Chapter 45

My vacation continued as it had started, with flying lessons in the morning, but now enjoyable lunches shared with Grace afterwards. On Tuesday after flying Trudy called me, and we agreed to see a movie. Neither one of us had seen the newest X-Men movie, so thought that would be a good choice.

On Wednesday because dad had my truck at the shop to add the hitch I used the farm truck. I loaded my keyboard into Scout, as well as my own computer. Once in the control booth I set it all up, then with headphones started testing and tweaking the setting until I was happy with what I had. And because I still had over two hours left until show time, I decided to give it a trial run. I started the recording software, then started the movie playing on the computer monitor. And At the end of the first one I opened the audio editor and started making some changes. Adding a fadeout and cutting some parts I flubbed, and as I had expected that I had continued to play for about a minute after the movie ended. I just added another fade-out, then exported it to an MP3 file.

I watched it again, this time with the audio playing as the sound on the video player was turned off. And it came out pretty good. I finished shortly before it was time for me to get something to eat, so I moved my stuff to the side and went down to get some soda and food.

I saw Grace was there also, talking to one of the cooks. She was already in costume, and as I was grabbing my food I invited her to the booth to see what I had done. She grabbed a plate and soda also and walked with me to the control booth. And as we ate I played for her the music over the video.

As it was playing, I decided to call Pete to see if he knew of a way to combine the audio and video into one file. Thankfully he was not busy when I called, and when I explained to him what I wanted he told me what I needed.

“George, for that call Mandy. We have a program from Adobe called ‘Premiere’. It’s a video editing program, and that can do what you want. I’ve used it, but she is much better at it because she uses it to do presentations for us.” I thanked him, and called his wife. She told me it was not a problem, and would bring a copy over that night. I told her I was going fishing with Grace, and she said she would get with me in a couple of days then to show me how to do it.

“George, it’s going to be similar to the sound editor you use, but also different. When it comes time to export it, that’s where it gets tricky. I will help you with that part, because if you’re not careful you will end up with massive files. But we will get together and I will show you what I’ve learned.”

I thanked her, and the first movie was at the climax so I watched with Grace. And when it was done she hugged me and said that was great. “George, that is much better than what they usually play. I think they had just grabbed some old music almost at random, you did it much more like a real movie score.”

When people started to arrive I had already started playing the music in the library for that purpose. She hugged me again, then said she would come back when the show was done.

“OK, I’ll be here, Princess Kimama.” She stuck her tongue out at me, but was smiling as she left. I think that now she understood why I had changed the name, she no longer had a problem with it.

And this time, I changed the script again as Hank was playing the hero. As he was walking Princess Kimama towards the edge of “town”, I said they were going to his ranch so he could get her a horse to ride back to her tribe’s village. And that maybe he could convince his son Jason to take her home as it was fine time he got himself a wife.

And I could see before they passed out of sight that Grace was laughing this time. I had just started the movie when she entered the booth, already changed into jeans and a t-shirt. She hugged me and I said obviously she was no longer mad at my script revisions.

“Actually, that new one is a lot better. I’m still not real happy about making me a Princess, but having Hank try to hook me up with his son is a lot better than his trying to hook up with me.”

As the movie played I had Grace watch over things as I hauled everything back to the truck. And when it was all done, the two of us headed back to the ranch. We went into the barn and grabbed the fishing gear, along with two folding chairs. Grace ran off to her house, then returned a moment later with a plastic container.

“Chicken guts” she said, and I nodded as we got back in and drove off. We got to our normal spot, and I brought over the gear and set up the chairs as she set up the lantern. This was an old one my dad had that used white gas, so as she was pumping it up I screwed the pole holders into the ground.

A few minutes later the lantern was set about twenty yards away, and I had put the bells on the tips of both poles. She opened the container, and boy did they smell! But as we were going after catfish, stinking was actually a good thing. We each baited our hooks then cast out. And once the poles were in the holders we washed our hands off in the lake then sat down.

“Thanks for doing this, George. It’s been ages since we’ve gone fishing like this.”

“Yeah, it has. We should do this more often before I have to go again.” I offered her a beer, but she shook her head sharply. “No, I don’t think I ever want beer again. But get me a grape soda?” I smiled and got us our drinks.

About ten minutes later the tinkling of her bell told us she had her first strike. And Grace smiled when she reeled it in, and it was a nice sized bullhead catfish. She put it on the stringer and was soon casting out again. We just talked and fished, and it was a great time. Finally at just after midnight we packed it all in. She had two bullheads and a nice trout, I had a single bullhead and a perch.

