Today Jennifer made her first photography sale. She took a few pictures for a balloon artist for a brochure that he was making. He came back today and bought two pictures and then re-shot a few more poses in order to buy two more. So, congratulations to Jennifer for making her first sale as photographer. I guess that officially makes her a “professional”. Hopefully, this is the first in a long line. She’s added advertising in a couple more directories in hopes of drumming up a few more clients. She’s also going to a lighting conference next week.
We made it home all in one piece. Sunday was spent cleaning all the stuff that needs to go back into the camper. We packed up in the morning, so there was still dew on the camper. Because of this, when we get home, we have to open it back up in the drive way and let the sun dry it the rest of the way before we pack it up and take it back to storage. So, we did that and I had to get the lawn mowed.
Today it was back to work for me. Jennifer picked up Austin, who we left at the kennel while we were camping. Jennifer also went and got her hair done. She goes to a hair stylist at the RDV Sportsplex, a private gym across the street from where I work. She likes it because she can drop the kids off at the kids gym across the hall for a couple of hours while she’s at the hair stylist. It would be great to take them there more often, but memberships to the RDV are too expensive. EA offers subsidized memberships for me and Jennifer, but they don’t for the kids. Not sure why when there’s more and more people with families working at EA. Hopefully they will change that one of these days.
For my birthday coming up I ordered a new phone, a Treo 750. I haven’t gotten it to work and I’m assuming that I have to get it fully charged. I’m going to let it charge up over night and hope for the best. Otherwise, it’s back to AT&T for another one. We also upgraded Jennifer’s phone to a Razr, since it was free.
I also played NCAA Football 08 at home for the first time tonight. It’s much better playing in at home than at work. It was the first time I got to sit down and play the Campus Legendmode. This is really cool. You get to create a player. I created a free safety #37 who played for Lindale High School (this is the position & number I played in junior high). The mode starts out with you playing through the state high school championship tournament. How well you play in the tournament determines the school you will play at in college. It was fun although the position of free safety isn’t all that exciting.
Vacation Bible School is getting more stressful for Jennifer as they keep adding more and more kids. They are now over 400 kids and the crafts she’s in charge of are going fast. She doesn’t want to get into a position where she has to tell one of the kids that there isn’t enough supplies for them.
Today it was announced that Peter Moore is now President of EA Sports. Recently Electronic Arts split into four separate labels or brands: EA Sports, EA Games, EA Casual, and The Sims. Each label will have a president who reports directly to the CEO of the company, John Riccitiello. EA Sports was the only label which didn’t have a president. Peter Moore comes from Microsoft where he was head of marketing for the Xbox. It’s good that John Riccitiello recognized that we needed someone from the outside to give us a different perspective on how to take our games into the next decade of gaming. I’m closing in on my seventh year at EA and it’s been pretty much the same thing: each year there is a packaged good that we sell: Madden 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, etc. How long can that be sustained? Are there better methods? Hopefully Peter Moore can help guide us in the right direction. It will now be interesting to see if this changes how the reporting structure works between studios. We’ll have to wait and see.
Today was another softball game this time against the QA department. We ended up losing 13-3. We were leading after 1 inning, 2-0, but after that our bats went away and they started getting in the runs. I went 1-2 with an RBI for hitting. They were playing with a “rover” in the outfield. I was able to plunk it right between the gap in the outfielders, but beyond the reach of the rover.
Today was the first day of Vacation Bible School for Jennifer and the girls. Even Isabelle got to go now that she’s two. Almost 400 people are attending and Jennifer said it was a sea of kids in the Family Life Center gymnasium up at church. Fortunately, Jennifer only sees a hand full of kids at a time and only for around twenty minutes until the next group comes in. Today’s picture is some of the decorations that were put up this weekend.
At work, I conducted the first team meeting for my new team. It was pretty much silent as I explained the plan for figuring out the type of game we were going to build. I also had to give some bad news to some guys who were going to moving off to a new team. Of all the things I don’t like about being a manager, it’s delivering bad news. It’s a fact of life that it’s part of my job and I know I have to do it and I don’t have a problem doing it. I just don’t like doing it. I guess no one really does, unless you are sadistic.
NCAA Football 08 comes out tomorrow and the Marketing department had some extra Xbox 360 Faceplates, so I snagged one for my 360. The requests for copies of NCAA from some of my friends started coming in this weekend. I plan on picking up my copy tomorrow. A pretty good commercial featuring the Texas Longhorns was sent around work today as well.
Today was a lounge around the house day with the kids while Jennifer went up to church to set up for vacation bible school. Jennifer is teaching crafts next week at our church’s vacation bible school, so she had to spend the afternoon up there getting ready for almost 400 kids to show up. They decorated nearly every room in the entire church. Jennifer was originally expecting around 325 kids and it kept increasing over the week. There was a mad dash this afternoon for some extra supplies, but they found what they were looking for and they should all be set.
