Yeah. Not much of a blogger. Kind of busy actually. Doing a sketchbook blog and a life blog. It is a full time job almost, on top of my full-time, part-time jobs and animation work.

Nevertheless, since it is the holidays, I've got time. Right now, I am dreading a 13km run in the cold. It has been 3 years since I've trained extensively in the cold weather. An hour and a half in freezing weather. I think I am getting soft in my old age. We'll find out.

Making big progress on my animation work. Yeah, I am working instead of chilling, but I feel better now that I am moving forward in big steps to get this project done. I like to move on to painting once this is done.

Hence the sketchbook.

Hopefully I can pull of 40 pages of sketches in the next 2 weeks. it would be great if I can get some ideas from anyone. I had picked a theme that was a little too difficult get great ideas from: "Great Hopes and Massive Failures". I was hoping to use that to reflect the events in my life. It is getting to repetitive. Generally it is about relationships. I wish there was more than that.

Anyways... enough distractions. Back to drawing frames...

Had a great time doing this year's 24 Hours of Adrenalin in Canmore this year. Of course, once again, it was scorching hot. As well, the course was rebuilt as the old trails needed to be revitalized from overuse, so the it was fun riding on the fresh, somewhat technical trails. I have to say, though, there was a lot of climbing...

Not a lot of photos were taken by me (or more like not a lot of photos that look decent), but the photographers for the event, Sportgraf, were amazing.

I feel this will be my last 24 Hour race as I've done this 5 (or 6) times now. Time to move to something different. Training for this was kind of lack luster due to trying to get the team together and train consistently, constant poor weather in Edmonton, and my sciatica. I hope I will recover soon and be back doing whatever race that may fit my fancy. Transrockies?

The past 2 weeks has been a stressful one. The lack of good sleep may have made me a little moody and snappy. Now I am getting all sensitive about red stripes on a postcard design. I found a homeopathic sleep aid, I hope it will help get some sleep and put myself in a better mood.

Kind of funny when you get caught up in this whirlwind of petty retarded-ness and you lose sight of the whole grand scheme of things. Nice to have friends to help me pull my head out of my ass. I give them a big thanks as I could have made some pretty dumb mistakes if it wasn't for them.

I have a conundrum. I had started taking on a project back in December. It was supposed to be a simple animation project. As I got further into it, it has become of a nightmare of a project that I cannot sleep.

The project is more of production work than creative and since the client is using government grant money to fund it, I had given him some slack on how much I charge. I guess I am paying for my generosity, since the original rate was $30/hour, which was something we agreed upon. What I am really getting paid is more like $10/hour. He had pulled some information on me, which was not presented up front. The grant he was given was significantly less than what he had proposed. I am not sure if he had made it up or not and I am no position to question him. Then, the footage was shot without much consideration to medium it is being turned into. I had discussed this already and having me adding elements after the shot was taken will add more time to the project.

Nevertheless, I am working a lot more than I should with a looming deadline. Fortunately, only portions of the project is being contracted, so I am at a point where I might just finish what I am obligated to do and cut my losses.

As it stands, I make pretty much the same slinging coffee. At least I can meet girls at a coffee shop.