Time Flying and New Year's Resolutions

Wow--is it just me, or did a month just come and go without me noticing?

Holy cow has this ever been a crazy month for us! We didn't end up making it to Seattle like we had planned for Christmas since the weather was so rotten both here and there, but we had a nice time here with my family. We got to talk to Ryan on the phone on Christmas Eve from Mozambique, which was a highlight of the week. It's funny, because most of our gifts ended up getting sent up to Seattle initially, so we're still getting things trickling in every day or two. It feels like we got married all over again, lol.

We're planning on spending a quiet evening doing a whole lot of nothing but being lazy for New Year's Eve tomorrow, and that should be really enjoyable. My first goal for the new year will be to get a short story I'm working on finished up this week and submit it to a magazine. We'll see how that goes; I've been recording audio notes via my mp3 player (thanks Janet and Grandma Fawcett, that's where the b-day money you sent me went to!) and I'm trying to do the drafting in the evenings when I get home, but it's proving more time-consuming than I would have expected to knock out a 7500 word story. Oh, well.

So do any of you out there have any new year's resolutions you want to share? Feel free to comment.

Getting settled and ready to party!

Moving was rather a fiasco, but we're finally here trying to get settled in. We couldn't seem to clean anything at the apartment good enough for management (although most of it was cleaner than when we found it), so we're going to end up paying for it, but it just got to the point where we don't even care. We're really glad to get out of there and not have to deal with the management anymore. Just as a quick public announcement, don't ever live in Brighton Place Apartments in Midvale. They're old and rundown, which means things are breaking all the time. We were able to paint our place up and make it look nice, but living in a third-world crime-filled neighborhood was a little less than preferable. We had people trying to break into our third floor apartment at least once that we know of, and there are always people around casing the buildings out. Over the last couple of months alone a bunch of apartments were destroyed in a fire, the swat team had to come break someone's door down, and there were a few of what appeared to be drug busts in the neighborhood. Fun times....

Anyway, we have a pretty sweet setup now, especially for being at my folks' house. We have a little kitchenette in our bedroom and part of a family room and library as well. Ash is having a great time running up and down the stairs all day (don't ask me why, but she loves it!). Most of our stuff is in storage for now up in Salt Lake. When we're ready to head up to the Northwest in a handful of months, we'll probably do a u-pack and have all our stuff just shipped up there for us (I really don't want to be driving a U-Haul truck through the Cascades; feel free to call me a chicken).

Jeff and Crystal and their kids are due here in the next couple of hours, and since it's Leo's birthday we're going to have a little party (complete with gluten-free cake for him). We're really looking forward to Thanksgiving tomorrow. I hope we can locate the camera to get some pics up of both that and Leo's party :P.

Thanks to those of you who helped us with the move, even though it took longer than we hoped it would. Thank you to all of you friends and family for your love and support. Thank you for helping us reach for our dreams.

The joys of moving

Well, we're getting ready to close out our apartment on Saturday. We're really looking forward to getting out of this complex--the crime has really gone up this past few months. Ash will be happy to get to run around at Spaulding Manor for a few months while we stay with the fam as we get ready to move up to Washington (hopefully in June--keeping our fingers crossed!).

We're looking forward to having Thanksgiving with my family this year down in Sanpete. Merrill and John are going to join us down there along with the family, so a good time should be had by all. Thank goodness for the holidays!!

Indiana Jones and the Dissappointing Audio Book

This was pretty disappointing. I got the audio book, reasoning that it might be fun to able to listen to the movie for road trips and the like. I really enjoyed the movie, but this is one of the weakest adaptations I've read, and I've read a few. Ok, not they're usually all that great. This is competently written, but the author really fails to communicate the spirit of the film, which is what I was going for.

It starts promising enough, showing a scene with Oreana that wasn't in the film and a different opening sequence. I suppose it's interesting enough and sets up the relationship better between Mac and Indy.

The actor sounds kind of ludicrous, like he belongs on a silly Saturday morning cartoon. Sadly, he kind of makes it feel like a silly Saturday morning cartoon. Rollin's cheezy additions to some of the chase scenes don't help either. It's actually kind of embarrassing.

