Desultory Thoughts

Heather was reading the Tooele Transcript Bulletin tonight and pointed out some interesting facts about an article entitled “Does Your Family Eat Together? That Could Say Alot About You”.

We’ve been eating together as a family nearly on a nightly basis ever since we got into our home just over 7 months ago. I’ve really enjoyed it and I’m glad Heather enjoys cooking now. (She didn’t used to.)

Of course, we have two small children, so that makes it much easier to do. I’m sure it will become more and more difficult as our children grow into teenagers. But it will be something that I hope we continue, because based on the article several good things come of it, according to studies.
For example:

• Children who eat frequently with their families tend to do better in school.
• Children tend to be happier with their present life and their prospects for the future.
• Teens who regularly eat meals with their families are less likely to get in fights, think about suicide, smoke, drink, do drugs and they’ll have better academic performance.

I’ve noticed that I look forward to being home with my family more now that I have dinner time to look forward to. I’ve always been a very social eater. It’s good to sit down with my family and bond with them over a hearty lasagna or a spicy chili. (Heather makes a mild batch for the kids. What a good mom!)

I enjoy eating lunch with my friends. I actually don’t take a lunch unless I’m going to eat with somebody. Eating socially might actually be considered a bad habit in my case. I’m contantly finding people that will go to lunch with me. Luckily my friend Clint joins me quite often. He works where I work, so that makes it even more convenient.

Today we ate lunch with at one of my favorite lunch joints, The Five Star Restaurant [visitsaltlake.com]. It’s really good and pretty dang cheap for the amount of food you get. It’s mixed Thai/Chinese food. The people there are very friendly and I wish more waitresses/waiters were as good as these are. The only thing about The Five Star is that you have to get there before noon (we usually go at around 11:15 or so) because the lunch rush is kind of crazy. But even if you go during the rush, the service is always awesome.

We first went to the restaurant because of the $9.99 all-you-can-eat crab on Tuesday and Thursdays. It’s not too bad, although every once in a while a plate of cold crab will come your way. I’m not sure how that happens, but cold and water-logged crab isn’t too good. But due to the great service, the low price and the majority of the plates containing wonderful, seculant, hot crab…it’s well worth it!

I wasn’t exactly happy with the look of the way video was posted on my site with the tool I was using before. So I got looking around and found another plugin for WordPress called VideoBloggerPlugin. I gave it a shot and I really liked it, but it posted the entire comments on the right side underneath the video. And it was center aligned with no way to get rid of it or even reformat it to right align. I’ll have to research it a little further when I have more time. Perhaps I’m missing something. For now I’ll stick with my current solution [rossgerbasi.com].

I recently finished the Special Olympics Utah General Orientation video that I’ve been working on for the past month. I had been waiting on the voice-over audio that was done by Doug Jardine. I finally received that from the Training Coordinator of Special Olympics Utah, Rochelle Deeter, the last week of December.

I’m pleased with the final product. I filmed all the footage over the last year. The was probably the hard part of all this. I edit video with Adobe Premier and add text effects with Adobe After Effects. The staff at Special Olympics were pleased and I had reports from the CEO that he shared the video with Special Olympics Inc in Washington D.C. and they liked it, too.

The funny thing is when the CEO of Special Olympics Utah complimented me on my work by saying that this video was every bit as good as the previous video that had been done by a TV Studio. The problem with that comment is that I had seen the old video and I didn’t think it was that good. It had PowerPoint style text screens and the video was kind of dull. I’m sure that when it was made it was probably top notch, but I think mine was a lot better! One thing that did come out of our conversation was my decision to charge more in the future. I give them a discount because they’re my favorite charity, but I don’t think I continue to discount my prices as much as I do. I’m glad he brought it up, but I’m sure he didn’t expect me to apply it to him. Oh well. I’ve gotta make a living, right?

Choir practice is in 20 minutes, but I’m procrastinating because I’m getting tired of it. I tried to turn over a new leaf in this ward and decided to participate in the ward choir. It’s been 7 months now and I’ve just about had it. I’m singing tenor (even though bass/baritone is my range) because there is only one other person that sings tenor, and sometimes I play piano. Today is one of those days where I have to play the piano.

We have to bring our two children with us and try to keep them quiet. That includes performances such as a couple of weeks ago when we performed. I brought Griffin up by me because Heather is by the piano, a temptation that he can’t resist. During the practices he was fine, but it was a different story during the performance. He started a slow whine “Where’s mommy, where’s mommy?” and wound it up to near full sirens when the Bishop came up to try and save the day. That of course made it worse and I did nothing! I figured he’d run over to where his mom was. Instead, if found the stairs and noticed people were watching him and proceeded to do what he considered funny stuff on the stairs during the rest of the performance. I’m sure plenty of people judged us on our lack of control over our children. That was the day that I decided choir was starting to be a pain.

Nevermind the Christmas incident where I was singing in a cortet with another guy and my wife and the other guys wife. We were singing “Silent Night” in German. The men started in German and the women echoed in English. It was acapella and we got our first note from the piano. In past practices the other guy had a tendency to start flat, so I had it in my head that I was going to make sure we started on pitch. I guess I was nervous about it because I started on a note that was completely off and nearly an octave higher! The guy tried to stop me, but I didn’t flinch and kept on singing. I pulled off the first part and the other guy even joined me, deciding that we must be going for it. It was the women’s turn to echo. WHOA! That’s when I realized how high I started. It was at that point that I agreed that we needed to start over, despite the embarrassment it would cause. But it was too late. The women switched an octave lower and we kept on singing in ultra-tenor. Amazingly enough, I stuck with it and perhaps even pulled it off. The training my brother Dave gave me when I was in 9th grade to switch from my full voice to falsetto really paid off. It was embarrassing for me, though. That’s actually when I started to think I might be done with choir.

So now there are only 8 minutes until I need to be at choir practice. Since I committed to fill in on the piano today, I guess I’ll go. Obviously I’ll be late.