#334 - Birthday Wishes

I woke dazed and confused and not entirely sure what day it was.

The alarm on my phone was telling me it was time to get up, but my body and mind were in full disagreement. Surely, I had set the alarm to go off to early?

But alas, the messages started coming in and as much as I wanted to stay put for another half an hour, duty called.

Duty was our scene planner who was missing some files and needed them to get his work done. This is the kind of thing that happens when you do a show in a week’s time. Things get missed. The worst-case scenario was that the painting was never completed. The more likely scenario was that I just forgot to send it to the render farm. I was hoping for the latter.

And it turned out that I had just missed that file when I was doing all the rendering. I popped the file onto the render farm and sent it to the right department after it was done. These are the kind of easy problems I hope for on a Friday.

My 2:30 meeting was bumped to 3 and that was fine with me, it gave me more time to get other things done. I was waiting on two paintings to be completed by one painter and as soon as I thought about it, he sent in one of them and promised to have the last one before end of day.

The art director didn’t have time today to look at all the pending paintings, so I started looking into the next show I would be supervising. The first order of business was to rewatch the animatic/Leica and familiarize myself with the ins and outs of this episode again. The last time I watched it was weeks ago.

Some new designs were completed in that time, and I went over them as well. On Monday I will do a deeper dive and open up the files to make sure they meet our standards and needs. I check for resolution, are they big enough to be used for an HD show. And then I look for how the files are constructed to see if there are any landmines that might trip us up during the production of the paintings.

I ordered a pair of used Skull Candy Hesh ANC earphones from Amazon after seeing how good the ones my supervisor uses were when we did calls. The only black pair I wanted were used and I thought why not give it a try; I can always return them if they don’t work.

In the near future I will need to be in more calls for work, and these seemed like a good investment, particularly at the discounted price. I am always wary about buying used items on Amazon, but I have had some good and some bad results.

We took our afternoon walk in the park again and it was a glorious day for it. The temperature was a bit cooler than normal and the breeze was wonderful. It was perfect walking weather. We even managed to get there right at noon for a change. I felt a little slow at the beginning of the walk compared to yesterday and I imagine it had something to do with how tired I was this morning. But about halfway through I started to feel a lot better and our pace quickened as a result. Robyn mentioned that she felt a bit more sluggish too when we started.

I felt great after the walk and really didn’t want to return to work.

But we did anyways.

I stopped at the mailbox and grabbed our mail. The hydro bill seemed really high this month and all I can think of is that the AC was running a lot this past month with all those hot days we had. With both kids living at home and there is a lot more laundry happening and dishwashing happening as well. So, I guess we shouldn’t have been so surprised that it was high this month, but it still hurts the wallet all the same.

I got back to work and approved the painting that had been handed in after making some adjustments to it. It was a minor adjustment bit I felt it really helped sell the depth of the painting. It featured a mountain side road that wrapped behind and disappeared coming out at the bottom and going off to the right. The road at the bottom felt wrong to me and I made it a bit darker and soften the hard edges the painter had left. Now it blended into the ground better and looked less mechanical. Sometimes a small change can make all the difference, and it can be hard to see when you are the one painting it. The second set of eyes on it is essential.

I continued doing the prep work for the next episode, taking an easy day after all the craziness of getting the last episode finished.

At three I had a meeting with the layout team, the paint supervisor and the art director to catch up and discuss any issues. We really didn’t have much to gripe about, since we had solved most of the issues during the week. Also, no one from the design team was there because they were all swamped getting us designs we needed. Instead, we spent the time chatting and the art director showed us some of the upcoming designs that had been approved and some that we still in progress. Every animated show has a holiday/winter episode and a Halloween episode, and it was cool to see some of that artwork.

After the meeting, I took a break by playing a game of chess and doing some puzzles. I felt good to get my chess game in before the end of the day and keeping my streak going. I started to feel the effects of not getting enough sleep and I had no messages to answer or up coming meetings. I took a moment to lie down and take a nap for fifteen minutes.

No sooner had my head hit the pillow than my Teams apps beeped. The painter had sent me the final image of the show. I hoped out of bed glad to have the last piece of art I needed. I gave it a once over and determined it was good as it was. With joy in my heart I approved it and sent it off to the art director’s folder for her approval.

In our meeting, she told me that she wouldn’t get to it until Monday, and I couldn’t see any issues with that.

This meant I was practically done for the week, baring any last-minute requests. I still needed to be reachable, so I picked up my book and read at my desk for a while. As I mentioned yesterday the book has arrived at the interesting part where everything is starting to come together and all the pieces on the board are moving all at once.

It was a nice way to end the work week.

I told myself I would get some writing done as soon as work ended for the day, but I was so tired I went and finally laid down in bed. I think I must have fallen asleep almost immediately and didn’t wake up until about seven o’clock.

Our guests were arriving around eight, so I figured I should get up and get myself ready. The earphones I’d ordered last night arrived while I was asleep and I thought I’d try them out and do some writing using their noise cancelling.

Try as I might, I couldn’t get the things to enter pairing mode. I tried to reset them using the information from the instruction manual, but nothing worked. I left them to charge hoping that full battery might help things out.

I grabbed my laptop and sat out on the porch to write while I waited for our friends to arrive. Robyn got back from her second job just they arrived.

We went inside since the evening was getting cool. We a small selection of deserts for the birthday celebration on the table which we had with coffee and tea. It was great to have a selection of treats that we could all try. A buffet of desserts is really what it was.

We chatted about the birthday girl’s new job and the state of their plan to move into a small apartment and all the decluttering they had yet to do. It’s a bog job to reduce your life in a big house into a 1200 square foot apartment. I sure wouldn’t want to do it right now!

The chatting went on until one am when we were all showing the signs of being tired, Mostly, there was a lot of yawning. I didn’t get nearly as much writing done today as I was hoping to, but I think tomorrow will be a good step forward in catching up on my quota. I plan to get most of my short story written tomorrow. I’ll treat it like the deadline is midnight and that will give me all day Sunday to look it over if I want to.

I really need to knuckle down tomorrow and get things done.

No excuses.

The plan is to sleep in and get all the rest I need. Robyn is out with a friend by eleven, and I would be wise to use that time to my advantage. So, I’ll be writing while she’s away and hopefully most of the day, taking breaks and naps as needed. No point chaining myself to the desk all day, bit I will be monitoring my progress by recording my word count during each session.

But that means I need to get some sleep. It’s just past 2 am and am more than ready to get some shut eye.

Until tomorrow.

Wish me luck.