Jason Dufair’s weblog
{ Monthly Archives }
Tagged by venessa, I’m (reluctantly) posting a self-portrait. I actually shot this as a thank you to jen for the awesome Madhur Jaffrey book she gave me, but it is a self portrait (albeit one where I’m on 5 hours sleep, need a shave, and have my flash pointed squarely at my forehead. I’ve discovered it’s tough to do a self-portrait with an SLR.
updated: Forgot to keep the meme alive. Tagging puddlejumper, missy, karrie.
“When you’ve got so much to say, it’s called gratitude, and that’s right”
-Beastie Boys
Woohoo! Another one of my blogfriends, karriew, sent us a package with a bunch of presents. Thank you so much, Karrie! It’s pretty overwhelming that people are being so kind to me. I got the package as I popped home between work and picking kids up to head straight to Chicago, so the unveiling will have to happen after we return - 1/1/07. We fly out in the morning to Charleston, SC to be with Anna’s brother, sister-in-law, and kids for a week (and perhaps her sister and mother too). I really love that whole family and am looking very forward to seeing all 5 of them. It’s probably going to be hard too, to be back in the place where Anna died. At least it won’t catch me off guard as I’m expecting it. And then we return for a weekend in Chicago visiting with my family. Unbelievably, I even get to see Umphrey’s McGee on New Year’s Eve! My family is going to throw a little NYE party for my kids (and theirs). And I get to see the show with a friend from West Lafayette who I’ve wanted to hang out with more.
It’ll be so nice to have karrie’s package to come home to, actually. Coming home has proven to be quite a bitch - getting home from Disney was hard. I cried on the bed for 20 minutes with Alyssa just rubbing my back. Anna was the one who really knew how to be fun and goofy with the kids. I’m goofy sometimes too, but can be too task-oriented. I guess it just wasn’t the same Disney trip as last year and I really felt sad about that.
Thanks Karrie (and Max and James too), and Merry Christmas. And Happy Solstice to everyone today. Here’s to 6 months of more light every day now.
Testing to see how video works, too. This is a clip of my good good pals Mike Garvey and Scott Crabtree. Can anyone not on Windows view this?
Insipred by my friend Michael Lewis who just upgraded his recording studio with a Pro Tools rig, I ordered an Mbox 2 for my christmas present to myself (thanks to Digidesign for their academic pricing program). I’ve been writing more music lately, and I would enjoy recording it and putting it online. For those that don’t know, my degree from Purdue is actually in Theatre Sound Design and I’ve done a fair amount of recording and live sound reinforcement in a past life. So I’m excited to do some recording and to do have an outlet for some of my recent songwriting, some of which is, predictably, dark and depressing, and some of which is silly kids stuff.
Being generally repulsed by MySpace, I decided to look into what I could do with posting my music here. Looks like, thanks to PodPress, I can do a lot with very little work. To that end, I’ve posted a junky-sounding but entertaining recording of Ian when he was about 2.
I started blogging more lately mostly to get the demons out from having lost Anna and to possibly connect with other people in my situation. I think it’s been its own reward. I enjoy writing. It gets me out of myself a bit. Little did I know that I would meet people as kind as Jen who, despite her own hectic, stressful holiday was so kind as to mail us a package of gifts, sweet treats, and custom ornaments. Talk about boosting my holiday spirit. We had guests for dinner, so I didn’t open the box until after they were in bed. They’ll get to open the presents in the morning. Thank you very much, Jen and C and Lucy.
(Being a person with little impulse control, I peeked at my gift, and it is extremely fitting - a Madhur Jaffrey cookbook. Only my favorite cookbook author ever.)
Jen, thank you so very much for thinking of us. It’s been a long December. But there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last.
And thanks to everyone else who has emailed or called me as a result of reading stuff here. At a time in my life when I feel really alone, it means a lot to (re)connect with good people.
My kids, closing their eyes as our babysitter presents them with Christmas presents.
“All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
I like watching the puddles gather rain”
- Blind Melon
I think Ian shot this photo. Rainy day. Bad timing on shuttles and meals and parks. Emma getting sicker. Went to Cape May for brunch. Took over an hour to get there on buses. They were closed when we got there, but they let us in to eat anyway. The staff at Disney are almost universally great. Went to Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party at night. Paid 50 bucks a head to get absolutely soaked.
Nonetheless, highlights:
Emma was running a high fever. How high? No idea. I forgot a thermometer. But we had her on acetominophen and decongestant pretty heavily this day and the next. And she insisted on being attached to me every minute. Good thing my back was feeling much better.
“Me Upon My Pony on My Boat”
-Lyle Lovett
We took a down day and played around the resort. Weather was absolutely gorgeous once the rain cleared in the early afternoon. Highlights:
Magic Kingdom tomorrow, Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party after hours. Being here is getting easier. Downright fun sometimes.
“It’s a nice day when you wake up in Disneyland”
-Five for Fighting
No Emma behind the lens again (I may have to coat the camera with chocolate tomorrow to re-interest her in it). So here she is in Cinderella’s castle, closing her eyes and making a wish with every other kid in the place. Fun captions would be welcome again 
Highlights:
Emma and Ian are sick with fevers, so we’re probably going for a down
day tomorrow, just chilling at the resort. Maybe dinner and fireworks
at Epcot or something. We’ll see.
“If you see Morocco, I know you’ll go in style - I haven’t seen Morocco for a long long while”
- Jackson Browne
Emma didn’t commandeer the camera today, so it’ Emma’s Disney, but not necessarily from her eyeballs. I’ll leave any caption on the attached photo as an exercise for the reader. Suggestions are welcome in the comments.
Highlights:
I’m going to try and post and album-ify all our pics so far on my Flickr page