I guess what I learned from this one is how much Harrison Ford's roughed up, aging, reliable image did for that film. The movie works because they remade Indy in the image of his hat and jacket. They fit better now than they ever did. But you won't find that Indy in this book. Save your money and just enjoy the DVD.

Halloween 2008

Okay, I realize I'm really late in getting this up, but with how busy we've been lately I'm pleased I'm only about 3 weeks behind. :S

Here are some pictures from Jon and Jenny Cuevas' party on November 1. The face paint got really old, but we all had a good time.















Star Wars themed costumes for us, of course :D






























Jenny posing for the camera :P


















Rosa as a fairy




















Tom Stafford and Terry Fawsom

My first freelance article (Amy)

Happy Autumn and Halloween!

First of all, I have to vent a little. I got accepted to write informational articles for a freelance writing site. Tom's been doing this for awhile, but it's all new to me. I just finished my first article yesterday. It was pretty stressful, but also exciting to be writing for pay :D. I was waiting today to see if the article got accepted, and just got a reply that they wanted revisions. Now that's nothing unusual in this business (I've learned from seeing Tom go through the learning curve), but the thing this client wanted from me was MORE KEYWORDS throughout the article. I took the time to write the article carefully so it would be informative and make the reader want to read it. It was much better than anything written on the rest of this client's website, and yet they didn't care because it didn't have a high enough percentage of the total article in keywords. Why do people like this bother to pay someone to write their articles, when they could just as well use the 550 keywords they sent me in a list to use for a 850 word article and get the same effect? I'm not exaggerating. The list of words they sent was 64% as long as the total article they wanted. If I had used all of the keywords they wanted--many of which are spelled incorrectly on purpose--I wouldn't have been able to use complete sentences.

Today's lesson, for all of you future entrepreneurs out there, is that if you inundate your web copy with keywords just to get people to find you in a google search and click on the ads on your web page, you will get the opposite effect. Google will not bring up your article in their search field if it is made up completely of keywords. It will red flag their system as a spam site and will not be recommended to people. If your overpaid publicist is telling you that this is the way to get people to your site, you should fire them and find someone else who actually knows what they are talking about!

Okay, I think I've finished my vent. I added an additional bunch of keywords to that article--another 10% of the total. I'm still not sure it's going to be enough for my client. My article is now less informative and more clumsy, but there you have it.

On a lighter note, we're looking forward to going to a party tomorrow night at Jenny and Jonny's house down in Spanish Fork. Tom and I both have Star Wars themed costumes. I'll try to get some pictures of the party up in the next couple of days.


In other news, Tom starts his NaNoWriMo tomorrow (or really he started it about 45 minutes ago, since we're sitting a bit after midnight now). If you don't know what this is, here's the site. http://www.nanowrimo.org/ We're all cheering him on--GO TOM!!

PRESENTS!!

Did I mention I'm looking forward to Christmas vacation? I seem to mention it every five minutes these days. I think I'm making Amy crazy with it.

Amy and I just solidified our plans with my brother John. We're carpooling up to Seattle for the week of Christmas.

This should be a great Christmas. It's been five years since I really spent the holidays with my immediate family. I'm sick of white Christmas. I want wet Christmas. We don't sing "Walkin in a winter wonderland" up there. We sing "Walkin in the rain and the fog." Sounds good.

I won't be ringing the bell for Salvation Army this year. They won't take me since I won't be available for the days leading right up to Christmas, and we'll be living far from any kettle location anyway. I thought about doing it on a volunteer basis this year for a day or something. I really rather enjoyed it, but out move down to Spaulding Manor sort of precludes that.

So in spite of Thanksgiving being the holiday I usually look forward to the most, this year I'm really excited to get out of town for Christmas.

Acobox - Mixed Results from Image Provider

Blogging is a jungle. In this weird competitive niche of writing, attention is like gold. And nothing grabs and holds reader attention than the right pictures. Finding images for blogs can be a tedious and fruitless process. I’ve often found that my own photos are more than adequate for garnishing my ramblings. Sometimes though, it’s clear that my own photos often won’t do the job of holding the reader’s attention.

The search begins. I do the standard image searches and scroll through picture after picture. It’s a struggle to find anything even remotely relevant, let alone images that look good.

