Crazy guy update: My mom ran his credit - he has the best score she has ever seen.

Em and I went to the first day of a three day Real Estate investing class today. It was pretty interesting! The woman who teaches the class talked about contracts the whole time, which in itself is not a very exciting topic, but she wasn't boring in the way she spoke. We've done a couple of really rushed jobs in the last couple days. Yesterday I shot a Lifetime Tribute Video for a woman who needed it for a family reunion today (24 hour turnaround!); today we edited and burned three copies of a concert video we had shot for a family friend (and we did it in two hours!).

Tomorrow is day two of the real estate thing. We have to be there at 8:30 am. Riiiight.

P.S. The crazy guy is in the class too...

Thumb update: first my nail turned white, then it turned green, now it's turning black. Hope it doesn't fall off...

In other, less exciting news, we met with a crazy egomaniacle lunitic who was interested in our hard money loans. Well, I shouldn't be that harsh on him. He was probably just really insecure. He spent the entire meeting telling us how smart, educated, worldly, qualified and most of all people friendly he is. Needless to say, he was not someone I want to spend much time with in the future, despite his uncanny ability to deal with people. He wouldn't even answer our questions; instead he changed the subject to himself!

My stupid thumb has been hurting all day. This morning I was scraping something off the bottom of a pot with my thumbnail (pasta maybe?) and instead of it coming off the pot, it logged itself under my nail. I ran to the bathroom, where Emily was putting on makeup, and made her remove it with tweezers. I was worried it wouldn't come out, because it broke in half the first time I tried to get it. Luckily she got it, but it still hurts a lot. And now it's starting to feel hot. Hope it doesn't have to be amputated.

We met with Adam, the hard money lender, today. He taught us about his program and gave us all the steps to make loans on our own. Very informative. Now I just have to find clients and make the deals.

I spent way too much time yesterday trying to figure out how to make a scrolling text box and have my blog entries inside of it. I could either make a box with my blog inside, or make a scrolling text box, but not both. Finally at around 11 pm, I figured it out. Use layers! It sucks trying to figure out all this web coding stuff when you have absolutely no training.

We shot a live concert video for Rhythm Method about a week ago. It came out pretty well (we had the forethought to record sound seperately). Now we are talking to them about shooting a real music video. I hope they go for it, because shooting music videos is great fun. And we may even get to shoot on 16mm! Good stuff.

Went to the Mall at Mellenia today with my mom and Emily. I needed some new work clothes. The only stuff I had was the clothes I had gotten right after graduating from college for interviews. It's so great when I can actually find clothes that fit me. Kenneth Cole seems to be the only store that works. I got three shirts and three pairs of pants. Now I'll be set for at least another year.

I've been working on music a lot more lately and tightening up the songs for my next CD. I already have over an hour and a half of music, but I keep taking out the songs that arn't absolutely perfect. I have maybe 35 minutes of music that I really like. At this rate I will never finish. I made a really cool song yesterday by creating three drum loops, putting them into one sampler, mapped across the keyboard and overlaping on some notes. That way one loop will be sped up, while another is slowed down. Then I wired each loop to a different reverb unit. The main bass and snare sounds were created with two different synths and I put a simple monosynth over the entire mix. All the drum sounds and effects were automated and the song came out great.

As you can see, I moved my blog again. Blogger is great. They have a deal with Flickr.com and Audioblogger.com to provide free photo hosting and free audioblog hosting. You can call audioblogger and they will automatically post your message to your blog. It's amazing. Here is a nice clip of Emily burping into my phone.

My grandparents from Baltomore have been in this weekend. Emily and I ate dinner with them and some other family members on Friday. Saturday, Grandma Mitzi, Mom, Emily and I took a cooking class with Chef John (The Helthy Chef). It was lots of fun. We want to take more. After the class, we met up with my dad and Grandpa for dinner at Bonefish. I wasn't very hungry after all the cooking. They all came over for dessert. Em and I make home-made icecream. Abe showed up around 9:30 and we hung out till 11:00.

