories, but every old story told by a new person is unique. They're all up on the class web page now so we can read them before tomorrow and that point is very well proved. One was set in 1944 (mine), one was set in 2114, the rest were contemporary. And if you had stripped the names off I probably still could have said who had written what. We all bring ourselves to our work and so it has to be unique.

Mom was having a similar experience this week in her pottery class. They were making mountains. And that was the assignment: make a mountain with a house. And she said she was really entertained by how different everyone's mountains were.

I think that's what I like about art and creativity. It has to be unique even when it's similar just because every artist is unique. But also every viewer is unique and everyone will look at the same thing and get something different out of it. So no, there may not be any new stories, but every telling, and every hearing has its own newness.

films of the week and the upcoming exam

I've watched a bunch of things this week in an attempt to catch up on all the required viewing before next week's exam. I saw Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky, 1947), but to be honest sitting here right now I can't tell you a thing about it. This is a problem, they're all starting to blur. The Battle of San Pietro (John Huston, 1944), a documentary that was trying to be supportive of the war effort, but was so brutal they didn't actually show it until after the war ended. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Lewis Milestone, 1946) a noir film that I liked a lot and we talked about in class today. A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1949) a women's film that I also enjoyed, particularly in contrast to Ivers. Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950) that is where the famous line "I'm ready for my closeup Mr. de Mille." comes from. And Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943) which is an Avant Guard short film that we watched in class today.

a good quote

There seems no doubt that a group can make or break its members, and that it's more powerful than the individuals in it. A great group can propel its members forward so that they achieve amazing things. Many teachers don't seem to think that manipulating a group is their responsibility at all. If they're working with a destructive, bored group they just blame the students for being 'dull', or uninterested. It's essential for the teacher to blame himself if the group aren't in a good state.

Normal schooling is intensely competitive, and the students are supposed to try and outdo each other. If I explain to a group that they're to work for the other members, that each individual is to be interested in the progress of the other members, they're amazed, yet obviously if a group supports its own members strongly, it'll be a better group to work in.

This comes from Keith Johnstone's book Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. He's an acting teacher and that's what the book is mostly about, but earlier in his life he'd been an elementary school teacher (8 to 10 year olds). He's British and he was teaching school in the 50s and acting in the 60s and 70s. (Maybe later, but the book was copyright 1979.) What I find interesting is how much he seems to be describing the American educational system. And America generally, really. We are so competitive, so individualistic. I can and will make it on my own. I can't win unless you lose. And yet to me his point seems so obvious. If we work together we will achieve so much more than if we rely only on ourselves.

I think that's one of the things that draws me to filmmaking. It's a team sport. you can't really do it alone. And in my experience the ideas that start out just in my head end up so much better after the collaborative group gets involved.

Company Man

We reviewed my first film project in class this morning. I used my phone to record it when it was projected (see below). The assignment was to tell a story in 1.5 to 2.5 minutes. There would be no sound. We had certain shots we had to have (use each lens at least once, do a pan, do a tilt, do a POV shot, stuff like that). And we had to do "in camera editing" which means you only get one take for each shot and then have to move on. I think, considering the limitations of the assignment and the fact that we were all just helping each other so I didn't actually have an old man in the park which would have been better, it came out pretty good.

Writing outlines

I think screenwriting is my favorite class. Once again I walk out feeling really energized and ready to write. Sadly the assignment for this week is to write the outline for our longer film and it's the shorter one that I have better figured out and ready to go. I'm posting the first draft of my outline below. It's due on Thursday preferably or Monday at the outside. I'm having trouble figuring it out so comments and brainstorming will be very welcome. I'm not married to the idea of flashbacks and I'm not sure about Sarah's 3 ideas or the consequences of them.

EDIT: 9 hours later and a bit of brainstorming with 2 different people and some progress has been made. I've posted all the changes below. If you missed the first draft that's probably just as well.

