3.5 reasons for happiness

Today is a very good day for three-and-a-half reasons. The first is that Sarah will be coming back to the U.S. in a matter of a few days. I'm excited to see her but more than that I'm really looking forward to the time we spend together. We don't usually take to going out and spending oodles of dollars on keeping ourselves happy. We just tend to spend lots of time together doing, usually, nothing in particular. And that's time I cherish. It's really easy to discover that when you are separated by thousands of miles, time spent like that isn't an option.

The second reason I'm happy is because two good friends are visiting me here in La Center for a couple days. Gavin Jensen and Holly Johnson (they're a couple, if you didn't know!) drove down yesterday and spent the afternoon and evening with me hanging out and buying CDs in Portland. We did that, looked at books in Powell's, listened to my friend Bobby's choir concert, then ate a great dinner at the McMenamin's Kennedy House over in northeast Portland. Without getting too sappy I've had a great time with them and plan to do more of that today. We might take a drive out to Multnomah Falls in the Gorge today. Fun!

Oh, buying good CDs was the half in those three-and-a-half reasons.

The third whole reason for today's dose of happiness comes from a completed project two years in the making. On September 20, 1998 I got my hands on a Sony Mavica digital still camera, checked out from the PLU Library Media Services. The day before I used the camera and tripod to make a couple of time-lapse films of clouds moving across the sky and a series of stop-motion animations using some toys I had laying around. The 20th marked the day I filmed the final chapter in this epic (not really). I set up my characters, lighting, tripod, and went to work. In total, I took a few less than 150 pictures for the film and, among other things, smeared toothpaste all over my desk. One thing led to another, and those 150 images were never put together in a cohesive, edited form—until now. The saga is now a moving story stored on my computer in AVI format. I hope soon to bring this amateur wonder to this website. Until now, the above image will have to suffice.

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