34. Wow. As I’ve been telling people: I’ve entered mid-30’s. Kind of a milestone, but what can you expect? I’ve been out of college for 10 years now. I’ve been married for 7 and I have three beautiful daughters. I guess I am “old” now. Funny, I don’t feel old. Here’s to another 34.
I took the day off from work and went to Clerks II. It was a good movie to see since it had me reminiscing about the old times back in college when the original came out. I went and saw it with my friend Erik Youdal at Dobie Mall. It was great seeing the original Clerks in the movie theatre because the movie because such a cult classic and you can always say you saw it in the movie theater.
For my birthday, the girls gave me a new University of Texas jersey and flag that we hung outside, but for the most part it was a pretty normal day.
In other news, I finally got an office at work. If you can believe it. So, we went up this past weekend and hung all the frames of the games I’ve work on that I’ve been collecting over the years.
This past week was Vacation Bible School so Jennifer took the girls up to church each day this week. Abby and Emily sang songs, make crafts, and learned bible stories; Isabelle played with other babies her age in the nursery; and Jennifer volunteered and taught crafts. All in all they had a great time and were asking to go back each morning and every night I came home I got to see the craft they had made for the week. On Sunday, there was a special church service where the girls sang the songs that they had learned and they showed a slide show of all that went on during the week.
Also on Sunday, we took a trip to a little stream down in Heathrow to take some pictures of Isabelle. Jennifer is still experimenting with the camera I borrowed from work and she wanted to take some nice pictures of Isabelle. So, we sat Isabelle on the rocks and I stood right off camera to make sure she didn’t take a plunge into the water. Finally the humidity and bugs drove us back home. Here’s one of the pictures that Jennifer took.
This morning we all headed to church to see Kinley baptized. It was at the 8:30 service, so the attendance was a little thin, but that really didn’t matter. We all sat at the front of the church while Christina and Mike stood up with Kinley while the Dr. Pennington baptized her. The ceremony went fine.
In the evening, Jennifer and I met George and Heather at Fogo de Chão, a South American restaurant. The best way to describe the restaurant is a parade of meat. It starts with a giant salad bar and then you head back to your table. There’s a disc on your table and if you leave it on the green side the people walking around with meat will stop at your table and offer you some. If you leave the disc on the red side, they will not bother you. It was a unique experience trying all different cuts of meat and it all tasted very, very good.
We didn’t realize it until this morning, but we were in a smoking room at the Horseshoe Casino. When we complained at the front desk, they just blew us off. Jennifer said that she’s going to write them an angry letter. We visited the floor below us and couldn’t believe the difference. When we first went to our floor, we figured the whole hotel smelled like cigarette smoke since people are allowed to smoke in the casino.
Today we took everyone out to buy Isabelle’s birthday gifts. We found the Toys R’ Us and allowed Abby and Emily to pick out a toy for Isabelle. We also gathered the ingredients for the bear cake which each girl has had for their first birthday.
Today’s picture is from a few days ago, Emily looking sadly outside the window at Nana and Poppy’s house.
Today we went to the park and had a picnic. We stopped over at Subway and picked up some sandwiches and headed over to a park near my parents’ house. The park had a nice play gym, but it turned out to be too hot, so we didn’t stay for too long.
Once we got back from the park, my mom had to go to work and while she was pulling out of the driveway, she scraped the side of our Sequoia with her car. It scratched the rear wheel panel and the running board. Now we have two cars to take into the shop: one from a crazy neighbor with a wine bottle and one with a crazy Nana with a car.
Later in the evening, Jennifer and I headed to Horseshoe Casino, to stay overnight. It was our little get away from the girls. We ate at a nice Chinese restaurant at the casino and then tried to win a lot of money. We ended up breaking even. We entered with $400 and left with $400. It was looking like we were going to be big losers, but Jennifer was able to win back our losses right at the end at the roulette table.
Today’s picture is from a couple of days ago when Emily was watching Poppy put up the shutters.
My break over, I headed back to work last Thursday and right back into our Finaling period on NFL Head Coach. So far, we’ve been able to keep it 10 – 11 hour days with weekends off. So far, so good. One of the nice things about working for EA is you get to go to special NFL events. As part of research for NFL Head Coach, this past weekend, I was able to go up to the Annual Owners and Coaches’ Meeting taking place here in Orlando. We were able to interview most of the coaches in order to get ideas for the game. One of my co-workers did most of the talking but I got to meet the following coaches: Bill Cowher (Steelers), Marty Schottenheimer (Chargers), Dick Jauron (Bills), Andy Reid (Eagles), Jim Mora (Falcons), Mike Holmgren (Seahawks), Jack Del Rio (Jaguars), and Mike McCarthy (Packers). Bill Cowher is going to be on the cover of NFL Head Coach and I got to show him a build of the game, which we filmed for marketing purposes. If any of the footage makes the light of day, I’ll be sure and post a link. Meeting all of them was great and a excellent resource for ideas for our game.
On Wednesday, we had several magazines come to visit Tiburon in order to get a first look at NFL Head Coach. Gamespot and IGN have both written pretty good previews of the game. This week we also announced that the game is officially entitled “NFL Head Coach” and that Bill Cowher is going to be on the cover. We also announced the ship date of: June 20th. The feedback was pretty favorable and we are all looking forward to getting this game done so we can see the reaction of the fans to the game.
