For some reason there has been quite a gap between blogs lately. Sorry about that, I’ve been rather busy. And, on top of being busy, I’ve been having pretty bad headaches right around the time I usually blog, and since that means I can’t be all happy and fun I tend to avoid wanting to blog. Otherwise I feel that things are just too blah for words. Also, I need to apologize to all the lovely people who have written to me and I have yet to write back to them. I’m really sorry, I promise I’ll get to it as soon as I possibly can. Things have just been ca-razy here. In a good way, but still insane.
So, an update, which will be quick since I just took some medicine for my head that’s supposed to help (and hopefully make me sleepy), but it’s still in a trial run right now. Even though I’ve only gone through ten percocets in a period of three months, they’re really worried I’ll get addicted to it so I’m not supposed to use it much. Believe me, I’m tempted to take some tonight, this is killing me. I loath headaches.
First off, all by myself I managed to redirect all of the Prophet-Inc domain names to the new server, so now when you go to Prophet-Inc.com, .net, or .org, they’ll all point to the same place on the new mammoth server. Which means that soon enough, this blog will move to Meggers.org. How exciting is that? I’m dead chuffed, honestly. In other exciting Prophet, Inc related news, my cousin Jennifer has given me proper permission to use that picture of her daughter Rose (the one that’s the place-holder right now for Prophet, Inc, and will soon be featured on the main page). Yay! It’s all legal now and I don’t have to worry about it at all. I’m allowed.
I did make it to Dean’s place on Friday. I had a great time. We tried desperately all morning to call the Count, but the call wouldn’t go through because of this dorky phone card I was trying to use, and Dean doesn’t have international calling through his phone company at the moment. We still had other things to do, though – Dean was nice enough to set up his PAL and NTSC VCRs so he could dub over a VHS tape of the Childnet Awards ceremony from London. See, they had videotaped the whole ceremony for all the winners, but the tape was in the European format. I was pretty miffed and was even more upset when I found out that PAL tapedecks are about $1500 over here. Thankfully Dean had just gotten one to do some editing and he was nice enough to take care of it for me. So we watched the awards ceremony while trying to find airline and hotel information for the trip to Berlin, and I sat on the couch and played with his little Yorkshire Terrier, Murphy. It was pretty entertaining, really, sitting in Dean’s basement, surrounded by all of his awards. To the right were a couple Telly Awards and a regional Emmy Award (which was, surprisingly enough, broken. If I had one of those, I think I’d get it fixed…) 🙂 To the left, were another Telly Award, the national Emmy Award (the big one, which definitely wasn’t broken), and an Aurora Award. Just sitting there, on a filing cabinet, there they were. It was pretty cool.
Honestly, though, I was most entertained by Murphy. For some reason I’ve been really popular with children and small animals recently. In Denver, I got remarkably close to a bunch of squirrels and I have the pictures to prove it. I went to a church social barbeque thing two weekends ago, and this big golden retriever fell in love with me. He hung around, wouldn’t leave me, and at one point walked straight between my legs and just stayed there. I have *no* idea what that was about. And then there was Murphy. He loved me right away and didn’t want to leave, it was the cutest thing. He’s pretty well-trained considering he’s only a year old – if you point your finger at him and go “Bang, bang!” he rolls over and plays dead, complete with his little feet up in the air.
Anyway, I didn’t go to Dean’s just to play with Murphy. I also had my picture taken. I think I broke a land make-up speed record – I had my make-up and hair done in under eight minutes. Not only that, the make-up actually looked decent! Not too shabby for a rush job. Although, I still don’t know how the pictures turned out… I’m kind of nervous about that. But you know what? Having the pictures done really made me feel better; it’s nice to know Emmy-winning producers take pictures using plain house walls too. Heck, he even pulled pictures down off the wall, just like I do. Of course, he did think it was rather funny that I usually take my own 8x10s… so maybe I’m still unique in that.
After all of that, though, we still couldn’t get a hold of the Count. In fact, Dean tried again this morning and once he got through, he kept asking if there was anybody who spoke English, and they eventually hung up on him. He was resolved to just sending a fax, but that has been bugging me all day. And wouldn’t you know it, all day I kept bumping into people who knew people who were fluent in German. It was fate, I’m telling you. Tonight, my Mom went to this church thing and was talking to some friends about me calling all these strangers today looking for a German translator, when a stranger walked up to her and said, “I know someone who does and would be happy to help.” Just some random lady! So Mom called me right away, gave me the name, I looked up the number, and called this guy. Turns out he was a bit rusty, but *he* knew someone *else* who was completely fluent. So I called that random guy, and sure enough he was amazing. He has the most beautiful German accent I have ever heard. Turns out he spent a great deal of his youth in Germany, went to a German university, and actually worked as a professional translator for several German firms, as well as Germany’s form of the Senate. Who knew? But what’s more important is he loved the TV show idea and is so enthralled with it that he’s going to call the Count for me tomorrow morning – completely free of charge – and set up a meeting for me. How nice is that? I love random people, they’re so fabulous. Of course I’ll be paying him back for the phone call, and believe me, if this all works out because of him, I’ll be sending him the nicest Christmas present he ever had.
Things are just fitting together so nicely with this show. I just hope the phone call goes well tomorrow. If it does, then I’ll be in like belly-button-lint. (Okay, I know that’s not the phrase, but who cares. I like mine better.) After being so nervous, I’m starting to feel more positive. I mean, after all, in one day I’ve managed to bump into five perfect strangers who happen to speak German. It’s a sign. Or something.
I just hope Dean isn’t irked by me kind of taking over with the whole meeting-set-up thing. We had kind of agreed to just send a fax tomorrow, but that was really bothering me. And I did *try* to call Dean to double check all of this – called him twice, in fact – but he was out doing something and I couldn’t reach him. I decided it would be better to take charge and get a meeting, than to sluff it off and risk the fax not even going through. Right?
You know what else happened today that’s exciting? Max’s fourth birthday party! It was a riot. I was the official photographer for the event, and had a great time following the kids around with the video camera as well as my digital camera. Although, I think Max was a bit overwhelmed by the whole event. About halfway through when we asked him what he wanted to do next (meaning, what game he wanted to play) he said he just wanted to go home. We had to keep convincing him that games were fun, cake was fun, opening presents was fun. It’s a very good thing we only invited about six kids instead of sixteen. They were all good kids, it was just overwhelming for Max. Once they all left he was able to calm down. He opened the present that Steven and I gave him – the book “If You Take a Mouse to School” complete with the matching mouse stuffed animal. We all sat him down on the couch and I read the story to him. After that, he was okay. Quiet, but okay. He managed to open the rest of his presents. It’s no wonder that kid got overwhelmed – you could have climbed that mountain of wrapped goodies, stuck a flag in the summit, and claimed it for Spain. Max is one seriously loved child.
Okay, I’m tired, the pill has kicked in now. My headache hasn’t been touched, but at least I’m tired and can hopefully sleep through it. I’ll know tomorrow if I’m going to Berlin or not, so I’ll post a message when I can and let you all know. Good night!