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a final update?

So I’m going to embark on writing what I belive will be the last post on this blog… at least for the foreseeable future. Once this post has been online for a short while, I’m going to be shutting this blog down. I may come back online another time with another blog somewhere on the internet… but… well, there it is.

Disney Geekdom

As I sit here working* in a borrowed office in the belly of DCE (the live entertainment production arm of Walt Disney Imagineering), I’m left to think about my absolute Disney geekdom.

I normally keep it pretty understated. I work with/near/around many executive level types, so it’s important that my discretion is never in question. Sometimes Disney geeks who end up working for the company are the first to blab any inside information they come across. This is maddening to me for several reasons… but mostly because it totally kills the magic and suspense of the final reveal of whatever the new project is. But I digress…

I’m sitting here just across the street from the very building the Walt commissioned for his private playground of geniuses. Since those days the area has grown up a lot. A person can’t swing an arm near Flower Street in Glendale without hitting a Disney owned facility. Imagineering, ABC 7 Studio, DCE, Feature Animation… it’s just cool. Some serious stuff is developed here, and the payoff, the magic, gets realized out in the world.

I’m just in my hog heaven here, doing what I’m doing. And I’ll surely stop by Mickey’s of Glendale before heading home!

* I am actually working… just taking a little break to blog while I wait for a meeting

Car Service and Twitter

Took my car in for some regular service today. Was looking for an oil change, front brake pads, and to check out a noise I thought might be the CV joints. After some checking, and some conversation with my mechanic I ended up tacking on two new CV joints, transmission fluid flush, and new rotors. So I got rid of plenty of that pesky money that was clogging up my checking account.

It’s sort of a pain… but as my dad says “it’s just all part of owning a car”. No sense in getting cranky about it. It’s just one of those costs that come with driving.

On Twitter…

TwitterI’m completely addicted to Twitter. Observant readers will have already noticed that I’ve added a “Right Now…” section to the front page of my blog. This is a feed directly from twitter for up-to-the-minute updates on what I’m doing. I do really mean up-to-the-minute. That little bit of info never goes more than a few hours of awake time without being updated.

I can’t really explain what makes this so appealing to me… its just sort of fun. It’s like that mental release that a blog gives you, but in small regular doses. You don’t have to think out what your going to say. Since your limited to about 200 characters, you just have to say, as the site asks, what you doing right now.

Register and add me as a friend. You’ll even get my updates on your phone. 🙂

Yeah. I know I’m behind

So I know I’m behind. you may just have to deal with it… as time marches on I just can’t get myself to sit down and write about all the things that have been going on.

Here is a quick rundown of the last month or so in pretty much chronological order:

  • Janey and I are good again…
  • We went on a cruise with my family… My first one
  • Left for Miami the same day I returned from the cruise
  • Spent about 10 days in FL working on the production of the Superbowl XLI Pregame and Halftime shows
  • Superbowl day was wet… very wet.
  • Came home and dove right back into the work I’m doing for Disney
  • My job with Disney continues to grow more interesting every day. I’m learning a ton and having fun.
  • MOST IMPORTANTLY: Jackie is recovering fatastically! That damn cancer is in remission!!! As far as the stroke recovery, she’s walking, talking and has the great ‘jackieness’ we all love. It’s still a hard road… but things look SO good.

So it doesn’t give you a lot of detail but you get the major points. It’s off my shoulders now and we can move on. Thank you, dear readers, for being so patient with me. (by patient I mean prodding me with emails and other various communications to get my blog updated)

What a show…
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just killing time

Right now I am sitting at a small table next to a starbucks kiosk just inside the door of the New York New York hotel in Las Vegas. I’m typing this on the wonderfully unusabe keyboard of my Blackberry mobile device. I tell you these things so you will appreciate my dedication to this blog… And to you, dear readers.

Yeah, that last bit might have been a bunch of crap. But I really am in vegas. Typing from my mobile because 1) I am bored, and 2) I checked out of my hotel at 8:00 this morning. So even if I did get my laptop back from the bellman, I wouldn’t have any comfy place to use it. And so here I am.

I’m in town for the Consumer Electronics Show for work. Just checking out new things and hopefully finding some inspiration in how all this stuff is presented.

I’m flying out tonight and will be happy to get home.

I gues that’s all for now. Maybe I’ll write a little more later.

A miracle recovery…

As happens all to often, I have procrastinated updating this space for far too long. My justification this time is the amount of time this holiday season spent in a hospital. And with an intro like that, why beat around the bush…

One morning a few days before Christmas I got a call from my sister Jen telling me that her twin Jaclyn was in the hospital for an unknown reason. It was an emergency… she couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t really react… couldn’t do much of anything. The night before she had gone to her husband and not being able to speak tried to motion that something was wrong. When she couldn’t do more than a blank stare, he rushed her to the hospital.

Skip forward after examinations, scans, and all manner of medical testing it’s determined that my sister had what was described to me as a massive stroke. She had movement in her legs and left arm, but no speech or real use of any of her limbs. Considering this news I decided to leave CA a day early to help out where I could.

Skip forward again to 7 days after the stroke. My wonderfully determined sister is making what can only be described as a miraculous recovery. She’s walking, has movement in both arms (while no articulation in her right arm), and can actually speak full sentences. It should not be taken lightly how difficult all these things were to achieve, and I’m sure it will be an uphill battle for the rest of her life.

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I don’t want to go into great detail. I would simply like to say how wonderful it was for me to spend several nights in the hospital doing what I could to make my sister comfortable while she goes through this. She’s doing so well, and while this stroke terrible in every way, I count her determination and speedy start to a recovery as a real blessing for her and the family.

As another note, I’m so amazed by the outpouring of community and family support when events like this occur. People really step up and do what they can. It gives a person great faith in humanity to see it all come together to help someone you love.

I’ve said it before… stay strong Jac. I love you, and I have no doubt this will just be another of your incredible stories to tell you children and grandchildren.

A friend to man

Loved this…

Let me live in a house by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by—
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.

I would not sit in the scorner’s seat,
Or hurl the cynic’s ban;—
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

(Sam Walter Foss, “The House by the Side of the Road,” in James Dalton Morrison, ed., Masterpieces of Religious Verse [1948])

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Atta boy!

This is about the cutest story you’ll read all day…

4-year-old in Power Ranger costume saves family from gun-toting robbers:
http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/515756.html

The robber was holding a gun to 5-year-old Mary Long’s head when a 3-foot-tall Mighty Morphin Power Ranger leapt into the room.

“Get away from my family,” 4-year-old Stevie Long shouted, punctuating his screams with swipes of his plastic sword and hearty “yah, yahs.” …

… “I scared the bad guys away”

Leveling out

I’m just getting in to work and for some reason this was the first place I stopped. I think probably the biggest reason for me posting here is to get that last entry off the big, bold, front-and-center spot on my site. I just think it looks a little too much like I’m posting for pity… I’m not. And before anyone commented on that entry I wanted to make sure to say that.

This blog is really just a nice way for me to release. Strange to some I guess. If you don’t have a blog, I highly recommend starting one. Most folks say “but I wouldn’t have anything to say”, and to that I say BAH! Everyone has something to say some time. It doesn’t have to be all the time.

It’s neat though, it’s my own little soap box out here on the intarwebs. People can read it… or not. Either way suits me just fine. I’m still going to write it.

Anyway, things seem to be leveling out at bit. At least in my own mind. Conversations are hard, and I fight with how I’m supposed to be feeling. But I think I’m on my way.