Monday, March 31, 2008

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William woke up at 7:30 this morning. Margaret had been planning to let him sleep as late as he needed to and had even left a message with the school in that regard, but he didn't need to miss any (not that he didn't want to...). I got my new video up on Youtube. This is the last episode of my "She Said" series, posted exactly 13 weeks into the year. I need to get to work on my new series, I had intended to write more while lying on the beach, but that didn't happen (I wrote a few lines, but nothing significant). Saw my doctor today, just to get referrals to see other medical people regarding my feet and my tri-glycerides. Margaret, William and I went to the big Gale's warehouse after school, amazing amount of stuff. I got some heart glitter for ray-o-grams and some needles for film scratching tools for after Christmas. Paul came over this evening and we all watched "How To Eat a Fried Worm" or whatever it was called. Not bad, although a bit drawn out.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

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The trip home was grueling, but we had bits of fun. We got on the bus at about 1am (it was late) and it took us to the airport where we found a huge line of people already waiting. Once in line, we noticed two things: the line was not moving and no one was being processed at the head of it, and that the schedule on the monitors said that our flight was delayed over 4 hours! We played cards on the floor for a while but eventually the line was processed and we got past security and were given ten dollars each in food vouchers. Of course this never goes far in an airport, but it covered a few pancakes (William's new obsession). Once on the plane, it took an hour to get the luggage on (they initially put the wrong luggage on our plane and had to swap around) then they had to fuel up. The crew on board were surprised we'd been waiting so long; they were only told at 1am to divert away from Ottawa and come to Cancun to pick us up. I am suspicious of the travel rep on the bus who didn't tell us about this, even though they must have known by then. The flight crew had no idea what the mix up was. Margaret hid the five "bobbleheads" that I bought yesterday inside William's rabbit puppet for him to find while on the plane, he was much happier with them than I could possibly have anticipated. He probably played with them for an hour. I thought he could share some with his friend Teegan (who collects them) but he lies them too much. Customs in Regina took 45 minutes since two planes arrived at the same time and there wasn't enough crew at the airport to unload luggage. I was at the house at a bit past four o'clock. In the end, the trip from hotel to home was 15 hours, with the flight being 4.5 hours of that. At least I could just go home, my sister Sharon had to drive back to Calgary after that as everyone had to work and go to school (7-8 hour drive).

Saturday, March 29, 2008

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Saturday, our last day, was pretty good. There was fun in the pool in the morning and an early lunch and cards for Margaret and the kids in the restaurant by the pool. The only mishap was when William convinced me to join him on the kids play structure. It is big and made of real stone, so I had no worries about climbing it, but my 18 year old nephew told me was too big for the spiral slide, so I wasn't doing any of that. However, I was convinced to go down one straight slide. It was only 10 feet long and wide, probably 7 or 8 feet, with water pumped down it continuously. No curves, no way to accidentally run into a kid, no problem. Wrong! The water slide aspect of it meant that I went fast, and unlike the regular pool, everything in the kids play area is shallow. I hit the 10 inches of water much faster than I'd ever have expected and skidded along the cement bottom on my right elbow. It still hurts and I cannot lean on it four days later as I write this. I drowned my pain with a couple of paralyzers (one vodka, one tequila - the latter was better) and some mescal and a silly thing called the Miami Vice which basically combines pina colata and strawberry dackari mix with some rum. I sat with Margaret and everyone with lunch but I opted to eat in the bigger dining hall (which doesn't serve until 12:30) primarily because I was still staking out the perfect video clip for She Said 13. I ended up using one I'd shot the day before by the pool, I ended up being a bit late for lunch and not many people were in appropriate positions. However, the great surprise was that they were finally serving mole', a really great Mexican dish made of a spicy (not sweet) chocolate sauce (see photo). I was in heaven. Last night was supposed to be "Mexican Friday" and staff wore traditional costumes (and the theatre played its rather uninspired traditional folk songs) but during my stop at the buffet after the Steakhouse I was told that mole' was not on the menu. Tanya told me last week that I could buy canned mole' at Tony's here in Regina, so I'll probably do that sometime.
We had our last meal at the very entertaining Japanese restaurant (see video of inverted onion slices with brandy on the stovetop).
After supper, my sister Sharon, her 18 year old son Chris, and I took a cab to the market on 5th avenue in the nearby city of Playa del Carmen. Our cab driver, "Burger", had a nice new car and a dvd player running concert videos. The laws in Mexico differ and he is allowed to have the screen installed in front so he can watch it while he drives. Chris and him talked music and they hit on a mutual interest, Guns and Roses, and in a moment he was running one of their early 90s concerts. Chris says he caught the whistle when he went to their show. The city shops were very touristy but a great experience. I was approached by my first crystal meth dealer (I just don't go into the right neighborhoods anymore), I bought some bobble-heads, and a $37 bottle of Tres Generations tequila (that Stephano our tour guide from Wednesday said was the best).
We checked out at midnight and waited in the lobby for the bus.

