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Today I built a button chandelier for the Baron's castle in Sockvile, as well as the book cover for the opening of the series" "Book of all the Socks" in Thomas Phinney's restored Cristoforo font laid out on top of a cover made of the skin of a sock puppet (or more precisely, from an image of Matt's sock mask he wore in the puppeteer episode).
Our new individual garbage cans arrived today, replacing the large communal bins. More hassle remembering to get it in place every week, but no longer have to contend with Don filling it to the brim with his loose grass clippings (don't know how he does it, no one has a lawn that big around here). 

trying to catch up

I find vacations much more exhausting than working. As a result, I was completely wrecked today, but trying desperately to get back on the working track. Margaret took me to the grand unveiling and tour of the Artful Dodger artist space on 11th avenue. It is huge and looks like we can set up some cool events there with the university and the Filmpool. This evening Margaret took a last minute work shift while Paul, William, and I re-learned how to play RA, a very cool game that Thomas gave me a few years ago.

Game day

William played with his cousins all day, running around with George visiting and so on, while Margaret worked and I brought my niece Nicole to Paul's to connect up with Mike and Thomas and play some games. I can't actually remember the names of the two games. One was set in a haunted house and the other was about disease control around the globe ("Outbreak" and "Pandemic" I think it was called). The haunted house game was very cool. You play it cooperatively at first, exploring the insides of a haunted house to see where everything is (the floor tiles are randomly chosen as you open doors) but when certain random events occur, one player becomes the villain and the rules all change. In on session I played an 8 year old girl who opened a gate to another dimension and summon in a Lovecraft-type elder god.

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My manic state continued last night as I did laundry until 2am and finished off a number of more tv shows. Bionic Woman was quite good, done with obvious attention of style and mood and setting up a dozen or so potential sub plots to deal with later. It felt well planned, perhaps even over planned. I feel it might be better suited to have stayed small at first, concentrating on Jamie's internal turmoil and making the company seem like an honest benefactor like the old show. However, we are already suspecting its motives. Basically good tv. Following Bionic Woman I recorded the first episode, but not the second, of "Life" about a cop who was sent to prison for 12 years, learned to be very philosophical about everything, then is released when it is proven he was innocent. He gets millions of dollars in compensation but returns to being a cop anyway so that he can solve the crime he was sentenced for. It is really well written and acted. I was playing out scenes of this this morning to Margaret, they stuck with me so strongly. The other gem of tv last night was the one hour opener of "Family Guy" doing a Star Wars parody. This was the best Star Wars send up since "Hardware Wars". It returned to the film with reverence, which made it more cutting than most other satires I've seen. A few weeks ago I was watching a bit of "Space Balls" and comparing these two is really eye opening. Satire really must be done by people who embrace the original, the satire is an honor to the original, not a excuse for opportunists to repeat the same jokes over and over again.

Thanksgiving supper with both sets of parents today; turkey was nice but I have a sore throat and conversations were limited.

I bought the board game "Carcassonne" box set with 4 extras today. Margaret, William and I played it - I learned it in Seattle from Tom and Veronica and liked it a lot. It is a fairly high end strategy game but there are no secret cards or negotiations, so we are able to help William along and play relatively cooperatively. We just played the basic game before supper, but will likely ramp up to the dragon supplement this week.

Get Smart

Thomas and I went to the Science Fiction Museum today, it was very cool. It had a temporary costume show including original Darth Vader, Indiana Jones, Obi Wan Kenobi, Will Robinson (ooo, I'd love to get a little silver flight suit for my William) plus original models for the Death Star, the Deep Space 9, and oodles of others.

Then I went to the Northwest Film Forum and got a tour of their facilities from their director Michael Selwerath and talked with the program director Adam Sekuler. They have some interesting ideas such as programming from a vault of old films they'd had donated. They have a modified JK printer to mount a video camera in place of the bolex to frame grab and do telecine from super-8 one frame at a time. On the other end of the spectrum, they take on the role of producer to help get financing together for members to shoot their first features. The front end of the organization is a 365 day per year cinematheque with fantastic programming.

This evening I've not been feeling well. I thought it might be hunger pains and it went away when I had supper, but some curious, unusual, and annoyingly painful cramps have started coming back. Thomas is really jet lagged so has fallen asleep already, so no gaming tonight. For those who don't know Thomas, he loves games and has a collection of over 300 on his shelves, with no sign of the common Monopoly, Clue, or Trivial Pursuit. Maybe tomorrow.

PS: on further looking, there is a version of Monopoly as well as Trivial Pursuit, but he still has no Clue.

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Am in Seattle staying with Thomas Phinney and Veronica Antal and their daughter Meranda. Pretty tired because I got up at 3:45 to get to my 5:30 cross border flight. One amazing stop so far was a Lego store. It had everything! Not only were all of the kits there, but you could also pick out pieces and buy in bulk. We spend part of the evening watching William's films: the Inspector Gadget films (all four) plus "The King Who Never Napped" and "The Adventures of Billy Backwards". Already homesick but have a lot of activity ahead of me.