I’m going to blame it on the coffee. That seems fair, and harmless. There’s enough blame.
For someone who’s spent most of his life in the Coffee Capitol, I was nearly 50 before I developed the habit. Just a taste thing; I grew up drinking gallons of iced tea (Phoenix may be the Iced Tea Capitol, now that I think of it), but it needed to be really sweet. I started using artificial sweetener when I was around 20, for that reason, and I still love sweet tea even if the sweet comes from Splenda.
But coffee seemed just too much. I’m not a big hot drink person anyway, but it turned out that I was spending a lot of evenings in chilly rooms for a couple of hours. A hot drink seemed prudent.
So I had my usual two cups yesterday, tired from a late night that always leaves me wired, and then an Americano (venti) at Starbuck’s when I met some friends for a conversation. I felt like a fully functional human being, then, for a couple of hours, riding the perfect caffeine level until I dropped.
Somewhere around then was when I bought Poser. Ergo the coffee shaming.
Poser is 3D animation software. I’d been seeing half-price ads for a while now, but just idly reading about the product on the website reminded me that I had a coupon code from long ago, somehow still good and applicable to the sale price. So I got a sophisticated piece of software for practically nothing.
The operative word being sophisticated. It’s a whole new level for me, and I’m not sure I’m up for it. I spent a couple of hours messing around, watching tutorials and just exploring. I’ve got some ideas, but I’m not sure I can reach enough expertise to pull off what I’m looking for.
This all came from making these videos, which were essentially talking-head moments that I thought were a little visually uninteresting, given that these were personal stories and I had few photos I could slide in there for a break.
So I fooled around and came up with some minor animation that I could pull off using just video editing software, and that’s where the notion came from. I’m fairly comfortable with key frames and the such, essential concepts when computer animating, but let’s be serious: It’s hard to learn new things when you’re an aging dog. It just is. I’m not all that optimistic.
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What I am optimistic about is Texas, where I’m heading in less than three weeks. I see pictures of that boy and I don’t see the toddler anymore; it’s time.
And given the fact that we’ve yet to hit 60 degrees here in 2017, about to set a record for that sort of thing, I expect that I’m going at just about the right time.