Today my parents, grandparents, Emily, the dogs, and I went to Blue Springs State Park. We saw the manatees, which was interesting for about 5 minutes. Emily, the dogs and I hung out in the grass, while my grandparents and dad listened to the ranger speak. That was my favorite part of the day. Very relaxing.

I grilled some hotdogs for everyone durring the Superbowl. Em and I stayed till halftime, then watched the rest of the game at home between commercials in Iron Chef America.

Emily and I didn't have much to do for the business today. I made some phone calls in the morning and got a film job. We recieved 4 or 5 calls from companies who wanted us to advertise with them. I directed them to Lynda Moy, our marketing director. I also ran by her office to drop off a check.

We went to a real estate meeting at 5:30. Hung out with my mom and talked to people at the meeting and didn't stay long. Afterward, we went to the pet store to get Turtle some more food. Emily decided she needed a real Turtle, so we ran around looking for one, but didn't find any.

I made phone calls this morning to present and potential clients. In trying to find a company who converts film to DVD, I contacted a woman from Park Ave Video. At 1:00 pm I went over there to talk to her; we worked out a deal whereby we would do all of their Photo Slide-Shows and they would do our film to DVD transfers. She was extremely nice and I look forward to working with her. This afternoon, Emily and I went to Pettys and got meat, cheese, and side dishes. That place is great. I made steak on the grill with hollendaise sauce for dinner and we watched the Napoleon Dynamite DVD.

I've been making Bradotypes again. But I've been making them a new way. Last time, I created the negatives (using my secret process) then created contact prints onto photo paper in the dark room. This time, I created the negatives the same way, but scanned them instead.

Yesterday Emily and I were sitting around my parents house, when my mom got a call from some real estate investors who wanted $600,000. She didn't have the money, but her friend Adam did. An hour later Adam, the investors, my parents, Emily and I were sitting around discussing the deal. The investors wanted to buy a luxury house in Alaqua that was going up for auction. They estimated the house to be worth around $1 million. We all drove over to check out the property. The front door was locked, the back door was open, so we went in. It was ugly, but in pretty good shape. It will probably sell for more than they can afford.

Woke up at 10:20, ten minutes before the hotel breakfast ended, threw on some clothes and ran downstairs. Everyone else had already eaten, but luckily I didn't miss the omelet bar. Emily came down a while later with Rebecca, her sister who almost didn't make it because of the weather. I'm glad she made it. Spent a few hours hanging out and playing pool with Emily's cousins and uncle before the big party. The party was like a Bar Mitzvah, with Irish dancers instead of Havah Nagela. Everyone had fun. After the party, we all went back to the grandmother's house, ate, drank, played pool and played spoons.

Ate lunch at Steve's, the same place we had eaten on our first night in town. The food was bad both times. During lunch, Emily, Joey and I decided to make dinner for everyone that night. We went shopping and spent the rest of the afternoon cooking Emily and my specialty, spaghetti and meatballs. Dinner was great. We drove to the hotel in a big snowstorm, checked in and met all of Emily's sisters and cousins at the bar. Another group of people were playing country songs on the juke box and line dancing. Very entertaining.

Emily and I took the train into downtown Chicago at around 1 pm. It was an above ground, double decker train with a good view. Naturally we sat on the upper level. The city looked really beautiful as we rode into town - brick buildings, industry, and a lot of history. I hate new cities. They just don't have the same feel. I guess that's why I liked Rome so much. We took a cab from Union Station to Ann and Miguel's (Emily's aunt and uncle) hotel. From there we rented a car, picked up Ann and Miguel's friend MacArthur (I think that's his name) and drove to a park next to lake Michigan. Emily and I thought that the were just taking us to the docks, to walk in and out of stores. Instead we went on a Siberian Blizzard Death March. We walked for about 2.5 miles in snowy, windy, and freezing weather. We had dinner at a Greek restaurant called The Parthenon, after picking up Joey. The food was amazing. Better than even the Greek food we had in Greece. After dinner, Emily, Joey and I went out for coffee until 2 am.

