One thing I did whilst without my computer was fire up my Sony digital camcorder that I haven't even turned on in years and look for a couple of raw videos I made at the time (about ten years ago) I had a video camera glued to my eye perpetually (after I stopped being able to paint more or less and was shifting around to the next thing I could use.

One of the videos is a reception at Dale Chilhuly's boathouse with the hotshop running full force. It was fun, and watching the men work with the glass was rather magical. Raw = about 25 minutes, could be maybe 20 edited down.

Another was a trip to the Takach Press Company in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After Wa He Lut was destroyed by flood the rebuilding became a BIA pilot program and the architects asked us all what we wanted. I specified everything I wanted for an artroom including an etching press. I asked for one from Takach, then when visiting my friend Judy called them up and visited. One of the brothers gave a completely spontaneous tour that was fascinating to me. What appeared to be rusty old well casing was machined into lovely parts for handmade presses. A highlight was the ball-graining machine - a rare bird. This contraption makes ball grain plates for lithography (which I've used although I hate lithography - especially lithography not on a stone). Basically a wooden rectangle filled with ball bearings, blank plates are placed on the floor of the rectangle. The whole contraption jiggles noisily as the beelion ball bearings uniformly grain the plates in a process that takes an unremembered (by me) although significant amount of time.
I didn't watch it, but estimate it to be an hour (may be too long to be bothered with).

Somewhere I have a video of a table shuffleboard tournament my pals the Monsters lured me to. I'd never seen that sort of thing before but it was funnish in a way.

I also - and it was about the day after I got my first video camera - documented the removal by forklift of the big coffee roaster from Batdorf and Bronson's erstwhile roastery on Columbia. It was driven a short distance north to their new building near the farmers' market, in the rain (nice for cameras), on a Sunday, earlyish I reckon. I haven't watched that, either, but I probably don't want to.

Oh, lots of other things, too. As well as tons of kiddie animation as I taught various children to do that (my contention was that grown-ups kept video cameras sitting in cupboards and wouldn't let children use them - so the cameras did nothing but age. Children, in point of fact - as far as my experience with loads of them has led me to believe- aren't hazardous to video cameras, and indeed can make some very nice little animations with minimal instruction). Anyway who the hell cares - it's ridiculous to think something too valuable to use. I used to loan my video cameras to children on weekends and when they were doing something interesting, and they never broke them. That reminds me of the brothers for whom I bought a digital video camera as they were just too cool in their movie-making. They moved away but a few years later it was the elder brother who said: "I'm taking a 3d class" Me: Bryce? Gerald: "I think his name is Mr. Wilson.