Something repeated and something new at the Ngoc Van Vietnamese restaurant

Margaret and William at the Ngoc Van, January 2014

All week William has been asking to go to the Ngoc Van (Vietnamese) restaurant again. With the weather finally turning nice and an otherwise uncommitted Friday evening, we went. As fate or luck or design would have it, we were seated at the same table where Erik, Geremy, and I were seated on September 7, so I took a stitched photo similar to the one from that night. Food was good. William tried a spring roll, which he is usually averse to. This has become the restaurant which symbolizes "trying new things" for him.

Geremy and Erik in September 2013

Little things

Did little things today. The girls stayed over last night. I introduced them to Ren and Stimpy before they had to go off with their dad. William used measurement and math to make little sandwiches. I wrote a few little ideas towards a project that Erik suggested while William read a short story. This evening Margaret taught me how to text message and I sent my one to Nicole while Rowan came over for a short visit. Then we watched the final two episodes of Slings and Arrows. 

New Bike

This morning we picked Saskatoon berries. We had to work fast because the farm was booked for w wedding and we had only an hour. Got lots.
I bought William a new bike. Went for a lower end model, figure he'll possibly grow out of it in two or three  years and we don't take it inside, so the idea of a 500 bike didn't seem practical. Canadian Tire has many bikes on half price right now. He's happy with it.
This evening we had dinner with Allan and Jana. Very nice. Afterwards, Allan was kind enough to run a short half hour session of the roll playing game that William was a part of designing. I played an elf who was a compulsive liar. We ran away from a bear.... or did we?

war of the zombies 2

I wasted a lot of time yesterday with some technical problems with William's new zombie movie. I took it in to work this morning and rendered it out easily and had a dvd ready at lunch. This was fortunate because there are a lot of kids excited to see it and William's teacher said she'd show it this afternoon if he had a copy. I met with Erik this afternoon and described the rendering problems to him. He thinks that the compressors on the QT videos is the issue, that they stretch across the whole video so when you chop them up, it takes a lot of work to maintain them. Perhaps if I pre-exported each clip after initially importing them into the session but before I've brought them into a timeline, that might solve it.

Cathedral Festival parade

Holiday Monday; beginning of Cathedral Festival. William dressed up and walked with the small but dedicated steam punk club who then held a workshop in the Balkwill Centre. William and I actually spent more time in Allan Dotson's comic book jam room where I made a Canister comic.

Not a snow day ... or is it?

Busy all over today; Trevor Grant did his very enthusiastic end-of-term presentation regarding his MFA status (spoke at length about the films he made in the summer with my course). I met with Erik (after a certain degree of kerfuffle around cars not starting) and had been planning on getting him to copy all of the Sockvile sessions into my computer so we could both be working and discussing them. However, we realized that he is working on a higher version than mine so this will be difficult. We'll move a copy into the university next week, but since Evan left the process of purchasing a high end PC to run HD footage is on the back-burner. The work Erik is doing looks great. In many cases, the eye is completely fooled into believing that the puppets are in front of complex sets: the project will certainly look grander than it started off.  This evening I took William to the Filmpool to see a set of animated films with filmmakers Xstine Cook and Jesse Gouchey  present to show and tell. They also did some workshops at William's school recently but he either missed them (he was sick once and also took a half day to go to Agribition, so perhaps he wasn't there or perhaps they didn't come to his class). Anyway, he loved the work and asked questions. Tanya was there and he got to ask her questions about chemistry as well. We bought the Oilfields of Catan add on set on the way home. I then made good use of the speed of my new computer to compile a set of all digital photos we have of snowmen since 2004. There are over 1100. We certainly have another few hundred on film since we got obsessed with this in 1991, but that will need to wait until I can scan large numbers of my old negs. Here is one from 2004:

Shooting super-8

I made my super-8 film today, with the help of William. He performed the narration and then we worked to the playback of the narration when we shot it at the university. It took 3 hours, even though the film was shot in one go (3.5 minutes). The set up and clean up were murder. I'm not even sure it worked very well. Fingers crossed.

