1,000 paper cranes.

I'd have to say that the past three weeks were rather hellish.

To sum up...Helen Wallace, one of my closest friends, a recent roomate, and my greatest collaborator passed away, Wednesday the 6th of July, at 7 am. Its taken me until her memorial service this past Saturday to really accept it. I'm at peace with her death. I do not grieve. I was at peace with it since before she died, for I spent every scrap of time I could spare watching her slowly disintegrate.

The shock of it happened for me the Saturday before her passing, when I found out that her supposed beaten breast cancer had spread to her lungs, around her lungs, her liver, and her bones. Her kidney's were failing, and her lungs were literally being torn apart, slowly and painfully. She had been at the hospital for 8 days already, for what I thought was pneumonia and water in her lungs. But the things the doctors were telling me weren't adding up. They were giving her biopsies in all the wrong places, and taking their bloody time with the whole thing. My sister and mother had had pneumonia, and nobody needed to be hospitalized. Helen was running a fever the entire time, and not responding to the broad spectrum antibiotics. My mother came in (after working a week in NY) to bully the doctors into telling her what is really going on. So...going from an innocent pneumonia, a mere side effect of cancer treatment, to an army of cancer cells ravaging her body....well...you can imagine for yourselves.

She rapidly deterioated since saturday. She was intubated Sunday morning, and sent out a message to all her friends desperately wanting to see them before she went under. However the doctors couldn't wait, and she was sedated in ICU with a number of uncomfortable tubes sticking out of her mouth. She would pass into conciousness now and again, and I was lucky to speak to her a few times. It was difficult to see her gasping and mouthing around the tubes trying to say something like "hug me" and "where?" and she persisted with a vengence until everyone in the room knew what she was saying, which as even harder to watch. We lavished her with stuffed animals, hugs, foot massages, and anything futile we thought we could do for her. She nearly jumped out of her bed when Adriel gave her a plastic batman teddy bear.

I spent all day at the hospital on Monday and Tuesday. I debated wether or not to go to Augenblick, but everyone assured me I could.

I found out on the way up into the building Wednesday morning.

So for the past fortnight I was obsessing with making her 1,000 paper cranes. All of us, her friends/family pitched in and we got them to her at an alarmingly fast rate. I even managed to string up 300 of them into a mobile for the service.

Hopefully the Crane God found you, Helen, and will bring you to your father. I will never stop loving you or thinking of you. 

Photographs Pending.

SANDY FISHNETS MUSIC VIDEO IS NOW PUBLIC

Title says it all. Ok, actually, its been public for a few weeks. I don't know what possessed me to not make this information public. I guess I was waiting to impress you all with the hits on the video?

Buuutt....HERE ITS!

So, lets shop the views around some more! Between vimeo, blogs, and youtube, I think we're close to 10,000 hits c:

I'M BACK

I'm back! So much is going on and I regret not getting to blog about it! I guess the next bunch of posts won't be what I've done "today" per say, but what's been going on.

For starters, yesterday was the season 2 premiere of Ugly Americans! Here's a clip:

Ugly Americans
Tags: New Episodes Oct 6, 10:30pm/9:30c,Department of Integration Field Guide,Follow the Show on Twitter

(p.s., totally got the chance to work on the shot of Callie's boobs...SCORE!)

You can catch up with season 1 and watch full episodes here:
http://www.comedycentral.com/full-episodes/ugly-americans/101-pilot

Its totally a blast! You should all tune in!

The creater of the show got the whole studio "Camp Friendship" T-shirts and we hung out at a bar. I got to meet an animation producer from nickleodean, and chat with people from the studio I normally never talk to. Was also on a "backgrounds" rampage the past two days. Almost finished 8...ALMOST!