Lessons Learned

One of the things I make my production students do is send me a lessons learned document after every project. When I did this at the doc institute I would just have them make a bullet list. And also we'd sit in a circle and debrief based off those lists. That works better with grad students than undergrads. When I asked these kids to share what they've learned so that people who hadn't gone yet could avoid making the same mistakes all I got was crickets. I had to sit there silently for 2 minutes before anyone would offer something. But I still make them write something.

So because I think self-assessment is a useful thing, here are my lessons learned from my first semester on the tenure track:

Doors Open Milwaukee

So there's this annual event where for free or cheap you can get into buildings around town that are usually not open to the public. One of my colleagues was going and invited me along. I had no idea what to want to do so I just went along with whatever she wanted.

Welcome to Milwaukee

It's been a month, I should probably tell you that I survived the move.

Beautiful day on the river

The humidity broke so after mowing the lawn I rewarded myself with a 4 mile paddle. I only got pictures of the egrets, but I also saw gulls, a cormorant, an osprey, 2 ducks, and 2 ??? (small, speckled brown on top, white on the bottom, pecking in the mud at the edge of the water).

My new house

I didn't take as many pictures as I intended because the husband was there showing us around, so mostly the realtor photos are a good view. Here's a few that I took though.

2016 Family Reunion

For now just photos. Give me a week and check back and I'll add some videos of the Folks vs Peeps competition. Folks won the Passaukee this year (again) taking the Ladder Ball, Salad Bowl, Bocchi Ball, and the tie breaking kayak race. The Peeps won the the Egg Toss, Volleyball, and team standing on the SUP.

June Cape Things

How is it June already? Tick tock tick tock.

And now it's July. I'm leaving today to give others a chance to enjoy the Cape. I'll be gone for the first half of the month, and shooting a film in the second in half of the month so this ends my time of savoring.

Whale Watch

While the girls were here we went up to Provincetown and did a whale watch. It took me a few days to cut together a highlights video. Kind of quick and dirty, but here you go.

Moonrise at Fort Hill

The full moon came up just after the sun went down on the night of the summer solstice. Enid would be out looking for ghost ships now, but I was just after some photos. At first it was very hazy and I thought it might be a bust, but actually it got kind of interesting as it passed through the layers of clouds.

Night on the Water

I'm having a little too much fun taking long exposure night shots. I went out two nights this week.

Headshots - opinions please

Marquette wants a headshot from me and to fill in the blanks for a 'new faculty at MU' internal (mostly) web page.  I have to have it back to them by Friday. I have no good headshots really, so I thought I'd steal one from last year's TvFILM interview. I did a dozen or so screen grabs and narrowed it down to these.

A new moving list

About 4 years ago, when I started this blog, I kept a to do list here so that I wouldn't forget stuff. And here I am, preparing for a big change again, with a lot of details to remember, so I need to keep a list and it might as well be here.

May Cape Things

A week has passed already and I haven't really done any "Cape Things" this month. See, I knew this would happen. Partly it's the rain. We've had bad weather pretty much all week long and it has made me realize that most of the things I associate with the Cape are outdoor activities. Or else food, and I am still trying to be healthy. So no clam chowder and no ice cream unless I'm out with company.

Official start of the season

The start of the season not because it's a holiday weekend, but because I finally got my boat in the water.

I want that little house some day when I'm very wealthy.

Weeds...

... or why I haven't mowed the lawn yet.

There's a nice sized patch of these along the side by the pine trees.

Here's a bee for scale. See, I can't mow, the flowers are still being used.

Neighbors down the road have some pretty weeds as well.

I never get tired of low tide sunsets

I went to Rock Harbor for my thing for the day. And I had more than one shot I loved so it gets its own post. If you're bored with my sunset photos then you can skip this one.

Also there were horseshoe crabs mating. I've never seen that before.

Cape Things

In honor of being mindful of how lucky I've been to be living here this last year or so I've set myself a goal to do a Cape Thing every day, or at least several per week. They aren't necessarily things that can't be done elsewhere, but are things that I enjoy doing here and that make me happy. There will certainly be repeats, and that's fine. The point isn't to come up with 50 new things before I go. The point is to savor what I have while I have it.

I promise not to post more than once a week. No, actually, I've decided it'll be once a month.

TvFILM season 8

I got word last night that Passing and Take Out will both air on this season of TvFILM. You know what, it doesn't get old. Clearly the producer there likes my style, but there was no guarantee, especially for those films. They are both older, and neither was made in Albany. So I thought it was worth sharing with them, but I didn't take it for granted.

And now, once again, I get to be part of the quality programming made possible by viewers like you.

Herring Run

The herring are definitely running. So I went to the Brewster Grist Mill (along with every family with small children living on the outer cape) on this fine spring day. I parked myself at one of the waterfalls and shot 90 photos pointing that way. 18 of them managed to have a fish making a run for it. 1 of them anyone other than me would be able to actually see the fish. I just looked for so long I know what to look for.

It's starting to get real

The good news is I found a house while I was in Milwaukee last weekend. I made an offer, we did a little negotiating, and the offer has been accepted. So now it's down to things like the house inspection and the financing. Those are the common things to sink a deal at this point, but I'm not expecting trouble with either.

It's too cold for this

I went to the West Dennis beach for a sunset that you can really only get in the winter. There was someone out kite surfing. My fingers were numb just photographing the sunset, this guy was getting wet. I don't care how good your wetsuit is, the air temp was 32 degrees and very windy.

As they say on the internet, pics or it didn't happen.

Sunsets with Karen

Karen is visiting. Yay! We wandered around this afternoon where we were greeted by the Chatham Chamber of Commerce welcoming committee. Then later we went to Scargo Tower for sunset. We tried to go to the Scargo Cafe, but there was a long wait. So we went to the Marshside instead. An equally lovely meal.

Here's some photos:

A Little Louis

It's kind of nice to have job hunting be over and have not that much to talk about here for the time being. I mean I'm working on stuff. My class at Fitchburg is under way and going well. I've been poking at Enid's Wall, though that's been a bit more thinking than writing honestly. I've been looking for grants and such to apply to for the tern documentary, but unsuccessfully so far.

Honestly, I'm spending a lot of time on the rocker taking it easy as this is likely to be my last lazy semester for quite a while. Louis keeps me entertained.

A good start to the new year

At this point I think everyone knows, but just for the record: I have a job!!!!! I'm so glad that's resolved. The process of job hunting was very bad for my emotional and mental well being. And it's a job that I expect I will settle nicely into and enjoy. I may well never have to job hunt again. (I should probably change the name of my blog now.)

So to kick off the new year, yesterday I went on a hike with Katie and Brenda.