Sockvile gets political

 This morning Erik and I went to the legislature building and shot photos and video of empty hallways for backgrounds in one episode of Sockvile. Margaret had a day full of prep for another big art social as well as an artist trading card session (Halloween and stitching as a theme, which William was excited about), so I ended up taking him along. He's never been inside there before so it was a cool thrill.

William animating

When I got home from work today, William had been reading the Lego magazine I got him which discussed ways to animate with Lego. He built the shooting table described in the magazine and wrote a script and began shooting.  When I told him he would need at least an hour to do it, I guess he thought he'd get bored before he finished. He told me that he was surprised at how interesting it was to do.

same old story

I've had a film that I have the footage shot for and voice over written for a year now but have been feeling unable to finish it. Today I recorded William telling the story instead of me (after a significant rewrite). He is more able to perform but he has also become less controlable and insists on ad libbing lines throughout. He also has a continuous cough which I'll need to work around. I took him back to the doctor today and managed to see someone as a drop in. This doctor confirmed that he likely has a viral infection (like Christine suggested yesterday) and has given him an inhaler which should clear it up in a few days. Thank goodness, he has been having a hard time falling asleep or doing anything, it is so persistent.

15 hours of ...

 

 We checked out of the hotel and went for brunch at Diane Bessai's fantastic (and large) condo.

Fred Bessai and Diane Bessai

Carl had to get to the airport. Frank, Tom and John Bessai were all there. We got to talk more than we did at the other parties; less people, more about family

. Frank, Tom, and John Bessai

 

Diane has one of Margaret's watercolour snowman pieces from her 2001 show. We don't see it often. John bought it for her for her 70th birthday. 

 

I thought we were going to leave town but we decided at the last minute to drive downtown and find the new Art Gallery of Alberta building (with no address but for some vague description from teenagers at a coffee shop on Whyte who don't drive and hadn't been there). Somehow we managed to find it and saw a very good Warhol show. It had four of his toupees and a lot of his early drawings. It also had a number of films showing that I'd not seen including "Kitchen Party".

Warhol silver cloud pillows at AGA

We arrived in Saskatoon around 8:30 and saw Mike Grzesina's new condo. It is a very good place. William had a swim in his pool. We drove home to Regina, arriving late.

Reflecting

Today I spent too much money. Bought all the episodes of Poirot tv show on dvd as well as a small sliver extremely overpriced plastic to protect Margaret's new Ipod.
To cap it off, we went to the Mercury for supper (Margaret paid since I was griping too much) and I took this photo of William reflected in the glossy formica tabletop.
I also updated my website in a few places, added a page for the new Dunlop show as well as my "Rerun Amok" and "All the Boys are Called William" projects.

rain rain went away

Last night the power in our house went out for an hour from 10-11 and again a few minutes later for an hour and a half. It rained all night and was forecast for rain all day today. I took a chance and continued on my scheduled film shoot and got very lucky. Not a spot of rain from noon until four, allowing me to shoot both my Godard film and my One Take Super 8 film. Erik was a real trooper, thanks. Here we are shooting with Teagan and William using the Canon 5D and recording with the Ederol.

pre-party party

To shoot William's birthday film we have been connecting him up with his friends every day for play dates and clip capturing. Today Teagan and Daniel both arrived at the same time so it became an impromptu party and bar-be-que. After everyone else left, William opened the power miners exo-suit that Paul bought him. He built it while Paul and I restored the Crystal King. Who would win in a fight? No one knows for sure.

