Burlaki [back] on the Hudson

The kid and Mom go for a first swim together.
 

Chronicles, Pictures

My employer has this incredible 12-week paternity leave benefit.

Yes, you read it right, paternity with a “p”. As in, the father of a newborn child can get 12 weeks off work with full pay.

I know plenty of people who take advantage of that. In fact, I know one guy who seemingly takes advantage of that every other year or so.

Did I go on paternity leave when Emily was born?

Um… no.

For reasons that I will surely regret eventually, I decided that my complete absence for 3 months would place in jeopardy various projects that “need” me. Instead, I agreed with my management hierarchy that I will work entirely from home for the foreseeable future, take time to help Natasha with the new baby, but make myself generally available for all and any tasks in progress.

The result? Instead of bonding with my new daughter and letting Natasha rest when she is not nursing, I sit in my basement office for nine-hour workdays.

Ok, saving over three hours of commute time every day is definitely helpful. I do take breaks throughout the day to give Natasha a breather here or there, I relieve her of chauffeuring-the-kids-around responsibilities, and on some days I do manage reasonable enough windows to keep pretense of being home for the sake of child-rearing.

Most of the days, though, it feels as though I plop down in front of my laptop at 8 in the morning, and stagger up the basement stairs with a headache at 6pm.

Nothing to complain about, really. Considering that I can jump into pool immediately following that…

Chronicles

There is something decidedly strange in getting excited about receiving the social security card.

But when it comes to a newborn, and the card signifies the very first official document that the little person has, it definitely passes for another milestone.

Chronicles

A little house problem: The dryer suddenly starts leaving clothes damp after a full cycle. What do I know about dryers? Nothing. I’m only aware of the fact that this is a ten year old unit, that we did not want to extend “service plan” for it last year, and that a flat-rate service call costs $150 before any replacement part costs and additional labor.

I look through available trouble-shooting documentation. It tells me to check the exhaust pipe for blockage. I am useful enough with the tools to be able to do that. No luck, though. There is no blockage in the pipe or at the vent.

What’s the information-age guy to do when he needs DIY repairs? Use internet, of course. I go to the manufacturer site in search of additional documentation. Fail. I google the exact model of the dryer. There are dozens of links to sales of newer models, and one or two forum links discussing various issues, but nothing I can use for my specific case. Finally, I start typing more generic queries into Google, hoping to hit upon a general repair advice.

One of the search results is a link to a site called Just Answer. Clicking on the URL, I get a comparatively simple page with a promising subtitle of “Ask an Appliance Question, Get an Answer ASAP!”, a form asking me to type in my question, and a button that says “Get an Answer”.

It would be too easy if that was all it took to figure out my problem, of course. There is no free lunch to be had – in order to get a qualified help, I have to pay. A follow-up question asks me to identify how much an answer to the question is worth to me; the cheapest option is $14. I have to stop for a while to figure out how the site works.

It turns out that the concept is quite simple. I make a good-faith deposit via PayPal to an “escrow” account, get to ask my question and receive assistance from one of the registered experts (nearly a dozen of them are supposedly online, so the answer should really be expected nearly instantaneously). I then have an option to follow-up with additional questions on the same subject. If I am satisfied with the assistance, I can “accept” the answer, which will result in the escrow money being transferred to the expert. If I am not satisfied for any reason, the FAQ says my deposit is fully refundable.

The terms sounds reasonable to me. I obviously do not want to pay up front for something of unproven-to-me quality. On the other hand, $14 do not sound like a tremendous amount of money to part with if I can get a useful advice. Not in a general sense of things, but in comparison with the aforementioned service call fee.

So, I type in the detailed question, mentioning the already performed exhaust pipe check. My question is picked by someone with a nickname of “Dr Appliance” who comes back in literally two minutes with the following advice: It is possible that the blockage exists somewhere within the vent system, so I should try to run a cycle in the dryer with a disconnected exhaust pipe; lint will fly around the laundry room, but if the clothes come out dry, then the problem is isolated, and the service call will be not to the appliance repair but to a chimneys and vents contractor.

As I read the response, a light bulb goes in my head. Dryer vent comes right out on the patio directly from the laundry. I walk outside, and take out the outer grill from the vent. It is completely covered in tightly pressed lint. It takes me sixty seconds to clean it and put it back. In about an hour, as the dryer cycle finishes, the clothes come out of it as dry as they can be.