Acobox provides a modest array of sharp, clear images for use on blogs. Their home page is stark, but inviting. The designers seem content to let the images do the talking: they’re slick, professional, and full of eye-popping color. Selection is somewhat limited. There are fourteen categories of photos, and some of those only have between five and seven images in each.

The images are easy to transfer. You just select the size you want, and copy and paste the URL. The buttons in the image tool are only compatible with Internet Explorer. As a Firefox user, I found this annoying.

While the images are of the highest quality and flexibility in terms of sizing, I find the relevance of the images to be tenuous. I can’t begrudge Acobox this weakness. Blogging covers such an array of subjects that finding the most relevant images for all blog users is impossible.

In spite of the weaknesses of Acobox, I’m willing to keep my eye on them. The images are so well done that they almost have an “ooh, pretty” hypnotic effect. Find an excuse to use them in your blog and you’ll get replies from people asking where you got them.

Strawberry Days 2008

So my mom decided a few years ago that she needed to start up some new family traditions. One of those she wanted to start was an annual "Strawberry Days" celebration. She planted loads of strawberry plants intending the whole family to get together and pick them sometime in August every year. Well, there have never been many strawberries to pick, either because they don't grow fast enough because it's too cold, or the deer eat most of the plants. This year, she decided she had to have SOMETHING there that had to do with strawberries, so this was what she came up with...


Ella REALLY loved the chocolate strawberries. She kept picking up new ones just to lick the chocolate off.



Mostly Strawberry Days means getting together and hanging out doing a whole lot of nothing. I wish we had gotten a picture of everyone on their respective laptops, it was pretty funny. I think we figured out there were no less than eight laptops in the house while we were all there.



The latest Spaulding family photo. Take a close look at Ella's face--she looks like she's mad at the camera. Leo has the right idea, he decided to hide in the shadows to protect his eyes.



Matt and Deneal had a big announcement. They had Ashton unzip his hoodie with a big reveal... Deneal is due in March :D



A bunch of us went over into Blackhawk to do some shooting on Labor Day. Tom and I finally got to shoot a muzzle loader. Isn't that smoke cool?










We took Devin's projector outside and watched a movie on the side of the house. The movie wasn't one any of us will probably ever see again, but it was a lot of fun being out there. The next morning, the kids took all the pillows and blankets we had taken outside and piled them up to jump in. Ella especially loved playing with Ashton; they got along really well.



Here are Ashton and Ella feeding one of Mom's baby goats. You can't see it so much in this picture, but Ashton is a bit nervous of the goat, almost as much as he is with dogs. He keeps backing away like it's going to bite off a finger or something.

FINALLY FINISHED!!!

I feel like throwing a party tonight. I just finished the basic first draft of my book. I hit 52,948 words, which got me a bit farther than I expected to be. Now I have the rest of the week to take this at a slower pace and go back and add to the scenes I flew through in my rush to finish the draft.

There's still a long way to go before this will even be remotely readable, but mostly I'm just pleased I survived without having any complete breakdowns.

Thanks to those of you who have been offering me encouragement through this. Don't be offended if you try to get ahold of me and I don't get right back. I think I'm going to be catching up on my sleep in celebration! I'm hoping to have another draft of this story finished by the end of September so I can start passing it out and getting feedback from friends and family.

Attempting the Utterly Ridiculous!

So Tom and I have been trying to find the best ways for each of us to get some serious writing done. We've been looking into books on writing and editing, and what it seems the universe has been trying to tell us is that the book in a month style is just right for us. I'll try to keep this ticker updated as to my progress, but my goal this month is to finish the first draft of a 50,000 word novel. It will be far from a completed work, but it's a start. Next month Tom will get to try this and I'll pick up the household chores and meals. We're not exactly the normal couple, I realize. I'd appreciate any encouragement getting through this!

As of right now, I have 9,042 words out of the 50,000.

I'm a rotten blogger!

Holy cow--I sure didn't realize it had been so very long since we posted on our blog. Pretty sad, really. Our life has been going crazy (as per usual, I suppose). Tom and I are both trying to work more on our writing. Tom is getting to write full time from home--mostly copywriting for companies trying to get their websites up--which has been fantastic. We're enjoying seeing more of each other and spending less on gas. Good time for it, lol. We're both working on some freelance short stories and also novels. It's been really fun to make writing a higher priority in our lives, although I admit I still have a hard time just seriously writing when we're in the same room together. I'm too much of a talker I guess, *blush*. We'll try to keep you updated as these projects progress.

