Back to the Grind(er)

the trip back to georgia was a good choice. i think i needed to rekindle the drawl just a little bit. hell, i shot a gun. it was a great change, being able to spend time with the family without having a holiday in the way to dictate the terms of my visit. outside of the family, i got to see almost everybody i wanted to see. two weeks seems like a lot of time, but it gets by quicker than you think it will. it was really great to see all of my friends from back home. i know its cliché to say it, but when i get back together with some of those guys it feels like i was never gone. it makes me really happy to know i've got such great friends in my life, even if i don't get to see some of them very often anymore.

i also got to see a few of my favorite things which are not people...





back home i tried to get the new studio up and running. okay, i knew that would not really happen AT ALL, but i wanted to get the ball rolling, at least. did i previously mention getting studio space? okay, yeah i have. jeez, it has been a long time since that last post, sorry guys! so yeah, i got in there and tried to get some work spaces put together. rachel and i spent most of every day that week building stuff and trying to figure out what was going to where. i think we got most of it figured out, but its always going to be a work in progress. for now, i'm just looking forward to getting back in there and getting some work done. here's what my little area looked like about 2 weeks ago.



after being in atlanta for two weeks, followed by about 5 days back home in portland, i have now moved on to the north hollywood for an extended work trip. i've been here for two weeks so far, and the end has yet to be determined. i am making some puppets for some buddies of mine, and after this particular job is finished it looks like i might be doing something for a more shadowy group. i can't really say much more than that, but it has been really great so far. for the most part. i have been pretty outspoken in the past about how much i think LA sucks, but i have been having a really nice time, so i guess i'm starting to change my mine a little bit. (how about that rocky IV monologue at the end where he says "if i can change, you can change! we can all change!". yeah!) since i've been here i've been able to meet a LOT of great new people and i've been able to see some people IRL who i've previously only "met" online. good stuff all around. i guess right now the main thing i'm feeling is "lucky". it is such a gift to be able to do stuff like this for awesome people and in the process be able to meet and work with even more awesome people...
but on a slightly less inspirational note, i spent a lot of last week just drilling holes...



i'll keep you guys posted. maybe one day i'll make it back to portland!

p.s. the last time i checked, coraline was about $100,000 short of matching NMBC's domestic box office numbers. that's crazy!

holiday?

besides being snowed in for a couple of weeks just before christmas, i would say i had a fairly unremarkable holiday season. i guess that's not entirely true, but it kind of seems that way. i stayed in portland for christmas this year, marking the first time i've spent the holidays away from family. i'd have gone home if i'd been able to afford it, but i'm grateful that i didn't buy a ticket because due to the snow in portland i probably wouldn't have been able to make it out of town anyway. instead i had a couple of great dinners with other fellow holiday orphans from various parts of the world that could not make it home for similar reasons. i definitely ate some of the best home cooked meals i've ever had. thanks to george, vera, graham, and melena (and family) for your excellent holiday cooking and hospitality! i wasn't completely without the loving attentions of family though. it is always nice to get care packages, and it was especially nice to get some holiday cheer from the family. cards, books, batteries, candy, seasonal underwear, home baked cookies, and six pack of the world's greatest ginger ale all found their way to me before christmas morning, even though there was no one there to share hugs and thank-yous with. i think my favorite gift was a print of a scott campbell painting that vera gave me. the great thing about this painting is that it perfectly encompasses everything loved and hated when i was about 7 years old. even as a little squirt i loved all of the old classic universal monsters, but i was completely terrified of E.T.

not much has changed.

on new year's eve my buddy huy hosted an amazing party at his new place. he talked me into bringing over the poker gear for anyone who wanted to start up a game, and we wound up playing for a couple of hours. i don't know if it was meant to be an exclamation point at the end of a good year, or a sign of even better things to come, but i made a royal flush just after midnight!


apparently the probability of a hitting a royal flush is 1 in 649,740.

back in the real world, the snow kind of wreaked havoc on my whiteboard plans. i was literally housebound for about 2 weeks, so my gym routine is pretty much busted. i've basically broken rules 1-3 daily for the past 2-3 weeks. so sue me. i did finish one of my projects that has been looming over my head for several months, and i have made considerable progress on a couple of others. a couple of new things have come up to, so even though i've kind of been a chump about certain things, i've managed to keep myself moving forward, more or less. more show and tell in a couple of days.

things might be picking up soon?