Well, I did it. I posted my post, even though I had to run it by Adrian first. Thankfully, he was sitting at Starbucks where he could read it with me before I clicked publish. Thankfully, he let me. He says I’m catty tonight. And the prize I’m getting? Well, Brett knows. I told him once, long ago.

The explicit details of the day are warranted, I think. At least a summary. It was a hard day for me. And I reserve the right by owning this site to whine. (As I did all day).

0. I woke up to the distinct smell of mess. Rotten eggs. Eww. Something in my gut immediately told me what it was. Sulfuric acid. A battery pack attached to the APC UPS that my brother gave me years ago had blown up downstairs in the office/studio. I opened the door and the stank hit even stronger. Thankfully, it didn’t catch fire - these things can do that - because it (even without the house) would have been a huge insurance claim. It’s powering every piece of editing equipment, rigs, monitors and storage that we have down here. And the Panasonic with the RedRock, and all of our lenses were sitting right next to it. Acid oozed out of the capsule onto the floor. So I called my brother and he left work to check it out and see what was up. 4 batteries ate themselves. They’re out in the yard right now continuing to cook (can’t dispose of them until they’re benign). And it’s still a little stanky. As I was leaving to head to the dentist (I was late) Ralph told me that Jill had pointed him to the Myst movie site. He thought it was pretty neat.

A. My dentist appointment completed without major happenings. Except, I was teased that I was late and again it was hard to get me numb. While waiting for the junk to take effect I explained that I had a good excuse as to my tardiness and started to explain. She didn’t get it, so I adapted. I had a stove fire, I said. I was making tea and olive oil from the other night must have caught. And I wanted to clean up it since I had to head to the office as soon as my appointment was finished and didn’t want a mess when I got home tonight. And things were kind of rushed, so I relented and let work begin before I was completely numb. It was a tad painful. Some moments took my breath away. I got a little dizzy. And then, after finally asking for another shot, it all hit me about an hour after the appointment and I was so numb I couldn’t feel my eye.

B. A friendly call with my sister. What you don’t know is that after a couple of years of development of this project, very few members of my family really know anything about it (see brother reference above). We’re all a little self-involved, and all a little secretive about our outside-goings-on. She bought the Myst Reader a couple of weeks ago and read it within a matter of days. She’s now asking to see the script, but she doesn’t have any more threats to make (she had threatened to come and let everyone know we were going for BoT like months ago, jokingly of course - I think). What she doesn’t know is that it’s on the way to her pretty soon. Adrian insists on cleaning it up before it’s seen by any members of our families.

What’s really cool is that this is a very strong show of support and I’m really touched. And I told her that, kind of. Immediately after completing Book of D’ni, Jill wanted to go through and talk about things that had been unclear from the books — matters we’ve enriched for the script. She nearly interrogated me on how we were going to handle certain things and told me straight out that I better not screw this up. Then her son asked if I could make a Ben 10 movie next. I didn’t answer. He was also mad about the scene missing in the presentation. I told him that he wasn’t the only one. Adrian had asked me days ago if it was weird getting story notes from my sister on something that up to this point had been generally unknown by the family. I said no - what was weird was that both of our notes aligned. I may not be the only filmmaker in the family.

Jill also had wanted to tell me of her discovery. In some book that her son’s been recently introduced to, she came across an interesting coincidence. Apparently the Magic Treehouse series covers the theme of two children who discover a tree house that is full of books. Upon reading them, they can touch them and go to the worlds they describe. I have to check this out… maybe you guys should too.

3. I got a latte. I went to the gas station to get fuel. The pump handle was sticky and smelled like oil and I got it on my hands. I was not pleased. I drove to Buchanan.

4. Walking up the stairwell toward my office, a dizzy spell hit me. Probably from the Novocaine, maybe from not havening eating all day. I tripped, I fell. My coffee flew everywhere, and I was covered. I sat there for a minute watching it roll down the stairs wondering if today could get worse.

E. I spent 15 minutes looking for a mop. I realized my hand was scraped up. It’s still burning.

Good Things:

F. Work ended and I got to come home. I stopped at Culver’s on the way and got my post-dentist burger.

7. Joy called. We hadn’t talked in ages.

8. Adrian’s here now. We have to work on some stuff.

11:22 pm

tags: chronicles of george, dentist, joy, magic treehouse