Dear imaginary readers,
Just another day in la la land for your humble head of Dervish Pictures. I thought I'd dedicate this blog entry to the human side of an independent artist. Many of the students whom I work with are on Spring Break this week which means that I've had time to dedicate to catching up with projects.
Unfortunately, Life has its own agenda, and most of my time has been spent dealing with putting Humpty Dumpty back together again (aka trying to put my computer back to the way it was before I suffered my first hard drive crash a couple weeks back), having my car fixed, and finding ways to compensate for my lack of decent, steady income...
When my computer crashed, all of the contents of my hard drive were salvageable, but I still have yet to re-install all of my programs. And since there are a couple of film festivals into which I wanted to enter TITO, I needed to be able to open my editing / DVD (and Blu-ray) authoring programs in order to burn discs to submit. Unfortunately, this proved VERY difficult... Alas, yesterday I had a limited success and was able to burn one copy. One more to go, and I will be sending TITO to both Fantasia and Atlanta Underground for consideration; both require being post-marked by today.
While driving back from L.A. last weekend, my temperature gauge went to the red and a little light went on. I pulled off of the Freeway in some unknown and eerily uninhabited area of the city, let my car cool down, added more coolant, and drove back to Orange County while blasting my heater to help keep the engine a little cooler. Next step was to get the car to my mechanic. Since my mechanic is about eight and a half miles away, I usually throw my bicycle into the back seat (removing the front tire, of course), drive there and pedal back (then pick the car up by reversing the last step). Unfortunately, while riding my bike last week, I had a couple of rough moments of riding which yielded a slightly warped tire and a deflated tube. So, to remedy the situation, I rode the Harley (usually reserved for serious road trips and pleasant day trips [for sanctity and because I don't like riding on CA's freeways]) to the bicycle shop for a new tube, did my best to re-align the tire on the bicycle's frame, and threw it in the car.
Yesterday morning I rode to my trusty mechanic's place, dropped the car, rode back, and later received the call; broken water pump and thermostat (~$460). Car is slowly shutting down, last month there was some other stuff wrong with it that cost me just as much... Oh well, that's what credit cards are for. I'll be riding my bicycle to pick up the car in about four hours.
Despite these problems, I have still managed to catch up on most of last month's e-mails from Diabolique, have been corresponding with writers for the current issue, and have been working on my own articles. Work on the Tito documentary has been paused due to the computer setback. And I guess that's about it. Y'all have a great day, y'hear?
Just another day in la la land for your humble head of Dervish Pictures. I thought I'd dedicate this blog entry to the human side of an independent artist. Many of the students whom I work with are on Spring Break this week which means that I've had time to dedicate to catching up with projects.
Unfortunately, Life has its own agenda, and most of my time has been spent dealing with putting Humpty Dumpty back together again (aka trying to put my computer back to the way it was before I suffered my first hard drive crash a couple weeks back), having my car fixed, and finding ways to compensate for my lack of decent, steady income...
When my computer crashed, all of the contents of my hard drive were salvageable, but I still have yet to re-install all of my programs. And since there are a couple of film festivals into which I wanted to enter TITO, I needed to be able to open my editing / DVD (and Blu-ray) authoring programs in order to burn discs to submit. Unfortunately, this proved VERY difficult... Alas, yesterday I had a limited success and was able to burn one copy. One more to go, and I will be sending TITO to both Fantasia and Atlanta Underground for consideration; both require being post-marked by today.
While driving back from L.A. last weekend, my temperature gauge went to the red and a little light went on. I pulled off of the Freeway in some unknown and eerily uninhabited area of the city, let my car cool down, added more coolant, and drove back to Orange County while blasting my heater to help keep the engine a little cooler. Next step was to get the car to my mechanic. Since my mechanic is about eight and a half miles away, I usually throw my bicycle into the back seat (removing the front tire, of course), drive there and pedal back (then pick the car up by reversing the last step). Unfortunately, while riding my bike last week, I had a couple of rough moments of riding which yielded a slightly warped tire and a deflated tube. So, to remedy the situation, I rode the Harley (usually reserved for serious road trips and pleasant day trips [for sanctity and because I don't like riding on CA's freeways]) to the bicycle shop for a new tube, did my best to re-align the tire on the bicycle's frame, and threw it in the car.
Yesterday morning I rode to my trusty mechanic's place, dropped the car, rode back, and later received the call; broken water pump and thermostat (~$460). Car is slowly shutting down, last month there was some other stuff wrong with it that cost me just as much... Oh well, that's what credit cards are for. I'll be riding my bicycle to pick up the car in about four hours.
Despite these problems, I have still managed to catch up on most of last month's e-mails from Diabolique, have been corresponding with writers for the current issue, and have been working on my own articles. Work on the Tito documentary has been paused due to the computer setback. And I guess that's about it. Y'all have a great day, y'hear?