Naked City

I'm jumping around in my to-do list, half of which is stuff that's past due and half stuff that's due over the next week. I actually intended to finally watch Scarface tonight which was from last week but Netflix wouldn't stream it so I watched Naked City instead. As a person overly fond of the detective genre both on TV and in films this was right up my alley. It wasn't film noir or the hard boiled detective and I'm wondering if it was the precursor to both. We'll find out more next week. In the meantime it was just a fun film. It had this wonderful narrator with a mix of telling us what's going on and sort of "talking" to the detectives. But it's a style you don't see any more. And it ends with that great line: there are 8 million stories in the naked city, this was one of them. 

today's films were depressing

On Thursday we watched Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) which was a post-code gangster movie. What makes it post-code? The gangster redeems himself in the end. The code says you can't have any drugs, can't have too much violence, and certainly can't glorify violence. So there's often people getting shot, but there's never any blood. And at the end of the day the gangster has to do something to make him the bad guy with the heart of gold. In fact in this one there were moments well before the end. We ended up on a discussion of Gangsters vs Westerns. Both are full of men prone to violence. In the Western he comes to town, uses violence to help the community, and then leaves at the end because he's far too violent to actually be part of any civilized community. All the classic westerns end with the hero riding off into the sunset. The hero in a Gangster however doesn't have anywhere to go. He starts out a part of the community. In Angels very early on he gets back to town after having been in and out of jail for 10 years and the community welcomes him back. "Sure I'll rent you a room in my boarding house even though I know exactly who you are and what you've done." He grew up there. Since civilized society can't therefore send him on his way he has to become civilized somehow and/or die. In this case both.

I think it's going to be a good year

We got all our shoots done this weekend. Apart from mine they were rainy and cold and uncomfortable, but there was a lot of laughing and fun just the same. So it leaves me very hopeful for how the remainder of the semester and year will go. I don't know if any of these first films will have turned out watchable at all. Possibly, but also possibly not as we're all learning the camera. We didn't get a whole lot of instruction on this camera in particular, more a 5 minute overview and here go shoot before we did our tests. So I'm sure we all had our share of mistakes as we got used to the gear. But you've got to get used to it somehow and this is a much more realistic way to do it.

Regardless of how these films turned out though I think what was most important was that we worked well together. And we did.

Now I must read read read...

Look at me I'm a flimmaker, literally

How you know you're in the right program: when you feel like you "get to" do something that is in fact a homework assignment.

Am I old or am I experienced?

You know we have been watching films this week. Yesterday was Frankenstein and I was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (both 1931 and pre-code). Tomorrow we're watching Angels with Dirty Faces (1938, so post-code) and then talking about all three. They were interesting/entertaining enough. It was a little difficult to watch Frankenstein mostly because I've recently seen the National Theater Live broadcasted stage version of Frankenstein which was based on the original source material and not on the movie and so wildly different. And so I watched the whole thing constantly comparing the two. But if you think about the three eras - when the book was written, when the film was made, and when the stage play was made - it is an interesting comparison. You learn a lot about people by what they find horrific. Mostly though I'm falling farther and farther behind in my reading for that class because it's just not as interesting to me as trying to prep for tomorrow's shoot, or trying to work my head around new story ideas for screenwriting.

Feeling good today

As long as I don't look at the reading list that keeps getting longer on my little post-it note I'm feeling pretty good at the moment.

We did sound in production class this morning and it was interesting to see what he covered. He did a lot more physics that I ever did. But he's also spending a lot more time on sound than I ever had the luxury of. And I liked testing myself to see if I remembered all the physics. (I did.)

Then in screenwriting we reviewed little 1 paragraph story ideas that we'd written. We had to turn in 3 of them last week (see below) and I had an awful time coming up with new ideas. Especially since I'd just used what I considered one of my better ideas for my silent film treatment for our first production project. I ended up reusing that idea, though when I turned it in I admitted that it wasn't new but hadn't been scripted before. I also stole Will and May from Grandpa's Getaways and tried to come up with something for while they were just young. The scripts we'll end up writing for this class are meant to be short so I was trying to think of one sort of interaction between them. And I didn't want to use the Grandpa storyline. That defeats the purpose of the class. Then the last one came from a brainstorming idea with a friend. (Thanks Theres.)