One thing that’s nice about living in Orlando is baseball’s Spring Training. About half of the Major League Baseball teams spend the month of March down in Central Florida. The Houston Astros’ home is South Orlando in Kissimmee, about a forty-five minute drive from where I live. The past two years, I’ve made it a point to make it out there to see at least one game and this year was against the Detroit Tigers. One of the nice things about Spring Training is that the stadium is small and pretty much every seat is nice and cheap. Well, I couldn’t get anyone to go with me, so I went myself and I’m glad I did, because I got monster seats: first row right behind home plate. It was great. The batters were warming up right in front of where I was sitting. I took some great pictures of the Astros baseball players. The Astros ended up loosing, but it was a nice day to have a hotdog, some peanuts and to get some time away from all the estrogen in my house.
On Monday Abby and Emily sang in a musical performance at school. This was the first time I’ve seen Abby stand up there and sing with the other kids. She usually gets a severe case of stage freight right before the performance. In the picture you will notice that she’s dressed up. The 4-year-old class was dressed as different professions. Abby was dressed as a teacher. Emily did well too. She didn’t know many of the words to the songs. However, she did know she was supposed to bark during “How Much is that Doggy in the Window?” At the end of the program, the kids handed out Valentine’s Day cards to their parents. Emily gave hers to Jennifer and Abby gave hers to me.
My eyes are getting a little better. I’m being very impatient and I want perfect vision right now. I know it takes time, but it can get frustrating at times. I’m okay to drive and watch TV, but looking at stuff from a long distance is still blurry.
Everyone has been telling me how much they enjoyed my Rose Bowl coverage. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back into the habit of writing on Frenchville. Things are starting to settle down, so hopefully I can get back into the routine.
One of the first things that happened once we got back was Emily’s 3rd birthday party. We rented out The Little Gym and we were really worried if anyone was going to show up. We ended up inviting some of Abby’s friends in order to round out the group. We only had one out of Emily’s six classmates show up. For the cake, Jennifer made a new creation: a group of cup cakes which had candy lions, zebras, tigers, and elephants. They ran around the Gym for two hours and had great fun. It has been though planning Emily’s parties since they are so close to Christmas. This year was no different.
At work I moved on to a new product tentatively entitled NFL Head Coach. It’s a new NFL franchise we are creating at Tiburon that is a strategy game where you attempt to build and manage a football team. I’ve come in to manage the Gameplay and Online aspects of the game. The game will be available in stores spring 2006 for the Playstation 2, Xbox and PC.
A couple of weeks ago Tiburon paid for everyone’s family to go to Disney World’s Epcot. The girls had fun going to a park that we don’t normally go to. (We usually go to Magic Kingdom.) We went from “country” to “country” decorating a mask at each one. I finally got to ride Mission: Space, which is only at Epcot. It’s a simulator ride which really makes it feel like you are taking off in a space shuttle. It was pretty cool. However, I was feeling a little dizzy when I got off. It spins you around like you are in a centrifuge, but you can’t tell it since you are locked into a simulator room.
A week ago last Wednesday Electronic Arts laid off 5% of their work force. It was a cost cutting move that typically happens during what we call a “transition year” (the time between generations of hardware). 35 people were laid off from Tiburon. It was sad because this was the first time that we had to go through this. Last transition (1999-2000) the lay offs happened at other studios because Tiburon was so small. Now that we are approaching 600 employees, it was time to downsize our work force. Although I wasn’t personal friends with some of the people that got laid off, I knew some of them and, like I said, it was sad to see them go.
This weekend I took the plunge and had laser eye surgery. I went in Friday morning. It was really easy there wasn’t much pain at all. I could tell a difference right after the surgery. I went home and slept for several hours and I could see much better. It’s quite amazing. My vision isn’t 100%, but it’s getting better every day. There were two strange events that went on. First, a very tall lanky guy comes up to you and says in a real calm voice, “Dr. Filutowski is going to be your surgeon today. He requests that everyone have a massage to relax you for your surgery. Would you care for a massage?” That was weird, but a guy who works on NFL Head Coach who got the surgery two weeks ago pre-warned me of the event. The other strange thing is that immediately after the surgery, Dr. Filutowski has you give a “thumbs up” and they take your picture with him. It’s framed and given to you when you leave. Besides the two strange events, I’ve been really happy with my surgery so far. I was amazed how easy it was.
Finally, Isabelle has made a lot of progress over the month. During Christmas vacation she was sitting up on her own. Now she crawls all over the house and will stand up against any kind of furniture that will let her. At first she would stand up and then she couldn’t get down, but now she’s fully mastered getting up and down. This is the first time we’ve had a baby so young that is mobile in a big area. When Abby and Emily were mobile we were living in apartments and we could section off the areas of the apartment. Isabelle is going from room to room getting in trouble. Abby has been a great help watching over her and moving her from room to room when necessary.
The last day of our trip started at 2:10 a.m. We had a 6:00 a.m. flight out of LAX and so the shuttle service said that they would pick us up at 2:40 a.m. They were 30 minutes late and didn’t actually pick us up until after 3:00. We ended up getting to the airport and to our flight on time. Since we only got two hours of sleep after the game, we tried to sleep on the plane, but that’s always hard to do. It’s tough to get comfortable sitting in one of those small airplane seats.
We arrived in Dallas where Aunt Marci picked us up from the airport. We had lunch with her and then headed back to Shreveport. Three hour drive with two hours sleep. We had to stop a couple of times in order to stock up on caffeine and snacks in order to stay awake.
We arrive in Shreveport and the girls were happy to see us. Emily exclaimed, “Daddy, you came back!” It was good to be reunited with the girls. It was good to get away from a week, but we missed them. Thanks to Nana and Poppy for watching them for the week.
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