Late nights and good times

Well we been having epic times......gots to post this right now, before I hit the hay (yes at 6 PM). 


Sunday I started writing out this post:

heHEEEEE I just got back from hanging out with my dear friend Eva. We had planned to get together sometime soon, and have a few Red Bulls to help get the good times rollin'.

Went over to her place about 4 this afternoon.

We wound up going to the university library in search of stuff she needed for her college class, thinking it would be a breeze to find. Medical journals, relating to physical therapy. We spent a solid 2 hours there. It was very frustrating, dealing with unhelpful librarians, and the fact that she didn't have an account there so we had to buy a card to make photo copies, and then I was hacking into the library computers to google stuff to see if we could find it online easier. Well not hacking EXACTLY.....well, ANYWAYS. Went up and downstairs there, FINALLY found the stuff and had tech problems trying to photocopy the pages.

Great fun, I have had enough experience doing that sort of thing on my own that it is nice to be doing it with somebody ELSE for a change, hehe.

THEN we stopped at Dari-mart on the way home and asked for the most caffeinated drink they had. The manager didn't know, so we went for the classic: a Red Bull and some sort of Monster, Assault I believe it was called.

Had dinner (toothsome) at her place, always exciting with a big family. Cleaned up the kitchen, I was getting worried because I'd have to go home soon, even though I had managed to get an extension from parents. About halfway through the dishwashing I suggested that we open The Goods. HEHEHE.

After cleaning the kitchen we holed up in her room with the remainder of The Goods. We were both twitching a bit, hehehe. Tried to play a game but got sidetracked to talking about random stuff. Things are vague, through a haze of caffeine, but I recall a lot of hilarity over Eva's mispronunciation of 'smog' as 'smug'. 

Then we had a lengthy and impassioned discussion over the horrors and sadnesses of feedlot animal production, don't ask me why, hehe. 'Well....enough of this topic!'   Got up-to-date on our various endeavors. 

Pretty soon Eva started reminiscing about the good times our homeschool co-op group had when we were all about 10. 'Remember one time we came up here and had a fainting contest?' [Faked fainting, I must hasten to add: we are all theatre geeks.]  Sez Eva, isn't it a pity that we're 18 (or nearly that) now and too old for such things....I LOOKS AT HER WITH A CRAZY LOOK IN ME EYES. Yes, we both fainted dead away. 

Then [has anybody seen Ice Age 1?] we somehow found that we both thought the bit hilarious, where Sid is trying to get to sleep and is turning round and round in place and 'HUYYY!' as he stretches, 'HYUKK!', and then round-and-round....well, hehe, you have to save seen it. Had a good time demonstrating that, hehe. Two almost-grown-ups, giggling hysterically and [on my part] making the classic Insane-Bethie face. 

I had to leave shortly alas, as most of the time had been taken up with library endeavors. Got home around 9, still wildly caffeinated. Proceeded to scare one or two friends via chat >:)  

Tuesday I had a chapter test in math, which went pretty well. Our teacher does give evil tests....

Yesterday [Wednesday] things really heated up. I was told that the laptop I borrowed to edit on was needed by the studio on Friday. I also had to study for the College Algebra midterm exam today, and read my week's worth of biology homework for today's bio class. And the robotics team is having an end-of-season party Saturday and wants some footage. 

I was out of the house til afternoon more or less, what with group-study at school, and farmers' market. By late afternoon I could tell it was going to be a long hard night. SOMETHING was going to be happening at a LATE HOUR, but it was a toss-up as to which thing. Studied, showered, ate, transferred music til 10 PM.  Then I finally settled down to editing the four-odd hours of footage from Atlanta. 

Keep in mind that this jollity came hard on the heels of several nights of poor sleep, and STILL not being caught up from Atlanta. It's getting rather serious, only the other day I was randomly pounced on by a friend, via chat, and told to get some sleep [this was around 8:30 PM]. 

Yes. ANYWAYS. Worked away at the editing, with a few distractions til 1:45 AM, what time I was told by my mom to go to bed, which I did very willingly, hehe. 

I ALSO set my alarm for 4:10 AM. 

........

And did not get to sleep for a bit. I believe 2 hours was the grand total...got up, made coffee, ate breakfast, and back to the editing. Fortunately it was only a rough cut. Coffee fumes swirled in my brain.

Around 6 AM I got worried that I wouldn't be able to get it done in time to be able to render while I was at school [I KNEW there would be a problem with the rendering]. I stopped worrying about editing much, and just cleaned up the gaps and adjusted audio levels. 

THEN I ran into a problem, all right: I had no idea how to export the file. One would think it would be straightforward enough, but when I tried 'export as Quicktime' it merely exported ONE file.   >.<  

Tried exporting entire sequence, and popped off an email to the equipment check-out manager and all-round techie. 

AT 8:45 AM, I HIT RENDER AND RACED OUT THE DOOR. Providential timing. 

Off to the math exam. I BEASTED IT. I TOOK IT DOWN. I DESTROYED IT UTTERLY. 

Not very hard at all, compared to the tests OUR teacher writes. I think I mebbe missed one or two points on on problem....it was 'name three truths expressed by the fact that x = 4 is a zero of P(x)"....I fudged a bit on one  :P

After that, I attempted to catch forty-winks on a bench by the school library [head pillowed on Bag of Holding] failed, because I am always nervous that I am going to be pounced on.....

Then out to spend the interim before biology at a friend's house. Biology was good, very low-key, I was let lie on a couch in the living room and DID catch forty winks, gotta love homeschoolers who allow you to take responsibility for your own actions. 

Then home, where I found email from forementioned techie with instructions on how to burn to DVD. Just drag the Quicktime file [which had successfully rendered] into a little program called Toast. Sweet thang....I really need to look into buying it for Eddie [MacBook Pro]. 

It's taking a while to prepare the file, but so far this has been the smoothest render-and-burn process I've EVER gone through, and I've used quite a few editing platforms. 

Also downloaded Bean, a nice little text-editing app for Mac OS X. A definite cut above your basic TextEdit, but lean, doesn't take so long to power up as, say, OpenOffice [which, by the way, I use for everything on Eddie. Nice open-source software, but bulky].  

If all goes well, I plan to be in bed by 7 PM tonight....let's see if we can do that..... hehehe! :)

Hope you enjoyed reading about my recent exploits...as much as I enjoyed having them :D