Something I could have easily figured out myself. But I didn’t. Whoever that Dr Appliance was, he steered me to the correct action. As far as I’m concerned, he earned his fourteen bucks. I “accepted” his response, and officially paid some stranger for an advice. The website allows for “bonuses” to be added on top of the fee, but I didn’t feel like further validating my general ineptitude with extra donations.

I have to say I see future use of this website for myself. Especially since it is not only specializing in appliances. I could get advice on computer programming. Or parenting…

Chronicles, Found On The Web

Umbilical cord fell off.

First trip in the royal carriage around the neighborhood.

Other than that, standard fare: eating, pooping, not letting parents sleep at night.
 

Chronicles

My meat-space friends have been aware of the fact that Natasha and I embarked on a serious new project roughly nine months ago. Now it’s time to announce the results.

Emily Sofia Burlak was born in the early morning hours of this fine Wednesday. She weighed in at 7 lbs 1 ounce and measured 20 inches. Both the mother and the child are doing very well.

Here is our perfect little princess.
 

 
Celebrate with us!!

Cheers!

Chronicles

This is the tomato that we have grown in our own back garden. I personally had nothing to do with it, which may explain why Kimmy thought that it was the tastiest tomato she ever had.
 

 
Photography by Kimmy.

Chronicles

More than a week between posts is quickly becoming the norm, rather than exception, for me.

During this last week, I could have written about a number of subjects.

I could continue to opine on the World Cup – disallowed goals, inanity of soccer being the only sport where the referee is both allowed to “interpret” the rules and to avoid any accountability to the public for his bad decisions, unwarranted yellow cards that ruin the games, disappointing performances, maddening leave-it-until-late tendencies of the US team, the domination of South America, the comprehensive dud showing by African teams… But I recognize that most of my audience does not give a rat’s posterior about soccer – and an even-sided analysis would take too much effort to write up, in any case.

I could express my delight at learning that when Russian TV project called “National Treasure” (I once mentioned it here) concluded, the winning song was one that I would most likely call my personal top favorite. I long ago started to think that Russia and I have nothing in common anymore except the ability to converse in the language. Turns out, there is that small little bit where I can say Russia and I see eye-to-eye… But I already posted that song in the past (if you are interested, look for the last video in this post), and I did not want to go into a long rumination on why this song seems to appeal to people of diverging generations and walks of life.

I could reflect on the fact that my eldest child is now of an age where we not only let her travel to foreign destinations for holidays, but we even allow her to get on the plane all by herself (she was picked up immediately upon arrival by the lead of her study program, so in fact, she was only on her own between the time she boarded the plane and exited through the customs on the other end)… But that brings me too close to reflecting on my advancing age, and I am lately becoming a bit too sensitive about it, for reasons I cannot explain.

I could also express how it warms my heart that my children are keen on studying foreign cultures and languages, but I am pretty sure I already discussed that ad nauseam in years past.

I could even profess my envy that Becky is spending two weeks at my favorite place on Earth, but that would border on unseemly.

I could…

But I didn’t.

Doesn’t sound like you missed anything, anyway.

Chronicles

Either I am exceedingly lucky or I don’t understand at all complaints of other people about O’Hare airport. I flew there and back quite frequently in my pre-England years, and just made a second trip this year, and I don’t seem to ever get stuck going through O’Hare. Going in or coming back, flights depart on time and arrive on schedule (although, truth be told, we did wait almost half an hour for take-off on the way back – but, apparently, that is “built into the schedule”, according to our pilot). No long delays on my memory.

I suppose now I jinxed it. My next trip to Chicago will be nightmarish, no doubt.

Walking through the airport, I was momentarily surprised with seemingly overwhelming interest Americans pay to the soccer World Cup. Every TV in every O’Hare bar was tuned to the broadcast of the live game. The teams playing? South Africa versus Uruguay. Wow, I thought, if a game between those two opponents is being universally watched, then Americans must truly be soccer aficionados nowadays.

Then it hit me. The game was on ESPN. Likely, the default channel on in any bar.

I was overly cautious about the Chicago traffic and the ensuing security controls, and found myself at the gate with more than an hour to spare before boarding time. So instead, I went to one of the nearby eateries, procured a seat at the bar, and ordered a glass of wine. The bartender asked me for an ID. When I commented that I did not think I looked that young, my neighbor at the bar chuckled and explained that at this particular bar they seemed to be carding everyone. Over the next hour, quite a number of fellow passengers – almost invariably in their forties or beyond – stated their delight at being carded, only to have their joy deflated when someone would tell them they were not really special that way. Quite amusing.

