Thursday, December 20, 2012

The Holiday Post

I have been really busy at the end of this year: Designing the Business Directory for the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, working on the final version of the 10th Edition of the American Society of Cinematographers' handbooks, working at lining up new work in the New Year. It's been exciting, but left me little time for blogging.

My favorite Christmas video on YouTube (animation of the Drifters' version of "White Christmas") has some sort of protection on it now, and I can't embed it here, so if you want to see it, please Click here to enjoy it.

In its stead, I give you my second-most favorite Christmas video, a 1913 stop-action animation from pre-revolutionary Russia.



Sister Kittie and brother-in-law David came down for the Thanksgiving weekend. We had the now-traditional dry-brined turkey and the appropriate side dishes for the holiday feast. On Friday we took the Gold Line down to Chinatown and went window shopping. On Saturday we went over to Cousin Robin's in the Hollywood Hills. Evan (her husband, for those who don't know) made his galactically famous pizza and we had a wonderful time.

Finishing up the Chamber Directory was daunting, as the listings (over 1,300 of them) kept doing minor shifts when flowed from Excel into InDesign. The result was that names and cities were shifting from one entry to another. So we had to go through the thing, line by line, making corrections on perhaps a quarter of the listings. It meant a number of all-nighters for me, but we got the book delivered on the date set.

I'm up to chapter 52 in the ASC handbooks, finalizing things for publication. There is light at the end of the tunnel and Martha, the publisher, calls to let me know that there are three pages (or perhaps more) to be added to the aerial cinematography chapter (17!). This is going to mean lots of renumbering of pages (at least pages 220 through, what, 876). And the shift will be consistent, so the numbering in the Index can be altered without too much trouble. Between this and the weirdly shifting chamber listings, I'm beginning to think long-form documents aren't really the place to specialize!

We haven't done any decorating for the holidays because Steve and I are going to spend the week between Christmas and New Years up in Eureka, and the idea of leaving the cats alone for a week with the Christmas tree, its fragile baubles calling to them, did not seem like a good idea.

It was my sister Kittie who suggested we spend a week during the winter in Eureka, as well as the week in the late spring we spent there on our last trip. As we are looking to retire up there, she said it would give us an idea of what it's like when the weather's bad. But since the weather really doesn't vacillate that much, it's more of a getaway than a test of our resistance to lousy weather.

When we were up there in the late spring, it was in the mid- to low 60s; this time the forecast is for mid- to low 50s. Same chance for rain (20% to 60%), same coastal clouds clearing to sunny afternoons, so I don't think we're in for any surprises. Also, I pointed out that sitting in a hotel room during lousy weather is not the same as sitting in your own home during lousy weather.

So that's about it. I just wanted to have a chance to send my holiday wishes to everyone (Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, if that's not too politically incorrect), and let them know things are going well. I know family and friends in the northern part of the country most likely will have a White Christmas this year. But whatever your holidays shape up to be, I hope they are warm and happy, and that you spend them with people you love.