Monday, July 20, 2009

Melting Lampshades

This weekend was extremely fun and productive. On Saturday, my brother, his wife, and their friends came over for a barbecue (Did you know you could spell it with a "c" instead of "q?" ...huh), and we went swimming in our pool. Daniel put the basketball hoop next to the pool so we play in the water, which was fun. It wasn't as hazardous as the time when he took the slide from our old swing set, strapped it to our dog pen with bungee cords, sprayed some water on it, then called it a water slide. The only problem with that was when we jumped quickly, the water decided to hang on to our trunks. I could not comfortably go all out, so my dunks were pretty half assed.

Chris and Jessica brought their 9 month old baby, Riot, which is indeed a strange name for a child, and that he is "a good baby," as my dad put it. He didn't cry the entire time he was at our house, and he was there for a good 8 hours, well past his bed time. I found his baby babbling so amusing, and it was even more amusing when we all would respond to his babbling. He was totally cool with being in the pool, too. I was a little jealous of this crazy baby raft he had that even had its own sun roof. Once we got out of the pool, we played "House Ball," as we called it where just threw a ball on my roof and let it come back until my dad suggested we, meaning Daniel, Chris, him, and I, should play dodgeball. So we had two fairly ineffective dodgeballs that would curve with the wind. We decided you were out after two hits just to make our 2 on 2 last longer than 3 seconds.

On Sunday, Mike and I continued to film "The Fret," and we really made some great stuff. We played with lighting for the first time by moving lamps and pointing the lampshades around Mike's house, and later my garage, which really improved our shots. My boss, Brian, insisted I get some practice with the $2000 Gyro stabilizer, and let me take that home. It gets pretty warm since it has a fast-spinning motor inside of it, so when we smelled burning, we thought it was the Gyro. I went to redirect a lampshade, only to find that part of it had melted onto the light bulb. Goopy shade stretched as it hung on to both the shade and the bulb. Luckily, nothing caught fire, and we continuing using it, being a little more careful to prevent the shade from touching the bulb again. Overall, it was great, and it made a lot of progress, but we will need one more day to film, so it won't be complete this week as I hoped, but still very soon.

I'm so excited for this weekend! I get to see Claire on Friday! I can't wait! :D

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