I had promised an update on last weekend, and here it is!  Friday, a week ago, I jumped in my truck and headed up to PA.  I got to hang out with some wonderful friends, whom I had not seen in almost three years.  We, being reenactors and musicians, went to an olde tyme days faire thing near where they live and played.  Since they were doing strings instead of brass and I haven't learned how to play a string instrument yet, I picked up the tambourine.  My tamborine skills are laughable.  After our first break, Dreamy mentioned that she had a set of bones in her violin case and that I could teach myself how to use them if I wanted to.  I think she figured that I'd give it a shot, fail, and then give up.  By lunch time, I was playing them with my right hand.  (Still not well, but I was playing them.)  Dreamy gave me a glare at one point.  Actually, she glared at me a number of times, and she threatened to poke me with her violin bow.  Apparently, she had not yet figured out how to play them.  By the time we packed up that afternoon, I had gotten pretty good at playing the bones with my right hand, and I was even functional with my left one.  Now I'm thinking that I might want to get a couple pairs of them to take around with me.

On Sunday, I left cool, sunny Altoona, PA, and headed towards Pittsburgh for the world premier of Dog Jack.  I got about 10 miles before my "check gages" light came on.  At that point, I noticed that my engine was overheating.  I slowed down, and my engine cooled a bit and stayed out of the red for the rest of my trip.  (After I got home, I took the truck in to get an oil change, and they told me my coolant was low and I should get my radiator serviced soon.)  I made it to Pittsburgh a couple hours before the show started so I walked around in an attempt to find a place to eat and Heinz Chapel.  On my way to Heinz Chapel, I made mental notes of various eateries in the Pitt area of town.  Heinz Chapel is definitely one of the most interesting churches that I've ever been to.  If you don't pay attention, you'd swear it was a small Catholic or Orthodox cathedral.  The big difference is the stain glass windows of people like Isaac Newton, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  After the site seeing, I ended up eating at Five Guys Burgers & Fries.  I ordered a cheeseburger and fries.  Upon recieving my food, I realized my mistake.  I managed to eat all the fries, but I ended up saving the burger for the trip back home.  (Even cold, it was still one of the best burgers I've eaten in my entire life.)

Dog Jack was entertaining.  It won't win any awards, I'm sure, unless they have Christian movie awards organizations.  I'm sure I won't get any awards for my work in it, but I did appear in no less than a half dozen scenes.  There was even one shot of me where I thought they were filming us for a behind the scenes documentary.  The movie has plenty of historical inaccuracies, but they apparently managed to hide a number of them also.  There is currently no distributor for the film, so it's doubtful that you'll get to see me in the theater for this work.  (I'll let you know when one of my films does hit the theaters though!)  Although the production company is talking to major Christian distributors, I think the realistic hope is to get someone to back them to take it straight to DVD.

That's outside the Soldiers & Sailors Museum.  I'm obviously on the left, since that's Chipmonk on the right.

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