RuLabinsky Ranch 2014 New Year's Letter

It's January and that can only mean one thing -- your 2014 RuLabinsky Ranch Newsletter! Here's the annual report....

Izaak -- Moved to the Google office in Sydney, Australia in May 2013 for a slated 2 year stay. He's working on Google Maps and has already launched a product! He lives in a shared apartment in the trendy Surry Hills area and is having a great time. During an August business trip, Izaak was able to swing through Canada for a visit with us in Bala, and is also back in California for work visits every few months. Amy and Steve will be going for a visit to New Zealand and Australia in March 2014. Izaak's other travels in 2013 included a trip to Tasmania.

Max -- Graduated from USC in May. His thesis film, Phantoms in the Dark, was a tour de force. After moving out of his fraternity, he spent some of the summer at RuLabinsky Ranch, with a week visiting us in Bala in August. He then moved back to LA in September where he now lives in Burwood House, an old group house near Pasadena that used to be a brothel in the 1920's! Times are tough in the animation industry (all the major studios are laying off, not hiring), but Max is getting by via freelance gigs. He has done jobs that have been used by Cirque du Soleil, the League of Legends gaming tournament in LA, an off-broadway dance performance, and Macy's advertising. As a 3D generalist with great technical skills, Max does everything from animation to modelling, rigging, compositing, and more.

Steve -- Still chipping away on Electric at Oracle, and planning on retiring in 3 years. In the meantime, his first romance novel, Executive Sweet, came out in May and has had some good reviews! The second novel in the planned "Westerley trilogy" will be coming out this spring and is entitled A Good Little Girl Like You. Steve is already hard at work on the third novel. He has also been enjoying drinking and learning more about whiskey, which all began because the heroine of Executive Sweet drank Jack Daniel's; Steve figured he had to check it out for himself.

Amy -- Still actively promoting her two books, Impossible Cure and Active Consciousness, through her monthly newsletters and getting articles placed in a variety of venues. One exciting development was being filmed in June for a movie about synchronicity being produced by a group of NYC artists and musicians (see picture on left). Entitled "Time Is Art", you can see two promotional interviews of Amy at the movie web site -- thesyncmovie.com. Another interesting development has been her inexplicable growing interest in fashion design, probably inspired by the show "Project Runway", but perhaps also by ancestral memories (her Dad was a men's clothing manufacturer). Amy's first project has just been completed -- a recreation of one of her favorite pairs of pants made by a (now defunct) boutique designer. The miracle of YouTube enabled Amy to learn many new skills, including how to create a pattern from existing clothes. She hadn't sewn a garment since 10th grade! In October, Amy also fulfilled a longtime desire -- learning how to milk a cow (!)

Travels for Amy and Steve in 2013 included: Kauai in February (see picture on right at the Tahiti Hui in Hanalei) and their first cross-country driving trip (three weeks across America to their cottage in Bala, Ontario where they spent the summer). Stops on their driving trip included Grass Valley, northern Nevada, Boise and other places in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota (Mt. Rushmore and their favorite, the Crazy Horse monument), the length of Minnesota, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (known as Yooperland). They also spent a weekend in Gualala.

Amy (lansky at renresearch.com): impossiblecure.com activeconsciousness.com amylansky.com renresearch.com Max (mlanskyrubin at gmail.com): maxamania.com

rulabinsky.com

Steve (strubin at strubin.com): staticfreesoft.com strubin.com sageardman.com medalerts.org Izaak (izaak.rubin at gmail.com): izaakrubin.com