Sorry it has been awhile, I have been busy. Read and enjoy some new things, make sure you read all the adventures in this series.
I was cleaning the pool the Monday after the Thanksgiving holidays when I found a crack in the pool wall. It wasn't major but I discovered that the pool was leaking some water. I wanted to get it fixed if possible before the winter freeze and especially before the New Year's Eve party. I called the contractor and he came out to look at the problem on Tuesday, he decided the pool had settled a little after the construction. He suggested that I drain the pool and he would have the pool specialist come tomorrow and see what it would take to fix the crack in the pool. It was coming up on the first few days of December and I told him I really wanted it fixed before Christmas, he said he would see if it was possible.
When the pool people arrived after I had the pool almost drained on Wednesday, they said they could get it fixed in time. The problem wasn't too bad and since it was cool weather now they didn't have anything to do so there would be plenty of help in getting the job done.
They worked late Friday and had the crack dug out and were finishing the removal of debris. They had discovered a few other small cracks from the settling so they went ahead and cleaned them out and prepared them for patching after the weekend. I had also decided to paint the pool a darker color instead of the 'pool blue' it was now painted. I had always hated that color and it didn't go with all the natural rock landscaping.
I had called Sam earlier in the week to ask for help in laying down the sound track for the surprise movie. I had tried but when I did it muffled the background voices. He said he could come on Saturday so I asked him to bring Olivia and stay till Sunday. He agreed so Dawn and I made plans for the two of them that weekend. Unfortunately, Amy was going to be out of town with her family for the weekend so Sam would miss her.
Olivia and Sam arrived around noon on Saturday, Dawn had prepared a lunch for all of us before we started working on the video. After lunch Olivia and Dawn had moved to the sofa in front of the big fireplace with drinks, Dawn had a small fire going. I was thinking to myself that if Dawn had on more clothes, she might not be cold. Even though it was December she was still running around the house in her cut-off blue jean shorts and a t-shirt. Olivia had dressed more appropriately for the weather, long pants and a long sleeve blouse. The two of them seem to have settled in for girl talk.
Sam and I grabbed a beer. Sam looked outside and saw all the construction around the pool and asked what was up, I explained to him what had happened. We went outside and surveyed the damage. Sam looked around a lot and said 'too bad'. I told him it wasn't that bad, it would be ready for the party.
"You know James, I have some ideas for the lights in the pool if you would like to change them."
The pool had large underwater lights about every 6 feet around the pool in the walls. They looked nice at night when they were on.
"What have you got in mind," I asked.
"Well, since it is drained, I have a source for some new lights for pools that are softer than the harsh floodlights that are in the pool now and they have some special effects for them."
"Sam, talk to Dawn about it, she is the one that designed the pool and the landscaping."
"Will do."
We talked some more and then headed inside to the video room where all the editing equipment Sam loaned me was. With Sam's help I had managed to edit about 100 hours of video from the first party and the party with the other three couples down to about 8 hours of short vignettes, each about 30 minutes long per couple. Sam had already seen a lot of the video when he had been out before.
I had broken up the 8 hours of video to two 4 hour segments. All the action that had gone on had turned out pretty hot. I had also edited a separate video for each couple of just them. Dawn and I had decided to show the video to everyone in two different segments and to give everyone a copy plus their personal video as a New Year's Eve present. I just had to get the music laid down over the video before I burned all the DVD's for everyone.
Sam finally figured out what I had done wrong. I told him that I wanted to make sure that all the moaning, groaning and screaming was louder than the music. He showed me how to record the music on one track while not affecting the background sounds. We ran a test and it sounded great. The bad news was the music had to be laid down in real-time so we would have to 'struggle' through watching all 8 hours of the video while we mixed the music.
"Let's get another beer and tell the girls where we will be for a while Sam."
We went to the kitchen to get another beer before we started. I told Dawn and Olivia that we would be back in the video room for a while and they were welcome to come and watch if they wanted.
"We might pop our head in after awhile," Dawn said.
It appeared she and Olivia were engrossed in girl talk and who knew what else. Olivia and Dawn appeared to be on their second round of drinks already. I wondered what Sam had told Olivia about the cameras and the video. He shouldn't have told her anything but I figured he had.
Sam and I returned to the editing, he complimented my work as we went through the mix I had made. He asked more about what we were going to do with it, I explained about the surprise. He said that he felt like everyone would be very surprised.
"You know, you have a lot of cool friends," Sam said. "Olivia and I really felt at home at the Halloween party, I really want to thank you again for the invite. With all my work I don't have much of a social life so Olivia enjoyed getting out with other people."
"We will have to change that. What did Olivia think about the party and everything," I asked.