Friday, March 28, 2008

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Everyone stayed close to the resort on Friday. William's heat rash returned with a vengence; Margaret wrapped wet wash clothes on his arms to keep them cool and we stayed in the shade except for a few dips in the pool (which tended to cool him off well). There is a fairly big open air (roofed) restaurant off the pool area where we could eat and play cards much of the day. It rained a bit, but that didn't cool things off significantly. We got our picture taken with an iguana (getting smarter, had both of us in the picture so spent only $8). I talked at length with some storekeepers about a prominent image they sold drawings and sculptures of. It depicted an Aztec warrior holding a sleeping Mayan princess in his arms. One foot of his is on a stone. She wears a crown. It is apparently a tragic love story, Romeo and Juliet-like. I didn't buy any copies of it and can't seem to locate it on the internet (I will keep searching, but the language barrier got in the way again, preventing me from fully understanding the names and reliance). We ate at the steakhouse, it was good but less exciting than the other restaurants. I went to see the stage show but found it dull. Apparently it was the worst of the week, so I chose poorly. I didn't stay to the end.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

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On Thursday for breakfast I sampled the honey that is always available beside the syrup, wondering if it is from the native bees that live here. The language barrier came into play, questions of this nature can never be answered by the staff. They will confirm that what I am eating is honey, but nothing about its source. The most important trade item the Mayans had was honey, as they had no metals and the shallow soil made agriculture limited (which in turn is likely a key reason for the collapse of their cities). We saw the bees along the path, they create large hives of their own in the trees, probably 2 feet across. These bees are small, the size of house flies, and do not sting. The honey I ate was dark and intuition tells me that it is honey from regular, domesticated bees such as we have here (European in origin), since the honey was plentiful and to be poured freely onto pancakes.
Sharon bought a blow up raft for the pool; I floated on it for a while and I think it was responsible for my rubbing of my sunscreen off the front of my shoulders and my only sunburn of the trip. I got a lot of sun today. Grandma (my mom) gave William a small, second-hand Star Wars Lego set, he went out of his mind with joy. We made him wait until after lunch (for Siesta) to assemble it. I made sure the parts were all apart and he put it together while I napped - a nap I really needed since I got up at 5:30 in the morning for no good reason. My ears still have not opened up since the flight and when I'm tired I get cranky for being so unable to hear people.
After supper at the seafood restaurant, we played cards in the lobby (see below). William was tired so I took him back to the room and we both were asleep by 9:15.

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Today we took a trip to see the Mayan ruins at Coba. These were really amazing, we were able to climb the tallest pyramid in the region (took twice as long to got back down). The tour guide, Stephano, was from Italy and he gave a lot of information although I felt some items were more myth than fact. I began to notice the complete absence of any books for sale about Mexico, either in Spanish or English. I think someone could do well selling coffee table books to tourists. We also went to a village and met a real Mayan family. They live in complete squaller. We were told not to give them money because they were supposed to earn it and not get lazy. The soil is only a few inches thick but they live on food from their yard and a bit of extra earned from these tours and from weaving hammocks. A hammock takes about 40 hours to create and they get 25% of the sale - they go for 20-30 dollars in the market. That's about 15 cents per hour. Apparently, about 70% of Mexicans are either aboriginal or of mixed blood and could claim aboriginal status if they wanted to. As a result, there is no distinction made, no history of reservations or that sort of thing. The Mayan language still exists and, due to the fact that this region has no gold or silver, they were never aggressively conquered. The 3.5 million pure blood Mayas along this coast cling to some traditions, but their cities fell before Columbus and their vast number of books were burned by the Spanish (I believe under orders from the pope). We also went for a swim in the healing waters of a sink hole; these holes are abundant in this area, they are spots were the vast number of underground rivers hit the surface. William got a heat rash on his face and arms. In the evening we were pretty tired but we played cards with the whole family in the lobby.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