What we've been watching lately

I've been neglecting the blog in an attempt to stay a step ahead on my homework. Today is the first day that I don't feel behind since classes started. You tend to start out a little behind just because everyone wants the readings done on the day they're listed on the syllabus and everyone had reading listed on the first day of class. I still have stuff to do, but I finally don't feel like I'm playing catch up.

My treatment got approved for my first film for Production 1 so on our walk this afternoon I was taking pictures of park benches trying to pick which one to use. It would probably be more realistic if I used one of the metro stations near the Commons and then used a bench there for the in the park scenes. I'm trying to avoid dragging everyone downtown. And if I shoot it right only people who live in Boston will notice that I've cheated.

And for those following along on the "important movies" list, I've watched 6 more since the last time I updated.

We shot film today

Actual film. Moving film even, which I haven't done before. Though it's not so much different from the still film shooting that I used to do. So in fact we were shooting in pairs and I let Jason do most of the shooting because he needed the experience more than I did. But it was so much fun getting my hands on a film camera.

Physics is your friend

We did a lot of the physics of cameras and lenses this morning. I struggled with physics in high school, mostly because I took it too early, before I had the proper math background. But in Oswego I did a semester of the physics of light and a semester of the physics of sound. I think what I like best about physics is that sort of by definition what you learn there doesn't change. In the TV and radio and photography classes only about half of what we learned still applies. Composition and aesthetics and storytelling is still applicable, but cutting sound using a grease pencil and a razor blade is a useless skill. Developing film isn't that useful anymore either, though we are going to be shooting film this month. But we send it to the lab to get developed. What really hasn't changed, what really won't ever change, is how a lens works and how a sound wave travels and that sort of stuff. I was probably pretty annoyed back in the day that I was getting a liberal arts degree and so had to take all these classes outside my major in an effort to be well rounded. But really physics has proven to be the most useful class over the course of my career.

Why study film history at all

They weren't working in a vacuum and neither are we. I am on a path whether I want to be or not. It's hard to go forward without knowing where you're coming from. All of the visual language that we understand today without even knowing that we know it was either developed or exploited by the people who came before.

The classes I have the most and the least experience in

On Wednesdays I have 2 classes. In the morning Film Production 1 and in the afternoon Acting for Directors. In both classes it's just the 5 of us. (#6, a guy named Brian, bailed at the last minute so really just the 5 of us.) One would think the production class will be the one we bond most in because film production is what we're here for. I don't think that's going to be true though. I think Acting is where we'll end up becoming friends (or not, but I think yes).

For production we're starting out with actual film, which is very cool as I've not shot film before. Not moving film anyway. Though so far my still film background is helping in that we were discussing how it works physically: emulsion and the chemical reaction of silver halide to the sun and that sort of stuff. It all made sense to me from what I already knew. Have to write a treatment for our first project to turn in on Monday. I think I have an idea so I just need to write it up. Will try to get that done before the weekend. I don't mind leaving myself reading to do on the plane, but I'd rather not have the pressure of getting writing done while I'm otherwise stressed.

And then acting. I'm not sure what to say about acting. We did exercises. He talked a lot, but he's kind of funny so that's all right. At the end we did a sort of scene. That would have been more painful if there was any expectation on me to be a good actor. But there's not so the fact that I sucked was fine. 10 years ago that would have been the most anxiety producing class ever, but now it's just fun. He was very surprised when there was only the 5 of us there. We really are the smallest class they've ever had. But after he thought about it he was pleased because we'll be able to do more things with a smaller group because you don't have to wait so long for everyone to have a turn at whatever.

Tonight for my Masterworks class I'll be watching Birth of a Nation by D.W.Griffith (1915). I understand why it's important; it's one of the first films to do narrative storytelling in the way we now understand it for film. Or probably more accurate to say we understand narrative storytelling because of this film. I don't anticipate enjoying the story though. It is at it's core a white supremacist propaganda film.

