Sunday, September 20, 2009

I now have a Toddler - by My Fair Lady

It seems as if Max's baby days are already over. At 9.5 months he started walking much to our surprise. However, as any parent knows, the first days of walking are filled with much more crawling than walking. Well, today he turns 10 months old, and now he walks more than he crawls :( While I am so happy that he is happy, healthy, growing and advanced for his age, a little part of me is so sad that my baby is already growing up. It is a constant push - pull - wanting your child to succeed and grow - and wanting your baby to be your baby forever.

In other news, along with the walking comes many more bumps and bruises. At Gymboree this week, Max took quite a tumble before I could catch him. He was walking across the carpet trying to get to a inflatable ring and caught his foot on the edge of the playmat and fell on the play equipment. However, after some love and affection from Mom, along with an icepack for his poor little cheek, he was up and running in no time, ready for more action. I think Max recovered much more quickly than poor Mom. I know he will have some falls which will include bumps and bruises while he explores his new world, but as his Mommy, I hate to see him hurt.

But, along with his toddling comes great fun as soon he will be able to run everywhere giggling and squealing as he goes with me running after him :)

Sunday, September 6, 2009

And now my phone has a blog

Coming to you courtey of my iPhone which has several blog apps. Booyah.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

IT'S ALIVE!!!!

So My Fair Lady and I are sitting on the floor playing with Lil Max when he stands up. Not entirely out of the ordinary as he'd been doing that off and on for the past few days. But then he walked and our mouths dropped in shock.

He and I were playing a game where I held out a glass of water and he would try and get it. So I raised it up and he balanced off my knee to try and get it. Then he let go and stumbled forward a few steps. We were stunned. Then he stood up again, went for the glass again, only this time made a hard left and walked to the fire place.

We were stunned. So much so we just had to have him walk between us again and again. Then later that night we got video of it, sort of, and it's hilarious. I'll see about posting it some day. In the meantime, we have to batten down the hatches because by this time next week he'll be running.

A week after that he'll be driving and then all bets are off.

"Yes."

The other day while I was looking for a job, an ad popped up in my Gmail for a literary agency out of NYC. I clicked it with the intention of keeping it for the future when I have stacks of completed manuscripts and need an agent to sell them. As I happen to have a script ready to go, I scrolled through their site to see if they had a screenplay agency. They did. I clicked it and filled out their form, dropped in my logline, and fired it off. The form said they'd get back to me within 48-72 hours.

Lo and behold, I received an email from them today. They wanted to see my script.

That loud thunderclap everyone heard this morning was my brain exploding with glee. I wrote back to them answering their questions (basically a get-to-know-you email telling them a little about myself and so forth), and attached the PDF. BAM! Screenplay is off to an agency, and a solid one at that. It's small, relatively new, and they are looking for COMMERCIALLY VIABLE material (it was in all caps in the email). This tells me a few things:

1) They're hungry and want a solid script that delivers on everything producers want at any given moment.

2) Since they're based out of NYC, they have a work ethic lacking from the California lifestyle. Agents in NYC will kick down the door and threaten people for their clients. Agents in LA schedule a three hour power lunch and talk to you about five minutes while talking on their iPhone to their other clients the rest of the time.

3) They don't take 4-6 weeks to reply with a one sentence message saying they're interested or not. 48-72 hours for the initial response, and 7-10 days after receiving material they let you know whether they like it enough to move forward.

So I'm in a good spot emotionally right now. Because an agency, even a small one, said "Yes."

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

And now that's broken

In other news, unrelated to the post below, the second set of blinds in the office is now broken. Tried to lower it to keep the sun out of the office while I'm working in here, but it only got about halfway down before stopping altogether. And now I can't raise them either. Fabulous.

But this in no way, shape, or form is related to me taking out my anger at Ninja Gaiden II on a pair of helpless blinds.

Now Playing: Ninja Gaiden II

Seriously? Screw this game. I mean screw it with a drill and stomp on it for good measure. My Fair Lady commented that she was under the impression gaming should be relaxing, and shouldn't cause my veins to buldge and my fury to explode into Hulk-like rage.

I'm strangely conflicted though with "Ninja Gaiden II" because while there is literally no end to the staggering amount of frustration, the other end of the spectrum is present as well. The ways in which you can just kill the ever loving crap out of evil ninjas is astonishing. Your character, Ryu, starts out as a badass and continues from that lofty perch up to the level of furious monster that will kill you so hard. But in between these moments of blood drenched bliss are so many sequences of frustration that will literally cause you to blow all of your fuses at once.

Take these examples of both ends of the spectrum:

1) When fighting ninjas, the ways in which you dispense the pain are countless. When decapitating a foe is just the beginning of you killing them, then you know you're in for a good time. It just melts your brain when you pull off a combo that results in 15 dead ninjas and 60+ body parts. I'd start swinging swords, flails, or this big ass scythe and all around me body parts and gore are flying. And when you think you've killed someone enough, Ryu stabs them in just the right way and really tears their body apart. It's tough to beat that.

2) Then you have boss fights either in the middle of a level or at the end of it that make you want to literally kill the development team, resurrect them, and kill them again until you get bored. Or you can hit the level I did last night (Ch. 13) which funnels you down a long series of tunnels packed to the gills with monsters, all of whom can hit you constantly, and there are no save stations in sight. Also, it doesn't help that the camera is glued to Ryu's heavily muscled ass. I don't mind fighting a room full of bad guys, but when half of them are off camera and able to hit me without me being able to at least judge the distance between us, I get frustrated.

On any given playthough, I scream in fury at the game. Not helping matters is the fact that 95% of the enemies are cheating bastards. Oh no, I shall not be replaying this game, Team Ninja, not now or ever. But at this point I'm one chapter away from the end and I'm going to soldier on and complete it just to say I did it. Screw this game. I'm going to beat it into the ground and then I may stomp on it for good measure.