Bich and I spent the weekend packing for our big move to Kirksville. Actually, we’re just moving a few things for now, as our house doesn’t close for another month and a half. But we want everything in boxes so that, come July 15th, we can just pack up the U-Haul and hit the road.

Dakota visited over the Memorial Day weekend, and I installed a brand-new 120 gigabyte hard drive in his computer. Properly armed, he can now begin the task of editing our short subject documentary, “Weekend Warriors.”

I also loaned him my Canon Elura so he can play back my footage. We ran into a minor compatibility problem: His GL1 will not properly play the tapes that my XL1 recorded. The audio comes out garbled and choppy. This sort of thing happens from time to time, even within cameras of the same brand. If you record on LP mode, you will run across this problem A LOT. Actually, you can pretty well bet that any MiniDV tape you’ve recorded in LP mode will not properly play in any other camera but your own. That’s why it’s a good idea to always record in SP. It works fine on the Elura, though.

We found this out the hard way. Several years ago, Dakota and I spent an entire day shooting a promo video for a retreat run by the Lutheran church in Missouri. Unfortunately, we shot it in LP, before we knew better. By the time we came back to the footage, with different equipment, we realized that all our tapes are useless.

Unless someone out there has a Canon Ultura they’d like to loan us for a day? Anyone?

My wife and I are packing things up and getting ready for our next big move. I accepted a position in the IT department at “Truman State University”:http://www.truman.edu in Kirksville, MO. Kirksville is special to us because we both went to school there. It’s where we met and where we got married. We already know a lot of folks in the community — former coworkers, friends, etc — from my days of working in the Truman PR office and as a news reporter for three radio stations in town.

It’s also the place where we shot our first movie, Dumping Jenny, back in the summer of 2000. One of the biggest reasons we decided to take the job and uproot ourselves is the promise of a steady paycheck and a straight 8-5 weekday job. That leaves lots of time on the weekends and in the evenings to tap the eager student population for another film project. With a few scripts in the works, it’s likely to happen sooner than later. Just give me some time to get adjusted…

We’re also plunging into home ownership, which has been a dream of ours for a while. Bich and I have felt like transients for a while now, and even when we moved back to the States we lost some of the privacy we enjoyed in our Japanese apartment. The Kirksville housing market is…um…interesting, but it only took a day of searching for us to find the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood at the perfect price. Apparently, the buyers thought so too, as we signed the contract on Sunday. Now the real fun begins.

By the way, if you haven’t already, be sure to sign on to “triggerstreet.com”:http://www.triggerstreet.com and check out our Breakups With Guns short featurette. It’s quite a bit different from anything else we’ve done, and it’s been entertaining to read the wide range of feedback we’ve gotten so far. After you watch it, be sure to write a review if the spirit moves you.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about an amazing chance encounter I had today and the Hollywood connection behind it…

The Artists’ Essentials DVDs are now available at a special pre-order price.

Go to the “Artists’ Essentials website”:http://www.artistsessentials.com to place your secure order with any major credit card.

When the DVDs are released — in about a month — you will receive the first-edition copies.