Happy birthday to me...yep, today is my birthday. In fact, I was born about 10 minutes ago on this day in 1980, making me 23 years old now. "One of these days you're going to have to grow up" I've heard....well, technically speaking, that would be today.

In honor of my birthday and the upcoming Christmas season, Hil and I started decorating our apartment last night. We got a new Christmas tree from Home Depot (my mom got it for me as a birthday present). My bass player/old Skapartment roommate/future brother-in-law Graham ran off from my parents house with all the Christmas decorations and tree - a la Dr. Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas - except that he didn't do it in spite. However, didn't keep my mom and sister from helping him to load all the junk in his car and head off to Athens. You didn't see Cindy-Lou Who helping the Grinch stuff the tree up the chimney, did you? Anyways, a new tree is nice anyways...the other one was a tree that my family had for years and just replaced after we moved to PTC (or as my friend Mike likes to refer to it, "Your Favorite Town"). It wasn't ugly, just old, but now we have parted ways. Speaking of ways, I need to find a way to get over to Athens to pick off a couple of things that I really can't allow the Skapartment to have, things that mean more than a strand of lights or plastic tree.

Tonight I have to work late, so when I get off of work, I'll be headed home to have some homemade (wife-made) cake and ice cream, and open some presents. Probably gonna do some more decorating and then go to bed. I can't really remember the last time I didn't have to do a bunch of work on my birthday. Oh well, that's the working world for ya.

I just got started finally capturing clips for my wedding video. I've been sitting around with these lists forever, but just haven't really had the time to set up a batch capture. So with that done, the really time consuming part is done. Next, I have to finalize the layouts for everything (the cermony won't be too hard - I just have to blend the cameras together where necessary and then export it entirely). The reception material will probably be the hardest to get done. Either way, deciding which shots to use took a couple of months (over 10 near-full 60 minute tapes to look over). I think I'm ending up keeping about 70% of the material that I have on tape. Gonna be one heck of a project.

Anyways, I'm at work taking my lunch break, but now I've run out of lunch to eat, and so now I must get back to making movies.

And no, it is not weird to be decorating for Christmas already. It is time consuming, and what's the point of starting after Thanksgiving, finishing around December 15th, and then enjoying it for a week or so before you start packing it away again? I like to get the most out of the Christmas season...and besides, its always sort of a neat birthday treat for myself to start putting this stuff up right now and enjoying it until New Year. I think everyone should do it (except people who don't celebrate Christmas (but they should)).