I had hoped to be able to spend this weekend with Tracy, but unfortunately she was indisposed, and so I had a weekend to myself, and went time travelling.

About 22 years ago I found I could project my old 8mm and Super-8 movies onto a silver screen and video tape them with -- well, not high quality, but enough -- and so I preserved a number of older films via tape.

Tape is a worse thing to preserve things on than old fashion film.  So about 6 years ago I took all the tapes that would still play, along with various other camcorder tapes mainly of my kids when they were young, and preserved them onto DVD discs.

This weekend I found to my horror that DVD discs don't hold up to time very well, either -- three of the 20 discs wouldn't play at all.  So I took a free program called ImgBurn and created disc "images" onto my computer, stored them on an external hard drive, and copied them to another external hard drive.  It's about 60 gigabytes of video.  The family legacy.

I'm able to take these disc image files and mount them as "drives" on my Mac, and view them as if I'd inserted them as a DVD.  But even better, I found I could take a conversion program and extract the movies to files that I can edit, keeping all the good bits and leaving out all the boring ones, and distill these down to nice little videos I can share on Facebook.

Imagine my kids horror when they discover Dad is putting old home movies of them for the rest of family and friends to see.  Yes, I'm evil that way.

But the really interesting part, to me, is that I stumbled upon my Aunt Bev interviewing me on a very early sound movie camera (you actually had to hold a microphone).  This was back in summer 1970.  It brought back vague memories of the event -- my late Grandma's 75th birthday party in Sacramento.

I don't think I'd ever seen this movie before, because it's a disc my Dad sent to me last year, something that another part of the family had sent him, and I filed it with the other home movies intending to watch it but never did.

Watching my earlier self, my 9 year old self, with sound, being interviewed -- I felt like Doctor Who had whisked me back in time to witness it.  That's me?  That's really ME?  I was so awkward, and nerdy, and "for godsakes" I kept telling myself, "keep your finger out of your nose!"  But it was definitely my voice, and my mannerisms, and my crooked teeth.  That's me alright.  

"Is this your first time in front of a camera?" Aunt Bev asked me.

"No.  But back in Arizona, we didn't have sound on our movie camera."

"Well now's your chance to be an actor!  Do you want to grow up and be an actor?"

"No," I said, as if it were repulsive.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" she asked.

As soon as I heard myself reply, I remembered saying it.  "A garbage man," I told her.  

Everyone laughed.  I remember saying it because I knew it would make everyone laugh.  They did, so did I, and I could see on my 9 year old face I was very pleased by the fact that I'd cracked everyone up.

All I could think, watching that, is:  That is so me.

I'm back here again at my Caribou Coffee shop and this time I got my favorite seat next to the fire.  Ahhhh.... cozy!  I'm about to start work on the old manuscript but had to check in via Facebook, and for the first time found two other people have also checked in where I'm at.  But they didn't have proper photographs so I couldn't look around to see who they were.

Weird that you can now go into a place, punch buttons on your phone, and find out stuff about people sitting around you.  Fun and creepy at the same time.

Meanwhile I'm getting texts from my love's daughter's boyfriend.  He's been asking for manadvice (man-advice?) from the worldly older gentleman.  Me?  How did I become a worldly older gentleman?  When did I cross that line?  Not that I object, but it's never been a role I'd seen myself in.

I hope I don't lead him astray.  "Stay away from the tequila, young man.  Stay away, far away..."

This fireplace feels so nice!  I think I'll be here a while.

Okay, now to start working on my manuscript...

My vacation with my love was wonderful and now that we're apart I'm missing her terribly.  Hopefully we'll be back together by this weekend, but if not, then week after -- I have two days I'll be working in her vicinity and if everything goes right we'll have 4-5 days together.

Meanwhile here I am in Chicagoland.  I got off work and brought my mini-supercomputer to my favorite coffee place to work on a manuscript, but alas, all the tables next to the fireplace are taken, and it looks like the people are there for the long haul.  The temperature has plummeted here and it's supposed to snow before midnight, and my feet are freezing from sitting next to a window, and I'm totally coveting those fireside tables.  They're so cozy.  

I want a fireplace.  The next place I move to will have one.

