No place like St. George in January

Sunday, right after church, we headed south to St. George, about 320 miles. Unfortunately, it was not just to get away from the snow. We went down to do some more videos for Myrna. I was kind of excited to get down there and get busy on them. Myrna had told me that for these videos we were going to have a lot more video from above, shooting down on her quilting instead of a talking head. Last year when Dustin was here, and over the internet and email I had shown Dustin some plans for a device (jib) to mount a video camera which allows you to get to very different angles, including from straight above, below, etc. Dustin built me one of these for my birthday/Fathers' Day, and he did a wonderful job. in addition he worked on it quite a bit more and brought down some additional stuff for mounting it to the tripod when they came down for Christmas, and he even had to send me an additional part for attaching to a different tripod after he went back after Christmas. Again, I repeat, he put a LOT of time and effort into this device and he did an AWESOME job. Last Thursday, before going down to St. George, I had a day off from work and I spent the whole day making sure I had all the parts I needed and could get the jib together, and also testing lighting, wireless mikes etc. Oh, by the way. I had also gone and bought a portable DVD player and some connectors so I could view what the camera was getting while on the jib. So, like I said above, I was anxious to get to Myrna's and use the jib for a better angle. Monday morning we got to Myrna's new studio (We had not been in this one before) and started setting up. Well to make a longer story shorter, after about two hours of trying everything we could think of including some rearranging of her studio we figured out that there just wasn't enough room to use the jib. All that time and money and work wasted. Of course I still have the jib and there certainly may be some other way I can and will use it in the future. If Myrna's new studio was as large as her old one we could have done it. My heart was broken. Also, last week, knowing that we would be staying with Madeline in a little park model, similar the Marian and Dick's, that she had rented, we went and bought the most deluxe blow up mattress we could find and brought it home and tested it by blowing it up and leaving it over night with some weight on it. It had a leak so we took it back and got another one and test it also. It held up fine. Those aren't as inexpensive as I remember them and it is so bulky that even empty in it's bag it takes up about a fifth of the trunk of the car. We took it with us and never used it. Of course, like the jib, I'm sure it will come in handy in the future, maybe as some of you come and visit. It should be pretty comfortable.

I do think we got good video. As I type this the video is being transferred from the tape into my computer so I can begin putting the DVDs together. I'll try to put some photos on later. If you click on the word Myrna here it will take you to her site where you will see the DVDs I did for her before for sale.

Also, I want to pass a special thanks to Melissa and Jeff for taking care of Annabelle while we were gone, and to Wade for taking care of the house and removing the snow. THANKS A MILLION. It is soooooooo good to have such great children who help us so much. Jeanne has been a great example to them, speaking of which, Jeanne was a great help during the taping.

Incidentally, it snowed in St. George while we were there, it just didn't stay long.