It’s been a busy few days around here. Trying to make the most of our remaining insurance, we’ve all had trips to the dentist. Seeing our coltish boy sprawled across the dentist’s chair with the aged dentist explaining what each of the pieces of equipment does was easily the most Norman Rockwell moment I’ve encountered in a while. I also went in for an eye exam and new pair of glasses. Men, take note: your wives may want input into the selection of eyewear, for as Barry so succinctly put it last night as we were discussing the issue, “you only have to look through them — they have to look at them.”

I took Liam and Abby out for their big days out with Daddy. Liam and I went to Kidzville, Chuck E. Cheese, and Natural Bridge Caverns. These particular caverns are still some of my favorite, as they have some of the most spectacular formations I’ve seen, courtesy of the Edward’s Aquifer. Liam was a bit concerned about descending into the bowels of the earth at first, but warmed to the venture once the initial perilous drop was passed. For our outing, Maggie and I ate breakfast on the square, went to storytime at the library, took a long walk down by the river, and caught Scooby Doo 2, which was every bit as good as I expected. (Which is to say not at all.)

Ben gave me a call earlier in the week to ask if I wanted to go to a Spurs game with him, courtesy of one of his suppliers at work. We enjoyed their Thursday night victory over the Pistons from the 11th row. While I had a nice time, and thoroughly enjoyed getting to spend the time with Ben, I feel that my quota for deafening sporting event attendance has been filled for the next two years.

Last night Kathy and I attended Austin Lyric Opera’s production of The Flying Dutchman with Barry and Catherine, themselves a mere eight days from their wedding. (Getting to go to the show was my birthday present for this year.) It was interesting to see one of Wagner’s earlier works, which don’t display as much of the characteristic use of leitmotif as one generally associates with the composer. The production was quite well-done, and we enjoyed the show and a Thai dinner beforehand a great deal. We topped off the evening by stopping in to visit Jason Young and his wife. Jason is a good friend of Barry’s who I’d met on-line, but never in person. What a treat to spend the evening in such company!

Finally, as my first two weeks of unemployment come to an end, I’m about to get serious about my job hunt. The University job for which I’d been holding high hopes failed to pan out. Since I haven’t found much else locally that would fit the bill, it looks like I’ll likely be driving up to Austin again. I have an interview with Microsoft on Monday for their Austin game studio, and will probably start exploring the more traditional web application/database developer stuff in earnest too. More on that as it happens.

• Just got done with a great show at Cheatham Street Warehouse with the Grant Mazak Band. Best crowd we’ve had there: lots of folks, energy was high, and we played well (and had a lot of fun). Thanks for coming out, everyone who did!
• David took me out to the studio for a bit this afternoon and ran me through the work he’d done to mix the live recording. It’s really interesting to me to learn more about the audio engineering work he does so well, and to hopefully be able to apply a bit of it to my own meager recording efforts. (Thanks for staying with the kiddos, Kath!)
• Abby and I went to Fiesta Texas on Friday. I enjoyed getting to run around with her for the day, and she seemed to really enjoy the time together, the rides, and the shows. She’s not quite ready for the biggest roller coasters yet, but was a bit more adventurous than I’d expected.
• Lowe’s is the Wal-Mart of hardware stores. I’m never going back. Fortunately, we have a great local hardware store in San Marcos (Steward’s Ace Hardware) that has nearly everything Lowe’s had, plus chicken feed and customer service.
• Had a nice long talk with Chris today while sitting in the treehouse. He met an English girl when over in Ireland for a wedding, and is going to see her at the beginning of April. I’m eager to see where this relationship goes.
• Went camping last weekend with Daniel and a number of his friends from back home last weekend at Goose Island State Park. It was a great time, and felt like a fitting kickoff to the next couple weeks of unemployment.
• In addition to Texas State University, I also have an interview lined up with Microsoft. It feels a little funny as a long-time Mac fan to be interviewing with them, even though it’s for one of their game studios.
• I recently finished most of the work on a website for my sister-in-law and her husband, who are headed to Uganda for some mission work in a few months. Both are brilliant and committed people, and it’s very exciting to see this coming together for them.

David finished up a first mix of Cheatham Street Special, one of the original songs the band performs. I’m really happy with the way it turned out, and am even more excited about getting a CD together now.

One of the things I’m doing with my next few week off is taking each of the kids out individually for a full-day romp together. Emily led the charge today with a trip down to San Antonio, where we explored along the river, ate at the Tower of the Americas, visited Ross’ mom at her shop, hit Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum, walked through the grounds of The Alamo, played on a downtown playground, fed the pigeons, and caught Cheaper By The Dozen at 50¢ movie night at the local theater.

