Day Three of Being Self-Employed.

Yeah, it's still weird. It's like I'm on summer vacation, but I have a butt load of homework that's due soon. And everyone is either wearing a suit or a white dress. WTF.

Anywho, I have to admit that I'm both working harder than I've ever been, and also procrastinating more than I've ever been. This post for instance. I'm close to finishing one wedding, but there's still seriously like 4 or 5 left. I don't even remember. And there's one tomorrow. So it's not like I'll be painting murals on my free time or anything, though I have to say that I feel a lot more refreshed, less stressed, and more... myself.

I am editing for the bulk of the time, but I do take a lot of breaks, and once my replacement laptop arrives (oh yeah, I ebayed me a faster ibook, and I'll be selling my other ibook this Sunday...) I'll be taking that to the library on a regular basis just to edit. Change of scenery, and there's way less tendency for me to do other things like snack like a fatty or look at porn. What can I say, I'm interested in anatomy.

But overall, I think it's been kinda different. My wife keeps thinking it's the weekend, because I've been home the last two days now. Hell, even I do that. Mr. Alex came down today and just assumed I was home because he started calling for Daddy before he even saw me. But like today, I just wake up, get ready to go somewhere, and then go upstairs. I don't even hang out with the wife or kids that much, just occasionally to say hi. When Zoe pooped in the potty today, I came down and cheered her on. And looked at the poop because she wanted to show me what she'd done. Yeah, I don't do that just for anyone.

I think one of my major problems in editing - is music. Seriously. I can think of a million different songs for moods, but love songs, goddamnit, I just don't listen to them. The ones I do like are like old. And kids today don't care for old music. This one I'm just finishing up has had several song changes. I'd lay then an audio track, edit to it, and then toss it out after a week because it's absolute shite. It didn't help when under musical preferences, the groom liked rap, hip-hop, and the bride liked ballads and oldies. So now I've thrown in Oscar Peterson, which some Mary J Blige, Paul McCartney, and Savage Garden in their video. I just hope they don't want to sue me for audio torture. Oh yes, and Wet Wet Wet.

Oh yeah, Love is All Around Me, C'mon and Let it Show.

Another obstacle with this baby is that they're in the hotel conference rooms the whole time. And the DJ completely shoved his musical penis into my footage by playing really loud 80s crapola, tainting all my audio. Basically, it's tough for me to keep any of the original audio in there because whenever I cut, the songs in the background are cut too, so it's disconcerting and choppy. So I have to shut out all audio and soundtrack it. Essentially turning it into a silent movie. And for the person who would think I should isolate the vocal audio from the background, please take me to your time machine as well, since you know where all the magical machines are located.

But this one's close to being done, and then it's the Indian wedding. Oh yeah, 11 hours of footage, and a good chunk of it I don't even understand. That should be a kick in the pants.

Well, back to procrastinatingwork.

Well, this was bound to happen sooner or later, but I've been thinking about the progression of the blog. Now that Zoe's 2nd birthday is nearing the corner next week, this blog's namesake is a little dated, and since most my entries have very little to do with charting the wonderful progression of child-rearing, and more to do with one man's slow descent into madness, I've been considering a few things with this blog.

1) Abandon it, start a new one. Those of you who have a big crush on me will still have a blog to visit, just not American Babies.

2) Change the title, pretend nothing happened. Of course, I could change it to Fifi's Awesome Poke Puppy with Incentive, but the web address will still be americanbaby.blogspot.com. Which makes it a little confusing and disturbing.

3) Pretend this post never happened, continue to blog until my kids turn old.

If I could possibly get some input on this, that would be great. If not, then I guess I'll do whatever I want, which is probably 1. Or 2. Really, I don't think anyone would care. Or would they?

Well, let me know, guys.

I would be more excited about today being my last day at work, but due to the lack of sleep from editing last night, it's not really working out to be that way. I was editing a project that's underpaid, and overworked, mostly because I was willing to bend the rates to fit the customer's needs, but because the customer had so many customized needs, it got to be more of a hassle than anything. A big pain in my ass, really.

Anyway, I'm training my replacement today, and that's going as well as can be expected. It's tough when you realize that other people aren't as anal as you are, because then you feel like they're never going to get it right. But hey, not going to be my problem anymore. I got a deli breakfast at the store, which has the distinction of having the world's worst scrambled eggs. They have a rubbery texture, and each nugget of egg has a dark yellow cap of hardened egg guts on the top, giving a weird kind of taste sensation in your mouth when you bite into it. I also had one of those power drinks, which claim to give you energy, and when I got back to work my co-worker got me a Frappincino. So I'll be running the paint off walls today, till about 3pm when I collapse from a triple cardiac arrest.

Awesome.

So tomorrow, I'll still be going to work, except I'll be hauling my mac mini upstairs, and closing the room to JL's bedroom. Since she's gone for the summer, I'll just be using her room during the day, and perhaps spend some quality time at the library, stealing their power for my own evil devices.

I've got 5 weddings, one instructional video, one photo montage, and another wedding to shoot this weekend. So don't worry, I won't be too bored.

I posted this from the free WIFI at work at Starbucks. That's pretty cool.