First Day of Class

I had my first class today: American Masterworks. It's not all of American film history, because you couldn't really fit that in one semester. So it's 1894 to the 1970s and even that "narrowing down" will still be a survey rather than in depth. I didn't really feel old until he started talking about the films of the 80s being historical but still probably seen by most of the people in the room, and likely we've even all seen Jaws and Star Wars, yes??? He and I might have been the only ones to see it in the theater though. His goal is to pick films we might not have seen or wouldn't necessarily know why they're significant. [So apparently Linda's new tee shirt of the sand people guy doing the John Cusak pose would go over the heads of all my classmates.]

We have 32 movies on our must watch list, most of them I either haven't seen or haven't seen recently enough to remember well. But as this was a class that several people wanted to know what we were going to watch and what we're talking about I figure I'll take it week by week.

Going to Boston

When I was a kid in my last year of high school my sister got a job downtown and my school was also downtown. It was tough to park downtown for her for work but at school we had a parking lot so we started commuting together. The way the highways are we'd get about 2/3 of the way to school and work and there was a split in the highway that said Albany one way and Boston the other. Particularly on nice days we'd get to that point in the split and look at each other and say, "We should go to Boston. Just play hooky and mess around." We'd both smile and laugh and then continue on our way to school and work because we were good kids and we did what you were supposed to do. We never played hooky.

Bit different from my day

I wonder how much of a refrain "That's now how we did it the last time I was in school" is going to become. I'll try not to bore you with it.

I will miss this job

A week ago I was exhausted and stressed and really not looking forward to being away for 6 days. But I needed the money and this is one of my very favorite clients. So I said, "A week in Oklahoma? Sure, sign me up." and was determined to grin and bear it. Now that we're done and on the long slog home (Tulsa to Houston to Jackson MS, to Baltimore to Albany then drive to Boston tomorrow) I can say this was a great week.

Here's why Museum on Main Street is one of my very favorite clients: we talk to the most interesting people that I would never have a reason to meet otherwise. 

Adventures in moving

I have survived the move, though it did end up being an adventure. When we picked up the truck on Friday afternoon they asked if we wanted to upgrade from 10" to 16" at no extra charge. If anyone offers you that and your stuff really would fit in the 10" don't take it. It's not just harder to drive and guzzling more gas, it's also truck rate for tolls and so 2-3 times the cost of a car. But it did make packing it very comfortable and low stress. And the guys I hire were fantastic: careful, professional, efficient, and cheap. So Friday went pretty well. 

Grip Gloves

I had to use my grip gloves to do yard work today and the whole time I was feeling uncomfortable about how stained they were getting. The thing is I bought them in the gardening section of Home Depot. But I don't garden. And now my grip gloves smell grassy and it makes me feel like a poser.

I believe this is a problem that regular people don't have.

saying goodbyes

The thing about the "last week" is it's full of a lot of goodbyes and that takes the edge off how excited and ready to go I am. I had a going away party yesterday. Or rather my friends had one for me. Mostly I've been feeling like, well I'll be back and forth a lot and I'll still be in touch with all my friends. And so in some ways this departure was feeling more like an extended business trip. But then at the end of the party yesterday Brian gave me a hug. Brian doesn't hug people. And I sort of stopped and thought, right, it's going to be a long time before I see Brian again.

Then tonight I was at a theater performance that the company I work with was doing. (Can't be a company member since I'm not an actor, but I've been a Saucy Lackey for a few years now.) Afterwards I was making the rounds hugging all of them - actors are huggy - and I ended with the friend who got me involved with them in the first place. After a couple of hugs I had to say, "I'm going to cry now, I have to go." Those folks I probably won't see for a couple of years. Though when I get to making my thesis film there's a few I'll be calling. But in so many ways it was those folks who enabled me to get as far as I've gotten as a filmmaker. I wouldn't be going to BU now if it weren't for them. I was able to start getting serious about films because I had fantastic people to work with.

And now I'm making myself cry again. I'm just going to stop.

One week, and I think I'm crazy

A week from now I will be standing in a small apartment in Boston staring at a lot of boxes. Actually no, if we're not still moving the boxes I'll probably be taking all the helpers our for dinner. It feels real now that Darryl has already moved in and I am 80% packed.