I'm so cold I'm thinking of packing up and going to the Chili's across the parking lot, because I've never been in a cold Chili's.

That sounds weird, doesn't it?

I'm on vacation for the next 9 days.

I drove down from Chicago last night and am now on Lady Savina's farm.  She has a multi-page "honey do" list for me.  For anyone else in the world I would be resentful, but for her, I'll do anything.  I'll even climb under the kitchen sink and willfully destroy her plumbing.

I keep telling her I'm not a plumber, but okay, I'll give it a try.

Her eldest daughter just got a new horse named Joy.  It's a beautiful brown arabian with a white star on it's face.  I'm saying it because I don't know if it's a he or she yet.  By the end of the day I'll know.

The youngest daughter is 6 and keeps picking up a guitar and writing songs.  The amazing thing is that she doesn't really know what she's doing -- she's just strumming without chords -- but her lyrics rhyme and they're all about the power of being a girl, and the amazing things she can do.  You can tell she has some strong positive influences.

Just now I got a text from work.  They need me to do something immediately.  Hmm.  So much for vacation.

Hope all is well with you!

Jerry

I'm at Lady Savina's farmhouse right now. It's 2AM and I can't sleep, because I'd taken a "recovering still from being sick" nap this afternoon. So it's me and her eldest daughter's three cats, and we're playing with my high powered laser pointer I have from work.

The oldest cat, the one who scratched the hell out of my foot earlier because I dared try and block it from going up the stairs (where its not supposed to go) it has no interest in the laser dot whatsoever. Doesn't care. Thinks its silly.

The other two cats, however, go absolutely nuts. I'll try and post a video -- not sure if I can from my iPhone. But it's so fun watching them chasing this dot around, and these are not athletic, wiry farm cats, either -- they're big, bulky, fat house cats.

It was kind of cool -- I was invited to Apple for a meeting about using iPads in the business environment.  So I show up this morning way early, because I thought traffic would be worse than it was, and ended up having breakfast at a Starbucks a block away.  Everyone there, it seemed, was using an Apple product.

An hour later I get to the Mainplace store (in Naperville, IL) and had a great meeting with the Apple Business unit and the CEO of Lextech Global about all the ways that businesses are adopting the iPad.

What gets me is the sales figures.  The iPad is even beating the iPhone in sales, and is showing signs to have the highest adoption rate of any product in recorded history.  They're on track to sell 28 million of the things by the end of 2011.

What are businesses using them for?  Basically, anything you'd use a clipboard for and a piece of paper, that's what they're using the iPad for.  Instead of jotting down notes or data or filling in forms to be later re-entered into a computer, you simply enter it into the iPad and then it goes directly into the company databases. 

Me?  I mainly use mine as a television set.  I just finished watching the entire last 5 seasons of Doctor Who on it.

I never mentioned on here that I set up a photo blog. Did I?

It's at PhoBloggery.com

Gone is the paranoia that caused me to lock down this Xanga site.  I've removed it and thrown the doors wide open to let in some air and light.

LadySavina's estranged husband won't come looking here, and if her kids do, that's okay.  I love her kids.  Even the one who probably still thinks I'm the devil.

I'm happy to report that her and I are as crazy about each other as ever.  Marriage for us looks to be on an ever-receding horizon, but it's still on that horizon, and you know what?  Who cares?  We still have each other.  We've done the improbable: we've made a long distance relationship work.

I read somewhere that if you really want people to read your blog posts, you need to keep them to 4 paragraphs or shorter.  This is paragraph #4.  LOL.  Hello to everyone in Xangaland, thank you for still being here.

Today is the 4th anniversary of our first kiss. 

Four years ago tonight, Tracy (Lady Savina) and I were sitting in her car, and we were flirting non stop, and I had asked if I could kiss her.  She said no.  A little later I asked again, and she again said no.  Then about ten minutes later (I'm guessing at the time because I don't quite remember) she suddenly launched herself at me and we were kissing.  I think it was right in the middle of a sentence in our conversation, and then the next thing I knew she had her arms around me and our faces were smooshed together.

We have been kissing non stop ever since.

You know, it's actually healthy to kiss?  It's totally good for you.

So go kiss someone! 

And happy "First Kiss Day!"