Monday August 23, 2010

Ryan and I flew to Orlando for the week for a wedding/event video conference. He had submitted a “Love Story” type piece and was hoping to win an award for it. Sadly, he didn’t place and we suspected that it might be a bit political…a lot of the winners were old time members of the organization and were also the ones speaking at seminars during the week. His piece was really good and was definitely comparable to the winners…oh well, maybe next year. During the awards dinner they could not get their shit together! Amazing that a conference for techie geeks had so many issues with their audio and visual devices. It was embarassing to be honest. They redeemed themselves with the informative seminars and the tradeshow floor was decent. We got to play with some gear…I am definitely ready to start shooting and editing my own videos. I have some really funny ideas that will surely make you all laugh. But that’s going to be another site/blog that I start.

I finally got the Canon 7D with a lens that I have been salivating over all year. It is pretty much changing the way videographers shoot and that was what a lot of the seminars were covering. How and why to shoot video with a DSLR.

The conference was at the Dolphin hotel on Disney property. Let me tell you if you are considering going off birth control you should spend some time in Orlando in the middle of August. Good gawd.

Even though I rented a car so I could get myself to yoga everyday we pretty much ate at the hotel. The second night we had steak at Shula’s. Check out this fancy wine dispenser…

I had the WaterBoy cocktail with watermelon and some other foo foo stuff. It was actually too sweet. I always like to try new cocktails before the meal starts, but often they are too sugary for me.

After dinner we went to the “dance hall” to watch a bunch of middle aged nerdy videographers dance to the “Cha Cha” and other ridiculous songs that suck. We were both fascinated by the giant video monitor and were just bouncing some cool ideas off each other about video production. Ryan and I work really well together and are both excited about our future and the super secret project.

The last night we went to BlueZoo, a Todd English restaurant. I had the most incredible cocktail: Level vodka infused for weeks with gobs of Bazooka Joe bubblegum, lemon juice and egg whites (I never knew that was used in drinks to give it that frothy texture!) It literally tasted exactly like a piece of Bazooka Joe gum.

Ryan ordered the shrimp that was rubbed in BBQ seasoning and served with grits.

As you can see I gave it the LTP award.

I decided to splurge and order what the waitress said was one of their oldest signature dishes: Cantonese Lobster. She made a point to say that it was lightly tempura battered but in fact, it was heavily battered. I ended up picking most of the meat out of the breading. It had a decent flavor, but honestly the breading was overwhelming and let’s face it…lobster should just be served plain or with butter. There’s a thorough review of it on yelp…I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Kind of a neat shot I think.

Thursday rolled around and I reached my 30th day for the yoga challenge. I had only completed 29 classes. My choices were to double up a day while I was in Orlando since Monday was a day in flight…but the seminars were important and the studio didn’t offer an early class except for Wednesday. I finished the 30th class on Friday back in San Diego. I am not going to lie, I am a little bummed that I couldn’t actually accomplish my goal, but 30 classes in 31 days is still not bad. A personal goal is a personal goal and when you don’t complete it…it’s definitely a bummer.