Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Happy Cinco De Mayo



So, here I am, the fifth of May 2009. Admittedly, in Cinco de Mayo terms, I've been feeling less like the victorious Mexican and more like the defeated French debt collector. C'est La Vie? Tomorrow marks our 8th month married, and still living apart. It has gotten more and more awful, from an emotional standpoint, but the past few weeks have been more hopeful. We're still not even to the level of cautious optimism, but we're doing what we can. The bigger question seems to be, what happens if/when he gets a job out here on the east coast, but my contract ends in late summer? Hopefully answers to questions like that will come to light in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, we're still pressing for solutions.

Feast for the lighter fare, work is great. Folks at work are awesome and the project is still as loveable and challenging as ever. We are just wrapping episode 8 and start episode 9 very shortly. Yesterday for me was spent doing layout for the first 12 available shots, which was fun and felt productive, although I much prefer animation. I'm concerned about assets that aren't ready for this part of the production yet but tomorrow I'm hoping those kinds of issues will be resolved. Dean who is our head of layout has been bogged down with interactive layout production which is why I've taken on some of the broadcast preparation for the moment, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that by the end of the week I'll be breathing life into characters again, as opposed to loading them into scenes and peppering in model props.

We had a barbeque last Wednesday at Eric, Andy, Roman and Haokun's house in Fanwood. Another case of mojito girl at play. Jan cooked up some fabulously giant hot dogs and Mike made some delicious potato salad (although I apparently let everyone know repeatedly that I wasn't fond of the bacon). Kevin (Worth) brought along some kielbasa in "secret" ketchup, mustard, and brown sugar sauce (oops), which was very delicious. Other folks brought other things but I don't remember and probably didn't eat it because I was too busy enjoying myself. Mostly I was downing mojitos and listening to crazy stories, and eventually laughing with Mikaila and others on the kitchen floor after attempting to take a group picture. She posted some photos which are not the terribly incriminating ones.

This past weekend was spent in New York helping Sally Anne prepare for her move (and meeting her lovely friends Eric and Kasia, or "Kate", who was Polish btw), and otherwise working on my last shot of episode 8, going to church (you know, because I need to), and wallowing in my general misery, telling myself I didn't get married to spend every night in crushing loneliness, blah blah blah. That has to be so old, to hear about, if you're my friend. I'm sorry. :-)

At any rate, you can bet if I was home in Chicago this would be a helluva week. Today's Cinco De Mayo (excuse for drinking, celebrating, and what-have-you), tomorrow's our 8-month-wedding-mark, and Thursday is Naveen's birthday. Thankfully Friday evening I have a plane ticket home to Chicago and will then need lots of caffeine to survive the four-hour late-night drive into Indiana, where we'll be spending Mother's day weekend with our families. Aside from wreaking havoc on my immune system and general alertness and well-being, the crazy traveling is keeping us from going insane from missing each other. If we're lucky, maybe we'll get an interesting little trip out of Memorial Day weekend.


Naveen and I During our Florida Days

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