Just WHERE Have You Been, Young Man?

(Well, not SUCH a young man... I did have a birthday between my last post and this one. I'm one year closer to 40...)

So... it's been a while, huh folks? Sorry about that... I didn't mean to drop off the face of the Earth (and, if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you probably noticed that I didn't, exactly...) but I have been pretty busy over the past couple weeks, and haven't had a nice long stretch to sit down and record my thoughts.

And, I'll be honest... I just wasn't in the the right frame of mind. Don't take that the wrong way, I love sitting down and getting all meditative, or sharing my little insights, or updating you on what's going on... but lets tell the truth. Doing so requires a certain focus, and I didn't really do much focusing over the holidays... and after the holidays? Well, I was a little TOO focused - but not on blogging.

So, anyway, let me give you all the quick run-down of the past few weeks:

The 24th through the 29th were really devoted to family time and relaxation. We headed down to Salem on Christmas morning to see Trish's sister and brother, and then the day after we headed up to the Bellingham area to see my parents, my brother James and his family. We hung out up north for a few days (celebrating my birthday on the 28th by seeing Avatar (yes, it really is as good as everyone says it is - Golden-Globe-for-Best-Picture good? I'll let the critics hash that out. I enjoyed the heck out of it... Give yourself a treat and see it in 3-D).

We drove through a surprise snow storm on the way home... no one expected it (in fact, there was no mention of snow in the morning forecasts) but it ended up locking up the highways from Chehalis, WA to Portland. Now, you Alaskans and Minnesotans reading this are going to chuckle when you see how much snow dropped on Portland - a whole 4 inches!! Woooo... but keep in mind that people out here don't generally put studs on their tires, since it doesn't snow that often. It does seem like we've gotten more snow over the past few years than we have in the entire time I've been here, though... so Oregonians may need to start paying attention to their winter tires in the future.

Once we got back home, Trish and I tried to make the most our time off before she went into rehearsals for her next show, Dirty Bomb (Which opens this Friday, the 22nd - get your tickets soon!) and before I started shooting my next film Wake Before I Die (we start shooting this Thursday, the 21st!). We did a little loafing around the house, checked in with that World we call Warcraft, messed around with my other favorite online obsession, had a wonderful new year's eve with our friends Rick and Francesca...

But, alas, it was all over too quickly. Before we knew it we were at the 4th of January - and the year started off with a bang. Auditions and callbacks started coming in, my computer clients started calling, and there was work to be done. So, for the past couple weeks, we've been back on the treadmill...

It's especially important that I get my "day-job" life in order, since I'll be pretty unavailable to my clients over the next couple of months. As I mentioned above, Wake Before I Die begins shooting on Thursday, and I'll be needed for most of the 20 shoot days. Once the shoot wraps (well, technically, before the shoot wraps) I'll also be traveling to Tucson and Pittsburgh for the National Institute on Drug Abuse - one of those traveling gigs I've talked about in the past. So, it's going to be a little hard for me to give them a lot of attention. Thankfully, my clients know that my "real job" takes priority, and they understand when I need to take leaves of absence like this...

With that being said, I'm going to try not to disappear from the blog during this busy period. You know how it goes, though... when focus is pointed in another direction, the blogging suffers. My best advice would be to follow me on Twitter - since I can quickly update my Twitter stream from my phone, I'm more likely to post updates that way.

So, stay tuned... I'll check back in when I can. And, as always, I hope you're all doing well...

-Harold