OK, you guys who are missing me, I'll let you in on what's been going on, without going into detail on certain issues. Others I can spill my guts onto.

As many of you know, I am a one-man operation. I've had a recent surge of work, especially shows, which is great. Money is tight for almost all of us, and here is no exception. I also recently had a third child with my wife. So, what's good is that after the kid popped out, the gigs picked up, so it pretty much off-set the maternity leave lack of income.

With gigs, there is video and photo. With video and photo means editing. Editing takes time. Time is not something I have a lot of. This is coupled with other work I do, which includes data communications, network design and implentation and intregration of both LAN and WAN, computer repair/builds/maintenance, and of course sound, lighting, video and photography.

Right now, I had one hell of a end of May, with one week having 3 big gigs with 2 being back to back, followed by an important gig at the beginning of June with another one last Saturday. Add to that a thousand slides to scan, film transfers and other goodies and I'm slammed.

"Dude, you should just hire someone to help out". Right, great idea. I can't afford to do that. So, idea valid, money not. Plus, I can't take the time to train up someone to do the job to my satisfaction, which is extremely HIGH expectations.

Once I get through these slides(8 more days best estimate), I have some 20+ hours of video to edit. After that I have another video shoot to work on and more gigs. And in between all this work, I am the primary care giver to an eating and pooping machine, and I'm not referring to my south american red tailed catfish, I'm referring to the latest kid. Since I am a "stay at home" father, I am primary caregiver to the 3 kids.

If that wasn't enough, here's the stuff I ain't going to go into in detail. There's family issues brewing on both sides of the fence. I won't go into the drama on my side outside to say that in order to maintain a more productive environment relatively free of injected negativity, I have terminated all contact with my side of the family some years ago. I'm also discovering recent news from them, mainly tied to my sister getting married, and I'm sure there is fall-out crap tied to that because I can't make it because I'm contractually obligated to a gig on the same day for a contract signed MONTHS ago. Sorry, I plan ahead, way far ahead. But there is more drama and I'm not going into that.

On the other side, regarding the in-laws, there is the typical nuisance stuff going on, but that's to be expected from a large bunch(8 kids, my wife being the eldest, and the parents run their own business). Unfortunately, due to recent events outside anyone's control, an individual's behavior has spun out of control and is causing tons of problems that is affecting everyone around that individual, including disrupting my household.

All this drama has made me physically ill. Seriously. I'm sleeping less than what I can function on(say, 3 hours or less on average with at least 2 48-hour shifts a week of no sleep)

As a result of all the crap going on, I'm working harder to get more events so I can get away from this garbage for a bit. It's working, mostly for the better. I dive hard into my work.

Couple that with the addition of a new dog at my house. New isn't the right word, she's like 10 years old and is my in-laws dog. She gets along quite well with my two pugs. Plus, another in-law has gotten herself a little dog as well, and that dog is here quite frequently and so I've got quite a well behaved pint-sized pack of pooches at the house. The joke we use is "Hey, we're gonna call CPS and report you for neglect", with CPS standing for "Canine Protective Services". The elder dog is here because someone moved into an apartment that won't allow pets at the moment. The puppy is here to ensure that when the other in-law isn't able to watch her for whatever reason, she's got a good place to dump her dog onto. It can be quite relaxing having 4 small dogs all trying to sleep on you.

So, while I'm stressed out and not exactly a "happy camper" in all aspects of life at the moment, things are overall better than this posting may imply. Don't get me wrong, I'm not "happy", but I'm not exactly "sad" either. My depression issues are kind of putting me in a spin cycle at the moment, but I'm getting enough gigs to keep me going.

(I've been suffering from depression for over 6 years now, but I refuse to be drugged up to deal with it. I'm happy to say I'm 100% sober and drug free. Only time I take meds are for back pain/problems, and I avoid that as much as possible.)

So, I'm taking a break from this forum, and other forums as well. I'm focussing on work and gigging, which is what makes me happy. I'm also trying to plan the family's annual trip to Disneyland, which will happen sometime in September. Yes, I'm a big Disney fan, and it's my 3-day vacation to just not have to care about anything outside of "is the kid tall enough to go on this ride" sort of thing. We got our hotel picked out, tickets we can get at any time, it's just a matter of finallizing a stretch of time for it. For other distractions, we've also bough season passes to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom(which is a LOT closer to where I live than Disneyland) and so we're planning to abuse that a bit for thrills and to see the critters there.

If anyone feels the need to contact me outside of here, hit up my web site and hit the "Contact us" link, which should be "contact me" since I'm the only person on Studio42. I fixed the broken CGI, so it works again.

Overall, there is nothing to worry about. Now that my wife is back to work, I have to adjust to the baby's schedule, which is starting to fall into place. I'm not suicidal and I have no inclination to do harm to myself.

I did have a recent ADJ service encounter, yesterday as a matter of fact. I had a 64 LED Pro fail on me, turns out a fuse blew, or at least that is the problem I can definately diagnose. I called service, talked to Lee, and he informed me that it was in fact a fast blow fuse, which is what I wanted to know. I also learned an important lesson: I ain't driving around town looking for fuses anymore. My only mistake was NOT being transfered to parts or sales to just order fuses. I drive around the region for 2 hours with no luck, so after that was done, I hit the ADJ parts web site and ordered 10 fuses. At 80-cents each, that's super cheap. Hopefully I never need more than just the one, but it's nice to be prepared!

No need to reply, I won't be back for several weeks. Once I am "caught up", I have some older events to re-cut web videos for, and I have a NTSC to PAL DVD project I am working on, plus I am training up 4 new guys for help with gigs, so it's a lot of work going on. I am basically getting up at 8AM with the baby, then back IN bed around 5:30 or so, just before my wife wakes up for work, and then start the cycle over again.

So, if you need to reach me, hit up my web site, that will guarantee getting to me. If you want to email me directly, and deal with my server(it may reject it), you can use my first name AT my domain and that's my email. You can call if you want too, but I'm on the phone a lot dealing with other business.

Keep on gigging, keep on using your ADJ gear. It's summer. Stay busy and make some money!

Good to hear from you Chris. Keep up the positive attitude. Great to hear about your new addition to your family. I haven't been around as much since my second, so I know part of what you are going through. Don't be a stranger.

I don't think I can get much stranger. I do have a ways to go!