50% day

Tuesdays are my research days with Erik. For the first time this summer, it was sunny out so we grabbed all the stuff we needed to shoot some pinhole footage and headed into the country. We ended up in a small town about 20 minutes south east of Regina and we set up to shoot the grain elevator. However we couldn't get the battery belt to power the controller/motor. I opened up an ac adapter that plugs into the cigarette lighter and we ran the motor with that for 45 minutes (2 second exposures with an f70 pinhole and 10 iso black and white film). We cut that part of the day short and went back to town, shooting all the way. The long exposures from the moving car are a bit more interesting than regular pixilated ones but only by a bit. You don't really escape the cliche aspect of it, but worthwhile to know. Back in Regina we developed film. The titles for my35mm film didn't work because the bleach I used, which I thought still had some umph left in it, didn't. It was only a test and can be redone in 15 minutes, maybe tomorrow. The footage we shot today was okay, although perhaps a bit overexposed. We got ice cream. This evening I took William to the RPL and we watched puppet films. It was a show curated for kids (there were other adult shows that I missed) and while a couple films were worthwhile, many of them were very juvenile (animals singing in a barn? come on!)

portrait of my brain

This isn't really my brain, it just feels that way. I had a headache all night that kept me from sleeping. This morning William asked if we could watch "Alice in Wonderland" which I bought a couple of weeks ago but haven't opened yet. I was quite certain that he didn't want to watch it, being potentially creepy, so I gladly agreed. I quite enjoyed it and so did William. He wanted to re-watch the Mad Hatter scenes. My headache persisted but discovered that it was less when I was sitting upright so I slept in a chair all afternoon. This image is a photo Margaret took yesterday while working at Gerda's on paper making. It is by Gerry Ann Siwek: image of bunny from handmade paper with inclusions.

Attack from beyond!

At midnight last night I came down with a migraine. Unusual in that I rarely let one late at night but I guess there is no real pattern as I only get one every year or two nowadays. My morning was a wreck with a couple of commitments but stayed home for much of the afternoon. After school, William painted on the sidewalk along with dozens of other kids as part of the Connaught Library event for the Cathedral Arts Festival. His brain attack is above. I didn't hang around because my mom called last minute to ask if I'd help assemble her new gazebo. We got it half done. This evening we attended an opening of paintings of local houses by Jana Kutarna at the Mysteria Gallery on 13th (below with her two favorites - photo by William).

Victoria Day art creation

Victoria Day today. We went to the short parade on Elphanstone to open the Cathedral Village Arts Festival, then to the park and had some fun drawing with the "comic jam" run by Allan Dotson inside the Balkwill Centre. Later I took William to the playground where I shot 300 feet of film of him playing with trucks in the sand for my "Grain" project.

almost a day off

While it is true that I was in at work at 8 am and spent most of the AM touring a group of Saskatoon high school students our department (they have a great media program up there and the teachers are very supportive of our program) and then met with Erik Sirke whom I just hired to help with some of my research projects over the next two months, and I did spent two hours this afternoon authoring a dvd of class projects, and I did work with my dad discussing taxes and the renovation rebate, I feel like my vacation has begun!!! William and I built Lego for much of the later afternoon and part of the evening (the part where we weren't watching Gilliam's Baron Munchhausen) restoring some of his Indiana Jones Lego. Ah, the pleasure of it all (actually I really need a back rub and my eyes are aching from trying to find specific black pieces from a cubic foot of random black pieces). Summer.

My Birthday

I started off the day light: a quick cappuccino and a biscotti then out the door to meet to discuss avant garde film with Brett at the new Mercury Diner on 13th Ave. It was the perfect place to discuss nostalgia, which was central to out discussion today. The Mercury opened last week and is owned by the same guys that run the Novia. They've fixed it up really nice with red vinyl benches and lots of retro stuff.Since I'd worked late last night getting a draft of the curriculum report done (a week ahead of schedule), and had no meetings this afternoon, I blew off the rest of the day. Margaret had to work (owing to her forgetting a shift yesterday) so William and I went to "Clash of the Titans" in 3D. He was amazed at the new glasses style, having not seen a 3D movie since "Shark Boy and Lava Girl" with the two colour glasses. It was fun and not as intense as the previews had led me to believe.This evening we dropped in to Paul's place and watched the new episode of Dr. Who on our way to going swimming. In the end we decided not to swim (just as well, I have had a leg cramp for the past three hours) and came home where William and Paul played Lego (William got a Prince of Persia Lego set the other day - see above) and I made vanilla gelato.
Margaret is home now; we can now eat some of the amaretto cheesecake I made yesterday.