lineofaction

I printed out my thesis today, on 25% cotton rag, watermarked paper with 1 1/2” left margins. All my renders are done and composited, my sound is edited, the dvd burned, menus made, double copies created, files backed-up. The whole shebang is sitting in a bubble-insulated envelope on my printer. Not even light itself can escape the gravity it’s generating there. Tomorrow it will go out via 2-day priority mail to Georgia where it will be hawked over for a few days, then with any luck signed in triplicate by my committee and submited to the library for binding and archiving. Then my thesis chair will submit my grade change and I will most likely have to file for graduation. The point is, for all intents and purposes I’m done. I’ll just sit here quietly until that sets in.

I am about 75% done with rendering my thesis. Sound is finished. I’ve got a few more scenes to polish some animation on and then render. After that I need to work up a DVD, print my paper on the fancy thesis stock, and ship the whole thing out to SCAD for acceptance. My goal of the end of September still seems perfectly reasonable.
I went to Sedona last weekend with Meredith. This was the first time I’ve hiked around Sedona instead of just driving by the scenery. It was really a great trip. The weather was beautiful, in the low seventies most of the time. We went a little north of Sedona to slide rock, which is a natural waterslide area right by the highway. It was pretty neat, albeit jammed with tourists. The water was remarkably cold. I got in, but didn’t slide. Neither did Meredith. We were pretty content watching other people do the crazy stuff. After Sedona we drove up to Jerome, which is an old mining town up the mountains. We had all intentions of stopping to eat there, but it was raining, and apparently rain shuts down the little town of Jerome. Nothing was open. It was much cooler there, in the lower 60’s. Very nice. Jacket weather. I was wearing a tank top. The road winds up the mountain through Jerome with near hairpin turning. It was actually a fun drive, though my poor car doesn’t do mountains so well. We continued on and were going to go to Prescott, but never quite made it and ended up going back to Phoenix for dinner. Good trip. Here’s a picture of me at one of the many Vortexes of Sedona…

That’s 172, by the way.

I’ve been going to physical therapy for 3 weeks to try to get my shoulder strength up in my right rotator cuff. I think it’s improving but it’s hard to tell. My therapist suggested I give it another week and then try to do some of my old exercises and see how it feels. If I still get popping and weakness, she wants me to get an MRI. Lovely.

Mom is coming to visit in a few weeks. That should be fun, and then I managed to get really cheap tickets to visit Brett and Bonnie in New Jersey, so October 12th through the 16th I’ll be travelling up there to see my good buddies. I’m very happy to be making that trip.

Final news, a friend of mine has started what I think is a really great idea. I’m a member and anyone that has a pet, I suggest you become a member too. The site is called SurePaws.com and it’s basically an online database that keeps track of your pet. They provide you with a tag with a unique surepaws id, and if your pet gets lost, the finder can look up the id number and get all the information about your pet, any medical data or whatnot, plus give you contact information for reaching the owner. It’s certainly worth 20 bucks a year (not to mention renewal is only 10 bucks.) So, if you own a pet, I demand you check out the site. http://www.surepaws.com.