Swamp Fest day 1

William split his wage with David to have a helper on the island, running the kid's croquet. After some sort of token exchange, kids can design a wicket and add it to the course and then play a round. 

Fred

 Margaret, Lori, and mom are all away in Calgary so I didn't have lunch with mom but I did pick up Fred from his class and had a coffee with him at the house. It is hot out again, but he had a long sleeve shirt, undershirt, sweater, and leather jacket on when I picked him up. As it is over 30 degrees outside, I convinced him to take off the jacket. 

Ken-franstein

William working night and day getting ready for Swamp Fest. Today he took one of my Ken dolls and made a Frankenstein monster who will be in the windmill as part of the croquet course. 
 

Emma at work

 Emma has been working at a place called Sticks and Doodles which crafts a lot of fun decorator items out of wood and metal and magnets and things using big laser cutters. Today there was a grand opening of the new storefront space with friends and family invited. Great to see her and to discover that one of my students from last year, Chansong, is also working there. Small world I guess. 

Gas fireplace

Installed gas fireplace today. Fortunately it is a cool day as we needed to run it for a few hours to burn off various junk. It was very comforting and inviting. 

Amy's closing reception

 Terrific turnout at Amy's closing reception today. Perhaps 50 or so people, maybe more with coming and going. Her defense went well, so I've heard. 

Eric Hill baby shower

 Very nice party at Jess's parent's house for a shower for her and Eric's baby. 

Nuit Blanche

 

Margaret had to work the entire evening during/for Nuit Blanche this year. William and I attended. The part had only a handful of works and none of them engaged us for more than a few seconds. Quite disappointing. We caught the end of a talk by Yuji Lee at Neutral Ground, but truthfully artist talks are too time based and not great choices for the come and go approach that Nuit Blanche generally offers. At the library we were looking at a black casting Joviel Buenavente did of their own body and were about to leave when we discovered that Jayden was doing a double header of Talkies in the theatre so we sat in on that for the rest of the evening. Caught the end of "Double Dragon" and all of the incredibly inept "To Catch a Yeti" starring Meatloaf. 

Amy Snider gallery

Slipped in near end of the day to see Amy and her MFA exhibition. The clay vessels covered the floor and only with the greatest of care could one navigate the room without breaking any. The sound that I helped assemble (backyard birds) was more prominent than I'd anticipated. Very engaging. 
 

Sidewalk progress

 Trucks arrived this morning, early, and finally got to work fixing the next door neighbour's sidewalk that was torn up in the fall when the tree was removed. 

Painting a fake camera

 Noelle lent me this object that she believe to be a casing for a security camera. It is light and obviously hollow but she thought the camera had been removed, although we were both confused by the continued presence of the lens. Anyway, I opened it up to discover that it cannot be used as a camera and has never been a camera. The lens will not function. It is basically a decoy security camera. Nice objects to paint regardless. 

Lunch with mom

 Mom suggested we go for lunch at Creme on the east end. She loved it the first time we went, then the second time she was disappointed and declared we would not return. She seems to have forgotten that and suggested we go again today. It was nice. 

Timothy Long tour

Had great evening at the MacKenzie with soon-to-retire curator Timothy Long telling us stories about a number of the art works on display. This last show of his was selected from the vault with specific intentions of the art having interesting stories behind them. Emma came along. There were almost too many stripes. 

 

Birthday

William's 23rd birthday today. Gifts included all of the stuff from Gales yesterday, as well as a special order shirt with Allan's beholder drawing on it. Got ice cream and cheese cake. Geremy and Allan came over for cake and to discuss William's ideas for his fall drawing class. 

 

Gales, beyond the closing

 Donna invited us back to Gales today where we bought many more of the dolls that William has been using to create his Bird People puppets. Great price, but not free. Bought everything we could. Sadly, we do not have as many bird stuffed toys as we have sets of clothing. 

Bird People puppets

 William progressing on his cast of Bird People puppets. 

Lunch with mom

 Picked up mom today for some errands. Didn't have lunch but just desert at Cafe Francais. Going out for desert with her is inevitably the wrong choice. Her appetite is small and she ultimately wants some real food, so no matter how good the desert is, it doesn't satisfy but just leaves her too full to have something else. 

