A tablesaw stands where an island counter in the kitchen will be in a month!

And here’s the sexy thing making it all possible! (other than my dad)

This is my husband breathing in fiberglass w/o a mask!

But while we are finishing the quarter off while simultaneously jumping into the next, we’ve been dreaming/thinking/talking of our life after school. There’s the biggest concern; finding jobs to earn the moneys (school ain’t cheap!)? But we want to find jobs that are going to push us in the right direction, jobs that are going to help our dreams/goals.

The immediate thought and desire is to find work in New York. We absolutely love everything about New York and the thought of living there does nothing but excite and inspire us. But a recent investigation in the Bay area could be in the works.

Watching Finding Nemo the other day, Sarah began researching Pixar animation studios. There are great internship opportunities that would help me in more ways than one. Pixar just looks like a great place to learn not only in skill, but in work ethic and leadership. They have great attitudes and work hard to maintain them. I really like what I see at Pixar and I see a gold mine of the “invisible stuff.”

Now, I’ve always been interested and drawn to 3D modeling and animation but never had the tools to really test myself in it. I could spend the next couple of years learning to as a hobby whilst building a portfolio to apply for the internship. The weird thing is, I wouldn’t pursue any other animation studio if I were to invest into my animation skills. The thought excites me and Pixar would be great! But that would mean moving to the Bary area before moving to New York. That is the biggest catch at the moment.

We’ve got some thinking/praying to do. Big choices in front of us but thankful that we have them.

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We’ll see. I keep telling myself I’m one tweak away from getting it to work perfectly.

These are photos of Blenheim Palace- we visited there August of 2007. Winston Churchill was born here.

I hope this works.

Vasant and I are looking into going to England twice in the next six months. There is a possible winter trip before the end of March we’re looking into, just for ourselves to get out, travel and relax. I’d love to go back and stay in York for a while. I don’t know why, but this was one of the most interesting places where I’d want to go back and write.

The York train station was one of the most beautiful stations we saw.

We found these ruins along the roadside in town. There was a dark corridor along the sidewalk. No plaques, no sign leading inwards. But I decided to go check and found the ruins of a hospital, nunnery and roman fort, all close together in a beautiful field. It was one of those incredible finds, not on the guidebook or the map, just a local curiosity hidden by the wayside.

York is has incredible history. It was a major Viking settlement in England, a major Roman settlement (it’s where Emperor Constantine found out he was to be the next leader of the Empire), and of course a major English city.

A statue of Constantine sits outside Yorkminster, the second most important cathedral in England.

One of my favorite places in York was the Shambles, a rickety road dating back to Viking occupation, resembling Diagon Alley, looking straight out of the pages of Harry Potter.

These pictures don’t do the diagonal juts and cuts of the building any justice. As cool as it looks, it’s much more impressive in person, but then, that’s true of almost all travel photography.

Vasant climbed up a medieval tower to get this shot of Yorkminster and the surrounding rooftops. In my opinion, the cloudy English sky adds to the beauty of this shot. I don’t know if I would have liked this place as much if it had been sunny.

One of the best parts of York is that it is an entirely walled city. We walked the entire circumference of the wall that day. All the gates still operate as entrances and exits to the city, complete with their portcullises poised above the traffic.

Lovely place. Full of age and mystery and winding close medieval alleys that lead to new discoveries that not even the guidebook can prepare you for.

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Can you tell I need to get away? I wish I were booking a trip to England now. I hope we’ll be there before Spring, but if not, we’ll at least be there in May for my sister’s graduation.

In the meantime, I settle for this for Vasant’s birthday:

We’re annual passholders, so we already have free admission until this coming fall, but we’ll get a gift card equal to the price of admission on his birthday. Very excited about this!

Sometime in the 80’s obviously…

OR IS IT?!

*testing software’s ability to update entries*

Our first quarter in the cinema program has been challenging and exciting. We’re learning to view films and film theory in a new way, and as a film maker and a film buff, it turns us on our head how much we don’t know. The width and depth of what’s available to us in film and story education is mind-boggling. It’s like seeing the ocean for the first time. 

Vasant got a great film internship with a production company in downtown Seattle. The guy has an office here and in LA, and he and Vasant are going to work together next year on film projects, film finance, coordinating festivals and festival submission and coordinating with all manner of production tasks. It’s an unpaid internship on the production task-side of things, but he’ll get paid for any video work he helps out on, which may be a lot. It’s very exciting. 

Christmas is upon us and we’ve got our tree up, our presents bought and I’m in the Christmas mood! It snowed this last weekend and more snow is on the way! My sister is flying out on Christmas Eve, we’re spending Christmas Eve Day with the Samudres, and Christmas Day with ourselves and later on, my family. With the snow on its way, it’s hard to feel out how quickly Christmas is arriving. It’s still a week and a half away, but it feels like it could be tomorrow.

The one on the left is ours, and the one on the right is my parent's.

Winter Quarter is starting January- Vasant will be doing the production internship part-time, and I’ll hopefully finish the book. We’re taking only one class on campus and two online to accomplish all of this. We’re excited for Christmas, but we’re even more excited for 2009. We’ll be in the apartment, taking more exciting classes, finishing my book and Vasant will be in a professional production company.

We’re healthy, we’re happy and we’ve got good prospects- and we may have snow ( a lot of snow) on Christmas. It’s shaping up to be a very happy holiday.

9 feet of Christmasy magic!

So I shall spend the coming days watching and analyzing movies, learning about the history of cinema and reading literature from all over the world.  I’ve realized the importance of being “well rounded” when constructing any form of art, and hope only to learn more with opportunities to practice.

Here’s to a good school year, at last!