Plenty to write about, but lately blogging has been displaced by doing. 
During the past 30 days I’ve spent time in Yokohama and Guangshan in the midst of my ongoing producing and consulting work. The Animation Options website has been updated with the latest happenings (at least those I’m free to talk about), and I hope to address some topics of interest here soon. 
Kevin Geiger
BEIJING
Haven’t blogged substantively in ages because I’ve been up to my eyeballs in it in Beijing: consulting, speaking, teaching and tai-chi-ing. Hope to return to writing soon. In the meantime, there are a few pics here. See if you can figure out what the folks in the third photo down are doing, and how it relates to production. (Answers in my next post.)
The whirlwind world tour continues. Just returned from an onsite consultation in Israel, and am off to Australia and Taiwan in a couple of days for a three-week run of lectures, seminars and consultations.
My bags stay packed.
On business in Beijing.
I’ll be “off blog” for a couple weeks, but in contact at: kevingeiger@animationoptions.com
I remember some pretty hard-core winters growing up as a boy in Cleveland, Ohio: the kind where giant snow drifts sealed our doors shut and torpedo-sized icicles hung ominously from the gutters overhead. Our heating bills were enough to make a grown man cry, and my father came close on more than one occasion. But he had resigned himself to the “reality” of our situation: we had taken reasonable steps to weatherproof the house, winters were a bear, heat was expensive, and that was that. Still, the Blizzard of 1977 was like nothing we had ever seen.
One morning as we were shoveling out, our next-door neighbor mentioned an assessment he had from a home energy consultant. My father was skeptical to say the least. “Last thing I need is some yahoo stopping by to tell me that Cleveland is cold in the winter, and then charging me for it!” he grumbled while chipping away at the icy sidewalk. Our neighbor laughed, and explained that the consultant not only conducted a thorough evaluation, but also had devised a practical energy saving plan that was custom-tailored to his home. And when he mentioned that his heating bills had been reduced by a third as a result, my dad’s financial interest was sufficiently piqued to schedule a consultation for our own home.
The result, in our case, was even more dramatic than our neighbor’s. The consultant arrived and asked a number of questions - not directly related to “energy” as one might assume, but instead to our daily use of the home. He then went through our house methodically from top to bottom, before sitting down with my dad to provide his assessment. “Mr. Geiger”, he said, “the aggregate energy leakage of your home from various sources is comparable to leaving the front door wide open all day and night.” My father’s mouth hung open. “The good news”, the consultant continued, “is that this situation can be remedied through a plan of simple steps that I have outlined for you, and may be addressed on your own within a couple of days.”
The home energy consultant reviewed the list of steps with my dad, and we spent the following weekend addressing the items one by one (you can imagine my joy): adding more insulation to the attic, replacing eroded weather-stripping, hanging a door to enclose the foyer, fixing a broken chimney vent, re-glazing a cracked basement window, making minor adjustments to our thermostat, and talking to my brothers about closing the door while they changed their boots.
The frigid weather continued, and a few weeks later our new heating bill arrived. My dad yelped, and we all ran for cover. But it was good news: our monthly charges had been reduced by half! The savings continued throughout the winter: paying for the consultant and the improvements, and from then on “insulating” my dad’s pocket. A fixed investment had produced significant, ongoing returns.
Our family “reward” – the ill-fated camping trip spent playing Monopoly in a rain-soaked trailer the following spring – is another story.