267

First thing this morning (7am) my brother-in-laws Paul and Al went to the beach and reserved 10 of the lounge chairs and guarded them until we could all go out there a couple of hours later. It was our plan to spend the whole day in the sand and surf. However, the wind decided this was the day for it to cool off. Not that it was really cold, probably 27 or 28 degrees, but the wind made you feel cold and uncomfortable, especially if you were wet. We spent the morning there. Margaret went the resort store and bought a cheap plastic bucket and a couple shovels for sand castle work, billing the $15 dollars to the room. I was a bit outraged at the price, but I found things of that nature to be similarly high priced when I went to town a few days later. I picked up the pictures of William and Michelle with the monkey that were taken on Monday night after supper - they are show with no commitment or even name taken but cost $8 per print, no negotiating. Steep by Mexican pricing but not really bad. Monkey's hands are really warm and they feel wonderful when they are on you. After supper we spent the evening in our room with all the kids and played cards and watched "Goldfinger". William seemed really pumped, even though he discovered the tradition of the siesta (see above) but eventually fell asleep this night between Michelle and Sean. "Old Maid" became the game of choice, it has no winners, just one loser.

Monday, March 24, 2008

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On the second day in Mexico, after trying in vain to avoid drinks with ice in them, I was informed that all the water being used was bottled, including pitchers of drinking water poured at the tables and all of the ice made in the whole hotel. William and I watched a few minutes of Tv, we caught some Mexican wrestling where they wear the masks and all that. The ring has 6 sides and the action is fun and not nearly as believable as the WWF!!! We spent most of the day at the pool. There were a number of pools, there was one for swimming laps (my sisters, brothers in laws, and my nephew Sean spent lots of time doing that, I didn't), there was a kids water park with a big structure and small water slides, and there were two large pools that spanned much of the complex. These large pools were 4 feet deep throughout, so William was generally able to keep his face above water when standing on his toes. Again, great food. I took a chance on a desert at lunch time, it was a small cake shaped like a strawberry with a red glaze covering it. Just looking at it made a bit queezy, knowing how sweet it was going to be - but I only thought I knew. It proved to be a subtle, flavorful treat that I could have eaten 10 of, had one not completely satisfied me. The deserts, which are available with every meal, were generally all of the best quality I've ever found, better than any I've found in any bakery in my life. While some were flavors I didn't prefer, they were always a nice experience. That night my family had reservations at one of the restaurants for 9:30, so we didn't go but rather spent time with the kids. After supper we took William and my niece Michelle and nephew Quinn to the beach to look at stars but were distracted by a fountain that sprayed out of the sidewalk along the way. The kids (and eventually Margaret) ran through it and stood on the jets, screaming and laughing until they were completely soaked. We went back to our room and played cards until their parents were finished at the Italian restaurant.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

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I'm going to do something I've avoided in the past, I'm going to be altering the posting dates of this and the next few postings to give you updates on the vacation I just returned from. Since it is clear who I am and where I live, it is inadvisable to announce in my blog when I intend to leave town. Last Sunday, March 23, I went with my entire family (15 of us in all, everyone except my niece Nicole) to a five star resort on the Mayan Riviera in Mexico. The flight out there was delayed four hours, so we had to be at the airport closer to midnight rather than 8. William and I went to bed early and got some rest, Margaret was the trooper and got the packing finalized. Arriving there was pretty amazing, the heat was expected but still surprising. We also didn't have our room until 6, so we spent the afternoon in long pants eating from the amazing restaurant and drinking fruity drinks. After supper we took a walk on the beach in the dark and looked at the stars. We got back today, March 30, and faced similar delays with the plane so I'm too tired to continue my description of the trip today.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

