I succumbed to the holiday pudge. I started 2010 about ten pounds heavier than I was pre-thanksgiving 2009. This is not a trend I want to continue. Traveling and cornucopias of food definitely added to the waste line, but the biggest factor was my lack of exercise going into the holiday break. I treated the break as a "recovery" from the long semester. The fall semester was crazy: two month long interview process, phd applications, traveling, conferences, oh and classes.

I have a little more free time now, still busy, but I'm not reading hundreds of pages a week and have a better idea of what my daily schedule will be. I started back running the third week of Jan, very lackadaisically, on a treadmill at the NYU gym, since the weather feels like the Planet Hoth, a few weeks ago. The miles came back easier than I imagined. I quickly realized that I need a goal so I don't just run sporadically. Some of Carla's co-workers are runners and had been talking about running the Brooklyn Half Marathon in May.

I was hesitant, but since the starting point is two blocks from our front door I really have no excuse not to. Officially, I signed up today, and I think we are going to try and get my brother up here to run. He'll more than likely be keeping a sub 7 min pace (closer to 6), while I'll be pushing for 9 min miles.

I did a long run(10k) on saturday and felt good afterwards. Time to rachet up! If you want to join me shoot me an email and sign up here registration/info

One of the many activities Carla and I enjoyed in Cleveland this past weekend was Tobogganing. The Cleveland Metropraks Department runs a tobogganing park. Very fun!

For our last run Carla, Andy, Katie, and I all decided to go down on the same toboggan. The formula I vaguely remember from physics is force = mass x acceleration. We had a lot of mass and acceleration so we flew down that hill. We blew past the couple in the chute next to us, and they actually had a head start.

We also went past the breaking pads placed at the end of the chute to slow the toboggan down. You can see at the end of the video the employee having to step aside because we kept going. To celebrate our awesome we all enjoyed corn dogs at the snack stand.

Cleveland Rocks!

After years of being stuck with in the box, I have decided to try my hand at traditional animation. I'm re-reading through the fantastic book by Richard Williams "The Animator's Survival Kit." Great book that explains a lot about timing, which is applicable to traditional and computer animation.

My first exercise is a ball bounce. I didn't have a light box, but was able to find an Acme hole punch at NYU. I used it to punch some light weight paper, but it was hard to see through several layers of paper-- a light box would help immensely.

Hope to churn out some more in the next few weeks.


Ball bounce from Christopher Jaynes on Vimeo.