Wow. It occurred to me that I have gone quite some time without posting on my blog what is going on in my life. Work on season 2 of "Abby's Flying Fairy School" with SpeakeasyFX wrapped in July, and in the days following I packed up our apartment and moved everything to Austin, TX - stopping overnight with my folks in Indiana for a few days, then overnight in Memphis, then finally to be with my hubby again in Texas. It was a long haul getting here but we love it here so far.
The end of July was spent getting used to the new apartment and a brand new city (region, really) with tons to do, places to go, things to see, people to meet. Right off the bat we have made friends with his whole office at Twisted Pixel Games. We have had house parties, lazy river tubing, baby showers, dinner and movie outings at Alamo Drafthouse venues around town (fantastic!!), and quite notably, the Gunstringer (for Xbox Kinect) launch party on a boat up at Lake Travis. We've eaten at the famous trailers, visited the capitol building, hung around downtown, and most importantly have just hung around together, enjoying daily life in one place again.
Recently we enjoyed a full day of Austin City Limits music festival, which was a big deal for us. We had only ever been to Summerfest up in Wisconsin, which was fun (probably more family-oriented with craft activities for kids, etc), but this was a great fun time with some great new music to our ears, as well as our primary reason for attending - Arcade Fire! We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves but completely burnt out exhausted from 10am-10pm in 100 degree heat. We may do a 3-day pass next year, especially since it will take place a month later in the year (hopefully slightly cooler, although in Texas, a "cool" day seems to be 90 degrees so far).
Fun things coming up include a wine trail tour, since it was rumored to us that Texas wineries are second in the country to Napa in California! We'd like to plan a bed and breakfast getaway out there as well, as a belated 3-year anniversary trip. Of course, we still have to plan our honeymoon too (is that getting old yet?) and had thought about doing that over Thanksgiving, but we are apparently really bad planners when it comes to vacations. We seem to do fine for seeing people, specific events or conferences, etc, but we're really bad at planning getaway times. Something we'd like to improve while we are enjoying our time here.
Professionally speaking, Naveen has been loving his job at TPG, very excited about the release of Gunstringer (his first big title!) and about working with such a great team of people.
I have been working at home toward an independent short film slated for release in March 2012, hopefully in time for the festival circuit. It's a collaborative project with a 45-member team working remotely, even internationally. I'm proud to have contributed layout work this summer, and will be supervising animation on it in the coming weeks. We have some great minds and talents working together on this, so it's pretty exciting to see it grow right now.
Oh, and finally, Sully has been enjoying it here too. He loves having all the stairs and windows at the townhome, and is learning to be a little more independent of us, although we are still thinking about getting him a buddy next year. We're just not sure what kind of buddy yet. ;-) We'll keep everyone posted!
Hope you are all well. Happy autumn!