Abby and Emily pretty much played on Jennifer’s computer while I watched TV and did the laundry. I also spent some time updating the look for Frenchville.
We started out the day by heading up to where I work. I recently moved to a new project and, thus, moved to a new office. When ever that happens, that means that I have to re-hang all my game plaques. Now totalling eight, it’s not an easy project. I try not to do it during the day, because I never have enough time and I don’t want to be banging on the walls with a hammer. So, it’s a family trip up to the office to hang the pictures. Jennifer did most of the work arranging them in a pattern. Because there’s now eight and I had a smaller area to hang them, we went with a double stacked approach. It also left some room for a new plaque when I finish the project I’m on a year from now. The girls ran around the cubicles and found some Nerf darts that some of the guys on the team sling across the cubicles. Abby was actually pretty good at firing them.
After that we went to pick up the camper. We bought some bike racks for the top of the camper. We noticed after we bought it that it had a Yakima rack system on top. So, I visited the web site and found some bike racks so that Jennifer and me could take our bikes. We didn’t buy four because we didn’t know if Abby and Emily’s bikes would fit. However, once we got them up on the camper, we tested their bikes and what do you know, they also fit. I’m going to go and buy two more so that we can fit all the bikes on top of the camper.
Today is Jennifer’s birthday and we spent it running around getting her presents and getting a cake. We started off the morning picking up a new bicycle from Target. Abby and Emily helped me pick it out. Abby said we needed to get a red one since that was Mom’s favorite color. We also got a baby seat for the back of the bike for Isabelle. We picked up a cake and some flowers and then presented all of what we found to Jennifer when she came home from shopping with Isabelle.
Later that evening Jennifer and I went out to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and then went to see a movie. Jennifer got a free desert since it was her birthday. She chose a banana cream pie, which was very good.
Today’s picture if from when we went putt-putt golf on our recent Disney vacation.
This year Jennifer’s parent drove over from Texas to visit for Easter. They drove because Jennifer bought a photography set from someone over the Internet who lives in San Antonio. The lady didn’t want to ship it so Jennifer convinced her brother to pick it up and her parents then carted here. Tomorrow they are heading back and they are taking our old crib and a few other baby items to Jennifer’s sister, Christina.
On Friday, Jennifer had her first three customers for her new business. She’s currently giving free sitting fees from some of her friends from church and they took her up on her offer. She was also shooting some of them for a candidate for her first advertisement which is going into a local kids circular.
On Saturday, we did the same thing we’ve done for the four years we’ve been here in Florida: we went to the church’s Easter Egg Hunt. This year Jennifer had a hand in setting it up so she had to leave early that morning while her parents and I made our lunches for the picnic. The event went off without a hitch. This was the first year Isabelle was old enough to hunt for eggs and she had no trouble figuring out what needed to be done. Emily got to ride a horse, so she was quite thrilled with everything.
The next morning the Easter Bunny arrived and brought the girls each an Easter Basket filled with candy and toys. They were so taken by the baskets, they didn’t notice all the eggs that the Easter Bunny had hidden around the Living Room. They finally caught on and went around the room finding the eggs. However, they did a pretty bad job. We were finding them all day long.
Jennifer has been getting on to me for a while to update Frenchville. Especially, since I had a Christmas tree at the top. Well, it’s now changed. We’ve been pretty busy for the past month, so I guess I will do a month in review.
For me, it has just been work, work, work. We are starting to wrap up our planning phase for the game I’m working on and we will start the actual construction of the code and making of the art assets. I can’t write any details on the web, but hopefully soon EA will put out a press release and then I will write a little bit more about it.
Jennifer has been getting more and more stuff for her photography studio (a.k.a. our front office). She has lights and a couple of sets she’s is working on. She’s been taking test photos of the girls in order to get the lighting just right. She will be starting to take photos of some of the neighbor kids in order to practice.
Abby has been doing fine in school. I’m amazed at how much they learn in Kindergarten. She has spelling words she has to learn. I don’t remember having to take spelling tests way back then. Of coarse, I don’t even remember Kindergarten, but oh well. She’s been struggling with writing out the numbers 11 – 99. She sometimes gets them reversed. We’re working on it often.
We had sad news a couple of weeks ago. Jennifer’s Grandmother, Helen Musselman, passed away. Her funeral was the following weekend, so we had to buy plane tickets and meet Jennifer’s parents in Muskegon, Michigan. The high temperature the day we arrived was 17 degrees and snow was on the ground. We flew into Grand Rapids and then had to rent a car and make a forty minute drive to Muskegon. We stayed in a hotel there in Muskegon and had the funeral on Saturday. On Sunday, we dove over to Jennifer’s other grandparents and visited with them and all of her aunts and uncles. Abby and Emily had fun playing in the snow, having never seen it before. It was tough having to always bundle up when we went outside. We were happy to get back to the warm weather in Florida.
Frenchville 