Amin Malakootikhah

Attended closing reception for  Amin Malakootikhah's MFA exhibition at the Fifth Parallel on campus. We were a bit late and, it being a summer event, attendance wasn't great. Chatted with John Hampton about his own art collection and the division of art on different floors on a house. 

Work bench, part 2

 The mix up about the work bench could not have been more extreme. Instead of it being in two boxes, it was a complete object, welded together, and weighing over 300 pounds. There was no way I could have moved this with a car. The two guys strained significantly to get it off their truck. Once down, it gets around easily enough on its high end wheels. It is going to be great. 

Work bench

 I ordered a large, heavy, steel work bench for my garage. I went to pick it up, even though George has his truck on the farm. Discovering that the boxes were heavy but narrow, I was able to lodge them in the car and get them home. It was a heavy load and wore me out, so once I'd managed to drag them into the garage I just left them there. Late in the afternoon, the company arrived with startling news..... they had given me the wrong boxes! They would be sending someone tomorrow morning to replace these boxes with mine. 

Reading out loud

 At least 10 years ago (possibly 13 or 14 years ago) while we were on a family vacation, I had brought along a book that I was intent on struggling through. It was called "Shades of Grey" by Jasper Fforde. I'd heard an interview with him and his writing sounded very interesting. I'd gone to a book store and purchased that book (one of many he'd written) but found that I couldn't really get into it. I read the first chapter three times and it just wasn't working for me. I don't remember what vacation this was, but William was bored so I offered to read to him. He was certainly old enough to read this book on his own (he was at least nine years old, probably 10-12) but agreed. To my surprise, the book flowed off my lips in an amazing way and we had great fun in this shared experience. Jump to today - Fford finally published the sequel to this book, called "Red Side Story" and I've begun reading it out loud as William draws. Having fun. Finally feeling like a summer. 

Parking lot mystery

 Running a number of errands today and happened by the old Safeway/Co-op parking lot on 25th at Albert Street. They are totally digging up all the cement. Are they building additional structures there? I don't usually see removal of all cement just to repair things. 

William new drawings

William has been working on drawings for a new project. 
 

Government House

Went to Government House for a while this afternoon. They had a small antique sale where we purchased a "new" butter dish. We then looked about at various exhibits including the historical needlepoint show. 
 

Momentum coffee

 Margaret joined mom and I for lunch/coffee today, which made it easier for me to take her to Momentum on campus which is the only reasonably sophisticated place to eat at the university these days. 

Got to be blood

Blood tests today. No story hear, but again it seems to be the only image I captured to represent my day. I used to blog every day, racing the clock to get something online before midnight. I eventually noticed that I could wind back the clock and post for any point in the past, which allowed me to catch up when I missed days. Now I just try to take pictures once a day so that I have a starting point for what to say about each day. This has led to the bad habit of blogging multiple weeks all in one day, or this case in the middle of s sleepless night. I do remember more of this day. I met with grad students Ayesha and Jhazley, separately rather than together, to talk about their thesis projects. I generally feel quite positive about teaching and working when I'm with grad students and perhaps if that was all I was doing, it would be cool. Reading on the other hand has never been less fun. 
 

MacKenzie Art Gallery

We finally made it to the MacKenzie Art Gallery to see the very cool Shary Boyle exhibition. An incredible demonstration of multi-disciplinary art that I felt inspired by and I hope William did too. Also of interest was a collection of works from the vault curated by Timothy Long who is retiring later this month. 

Margaret went to Bushwakers to see her old high school teacher playing some folk tunes. 

 

Groceries

 Running through a backlog of images. The only thing to represent today was this photo from the cereal aisle. I looks horrible but I'm attracted to buying it anyway. Blood sugar has been spiking even though I'm exercising every day. Temptations for sugar rise. 

Class prep

 I'm stressed at my inability to focus on getting my work done. I am teaching an online animation course in the fall and have a lot of material cobbled together, but as of today I don't have a single class prepared. It used to be that the stress urged me on to prove myself, but now it just makes me want to abandon everything.

Cherries

 William and I picked about 3 buckets of cherries from Margaret's dad's tree. We pitted them all, ready for pie. 

Dad's memorial

The weather was perfect for dad's memorial today. Lots of people came, mostly from out of town including cousins I've not seen in years and a few people I've never met before. Lori went above and beyond with the amazing event.