Everything about this is just beautiful. I highly recommend watching it full screen, but for the lazy or whatever, here's an embed:

(via Geekosystem)

It's quiet outside my office window, like the heat and humidity is sort of absorbing and muffling most of the sounds that usually come through during a typical Saturday morning. All I really hear is birds singing, the occasional drone of a distant train, and the low rumble of thunder out over the mountains somewhere … it's magical. Both dogs and both cats are asleep in my office, Nolan is sleeping in, and Anne is out at the gym. At this peaceful and solitary moment, it feels like I can take a few minutes to look back on the last week.

I'm home between episodes of Eureka, and rather than spend the week taking walks with my wife and my dogs, I recorded an audiobook. It took about 24 total hours, spread across four days, to perform my friend John Scalzi's Agent to the Stars. I'd read this book a couple of years ago, but performing it aloud was an entirely different experience from reading it. I had to create distinctly different voices and characters for everyone in the book, and that brought the material to life in a way that simply reading it did not. I love Agent to the Stars, and I'm blown away that this was John's "practice novel" that he wrote on the weekends while he was working full time on what was, at the time, his real job. Briefly, the story: Tom Stein is a junior agent in Hollywood, and when an alien species decides to make First Contact with humanity, he acts as their agent … to the stars. There's much, much more than that, obviously, including characters I really cared about and became invested in, but that's the basic MacGuffin. At least once a day while working on the project, I marveled that I was getting paid to read a book I loved. I mean, for one week, that was my job.

I seriously mean it when I say that I don't ever want to wake up from this wonderful dream.

Oh, hey, it's raining outside. I love the way the rain smells when it's warm outside.

That reminds me: one day this week, when I got home from work, Anne and I watched this huge thunderstorm blow up from way out east, and eventually over our house. It was probably 85 degrees when it passed over us, so while we watched the gutters on our street swell with a miniature flash flood, I grabbed Anne's hand and said, "Let's go run out in the rain!"

Some of you may remember a story I first posted on my blog a thousand years ago, about dancing in the rain with Anne; it made it into Dancing Barefoot as We Close Our Eyes. It's a tiny story that's really just a love letter to my wife, but it remains one of my favorite things I've ever written. Strangely, since that happened back in 2001 or 2002, we haven't intentionally run out into the rain, so this was especially lovely.

The afternoon sun was low in the sky, and the trees on our street broke it up into golden shafts of light that turned the sudden downpour into a glittering cascade of tiny jewels. We kicked off our shoes and skipped across our lawn like children (or a middle-aged couple deeply in love with each other). When we got to the street, it was still hot under our feet, and the cold raindrops were creating little clouds of steam that sat around ankle level. I brushed my hair back off my face, and looked up into the sky, with my arms out and my palms turned up.

"Remember when we danced in the rain in Santa Barbara?" Anne said.

"Yeah," I said, "that was awesome."

"I liked that a lot," she said.

I turned to look at her, and remembered how much I loved her at that moment, so many years ago, and wasn't surprised in the least to discover that I love her even more, now.

I kissed her face. "I love you so much," I said.

"I love you too. I love that we're walking in the rain!"

I took her hand in mine again, and we walked up our block and back. We were soaked through to the skin when we got home.

—

Last night, we went on a date to an arcade (I know, right?) where we played the hell out of Centipede. I'm not sure exactly why (some may say my reflexes were affected by a Guinness) but Anne destroyed me on our first two games, and got a high score. For her initials, she put in ASS, laughing hysterically the entire time.

"I really love that we still do stupid stuff like this, even though we're all old and shit," I said.

"Yeah, we're totally twelve," she said. "Play again? Or are you too chicken?"

"Nobody calls me chicken!" I declared, and started another game. This one, I focused, did my best, and not only did I win the game, I got an even higher high score … so of course, I put in SEX as my initials. We made a stupid cellphone video of the moment, because it was important to preserve that for posterity.

When we got home, I played Xbox with Nolan, and fell asleep a little after midnight, happily exhausted from a wonderful week doing things I love with people I love.

This is a very, very good life, and I'm grateful for it.

I'm home for a few days before I go back to Vancouver to finish out the season on Eureka. It's nice to sleep in my own bed, actually see my family, and work in my actual office, instead of sitting at a desk in a hotel.

Doctor Parrish was very heavy in the last episode I shot, so I worked 5 of 6 days, an average of 14 hours each day. It was exhausting work, but I loved every second of it. I wish I could get into the details of it, but that is right in the middle of Spoilertown, so I'll just say that it was a lot of fun, and I got to do a lot of origami.

There's this saying, possibly apocryphal, that actors work for free and get paid to wait. One of my days last week, I was called to the studio early, and then ended up not working for about seven hours. This sometimes happens when the scene before me takes longer than anyone expected, or it turns out that they're not going to see me in the background of a shot like they thought. Rookie actors tend to bitch about this sort of thing, but salty veterans like me have learned to be grateful for the job, appreciate that I'm getting paid to wait, and pack a Bag of holding that's filled with books and games and diversions. (Back in the old days, I'd bring tons of stuff, but now I just bring my iPad and a book.)

On this particular day, I played the hell out of Plants Vs. Zombies HD, re-read Metatropolis, spent some time looking for the end of the Internet, and actually started to get bored.

Once I started to get bored, my brain spit out an idea, that went something like this: "Hey, your cell phone has a video camera on it. You should make stupid videos with it, and upload them to YouTube!"

This sounded like a brilliantly stupid idea, so I did as my brain commanded, producing this:

I told Twitter about it, and there was much rejoicing. A few hours later, I did this:

Then I was finally called to set, where I was no longer bored, and my cretive energy was directed into the very useful and productive task of bringing Doctor Parrish to life.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that my stupid videos had been viewed about 7,000 times. "See, we're entertaining more people than just ourselves," my brain said, "let's make more stupid cell phone videos!"

"Yes, sir, Mister Brain," I said. I enlisted the help of some friends, and made this:

I don't know how long this will last, but it's easy, it's amusing to me, and it's a lot of stupid fun, so I'll keep doing it until I lose interest or get distracted and chase a red balloon down the street. If you want to see these stupid things as they become available, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel.

I love this shirt so much, I am in for three, and then in for three again:

It's currently in the derby at shirt.woot, and it really needs to make it across the finish line. If you agree with me, please give it an upboat. Godsdammit, the derby is closed. Well, enjoy what could have been, anyway.