Ketchup

I’m sadly aware that I’ve not updated of late.

What’s happening?

This is what’s happening!

Leah and I have moved to Woodland Hills, just that much closer to the kids. We are living in a small studio apartment that has been great so far. Woodland Hills is in the San Fernando Valley to the northwest of Los Angeles. Here’s the Google Maps map which shows the location more or less.

My phone number has changed and will likely change again soon. See Contact for more information.

Our cat Bas is coping well with the continuous changes. He’s lying on my arms as I type this.

I’m behind on some things, mostly freelance work things, which is vexing; meanwhile, my day job is going okay. I telecommute and it’s working out pretty well.

I’ve not had a haircut in about 2 months now. I’m getting shaggy.

Last week I picked up Brian Wilson’s Smile, and it’s brilliant. I’ve always liked the Beach Boys, even when I was a 13 year old kid, the first mix-tape I ever made had Beach Boys music on it. Smile is a work of great complexity. The doo-wop parts reminded me of Frank Zappa and his own doo-wop influences.

I attended the LA SIGGRAPH meeting this month with Devon, Leah’s son, and my stepson — hmm — I have no idea what the etiquette is here. Do I simply call him my son? Is stepson too stilted-sounding? But I digress. The presentation was really quite good about the state-of-the-art in videogame production. I took copious notes and it got me and Dev thinking a great deal. An additional bit of fun, Dev ran into someone he knows from high school in Moorpark. That was a bit surreal. Dev introduced me as “my stepdad” — which I suppose paves the way for me to the etiquette. Anyway, it was really awesome, though they had to futz with the projector for a long time, they couldn’t get PowerPoint to show up on the right screen. Dev was saying different things about what they needed to do in Windows XP to get the thing to work properly. It was fun.

Leah and I have not been to a movie together in weeks. We miss it. It’s a great irony, because this really is a movie town!

We have, however, socialized with old friends and some new ones. We wish we had that house by now because we think we could have a ripping party up here with our LA/SFV/Ventura friends and neighbors.

And hey, onward.