Grace hugged me before we started to break down everything and put it back in the truck. I put the fish in a foam cooler we used for fish, and headed on home. Once we got there we took turns cleaning our catch in the sink behind the barn that was there for that reason. And once it was done she took the guts and put them in the tub, saying we could use those next time. We shared a hug, and before she headed home Grace kissed my cheek. Then with a wave headed in as I drove to the top of the hill.

Thankfully I had nothing to do the next day, so did not even get up until it was close to noon. And an hour later Mandy called me, and it was a good thing I had not unloaded the truck yet. I drove down to their house, and smiled at Rose when she opened the door and called out I was there. “Go on down, Uncle George. Mom’s in her study.”

I headed into the basement, and after giving me a hug Mandy directed me to set up on the smaller desk in the corner. We soon had everything hooked up, and she opened a box and pulled out a CD. Soon the software was loaded, and she fired it up. And it did look a lot like my audio editing program, but of course different as it was for video. And as I had saved copies of the video files she loaded one up, then the audio clip.

And she then showed me how to render the project into a final video. “Now this is the long part, figure about two hours for a half hour of video.” I whistled, as that was significantly longer than rendering an MP3 was. She then showed me what the various codecs were, and why some were better than others.

“Here, this one makes smaller files, but the audio comes out like it’s playing in a tunnel. This one is the best, but the finished file will be really big. This is a good compromise, decent video and size.” She had installed over half a dozen of them, and I asked about DivX, as I had read a lot claiming that was a good one.

“Oh, I installed it already, and it is actually pretty good. But unless you want to pay the fifty dollars for licensing, it will put this watermark on all the videos you make with it. Feel free to use it if you want, but since these will be shown at the campground don’t use it for that.”

She started the render to combine my audio with the video, and I saw it would take about an hour. We moved to her desk, and she showed me some of her past projects. Most were commercials, and I had to admit I was surprised as I did not know that Mandy was actually making the commercials for Gem.

“Oh George, I don’t actually make them. These are just demos and sample cuts. I make these to give the guys and gals that are really good at it an idea of what it is we want. It’s really just what we call a ‘pencil test’. They then run with that and produce something much better than I could ever do.” She then played one that was finished, and it was much better. Hers had static text, while the final versions had text in 3D that would change size. Sound effects, some blending, things like that.

She then showed me how I could cut clips out and add in others, and in this it was almost exactly like my sound editor. And at a chime we looked up, and saw that the render was done on my computer. We went over, and I saw the file was over 500 megs.

“OK, that’s not bad. Here, let’s see how it plays” Mandy said, so I started it.

And when it finished, she smiled and said that was pretty good. “So, are you going to do this with all of them?”

“Well, I actually have a few ideas about that. These are all public domain, so I can’t get into trouble for it. Maybe do some more, and see if any would be interested in buying them.”

“That’s actually a good idea. But remember, if you are going to sell them you need to make sure the music is public domain also. All of that is over a century old, so in the public domain. But be careful, as some songs that might surprise you are not.”

And she listed several, which did surprise me. “Happy Birthday” was one of them. “If it’s just for your own use here, don’t worry about it. But if you want to sell it, make damned sure it’s in the public domain or you might get sued. Public domain, or entirely your own creation.”

I thanked her and headed home, and mom came in as I was messing around and trying to find song for “The Great Train Robbery”. She had me bring my keyboard into her office, and soon the two of us were taking turns playing different pieces. And we did a demo take, as it was a short movie at only twelve minutes.

And it sounded great, as she was mostly doing backup for me, handling things like drums and other instruments as I stuck to mostly piano. And when we finished, we smiled at each other. “Wow, been a while since we played together like that. But I see that look on your face, it’s just like your brother when he’s thinking of something.”

“Oh, I was thinking that we should try and record this. But where can we do it? I mean, I guess we can do it here, but there will be cables everywhere if we do that. Plus to do it right I would need to also use my mixer board, that would mean even more cables.”

Mom nodded, then smiled. “Wait one, dear. I’ll be right back.” And I watched as she went into the other room. She came back about ten minutes later, and gave me a thumbs up as she was still on the phone. “OK, great. We’ll see you there in about fifteen minutes.” She told me to grab everything and bring it to her minivan.

It took about ten minutes, because I also went to my room and grabbed all three of my keyboards. Mom said we were going to go to the conference room at Gem. I said that would be great, there was a lot of room there. She smiled, and even added they could use the projector to show the movie on the wall as we did it.