Ash has been pretty sick. We had to change her dogfood from what she was on for awhile. She's lost a lot of weight and is shedding like never before. This is saying something, since she has always been a crazy shedder.





It's like she has a litter of puppies every couple of days. Pretty gross, huh? Hopefully this will slow down to normal shedding soon :P

Well, I'll really try to be better at this. Have a great day!

Ella's Birthday party

Okay, for now I'm just going to put up a bunch of photos we took at Ella's birthday party last weekend. I'll come by and talk about them all later, but I figure if I put them on here I'm more likely to get it done. Enjoy!!

Amy's Birthday Party

Okay, we're getting the super cheesy pictures over with first. Here are Tom and myself posing as we were getting ready for our company to come over. I took most of the pictures, so this is the only one I'm actually in, lol. Tom was a really good sport and decorated and really got the house cleaned up. It was nice, because I had a Relief Society lesson I needed to work on.






Now this was the coolest cake I have ever had. My friend Kelsey made it for me, and if you have ever played games with us, you probably recognize the theme she's got going here. It was great! There's no better theme for me than board games, and as Settlers of Catan is one of my favorites, it was perfect for me. You can't see it well in this picture, but there are even little number tokens and settlements and roads all around the cake. Way to go, Kelsey! I was totally impressed. All of the hexes are hand-painted with food coloring on fondant (rolled out icing).



Here are Jeff and Crystal with their kids. Jeff looks like a demon with his red eye. I tried to fix it but because they're so very red it just kept blacking out half of the photo. What a cute family, though!



More Leo and Ella huggy pictures. They were so cute all night, going from lap to lap getting their loves and hugging everyone. Here they are with Uncle Devin.



Here is Rosa. Didn't get much of a smile there :S. Not sure what Leo is trying to get into here, but he was constantly intrigued by everything around him that he wasn't supposed to have. He kept stealing Doritos off of people's plates because he likes them so much, but he can't have some of the ingredients in them so we kept having to take them away. At least we had some special ice cream there he could have, and that distracted him most of the time.



How could anyone resist this face? I don't think I could say no if she asked me anything!



We played Harry Potter Scene It and Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit. Devin was kind enough to lend us his movie projector, so we had a huge-sized screen to watch it all on. We all enjoyed ourselves, and the teams were neck and neck the whole time.



There's Summer's cute head in the foreground here and Tom in the back having a drink.



Ella wrapping Grandpa around her little finger. There are Kelsey and Sam eating in the background.



These are the nice flowers Tom picked out for me. I think he did a good job :D



--Amy

Amy's Birthday

I really had a nice birthday this year (though I guess the partying isn't over yet). Tom took the day off today, and I only worked a few hours. We got to sleep in, and then after I got off of work and he finished some errands (which included picking up a really nice vase of flowers and balloons from a local flower shop--way to go, Tom!), we went out to lunch at Marie Calendars. After that, Tom let me drag him around town to do some shopping I wanted to do. Thank goodness he had his MP3 player with him, he was able to listen to his favorite talk radio podcasts while I looked through scrapbook supplies at a craft store. Not his favorite place to be--I think he likes me ;D

After all of the shopping, Tom took me to a movie called Penelope. If you haven't seen it, I would recommend it. Very cute--it's definitely acceptable for families, and it had a good theme. It was very much a make you feel good sort of movie. On the way home we stopped at the grocery store for some snack foods (had to be well stocked for my party tomorrow).

Okay, I don't really know why I just gave you an intensive travel log. I think I must be tired.
I just thought I'd put up a quickie post to thank you all for being in our lives. We love your friendships and look forward to many more years of the same. Thanks for all of your calls and messages, it's always nice to hear from you. I'll put up some photos of the party we're having tomorrow night (I guess it's tonight now since it's past midnight already).

--Amy

Tom's Toon of the Month April 08

This month we take a look at the Haunted House starring your favorite character and mine, Mickey Mouse.

