Thanks to Maureen and Bill!
I haven't taken a vacation in two years...I feel blessed to be working a lot, don't get me wrong! However, this weekend I"m actually taking off and really trying to simply relax and have fun. My wife would tell you firsthand I'm a workaholic and if I didn't have to sleep I'd be working around the clock. I love to work hard for my wife and kids!
So, for me a big part of relaxing is this..and I'm sure many here may identify with this...I put on Smurf cartoons, open up my "Smurf Cupboard" where I keep my collection (it keeps dust...and my small nephews...out of the collection) and rearrange or simply work on my collection. It makes me feel like a kid again to do this, and brings back lots of happy childhood memories! My collection is in my office, which is in our finished basement of our new house here in Chicago. The cool part is that my son Noah, who's 7, will bring down his legos or Transformers and hang out and watch the Smurfs while he plays, and my daughter, May, who's 13 will often come down just to lounge in the easy chair in the corner with her laptop and watch Smurfs and hang out too. My wife will come down occasionally although most of the time when they're downstairs with me it's because she's out running errands and that's when I have the time normally to delve into my collection.
Well, it's back to work! I've got calls to return and paperwork to produce before I can take off on my weekend "vacation" (albeit at home). I have my flip camera, but also recently got a new editing program that I can use with it....so I'm really looking forward to producing a fun video for you guys to see!!
BTW: I've been renting, perpetually, the new Smurf DVD's. There's apparently two collections on DVD? I get them from Family Video (and they're FREE RENTALS! It's like HEAVEN!) here in my area. Each is a two dvd set. Both come with some nice special features. My question....does anyone know where I can buy these so I have my own copy? The bummer is that the Astrosmurf episode has a scratch..and it always starts to "jump" or just plain freezes right as he's falling asleep and "taking off" in his rocket...how ironic!