Chronicles

I finished Kimmy’s birthday movie with over a week to spare. Go me! It turned out pretty good, if I say so myself, but I’ll be sure to post here the raving reviews I’m certain to receive after its premiere this coming weekend.

Of course, I spent so much time focusing on that one project over the last three months, that a ton of other projects piled up behind it.

And as if I needed any more things to distract me, something really important and non-negotiable in nature sneaked up on me – The World Cup.

I recognize that most of my readers have little care for The Beautiful Game – feel free to skip the rest of this entry. I’ve been so neglectful a blogger recently that I deserve to be ignored when I finally find something I deem worth spending time on writing up.

Actually, it is a bit too early for any strong impressions of this Cup – 12 of the 32 teams are yet to take field for their opening games. I have to say that I am slightly disappointed by the quality of football that I’ve seen so far, but no major surprised have occurred, a few title favorites that have already played confirmed their claims, a few weaker teams were exposed as prime candidates for group stage elimination.

What I am mostly incredulous about is the quality of commentary and analysis on ESPN/ABC. I suppose I should not be complaining overall, with every single game available on prime channels live in magnificent HD. Furthermore, with British Sky network apparently not getting any broadcast rights for the Cup, ESPN/ABC hired several Sky commentators and talking heads to spice up the proceedings. I happened to like a number of those guys while I was a Sky subscriber.

Here in the States, they show immediate signs of degradation. Led by ESPN anchors who are all in love with the sound of their voice and can never condone asking a question that does not have several sub-questions and not take three time as long to ask as to answer, all of these commentators slide into meaningless platitudes, cliches and occasional sweeping over-dramatizations. They spend more time reminding the viewer of the upcoming coverage (ending each such reminder with the inane tagline: “Remember, one game changes everything!” – WTF?) than actually commentating. They try to sensationalize things as much as they can at the expense of the game analysis.

And what about those slo-mo close-ups of footballers’ grimacing faces every couple of minutes? Must be the next bright idea someone had about making football more appealing to an average American viewer: Inject emotions into the broadcast! Hey, this is not golf. You want to fill the pause in proceedings, show me a replay of the last key moment in the game, rather than what the broadcast director feels is the example of the players “feeling it”.

And the information graphics that comes up on the screen a la baseball stats is sometimes simply laughable. Every other fact is bound to be incorrect, from Holland listed as getting 4th place as their best result to-date (in fact, it was a runner-up not once but twice) to the names of clubs to which players belong misspelled or probably invented (how one misspells “Alaniya” to get “Kublan” for one Nigerian midfielder who plies his trade in Russia is beyond me).

It all looks so amateurish it is not even funny.

Reminds me of the Soviet TV coverage of the 1990 World Cup. Then, as one star player from each country would give a short immediate postgame interview, somebody in the TV hierarchy decided that it would be a grand idea to include those interviews in the broadcasts. The interviews were conducted in each player’s native language. For whatever reason, nobody cared to actually hire proper interpreters. Instead, the live sound stream would be sufficiently diminished to make the actual words coming out in Spanish, Italian, German, French, Portuguese, etc, practically indecipherable, overlaid with a bright young voice sounding as if it was translating.

One small problem. Football players have a habit of exchanging jerseys after completion of important matches. Hygienic considerations notwithstanding, a fair number of players would put the opponent’s jersey on when exiting the pitch – I suppose they want to keep their hands free for whatever reasons. So, an Uruguayan player puts on a jersey he obtained from his Italian opponent before coming on for his interview. Italy won 2-0. The behind-the-screen “interpreter” works off the sight of an Italian jersey and proceeds to talk about “elation”, “hard-won battles”, “scoring when we needed to”, “giving credit to the tough Uruguayan team”, etc… But anyone who’s just seen the game knows that the player in front of the camera is actually Uruguayan, and he is probably talking about “disappointment”, “missed chances”, “mistakes in defense”, “bad refereeing decisions”, “giving credit to the deserving Italians”… It was such a blatant attempt to deceive the viewers, exposed in such a simple but spectacular fashion. Every time I see an attempt at broadcast sophistication where incompetence is brightly shining through, I think back to that.

Just as with the Olympics, I have little choice in the matter. I want to watch – I’ll have to do my best to tolerate.