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Our flight out of town is delayed, so our vacation won't start until 5 am now. I'll be away a few days and if I can't find a computer, I may have my first gap in the blog (I'm not taking a computer, just a pad of paper). I don't know if you have looked at the video I posted last night, but someone did. It got over 2800 hits in the first nine hours! Not many hits since then, but I didn't even have "sex" in the title! I made the technical corrections to Tanya's dvd this afternoon, and while the machines did their bit, I shot more animation with the puppet/doll Frederick, the apple-headed character who is the Golem of Sock's creator (the same character seen as a drawing in my blog a few days ago). He is pretty inflexible as his body is made of coat hanger wire covered with loose clothing. I was fantasizing about a full production with these characters in which I could get fully jointed armatures for each of them, then put apple heads on top. Collision of old and new technologies just cracks me up. Here is a clip before I start removing backgrounds and that sort of stuff.

Friday, March 21, 2008

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Good Friday, but I spent the first few hours of the day at work, trying to fix the glitches in Tanya's compilation tape I was helping her with. We got it cut, but the dvd creation hasn't worked well and I'll have to go back tomorrow. William stayed home, ran around in the yard a bit, and watched more Munsters.
I finished my new video, finally back on schedule. Here it is:

Thursday, March 20, 2008

262

I posted my new video today, the third last in this "She Said..." series. We coloured Easter eggs at our house this afternoon (I know June will flag this as another "egg" event, but what am I supposed to say, that we coloured Easter doorknobs?). I had to cut out early as we scheduled a Filmpool meeting for 3pm. This evening we watched the first 3 episodes of the Munsters season1. I enjoyed it, not profound but fair innocent tv, William was into it and kept asking to see more episodes. He refused to watch even a second episode of H.R.Pufnstuf, which I value for nostalgic reasons but am fascinated by today for it's audacious surrealism hiding beneath a candy coating.

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Screened my new cut of the End of Life project, it went generally well although I feel strongly that it remains far too long (I cut it from 2.5 hours to 1.5 hours but think taking another 30 minutes will do it good). We also met with an artist who is going to do some interpretations of Elder Betty's dream that she feels is associated with this project; I think this will help us set the tone and separate the project from other informational films.
This evening I went to the Filmpool premier screening. Lots of good films, but I was certainly struck by both Surviving the Tribulation by Dylan Worts and Brent Braaten and Shuya Show, a gut bursting comedy done as if it were an eastern European film badly translated to English by Jason Shabatoski, David Stefanyshyn, and Jon Tewksbury. This last one I am looking forward to seeing the longer, 47 minute cut of, every scene hit. The only thing that bothered me about the screening was the lack of experimental films. It might just be the timing, but it also might be an affect of the shift to video screenings in some way. More thoughts on this later.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

260

Today I got the new cut of the End of Life conference video authored to dvd. It is starting to look okay. John Hampton shot some great looking smoke for me. I had great shape although it was too fast. To make it seem more meditative, I've slowed it to half speed, it's almost impossible to tell. This is just used over the titles and intertitles, but it makes a difference. I'm scheduled to show it at our meeting with the elders tomorrow, so it's obviously been weighing on my mind.
While waiting for a render, I searched my office for the Golem of Socks again and finally found it. I was mistaken about having seen it recently, as it was in a box I've not opened in about a year. I shot a bit of animation with it, although at the end I realized I didn't have his flag stuffed into his head (how can one fly without a flag?). I'll be using him in some web videos later this year.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

259

I got a message from Adam Budd today, he's a young filmmaker and performance artist as well as being the co-star of Mark Wihak's "River". He's out in Montreal now, trying to find his path I imagine. He's brave and bold, more than I was at his age or even now, so I'm certain he'll make his name known soon enough.
I spent time at the university today, preparing the edit for the End of Life screening/meeting/discussion on Wednesday. John delivered a tape of smoke (sans mirrors) to help give some style to the otherwise talking head piece. While the machines were doing their thing, I almost caught up with my filing. I have so many papers on my desk and in boxes on my office floor that I can hardly stand going there. It's taken me 8 months to file, and I'm not even generating any new paper there. I also spent more time trying to find the Golem of Socks doll/puppet. I know it is somewhere safe, but cannot find it to save my life. I search the house and decide it must be at the office, then search the office and decide I must have it at home. Grrrrr.
Margaret and I finished watching episode 9 of Torchwood season 2 tonight, dying to see more.
Based on something Paul told me about search engines only looking at sites that are updated, I've taken to going into my old blogs and adding new material. It's like a treasure hunt: I added a new piece of video to a previous blog this evening.

