I’ve been home bound lately, mostly because I got sick two weekends ago and am slowly recovering. I’m not entirely sure, but I have the sneaking suspicion that my chimney deconstruction (still not complete, but I’ve got eight feet cleared) had something to do with it — inhaling all that soot and dust on the first two days. Man, I hate being sick.

One of my projects that I could still manage, whilst sickly, was to start converting my old VHS tapes to DVDs. I bought a Sony machine to do it and once I’ve finished I will take it up to Delaware to start in on my parents massive collection. Paramount are the many tapes my dad made, and continues to make, especially around Christmas time; we have them all the way back to 1981! There is some truly fantastic stuff in there that would be tragic to lose to the forces of electromagnetic entropy. And let us not forget the video of my 2nd grade, directorial debut, performance of Cats!

I’ve been watching a lot of my videos in the course of converting them, and I’ve become quite a bit nostalgic. Watching scenes from high school band camp, my friends and I putting on fake newscasts, my wedding, old grade school projects, vacations with my ex, etc, has really got me reflective, and emotive! It’s a huge weird chaotic amalgam of memories and feelings. It’s not that it is good or bad, per se, but mostly just emotionally confusing. Almost to the point of being debilitated and retarded by my own sentimentality.

In other unusual and exciting news: work is flying me back to the Oakland office next week. I haven’t been back to California since I moved to North Carolina in 2003. I am really looking forward to it although I’m becoming ever more daunted by the purpose behind the trip. And because I didn’t think ahead very well and believe I will be quite quite busy during my stay, I don’t think I will have the opportunity to hang out with any of my old friends and family. But if all goes well then I think I will try to make a dedicated trip out there, perhaps two long weekends with a few days work in between. I am hopeful, but we shall see.