Update

I've been ignoring my blog. A week of much needed vacation on the beach in Cali, followed by never-ending loads of beach camping laundry, work shmirk, training runs, and all the craziness of finalizing our high school reunion movie and plans and logistics for this weekend has kept me otherwise occupied.

But I'm still here and kicking. Kicking in high gear actually. I can't believe that our 20-year reunion is only a couple days away now. It's just like anything that you plan out forever in advance: at first, it seems so far away, then suddenly the day is here and you wonder where all the time went. I swore that I would not be working on the DVD the week of the reunion. I would have it long done weeks ahead...Ya, right. Well, I had good intentions anyway.

But alas...it is finished. Well, mostly. The movie itself is done - finished at midnight last night - now it's just the DVD covers and DVD menu to wrap up. I have to say, I'm super excited about it. Probably too excited really (just like I always am after laboring for hours and days on a movie project near and dear to my heart) because I know all the time that went into it and that it was a special creation. Until you make your own movie (or your own homemade anything I suppose), it's hard to understand the joy that comes from delivering the finished product. You always hope the end recipient will love it like you do, but really, I think that's impossible. No one will ever love it like you do because you made it. With your own hands and your own time. It's the same with homemade quilts or scrapbooks or anything you pour yourself into. Actually, I think I might be different like that. Maybe because I like making homemade things and understand the time involved, I cherish homemade things so much more. I'm kinda sentimental like that. Actually, really sentimental like that.

Anyway, I'm digressing on the virtues of handmade things...

I've been thinking about the awesomeness of modern technology. We found Ryan's copy of our Senior Year Video (on VHS tape - which is a technology that my kids don't really understand), which Ryan then converted to DVD through a VHS to DVD recorder. Then I downloaded some MPEG Streamclip software to my Mac and converted the DVD to ".DV" format (which is the raw data file, if you will, that is editable in computer programs like iMovie.) Then I imported the video to iMovie and started excerpting footage from 20 years ago. Throw in a bunch of hard copy retro photos I scanned from all sorts of alumni, add in the recent digital pics uploaded to our class website by all of the classmates, scour through hard drives of music libraries to find the perfect 10-12 killer '80's tunes for the movie, and voila! Several days later, we have ourselves a "Toro Class of '90 Then and Now" DVD!

Seriously, technology is amazing. Someday, maybe when my peeps are grown and married with kids, I'll have this blog printed into a book and they'll be reading it wondering what the heck I'm talking about. DVD? What's that? I'm sure that in 20 years there will be something smaller and better and far more advanced. We already have Blue Ray and mini DVD's and all the music that used to fill towers of CD's (or cassettes or 8-tracks) now fits nicely with room to spare on my pink iPod Shuffle, which is 2/3rds the size of my pinky finger.

Crazy.

So probably after this weekend's reunion events are finished and I've slept a good 8 hours straight, I'll upload some pics of our vaca and blog about our great fall break and Barrett's birthday and the reunion I'm sure and all of the other stuff I need to write about.