Blue is not happy

For a while I was in the "getting worse before it gets better" stages of packing. Now I think I've turned the corner and it's starting to get better. I have some actually empty rooms now. The downside to the very clear signs that change is a foot is that Blue is starting to get anxious.

The stuff to do is endless

I've been crossing things off the earlier to do list, but then I keep adding things to it as well. It has been helpful to me for not forgetting stuff so I'm gong to do a new and improved list here.

12 bags for goodwill

Well, I did the "if it doesn't fit it goes" purge of my closets today. There were a few nice things that actually fit that I donated as well. I kept telling myself some struggling single mother could use a good interview suit in ways that I really won't for the next two years or so. I saved a couple of nice things - including the little black dress I didn't even know I owned - but mostly if I haven't worn it in 2 years it went. I am no longer worried about my wardrobe fitting in my little apartment. And since I found a bunch of cold weather stuff that I haven't warn in forever because it never gets cold here, round about November I'm going to feel like I have a whole new wardrobe.

Sadly a few of the things that got kept were found in a box in the bottom of my closet. I am fairly certain they are things that when I lost all that weight 6 years ago I set aside for donation and never got around to it. Now they fit again. That was the not good kind of surprise. As soon as I finish this I'm going out for a run.

I was going to try to figure out how to do a poll but decided it's easier to just toss this question out there. I kept track of everything as it went into the bags so that I can do an itemised deduction for my taxes. I've certainly got enough stuff that I'll be better off than the flat deduction. Anyway, take a guess how many tee shirts and in a week I'll do a comment with the answer.

Grad school the first time around

I've been packing the library. It is apparently the place things go to be forgotten. There were boxes that never got unpacked, just squirrelled away there. And even the stuff that did get shelved... Well I'm finding a lot of papers and notebooks from my time at Ithaca College. I've been skimming most of it before dumping it into the recycling. It's kind of entertaining. Here's what I have learned: I am not the person I was then. 

I will never complain about the snow (though Blue might)

It is currently 20 degrees cooler in Boston than in College Park right now. I am so looking forward to moving north. Though I suppose costal has as much to do with it since Albany is just as far north and exactly half way between us in temperature at the moment. People who don't know me well have been saying, "You're moving north? Good luck with the winter." I say bring it. I will take all the snow you want to throw at me if it means I won't have to suffer through these summers any more.

On another note, I'm slowly making progress on packing. Still definitely in the getting worse before it gets better stages, but I'm chipping away. My laundry room looks so much bigger with all the crap out of it.

I have a moving date

August 11th

School will certainly be better than this

This is officially my last 'weekend before a meeting poster processing crunch' weekend. I am beyond happy. No matter how busy school gets, how intense around finals, or crazy with deadlines piling up it will not be as mind deadeningly boring as this job is. To be fair the whole job isn't as soul suckingly dull as this task. But 10-20 hours a day for 5 days before the start of every meeting is. It's not good to wish your life away, but right now I can't wait to move to Boston.

Not my stuff

I actually have a lot of work to do, but I can't seem to get myself focused enough to do it so instead I am working on getting things in order for packing. It's in the getting worse before it gets better stage. I'm noticing as I go several things that aren't actually mine. I figure this makes a good spot for list keeping. That should help me make sure it all gets back to the right people.

August will be interesting

So the guy who is going to rent my house called me yesterday and said he discovered that he misread his current lease. It doesn't end on August 31, it ends on July 31. My lease in Boston doesn't start until August 7 and I hadn't been planning to move until 5-10 days after that. I told him we'll figure it out. Fortunately he's a friend of a friend who I've met several times because we'll probably end up sharing for a while.

Don't forget to...

I think I need a to do list. And I think I'll put it here so that you can point out all the stuff I've forgotten. This is the order that I'm thinking of it, not the order it needs to get done. Some needs to not get done for a while. But I can cross things out as I go.

Signed up for classes today

In the first semester you don't really have a choice, but as I like them all that's just fine.

Welcome

On the off chance that anyone not related to me stumbles upon this I'll start with a little introduction.