Archive for September, 2009

Indigo Studios website was designed and created by Dave Caselli. The site is currently being maintained and updated on a monthly basis by Dave Caselli. You can see the website live at: www.indigostudios.com

Avid hired Indigo Studios to complete some web animations for their new website.  I created the animations.  Though simple and straight forward, the website is not only functional, but very well designed.  My animations only add to the experience.  Check it out.

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Who do you think you are? Do you know? Do we ever stop and think about who you are. I mean physically. You are an animal just like your dog. You are no more than the organisms living in your bathroom sink. You are a creature of this planet just like the rest, right? We are human beings. We like food and sex. We make friends and create unions. We fight and cheat. We strive to be good and to become better then we are. We want to learn. We want to evolve. We want to think we are more than the creatures we share this planet with but the truth is that we just the same.

I like women. Most guys do, but I cant say why I do. It was bred into me way before I was born. I have a sense of competitiveness. I’m not saying I like to fight; I’ve never been in a real fight. But I think most guys like to compete for superiority over other males. It’s something we do cause we want to, but in reality we need to. It’s part of what makes us who we are and who we are is human. I am breed to survive. Survival of the fittest, right? I am breed to think. I am bred to procreate. So what else am I bred to do? There are parts of my nature that I need to remember are just the human parts. So why deny that?

Now society in general has grown to the way it is for a reason. Orgies, serial murders, and street fights are all frowned upon. This is a good thing, but all those things still happen. As horrible as they all sound they are still something that are inside each of us.  They are something that we decide to suppress. Again, this is a good thing. We don’t want any Dexter wannabes reeking havoc or some Eyes Wide shut parties all over our neat, well manured neighborhoods, now do we?  No we don’t.

I guess my point is that maybe we are different from all those crazy animals on this planet because we want to suppress those things. The more I think about it the more I think that our God, or our Creator wouldn’t want us to suppress who we are. I mean, he made us the way we are. Yet, we want to be more than who we are. So maybe its the fact that humans are always trying to better themselves that really makes us human. Yet you can also claim that animals in general do the same thing on a smaller/slower scale. Shit, if dogs can open doors and birds can talk, it seems to me that they are making progress.

So maybe we are all the same then. Humans are just a few million years ahead of our animal neighbors. The more we adapt, the more we evolve, the more we strive to be better, the more human we are. Or maybe that just makes us more like the animals we are.  And we shouldn’t deny that.

I am a drinker. I’m not out of control or anything, but I can say I like to put them away more so than the average guy. I like to have a good time. I like to party. I have friends that like to party and they have friends that like to party. I indulge in the activity of drinking at least once a week but most likely more than that. I have noticed that most social gatherings, when you are in your twenties, has to do with drinking and most of the time it has to do with drinking a lot. Sometimes more than others, but most of the time it’s enough to make you take a cab home. Society today really embraces drinkers so everyone seems fine with the idea of “going out for some drinks after work”. That’s just the way it is. I didn’t really see the whole extremity of the situation until I decided to stop drinking for a month. It’s almost strange how it is so natural to drink when “going out” or when “hanging out with friends”. It’s just what we do and the way things are. And we all know that people stick with what they know and what seems comfortable.

I can’t take credit for the idea of giving drinking a break. Though it seems like a simple concept, I hadn’t met anyone who had actually considered doing it until I met Priscilla’s good friend Meghann Quirk. She gave up drinking for Lent a couple years in a row before I had decided to partake. This was about two years ago now. I didn’t really quit because I gave myself three “give me’s”. Three days that I could drink within the six weeks that I couldn’t. It made it a lot easier and it more than made up for the days I didn’t drink by getting plastered the days I could. By the end of it, I did feel a small sense of accomplishment, but it was short lived.

This time I didn’t give myself any free days. I set a time to start and a time to finish. It just happened to start on my friend Dennis’ Bachelor Party and ended on his wedding day. It seemed fitting since I knew I would be drinking heavily at the Bachelor Party and then again at the wedding. The four weekends in between were uneventful unplanned weekends without traveling, or guests, or parties, or birthdays or holidays. With nothing to stand in my way, I knew it would be the easiest time to be successful. Is that cheating? Maybe a little, but I still had my hardships and those four weekends filled up pretty quickly with drinking events.

Right off the bat I had a run in with temptation. I joined a kickball league with friends that had games every Tuesday night after work. The games were sometimes followed by dinner and drinks at a local Pizza joint Mellow Mushroom. I drank my water and ate my pizza. It was harmless. Nobody really got wasted so it wasn’t that hard. That weekend Priscilla and I went to a concert to see Rascal Flatts. (A gift from me to her for our Anniversary) We tailgated and everything. I watched Priscilla try to down as many beers as she could in the four hours we were there. It was pretty entertaining to try to get her drunk. That was until the ride home when she complained the entire ride about how she had the hiccups and wanted to throw up. All in all it was still fun though.

The following weekend was uneventful. A weekend of rest and being lame. We stayed in both nights. The weekend after that was looking to be a challenge though. We were visited by Priscilla’s college friend Michele and her husband Jake. I thought I would have some long nights at the bar in front of me being miserable the whole time. I lucked out though because they were ready for bed after dinner each night. Now don’t get me wrong, they had plenty of wine and drinks through dinner as most people do, they just didn’t want to get crazy and stay up all hours of the night. I wasn’t complaining.

Then the last weekend came a visit from the in-laws. This doesn’t seem like it would be hard, but they do drink so it is was present. Plus, a few drinks while the in-laws are around makes everything a little easier to withstand. The weekend was fun and we filled it with shopping and cooking. It wasn’t bad at all.

So now the wedding and the cutoff date is slowly approaching. Only a couple more days left. It really hasn’t been hard. People wouldn’t understand when I would explain I wasn’t drinking. They mostly would give me a strange look like, “what a weirdo”. Everyone would ask me, “why are you not drinking?” I would always answer, “Just for Fun” but the real answer is that I just wanted to take a break from something I do all the time. A break from something that isn’t good for me and something I most likely should cut back on doing. I still like to drink and I think I will most likely will be getting pretty drunk at the wedding this weekend, but I do plan on cutting back when I start back at it. Not completely, but maybe through this experience I can have a better perspective on how much I drink. But especially how much I drink cause everyone else does.

UPDATE: I drank the day before the wedding cause I counted the days and it had already been 32 days. So I had a couple to get my liver ready for the wedding the next night. The wedding came and went and yes, I drank enough to get drunk. It was a good time. By Monday I was sick as a dog and had to miss work cause I had a fever. Hooray for alcohol.