When mom got to the bottom of the hill, I smiled as I saw Mandy getting in the car and talking with Grace. I hopped out and ran over to Mandy and gave her a hug, then turned and smiled at Grace. “Hey sis, wanna give us a hand?” She looked up at me, and I told her to go grab her keyboard. She actually reminded me of the little girl I left a few years ago when she bounced up and down, then hugged me and ran off to get her stuff. Mandy and mom both laughed and smiled at me, and Mandy said she would head on down and get everything ready.

I went to the Big House, and was walking towards the stairs when Grace started to come down. Once she got to the bottom I took her keyboard, and we were all in the van as mom drove to Gem. As usual the tech support building was unlocked, and we went right to the main conference room. Mandy already had the screen lowered, and the projector turned on showing the desktop of the computer she was working on. She pointed where she wanted the computer as mom and Grace started to make trips out to bring everything else in.

She flipped the projector to where the movie was playing on the screen, as I was hooking up all of the cables to the mixer board. I had mom and Grace play a bit as I adjusted the volumes, and smiled when I saw Mandy fire up the video editing software. “Oh, this will probably be better. With this, I can record the audio right over the video. That will eliminate a step, no need to record then combine them separately.”

Mom talked to Grace, and Mandy started the playback as the two of them played “Danger Zone” from Beverly Hills Cop. When they finished Mandy smiled, then played it back for us. And even though I knew we would not be keeping it, it came out pretty good as a test.

We talked for about ten minutes, then mom told us to play Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. Thankfully it was a song we all knew, and Grace took the percussion as mom did the piano and sax and I did the horns and woodwinds. And mom moved her keyboard so she was in front of us and said to follow her lead. She nodded to Mandy, and gave us a five count and we started playing.

And mom had a great sense of timing, as she had us speed up or slow down at various parts. And mom had us cut off a bit early as she handled the piano by herself and faded it out. We all went and joined her and had a group hug, then Mandy started playing it for us. And it was great!

And it was even better as there were three of us working together, not just me alone. We did one more movie after that, then packed everything away and we all agreed we would have to do this again. Mom brought us home, and dad asked where we had been as we brought everything in. We told him what we had been doing, and he smiled. He had been fishing all day, and after dinner tossed me the keys to my truck.

I moved my stuff from the van to my truck, and drove it to my trailer. Then went ahead and drove to pick up Trudy. She was in a black skirt and green blouse, and after a hug and kiss we headed to Idaho Falls, about an hour away.

We stopped and grabbed a pizza and sodas as well as a case of beer right before we got there, and pulled into the Starlight Drive-In just south of town. Because we were in my truck I parked in the back, and had Trudy climb into the back to help me get situated where she thought best.

The main movie was pretty good, and we only kissed and caressed each other while it was playing. The second movie was one we had already seen, so after kissing and caressing each other for a bit, she asked if we could go elsewhere.

I smiled at her and we climbed back in the front and pulled out. And the entire drive back we talked about the movie, and that as they had now killed several of the main cast, the X-Men franchise was likely over.

We were on the highway and heading towards my house, so I imagine Trudy thought we were going back behind the bull pasture again. But she looked at me when I instead went a bit farther and turned into the campground. “George, why are we here?” she asked, and I smiled and said I had my new trailer here.

She joined me when I got out, and once inside she went to look around. I put the beer and remaining soda in the fridge, and set two on the table and sat as she looked around. She did make use of the bathroom, then sat next to me and took a drink of her beer. She asked me about all of the stuff on the other side of the sliding glass door, and I said that was my music stuff. I told her about our little recording session earlier in the day, and that one of the reasons I had gotten this one was that I could use the back as a music studio.

We each had about half a beer, and were making out again on the couch. And when I got her bra popped open and started to caress her tits she broke away and pushed my chest so I would move away. I moved back, and asked her if everything was alright.

But without saying a word, she smiled at me and stood up. She then removed her blouse and bra and placed them on the table next to her beer. And looking into my eyes she reached to her side and unfastened the catch on the side of her skirt, then lowered it down her legs and stepped out. And I remembered what a tease she could be as she turned her back and walked towards the front of the trailer and started up the small steps to the bedroom.

I quickly kicked off my shoes, then stood and pulled my shirt off and tossed it on the ground. I got out of my jeans and tossed them on the couch and quickly followed Trudy into the back. I was glad I had already made the bed, and saw Trudy lying on top, her panties now gone and she smiled at me.

I quickly joined her, and I am pretty sure she expected me to just climb on and push myself into her, as that was what I would have done in the past. But I started by kissing her and letting my hand caress her body. Then slowly kissing my way down her neck, and her breasts. After all, I now had a chance to show her that she was not the only one to have learned things in the past few years.