Chronicles, Sports, TV

Children of the age of technology acquire the weirdest mannerisms. Becky, for instance, has gotten into a habit of saying “LOL” when she is amused, rather than, you know, bursting out laughing.

I’m starting to call her Lola.

My other daughter, meanwhile, resides in pool heaven. She always has been very partial to water-based activities, and having a pool in her own backyard is a true boon to her.

She is now privately known as The Frog. Or The Duck. Or The Fish. Or whatever other water-dwelling member of the animal world comes to mind when we need to talk her into getting out of the pool.

I joined her on a couple of occasions over the weekend. I have to admit that was awfully pleasant. Even if the damn pool causes me more grief maintenance-wise than I ever expected…

Children & Schooling, Chronicles

I enjoy our by now traditional semi-annual КСП outings. I happen to have a good time while I am there. Then I get back home, recognize the fact that I slept for probably 6-7 hours cumulatively over the course of the weekend, and fight fatigue for the next couple of days. It’s worse than a jet lag, honest.

A few other notes from the festival.

My personal playbook contains several hundred songs, of which I can play by heart – or by ear – roughly a hundred (the rest are complicated enough that if I want a smooth performance, I need to have the book in front of me; the playbook is a weighty folder 250 pages long – not exactly a handy object when you sit with your guitar on a log around a fire). You would think nearly a hundred songs should be more than enough to never get short on numbers to perform at any given point in time. And yet, after going through a dozen of my favorites, I always end up “forgetting” which songs I know. We alternate leads between three or four guitars, so now it’s my turn, and I can’t find an answer to “What else can I play?”

Something about spontaneity that my brain objects to. Good thing that I am almost invariably the weakest musician around the fire and others can play by ear practically anything, so if one of the listeners blurts out a request while I’m still searching for my next number, I can draw on my vast knowledge of lyrics and lead the singing, even if I can’t exactly keep up with the the accompaniment.

On a different note, it turns out to be quite important to stay away from elaborate knots if you know you’ll have to untie them. I ended with the primary responsibility for putting up the tarpaulin cover over our campsite on Friday, and I managed it splendidly, acknowledged by all participants as “the best tarp we ever had”. This was my first time at that particular job, and I emphasized securing the thing to the trees at the expense of simplicity. Then, Sunday morning, I entertained half the campground repeatedly balancing on the top step of the ladder and cursing the knots, “What cretin tied this damn thing this way? Oh, sorry, I think I did it myself!”

Finally, sleeping in adjacent tents with someone who loudly snores feels as if they are sleeping in the same bed with you. You try and tell me if there is any difference.

Must have contributed to my lack of sleep.

Repeat in the fall. Although I might skip the rainier/colder instance this year.

Chronicles

I’d like to think that I am long past having to come up with excuses for the absence of any blogging activity. I simply ignore the blog these days when I’m too busy. And I am very busy. Employment-related busy-ness aside, we are currently entertaining house-guests who’ve never been to the States before and whom we haven’t seen in a long time, not counting several converging creative endeavors of personal nature for which I have inflexible deadlines. I found inspiration for one literally at the 11th hour, and am still searching for a similar breakthrough for another, running out of time ahead of the next weekend. Thinking about writing a blog post is not too high on my list of priorities right now. Sorry about that.

At least, you now all know that I’m alive and kicking…

Chronicles

Kept assembling the various piece of furniture that the wife had bought.

Wrote checks for ungodly sums of money to various home service providers.

Discovered a couple of inevitable future expenses related to the house equipment and services.

Cleaned the pool, worked on the backyard, drove back and forth for supplies…

This home-ownership gig is more demanding than I remembered from the past.

Oh yeah – officially opened the pool season. After all that hard work on Sunday, it was immensely refreshing.

I suppose it’s all good, on balance.

Chronicles

Even if the assembly manual for a fairly complicated contraption explicitly states that two people are needed to successfully complete the work, a determined and resourceful individual should be able to come up with ways of achieving the desired end result all by himself.

If said individual has a history of back problems directly linked to working with heavy objects, there is no surer way to a relapse than an attempt to do something that normally requires two people all by oneself.

Chronicles

Becky has recently taken to riding her bike around the neighborhood. Weather being what it’s been the last few days, she obviously doesn’t wear track-suits on her rides.

We live about half a mile away from a synagogue. There are some people who drive to services there, but many people walk, so on Saturdays and on holidays, we see a greater number of pedestrians on the streets than usual.