We both had a great time. I’m very grateful for the chance to get the extra time with the kids, and was reminded again by the movie (which was better than I expected) of why I’ve made some of the decisions I have regarding career and family.

Looking forward to a nice break full of sunshine and bike-riding with the kids, I yesterday dropped off a couple of our bikes that needed a bit of work at Pedal Power, the local bike shop I prefer. On the way back to pick them up that afternoon, I came to stop at a red light. So did the car immediately behind me. The car behind her, however, didn’t, and both plowed into the back of our car. The speed of collision was relatively low, so nobody was hurt, and there wasn’t too much damage done to our car, but it was still an unfortunate interlude in our sunny day.

After getting the bikes home, we went out riding later. Emily tackled a big hill by Crockett Elementary, and Liam, who is normally a bit timid about physically hazardous adventures, surprised me by following immediately after. Unfortunately, he still hasn’t mastered using the brakes to moderate his speed when going downhill, and had quite a head of steam when he hit the bottom of the hill and went flipping off his bike.

Three hours and one trip to the hospital later, it turned out that he just had a bunch of scrapes and a nasty sprain. He’s on ibuprofin to keep the swelling down and has a bandage to keep his arm straight, but should be in good shape in a few days.

The frequency of these misadventures is starting to make me suspect that I’d be better off in a nice safe office somewhere!

My buddy Daniel and I took advantage of a borrowed microphone a few weeks back to record some of his poetry. This had been a project we’d been talking about for a while, but kept getting distracted by conversation, Fat Tire ales, XBox, kid-wrestling, movies, or any number of other things.

Daniel is a very talented poet, and I’ve been excited to help him commit some of his work to good-quality recordings. I haven’t finished all the engineering I want to do quite yet, but have a couple of tracks ready for preliminary listening: enjoy Speed and The Dead in Jazz.

Today’s my last day as a gainfully employed member of Electronic Arts. We enjoyed a big lunch at Dave & Busters this afternoon, but are otherwise keeping busy up until the last minute trying to get Character Transfer wrapped up and ready for public consumption. (I spilled queso on myself at lunch, but had fortunately had the foresight to wear my cheese-colored shirt.) It’s been interesting (and a bit difficult) to watch friends work through the decision of whether to stay in Austin or to move out to California.

I’m planning on taking a couple of weeks to spend with family, to take each of the kids out individually for a day together, and to relax while doing some very low-key job hunting. If none of the initial prospects pan out, I’ll get more serious about it at the beginning of April.

Liam has recently gotten the hang of riding a two-wheeler without benefit of training wheels. He’s been teetering enthusiastically around our street for a couple of weeks now, finally causing me to decide yesterday evening that we should go bike riding together.

Of course, nothing is ever as easy as it sounds around our house. Abigail didn’t want him to use her bike, which is in good shape and a reasonably good size for him, so we grabbed a tiny little bike that looks more like it belongs under a clown in the circus than under a five year old boy. (Perhaps I should add one of those funny squeeze bulb horns to complete the effect.) A quick inspection, however, revealed that the back tire was flat. I grabbed the cigarette-lighter powered air compressor and pumped it up, only to discover that it had a slow leak. He’d be able to ride it for about five minutes at a stretch, and would then need reinflation.

So, we tossed his bike and mine in the van and headed to the bike store to get a replacement tire. Closed! Curses! Fortunately, I’d had the foresight to borrow a manual air pump from Possum John before we left. We went on down to the San Marcos River, unloaded our bikes, helmets, and accessories, pumped up the back tire again, and headed down the riverwalk together.

We had a great time tooling down the sidewalks, getting grins from passersby and stopping every few minutes to put more air in his tires. We rode on sidewalks, across bridges, and on gravel paths, occasionally coming close to collisions with innocent bystanders, but always avoiding catastrophe. He made it a good deal farther than I had expected, and talked all the rest of the evening about how much fun he’d had, though it would be difficult to determine who had the better time.

Yesterday the Grant Mazak Band, for which I play bass, played our usual first Sunday of the month gig at Cheatham Street Warehouse. It was a fun show for a couple of reasons: we had one of Grant’s faculty friends sit in on saxophone, and my good friend David was recording the performance for us.

David graduated from Texas State University a couple of years back with a degree in Sound and Recording Technology, and he really knows his stuff. He brought out his Powerbook-based ProTools rig and recorded 15 tracks of digital audio goodness. We listened to the raw tracks briefly after the gig and were delighted with the results. With some mixing and equalization work, I think we’ll have some very workable recordings of the band.

If you live in Central Texas and need some audio engineering work, I highly recommend Dave.