Monday, March 17, 2008

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Kevin got back from Disneyland and surrounding parks such as Legoland. He brought me a Lego foam pirate clever, it's amazing. When I got home with it I discovered that Margaret had set his last gift on fire, or at least charred it beyond recognition. Sorry Kev, she forgot to remove it when she put the oven into cleaning mode.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

257

Today I bought William the giant Harry Potter Hogwarts Lego set that was on half price at Toys-R-Us and Paul came over and we built it. This evening we went to the Dunlop and to the Neutral Ground art openings, both good shows. The Dunlop show is on contemporary independent Canadian comic books. The gallery is filled with pillars with alcoves in them in which stacks of comics are stored. There are lots of comfortable places to sit and read them. There is no original artwork up, the curator claimed that this fetishizes the process, and instead presents only the comics as they were published.

256 test for Sock character animation in 3D

Finally started finishing some things today, delivered Tanya's disc she needs to her, and delivered all the work for New Dance Horizons to them. I can now purge my drives of all the material there and start on something fresh. At home I began trying to work with the 3D features in After Effects. Instead of the layers being flat on top of each other, they have a Z axis as well to allow the layers to be further from or closer to the camera. I've not figured out the viewpoint yet. I'd like to build the town out of tin buildings and let the characters move throughout them, but it seems you need to keep track of where the buildings are because if you don't, your moving characters will simply pass through them.
The BFA show opened at the MacKenzie Art Gallery tonight. I went alone, got Allan Dodson for my Warhol series. The art was very good, probably the best graduating show I've seen in many years.
Margaret and I watched two more episodes of Torchwood season 2 (thanks for downloading them Paul), both of tonights were tragic and more than a little melodramatic.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

255

I bought and assembled a new chair for my computer today. It's not that I had a bad chair, but it was actually too big for the small space I have, so I often had to sit awkwardly to type. There was a sale, so I impulse bought. I might get William a new chair tomorrow as well. Felipe called me from the Filmpool and asked if I'd write program notes for an Ian Toews screening. As I'd planned to write an article on Toews in the near future, I said I'd be delighted. I've got about 4 weeks. I have the first two of three New Dance dvds done, and the third is probably done (left at lab burning, haven't picked it up and tested it yet). Paul came over and ate cheesecake, played Lego, and now we'll watch Torchwood.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

254

A busy day, the Avids at work seemed to be functioning well today, I made one of the three New Dance dvds, and left a second one burning - it should be done as well. I should be able to purge those drives tomorrow and get on to other stuff. I just finished my new "She Said..." video. This required me to figure out how to do traveling mattes, which were easier than I first anticipated. There are no Daleks in it, but I did use some inexplicable sound effects that were vaguely reminiscent of Dr. Who and I do find that a popular reference in the title helps get hits. William had to go the dentist again to have a casting made of his missing teeth for a spacer. The last time this happened he was traumatized, but this time it seemed quick and fun and he declared it the best trip to the dentist ever. In anticipation of it being a bad experience, I rented a movie, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. It looked great, and I even sort of liked the script (writing was okay even though it was just a watered down Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and I liked the cast except Dustin Hoffman. For being the most experienced actor in the cast, he gave a terrible performance. He gave himself some ridiculous lisp and was never endearing. William and I then baked an amaretto cheesecake for tomorrow (sure be great to snack on during Torchwood).