Imagine a group of adolescent Jewish boys, in their formal temple-going attire, walking to attend a service. Towards them, in the opposite direction, comes a leggy, pretty teenage girl on a bike, wearing shorts and a tank top.

They stare. She notices. She smiles and waves. They keep staring.

One of them walks into a tree.

Oy!

Chronicles

Hello, my name is Ilya and for a pretty smart guy I must be the stupidest homeowner in the Western Hemisphere.

April Fools’ Day came early this year, and, boy, did it make me feel like a fool!

Remember my note about not having any water damage in the mid-March big storm? It was not due to luck, as it turned out, but simply due to French drains not being overflowed yet…

The constant rain at the start of this week did not feel all that threatening. It was unending for over 48 hours, true, but it was not exceptionally heavy. The glass doorway referenced in the same aforementioned post did not show any sign of leaking (and I am yet to get around to figuring out how to seal that). You can imagine my dismay when I stepped into a wet patch of carpet in my basement on Tuesday night.

Quick examination found two areas of wetness in different parts of basement, both of them, thankfully, not the primary-usage areas. Natasha and I spent a couple of hours mopping up the puddle in a non-carpeted area, but recognized that we weren’t getting anywhere with that. With the damage seemingly localized, we decided to wait until the morning before proceeding with any other actions.

Now, the house supposedly has a sump pump, only I never heard it working. In fact, I’ve never opened before the door behind which it was supposed to be located. My delayed first instinct after seeing the water in the basement was to go check the sump pump. There’s limited lighting in that corner of the basement. I open the door, turn on the flash light, and discover a unit that could only be the central vacuum device seating on the wall. There is a pile of hoses underneath it on the floor. My first thought is: Ah, those must be the vacuum hoses that we could not find when we at first wanted to try using the central vacuum. My second thought is: Damn, I don’t think the house has a sump pump; they must have lied to us on the disclosure (and I expressly remember the inspector unable to get to that door during the house inspection, on account of a lot of rubbish filling up that area of the basement utility space).

In the morning next day, I see the wet spots spreading. The TV space and, most importantly, my home office are not yet affected, but carpet being carpet, the moisture will get there eventually.

I start calling water extraction/restoration services and get two of them to schedule emergency visits to the house. One guy inquires about the size of the basement, rattles off a dozen things that they would do to fix the water problem, and quotes me $1800 for the work. Little idea that I have whether all of that is necessary, I nonetheless agree 4pm appointment.

The other company sends an inspector over around 2pm. He takes some measurements of wetness, takes a look around, and produces an estimate for $3900 to extract water, dry everything, find and fix the problem, etc. He takes me on my word that there is no sump pump in the house. I’m pretty sure I heard the other guy mention exactly the same activities as he does, so I politely thank him for his time and promise him that I’ll call him back later in the day if I decide to go for it. He might still be waiting.

In the meantime, before noon, Natasha goes to Home Depot and buys a nearly-industrial-strength 9-gallon wet/dry vacuum, and we start homegrown attempt at drying the floors. After 20 or so buckets, we can see the results somewhat, but in at least one non-carpeted area the water seems to be continuously arriving almost as fast as we remove it.

Around 3:40pm I get the phone call from the other water extraction service. The crew van got into a fender-bender or something, and they would only be able to come to the house by 6:30pm or so. I am annoyed but I see little choice but to say yes, they should still come.

In the next half an hour, I make a bit more progress with the vacuum, plus the handyman neighbor tells me over the phone that houses in this area are required by code to have sump pumps. While I assure him that I looked, he insists on coming over and checking himself, in an hour or so. I am happy with any help I can get. I do, however, decide to cancel the service call, given that no one but me thinks it is a good idea.

The good neighbor comes in, goes to the putative sump pump enclosure and exclaims: “You better believe it’s there!” He picks up the pile of hoses on the bottom and it turns out that they are covering the sump pump hole. The hole is overflowing with water. The hoses are actually sump pump hoses that need to be extended through the window to the side lawn. The sump pump is disconnected and does not work even when plugged in.

Oh man! The pump was always there, but it must have been disconnected since before we moved in. I never properly checked, and now we have backed up French drains all around the perimeter that cause the partial flooding. Believe me, I have never felt stupider in my entire life.

The neighbor then brings over the pump from his pool, spends good half an hour setting it up, and voilà, the hole starts emptying, the water starts flowing in, and almost immediately the one most troublesome area no longer appears to get fresh amounts of water.