This particular toon is a great example of Mickey's early inspiration from Charlie Chaplain. Disney worshiped Chaplain and I suspect Ub Iwerks admired him too. For good reason. Chaplain was a genious. He embodied comedy in Hollywood's halcyon days. He could be a foil for a gag, but you still liked him. You still rooted for him, even if he looked foolish sometimes. Mickey is here in this role. His roundness, his diminuitive size, and his vulnerability make him easy to identify with.

What stands out to me about this cartoon is that deep down inside, I find it genuinely scary. When I was a little kid I used to have nightmares that played out a lot like this cartoon does. The intimidating hooded figure, the horrifying revelation of walking dead, the nature of Mickey's predicament trapped and enslaved all add up to my worst childhood fears. This is all juxtaposed with goofy gags with dancing skeletons. There aren't a lot of belly laughs in this one, but there's the usual attention to quality and detail. The movements are fluid, weighty, and dimensional. I especially enjoy watching Mickey pump the pedals on that organ. The lighting effects are awesome. The scene where Mickey lights a match in the hallway is breath-taking to me.

For all this, Roy's cost-cutting measures are also evident. Some of the animation of the skeleton dances are directly recycled from a Silly Symphony entitled "The Skeleton Dance," a title I'll be featuring at a later date.

In classic Disney fashion, the nightmare ends and Mickey not only survives, but gets away. Mickey's fear seems to walk a line between the comic and the sympathetic. Whether we laugh at his fear, or share in it, we identify with it. That's the genius of Mickey Mouse as a character.

-Tom

Spring update

Things are going much the same here at the Gunn household. I feel bad we haven't been very good at updating the blog, so mostly I'm writing to let you know we really are still alive. We got to go to Tom's mission reunion last weekend, and of course we forgot to bring along our camera. Really smart, that... We had a really nice time. Tom got to see people he hasn't seen since his mission, and we finally caught up with friends we've had the good intention of inviting over but never do. Tom's phone died about the time we moved up here to Midvale, so he didn't have any phone numbers or contact information for many of these people. We're looking forward to spending time with these friends in the near future (and already have dates set, or it wouldn't happen, lol).

We've had a long, harsh winter here in Utah, as a lot of you would attest. For awhile there, it seemed like Spring would never decide to grace us with her presence. It seems however, that she is finally here to stay (Okay, I realize that means it could snow tomorrow, but I'm finding the silver lining here!). We just had the most beautiful weather this weekend, it was in the 60's and 70's the whole time, and we actually had our windows open all day Sunday.

Ash was sick during the week, so she needed us to run her down our three flights of stairs about every hour for a full day so she could do her business outside. I'm so grateful she's so well-trained! This could have meant some pretty serious scrubbing, but she never once in her illness had an accident. She's feeling much better now, and is back to her old antics of begging for any scrap of food she thinks she has a chance at getting. We love having her around, and I'm enjoying taking longer walks with her now that the weather is getting nicer. She loves any excuse to be outside, especially if it involves being with us, her pack.

We love you all and wish you the best! We'll at least be posting more photos for my birthday soon, and I'll try to be better at updates.

-Amy

Tom's 'Toon of the Month March 08

Disney Silly Symphony - Flowers And Trees

My apologies to those who loyally read TTOTM for my complete no-show last month! I hope you enjoy this month’s toon twice as much.


Flowers and Trees was the first Technicolor cartoon ever produced. Color films had been created before, and even a few using the patented Technicolor process, but this was the first cartoon. Flowers and Trees started life as another in the long series of Walt Disney Studios Cartoons under the banner of Silly Symphonies. It wasn’t until very late in production that Walt decided to make Flowers and Trees a Technicolor picture. The ink and paint girls had to clean the black and white paint from the back of the cells and completely repaint them.


Few films had been produced using the new Technicolor process because it was so expensive. Much to the chagrin of his brother, and business partner Roy, Walt signed a long-term contract with Technicolor to have shorts filmed using this new, expensive process years and years into the future. The studio, though nationally known and successful at this time, was always strapped for cash. Throughout both of their careers in show business, Walt seemed to come up with new ways to spend money in the name of quality pictures as easily as Roy found ways to cut costs in the name of keeping the studio financially solvent. To put it another way, it was often said that Walt dreamed things up, and Roy dreamed up ways to pay for them. It wasn’t just the filming and developing process that was expensive. The studio had to completely re-tool, replacing their black, white, and gray paints with a whole spectrum of colors. In spite of all this, Walt believed in the future of color in movies generally, and was convinced that the Technicolor process resulted in the best colors. Walt aspired to be the King of Animation, and believed his pictures deserved nothing but the best.


