Anniversary Cake

From J:

As A and I will be traveling tomorrow on our actual anniversary and we don't want to have year-old cake for breakfast, we went ahead and ate a piece of the top tonight.

Here it is!  Wrapped with care approximately 364 days ago.  In a J+A first, here's some video of the action:



That was the first video we took with our new camera.  Not too shabby!  I mistakenly shot the original in 720p, giving an absolutely enormous file size (235mb for a little over a minute).  But I digress.  Yes, we were surprised to see that the flowers were still on the cake!  And were still blue!

Time to slice...

Plate...

And eat!

The taste was...okay.  It still tasted like cake, but had a bit of a freezer taste and the frosting was pretty hard.  We were satisfied with one bite each.  One year down!  Tough to believe...

Commercial Recap

From A:

It's over!  I have officially finished shooting my scene for the "We are the Boys" commercial.  While talking with the producer today, it seems that the commercial I was in will be broadcast during the 2011 football season, whereas the "Do the Chomp" commercial (that I wasn't in) is for the 2010 season.  That gives me plenty of time to sign autographs prior to the debut.

But don't despair.  It seems that once the commercial is complete, I'll be getting a link via email to see the finished product.  Look for the link on our blog later this year!

So now for the description of my experience.  When I arrived for the shoot I was immediately sent to hair and makeup.  Although I had already applied what I consider to be "heavy" makeup, I hadn't gotten anywhere close what they would ultimately apply.  Once the makeup lady was done, my face definitely had quite a matte finish:

Next was wardrobe.  Although I brought scrubs to wear (as instructed), the producer made a last-minute change and decided I would wear an orange Gator polo instead.  It was really cute and just my size, so I was fine with the change.  My scene consisted of a resident (in scrubs), a doctor (in a white coat), me (in my polo), a lady from transplant (in a blouse), and a secretary (in a suit).

Our location was the "monumental staircase" in the lobby of the new hospital, and our line of the song was the very last, "For F-L-O-R-I-D-A," although we sang the entire song for all of the takes just in case they need it to fill in with during editing.  We did about 5 takes with a wide angle and about 5 more with a close angle, then shot a few with variations in motion, and a couple of "Go Gators!" cheers.

The coolest part of the experience to me was the makeup lady who would run up to us between takes to blot off any sweat and apply more powder so we didn't have shiny faces.  I've always wanted to have that done!

The entire film crew and cast members got t-shirts, too:

Commercial and Anniversary

From A:

J and I have a couple of exciting days ahead.

This afternoon I'll be filming a scene from a new commercial that will debut this fall.  It's one of two commercials being filmed in Gainesville this week, and both commercials are (of course) Gator themed.  I auditioned for the commercials about a month ago and am really excited to be cast in one (for the record, nobody was cast in both).

I'll be in the commercial which uses the song "We are the Boys."  True Gator fans know this song by memory since everyone sings it after the 3rd quarter of each football game.

The other commercial uses the song "Do the Chomp" and has choreographed dance moves.  Luckily, since I'm not part of this commercial, I wasn't required to attempt or execute the dance moves.

If you want to see and hear more, you can listen to the songs and view the dance moves here.

The other exciting news is that tomorrow is our one year anniversary!  We'll finally get the chance to break out our year-old frozen top layer of wedding cake and give it a try.  Although my parents talked our cake baker into telling them what flavor the top layer is, J and I have no idea.  However, after a year in the freezer, we're not entirely convinced that we'll even be able to tell what flavor it actually is.  But we'll certainly try!  Pictures and taste test impressions to come on a future post.

As a reminder, here's what the cake looked like prior to a year in our freezer:

A world without cable...

From J:

A and I have finally had it with Cox increasing our cable rates every couple of months.  Inspired by our recent visit to C and D, we're ditching cable and going with internet TV.  Our new media setup (note that I had all of this on hand, making the process really painless):

1) An LCD TV with computer audio (1/8" jack) and video (VGA) inputs.
2) A's old laptop.  I took off a bunch of old software, turned off most of the startup programs, and installed Google Chrome (it uses less processor power than Firefox or Internet Explorer).  The end result is a serviceable media laptop that can run flash and other internet video smoothly.
3) One 6' male-to-male audio cable and one 6' VGA monitor cable.
4) One wireless mouse, for use as a remote control.
5) One high speed internet connection with which to view Hulu, CastTV, espn3, and Clicker.  Clicker is a nice aggregator for all of the episodes of different shows on different websites (like TBS, Hulu, NBC, etc.), Hulu is superb, if a bit limited in its offerings, and CastTV has a big selection of shows across all stations, even Discovery and HBO.  The offerings are a bit spotty, but it always has the latest episodes of popular shows like Deadliest Catch and Breaking Bad.

In the living room, I set up an antenna with our other TV so we can get our local stations (except NBC...what's the deal, WNBW?).  As it turns out, the new digital broadcast quality is very nice, and looks identical to the cable signal.  Football season, here we come.

As I am a notorious flipper, the biggest change will be moving away from mindless channel changing and picking something to watch.  And agreeing on watching that, since channel changing is much less convenient with the internet.  But that adjustment won't be too tough.  Anyway, A and  I are pretty pumped to stick it to the cable company.  As of Monday, we're going cable-less.  Updates to follow.

Arachnophobia!

From J:

Today, while coming home from work, my wife had the crap scared out of her by a gigantic spider.  Like a good husband, I took a picture of it.  Then killed it.  And took a couple of other pictures, for blog purposes.

Total diameter: ~4".  Total viciousness: INCALCULABLE (to insects).  To humans?  Not so much.  It's a huntsman spider, fairly common in Florida.  The variety that we have around here grows up to about 5" in diameter.  Elsewhere in the world they grow up to 12" in diameter.  And probably eat puppies, or something.  I entered into battle and bravely sprayed this thing with some spider spray, which caused it to freak out and run all over the place.  Then calm down, and consider its next move.  Would it make a run at my wife?  Would it attempt to attack me, its aggressor?  Would it try and steal my car to get away?  It turns out that its preferred option was "stay still and get sprayed again, and die after about 10 minutes."

In retrospect, this would be a much better demonstration picture of wildlife than that lame squirrel picture I posted a week back.

RIP, hunstman spider.  You looked like you wanted to lay eggs in my brain, so I killed you.  Sorry.

The Land of Cheese

From A:

Highlights of our trip to Wisconsin, in photos:

(all photo captions by J)

Bratfest!  A and I were struck by the way that Wisconsin residents really attack summer, as exemplified in their willingness to 1) get sunburned while 2) listening to crappy bands and 3) eating brats.  There is no equivalent to this event in Gainesville.

Not that bratfest was lame.  It had the official Wiener Mobile in attendance, instantly raising its coolness.

A wearing a cheese hat.  It was not made out of real cheese.  Wisconsin is very proud of its cheese.

Here I am sharing a glass of chocolate Wisconsin milk with Bucky Badger, the Wisconsin mascot.  Wisconsin is also very proud of its milk, as that is used to make cheese.  

D, C, A, and I at the Brewers game (vs. the Mets) at Miller Park.  My previous MLB experiences have been at Pro Player/Dolphin/Joe Robbie/Landshark/Sun Life Stadium in Miami, so this was a nice change.  The best part was...

The Klement's Sausage race.  Go, Chorizo!  He's stereotypically wearing a sombrero.  Chorizo was doing well until they tagged off to the little sausages (cocktail wieners, I guess) seen at the bottom of the frame.  The little chorizo was very slow, and Polish sausage took the day.