I am buying a new sump pump, and the neighbor even volunteered to install it for me, so the monetary damage will be fairly small. (Maybe, luck is involved; if not for that crew van fender-bender, I might have already shelled out $1800 and had my basement all torn apart by 5pm last night.) We’ll dry all of the affected carpets and will likely have to replace carpeting in the entire basement, but I don’t think we’ll ever run into this problem again.

Still, how stupid was that!

Chronicles

Today’s Russian word is захолустье. Most closely translated as “a God-forsaken place”, it means a backwater, marginal, more likely than not unattractive, sparsely-populated periphery town or village with rudimentary, if any, modern infrastructure and nothing to be proud about. (To pronounce it, start with “z” as in “zoo”, followed by “ah”, followed by “ho” as in “horse”, followed by “loost”, which is exactly like combining the vowel sound in “loose” with the consonant ending in “lost”, finally followed by “yeh”. To make it sound really Russian, you need to soften the “t”, which I do not believe has an English phonetic equivalent.)

The area of New Jersey where we live can hardly be called a захолустье on merit. It is well built-up, has all of the attributes of modern infrastructure aside from local public transportation, provides for quite a number of diversions, and some townships even have their own theatrical societies. And yet, the City commuter lot that resides in this area chooses it precisely for its comparative sleepiness in the shadow of the Big Apple.

A celebrity appearance at a low-key local event is what brings the backwater-ness of Central Jersey into focus. “What might she be doing in our захолустье?” is the understandable reaction.

We had precisely that reaction when, upon arriving at the local ice arena for the end-of-season children skating competition, we learned that the 1994 Olympic champion Oksana Baiul was in attendance and scheduled to skate a couple of exhibition programs.

The incongruity of a non-resident, non-native Olympic champion making an appearance in “God-forsaken” Old Bridge was easily explained. A local skater is part of Ms Baiul’s ice-skating Broadway musical, and he arranged her appearance as a sort of a promotional stint. She signed programs and skates, posed for pictures with kids, and performed both a current number from the musical and a simplified version of her Olympic gold medal winning “Swan Lake” routine. I have no doubt that at least a dozen families who would otherwise not bother to go see Cold as Ice will now do so.

Baiul is still very graceful on the ice and a pleasure to watch, even though her most challenging jumps these days are mere doubles.

She tried her very best to charm the public, who gave her a thunderous reception, but her infamous temper almost got the best of her precisely at the moment when it was my little girl’s turn to get her skate signed. Without going into much detail on the unfortunate mishap, Kimmy still got the autograph, but no personal picture with the star. This shot was taken seconds before Ms Baiul got temporarily put off by a child’s behavior.
 

 
When it was her turn to perform, Kimmy coolly skated a clean and composed program. From this un-objective spectator’s perspective, she was hands down the best in her skill-level/age group. The judges agreed.

Chronicles

All houses but three on our street lost power on Saturday, and it is yet to be restored. Ours is one of the three lucky ones.

Becky says more than half of her friends said today that they had flooded basements. We found one single glass doorway that had water seeping through when the wind and the rain were at their strongest.

Our neighborhood was thoroughly decorated with fallen trees on Sunday morning. Our most troublesome tree was kind enough to break on earlier occasions.

We did lose cable services and, because we are on Optimum Triple Play, did not have phone service, TV or internet connection for roughly 48 hours. Mobile phones sufficed, and while it is hard to live without the other two in this day and age, it was not nearly a true hardship. We were told at some point that the service could not be restored until power came back to all houses on the street, but I just drove down the street: Our neighbors are still without power; we already have cable back.

No wonder I can never win a lottery. I’m using up all of my luck elsewhere. (Well, that, and I don’t buy tickets…)

Chronicles

Don’t tell my younger daughter, but I am awfully late with what she surely expects will be my gift to her on her next birthday. Given that the similar enterprise for the benefit of her older sister six years ago took me roughly nine months to finish, I shouldn’t have waited until March to start something that I need to complete in June.

One thing works for me: I do not have to digitize hundreds of hours of 8mm video recordings this time around. Also, I now have a considerably more powerful hardware than I had then. And I am undoubtedly more skillful with the various media software. On the other hand, I haven’t done much movie-making since before our England years; I could be rusty, for all I know.

My activity log so far has a couple of hours for photo prep and about the same amount for introductory slideshow. I expect the total time to be in the vicinity of 150 hours. I better get on with that.

Chronicles