This short is the forerunner of the celebrated Disney features in several ways. This early experiment in Technicolor was an essential achievement to the production of a first-class color feature, Snow White. The Disney animators also learned lessons in combining artistic excellence with crowd-pleasing gags; a cocktail that remains the signature of Disney features. In the case of Flowers and Trees, the whole tone of the film is akin to an ancient myth or fable. It feels like it could be based on the work of Virgil, Aesop, or Homer. Yet, the gags are frankly expressed and elegantly executed. My personal favorite is the flower dragging himself up to perch on the chest of the defeated villain-tree. The emotion is unmistakable. Every plant or animal in this short is alive somehow. Nothing is used merely as a moving prop. The details pass quickly, but the care, devotion, and attention are on every frame, right down to the leafy “hair styles” of the tree protagonists.


Walt was right about the future of color in motion pictures. His perfectionism also paid off. Flowers and Trees won the Oscar for Best Animated Short that year. In fact, Flowers and Trees invented the category.

--Tom

Master Ron Heimberger

Ronny Layne Heimberger Obituary:

So far, the life of Ronny Layne Heimberger has been filled with vision and purpose. He set out to become a great student, but continued on to become a great teacher. One of the quotes he embodies was penned by Tzu-kung who said, "Not to tire of learning is wisdom; not to weary of teaching is benevolence." Once he realized that the foundation he laid for his work in mortality was strong enough to be perpetuated by others, he was allowed to move on. He got up on the morning of March 9th, got dressed and said he "had to go." Soon thereafter, he was called away by his Heavenly Father and continues his eternal work in the Celestial Realm.

Ronny was born on March 7, 1956 in Nampa, Idaho to William Charles Heimberger (deceased) and Lucy Elaine VanSickle-Heimberger of Richmond, Utah. Not many years after his birth, he received three siblings, Chrystal Hallam of Las Vegas, NV; Gwyn Hammer of Lewiston, UT and Adam Heimberger of Logan, UT.

He met Lisa Dee McGoldrick in Idaho and married her on April 30, 1980. Their marriage was later solemnized in the Idaho Falls Temple on May 19, 1983. Ronny admires Lisa for her work as a midwife and herbalist. He and Lisa have five children: Nicole S. Heimberger of Phoeniz, AZ, Chantel Heimberger-Hilsmann, Cody Heimberger, Garrette Heimberger and Aubrey Heimberger all of St. George, UT.
Ronny served in the Army National Guard, fulfilled his callings in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, traveled the world, and speaks several languages. He is widely loved, and most well-known throughout the world, for his work as founder and director of the world-wide Wing Chun Kung Fu Council. He is, to countless of his loyal students, simply known as "Sifu," their mentor and guide. To read Ronny's memorial or find out more about his work visit www.wckfc.com.

Viewings for Ronny will be held this Friday evening on the 14th of March from 6-7 p.m. at The Spilsbury Mortuary and on Saturday morning the 15th from 9-10:30 a.m. at the St.George Fifth Ward chapel on 85 S. 400 E. in St. George, UT. Services will commence at 11:00 a.m. A short grave-side service with bagpipes and military honors will immediately follow at the Tonaquint Cemetery. Services are under the direction of Spilsbury Mortuary, 110 S. Bluff Street, St. George, Utah.

"Wherever the Superior Man passes through, people are transformed; the place where he tarried is spiritualized and Heaven and Earth blend harmoniously. How could you say 'he is gone'?" - Mencius

Sifu with his Sifu, Grand Master Ip Ching


Sifu playing the blues with Si Heng Carlos


Sifu dancing in the hay after a Kung Fu training camp. This was the side of him most people never got to see.


Sifu presenting me with a camp certificate


Sifu, you will be missed by all who had the chance to know and learn from you. Thank you for touching our lives!

--Amy