Emily and I flew into Chicago on Sunday. We came to shoot a Lifetime Tribute Video of her grandmother and attend said grandmother's 90th birthday party. Monday we rented video lights and began shooting. She told stories for 3 hours straight. Her memory is amazing, like a camera turned on at age two and left running. She even remembers the end of WWI and running away from home to get married at age 3. We ate dinner at Giordano's, which is suppose to be the best pizza in the country. It was good, but I've had better.

Today we finished shooting the video (another 2 hours of footage) and ran errands. One of the places we went was an art supply store in downtown Downers Grove. I have a love/hate relationship with those type of stores, because I really want to be a good artist, but I'm just not. Emily's cousin Joey arrived tonight. He's great; we talked about everything from music to politics and alternative energ

We spent the weekend preparing for our big meeting with Baldwin Fairchild funeral homes. They want us to create Photo Slide-Shows for their client's memorial services. Em put together a folder with tiered sheets of paper describing our business and our service. I updated the demo DVD with the Baldwin Fairchild logo and practiced my sales pitch. The meeting is tomorrow, so hopefully it will go well.

Saturday we met Marshal and Brittany at Fuji Sushi for dinner. It was good, as usual, and I enjoyed seeing them (for the first time in a long while). Last week I rented Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (or whatever it's called). It was addictive and I spent way too much time playing it. Thankfully it was only a rental. We also rented the HBO series "Angels in America", a 6 hour program about immigrants. I fell asleep after an hour

Piggy was getting very upset about Turtle sitting on my lap this morning. She laid on the floor barking and howling for a few minutes. I got out my camera and she got even more upset.

Em and I spent most of the day scanning photos for our new ads, which are being created by Grandesign. At around 5pm we went to Home Depot and picked up some vegetable and herb plants - tomato, green pepper, broccoli, basil, sage, camomile, and some other stuff which I can't remember at the moment. We came home and planted it in a small plot in the back yard. Piggy ripped up and ate one of the broccoli plants right after we finished.

Emily, Turtle, Piggy and I spent the holidays in Dallas with Emily's dad, step mom and sisters. They are all very good cooks, so we sat around eating the entire time. Well almost the entire time. Between meals we managed to go ice skating, visit the Fossil office where Emily's sister works, check out Emily's dad's new boat and see The Aviator (which was excellent). Turtle and Piggy were annoying the crap out of us by chasing the cats around and getting into trouble.

I spent new years at Danny Berger's party and January first at De Leon Springs State park. We ate pancakes at the Sugar Mill and debated the existence of Woolly Mammoths in Florida (there weren't any, but there were giant sloths).

Yesterday I went to the British Pub on 436 with Abe and Jamie. We met up with all the people I use to hang out with in high school. It was really cool to see all of them. I hadn't seen most of them in years. Not too much has changed. Most of them are still in school, working, etc. Doing the same stuff as always. I was glad to see everyone and hear about what they've been up to...

Spent most of the day today putting up a fence in the backyard with Emily and John Sheridan. It was nice to do some manual labor and have something to show for our work. The fence cane out really well. Now the yard actually feels like our own. We have some privacy and a place for the dogs to play. It even feels bigger. And one of our neighbors gave us some patio furniture that she was going to throw out. No more sitting on the ground.

It's been a busy week. Lots of dubs, lots of scans and lots of calls to make. I played traveling salesman again today. Went to every office park and doctor's office I could find. Probably handed out 250 or 300 flyers. Now we're almost out of flyers. This morning we had a meeting with Grandesign to see our new business identity. It looked really good, definitely captured the essence of our business. Tonight we had our first meeting to try and sell a Lifetime Tribute Video to someone we didn't already know. It went OK, but it was a little awkward. Neither Emily or I are very good at small talk and we didn't know our product well enough to really sell it, so we stumbled through the sales pitch. Oh well, we'll get better with time.