g.wygonik's flash experiments

Looking back over recent posts it seems I've been posting nothing but bad news and sadness. Unfortunately that seems to be where our minds wander these days. Though, it has been easing. Finally.

Getting settled into a new city, new routines, new everything is starting to take over. In good ways.

Work has been amazing. Crazy busy doing some of the most enjoyable Flash work and experimentation I've ever had the privilege of working on. Just creating stuff. "Can this be done?" -- "Of course!" says I (now, how do i DO that? )

We recently finished up our role in moving NBC's It's Your Show TV to a community-driven, user-generated content, rockin', FanRocket-driven site. Not bad for hacking our system into an existing design. But the future looks even better. Not too much I can talk about, but certainly things that are taking my Flash (and Flex) knowledge to new heights.

Music is coming along. I've sent out some remix kits to peeps, which means I've actually have finished up some tracks. Quite different from previous, but at the same time, not.

Life in general, well, as mentioned it's still hard and weird, but moving. I actually have done things to the house that i never dreamed I would be doing. I hung gutters on one side of our garage so we can collect more water in rain barrels, I replaced a ceiling fan (sounds small, but i HATE[d] working with electricity)... Just little things that make me happy.

I've also helped Lorie learn how to develop black and white film in our kitchen. I got her all the stuff for xmas and cleared out some space in a closet to use as a make-shift darkroom. You can see some of the fruits of our at-home development labor at her photo blog (and some pictures of the parrots that have been hanging around lately).

She got me an awesome bread machine and I've been making bread and pizza dough a LOT (both vegan). Yes, we have moved towards being vegan again... It was hard in NOLA to be vegetarian, let alone vegan. At least for us. Here it's pretty easy really. We are cooking more, composting, wasting less. Just feels better. Feels like the right thing to do.

Now if we could just exercise again... That would be the last post-K blockage for us i think.

I'm hopeful for 2007. I wish everyone a good, happy, prosperous new year, and I promise I'll not post all doom and gloom -- rather, i'll post more Flash-related stuff as I have stuff to post again.

:-)
g.

...Helen and Paul.

It's been a week or so since I read about another murder in New Orleans. But as i read the description of the victims my heart sank. And then i saw the names that friends had identified them as. By now people around the world have heard the story, so i won't re-iterate.

Helen was special. Paul is special. I never met their child, but i KNOW Francis will be special. I'm sure Paul will be able to overcome, even though that may take time. They were/are the best of people. We barely knew them - but it hurts. And i just can't stop thinking about them.

Helen and Paul were new-found friends of ours. We had met them through friends and shared a wonderful vegan breakfast at a local restaurant. We saw them several times more at friends' parties. Then i had the stomach pain and needed a doctor. Paul was my first choice -- my age, friendly, vegan, someone i could relate to. So i went and he immediately knew it was my gallbladder (which it was and i had it removed two days later because it was very bad). I am eternally thankful for him and his kindness and happy it wasn't some old, jaded, uncaring, self-righteous, arrogant doctor (pretty much every other one I had met up until then). Paul is totally opposite of that.

Then Katrina hit a month later. We moved away, Paul and Helen had moved away, we never got to see them again. I never got to truly thank Paul for just being.

Then this. It makes me terribly ill. Everyday i see new articles and pictures and i just stop.

I think -- what if we had moved back? The only white people in the neighborhood; the only ones that seem to have gotten insurance money and had a chance, a hope, to rebuild... Would we have been targets? Would that have mattered? I'm sure Helen and Paul weren't "targeted" -- just wrong place wrong time. But i can't help feeling that the whole city is the wrong place at this time. Being away, being in a city that's functional opened my eyes. Yes there's crime here, but not that.

We had grown accustom to hearing the neighbors behind us firing round after round of semi-automatic weapons on Saturday nights ("Raymond! Put the gun inside! Do you wanna go back to jail?" -- seriously). Lorie always jokes that she had, at times, been gardening in the back yard and heard gunfire across the street and just ducked down and kept working. For us people that didn't grow up around that sort of thing, to have assimilated so quickly to treat guns, drugs, and murders as common and everyday it's no wonder that the majority of New Orleans has become so uncaring (or, rather, blind to what's going on).

I don't know. I was missing things about NOLA -- but now. Nothing.

Helen - goodbye dear friend. We hardly knew you -- and that saddens me terribly. You were a light.

Paul - one day i hope our paths cross again. You are truly special. Please be strong.

g.