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

253

As I write this, William is in bed, supposed to go to sleep. He says he's sad and lonely. He says he is slad.
This evening I went to the "Unscripted" session at the Dunlop Art Gallery. Some interesting points were made about art and cities, but it wasn't the madhouse that I heard the last session was. I began grabbing interesting words from the air to create a new "Mr. Saul" film, probably for the Cathedral festival. I also convinced Jeannie Mah, Elwood Jimmy, and Lorne Boeg to appear in my Modern/Warhol video/films. Margaret and I saw the Warhol exhibit today (her for the first time, me for the second) and I spent most of the time watching the 90 minutes of films I'd not had time for previously. I realized, while watching them, that I shouldn't be doing a 10 minute set of portraits in Warhol style, but obviously I should do 15! I'm calling the set "15 minutes of famous". My role call is now Tyler Banadyga, Leesa Streifler, Eric Hill, Carle Steel, William, me, the three new ones, and six more I've not shot yet. Margaret will be one of them, that leaves five.
I thought I had one of the three dvds done for New Dance Horizons today, but when I looked at it, the image disappears inexplicably after the first two minutes. I recall there was some sort of error when exporting the video, but it looked in tact. I guess I was lazy and didn't check it far enough in. Grrrr. I need this done and deleted off the hard drive so I can move on.
Saw my doctor this morning, he says there's nothing too wrong with my liver (recall test with giant needle a couple of weeks ago) but abnormalities could be from some fat on my liver and I should look into my levels of triglycerides. Hitting the books again I guess.

252

I went back to my eye doctor today, he'll have to order a new contact for my left eye, probably a larger one (in size, not magnification) to get rid of the double vision I had with it. I also got a pair of reading glasses today; they are a bit disconcerting. As I mentioned once before, my eyes don't correct with glasses, so the effect of these are to sharpen my vision but not quite get it in focus. In-between vision. I started going through my tax stuff. The glasses helped in seeing the tiny faded print on receipts, but otherwise just got tangled in my hair.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

251

The weather was great, we drove around for a while taking pictures of snowmen (found 4 or 5) and went to the museum. I was going to meet with Tanya to edit some video together but she's sick and didn't want to get us sick. I found out the other day that her roommate is Scott Fulton, brother of Shawn. This afternoon I shot another "Hot Wheels" movie with William, this time alone rather than with Daniel. However, things went smoother so there weren't any crashes, just a quick race and narration. This made it a bit less dynamic, but he liked it anyways. I used to think it would be a great job just to be someone's personal filmmaker, following them around and making home movies or whatever they wanted (presumably someone rich), but of course job openings of that sort don't arise often.

This evening we watched The Black Hole, the Disney film from the early 80s. On some levels I liked it, it was really old fashioned in that Forbidden Planet sort of way, but with much better effects. However, it became impossible to watch it without wondering about so many technical things like when asteroids start hitting the ship, why all the air isn't sucked out in a moment. Why the woman with ESP is always surprised when men walk up behind her. And why an old ship that was not supposed to have artificial gravity (since the newer one didn't have it) has a chandelier hanging in the dining room?

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Friday, March 7, 2008

249

I went to a foot expert today, Ernie Klinger, since my left foot aches on and off over the past year. He's of the opinion that my arches have fallen very far and I'll need some better support..... Gee, I can't make an interesting story out of this, a sore foot just isn't very dramatic.

William did his oration with his class today, we went. They did Shel Silverstein's "Snowball". I had recorded it last night, just him alone, and it is up on my profile page on Facebook. I'm not sure if you have to be a facebook member or not to see this page, but here it is.

Mostly I worked on my website today. Except for the film title list, the site is now done (of course I keep thinking of new things to add, but that doesn't count).

Just noticed that I'm quoted by Alex MacKenzie in his website.
I also just notice a film of mine (Final: Toxic 6) at a festival a few months ago that I don't recall entering.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

248

I worked with Tanya for a while this morning putting some of her dance footage together in preparation for a new grant. I might be more involved with this one from the start, although we've not spent much time discussing it yet. Mostly we struggled with the technology, trying to get some vhs footage into the computer. Once we'd figured it out, I also digitized a clip from "Small Town Coffee Stories", the last clip on my list to get.
This afternoon I finished my weekly video, AM I THE EGGMAN. Leading up to it, I had Margaret throw a dozen eggs at me and I blew up another egg in the microwave, most of which is just chalked up to experience and isn't up on the screen. I've recorded my next chapter but I don't have the non-fat condensed milk required to shoot it.
Paul was sick today so didn't come over for supper, but his brother Mike was in town so he came over as substitute-Paul. We had mango chicken.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

247

I got new contact lenses yesterday but the left one isn't sitting right and I've got double vision with it. The doctor thought it might settle after I wore it a while, but after 12 hours I just had a headache. Today I'm only wearing the right one. We are wondering how many days/weeks/months I would have to do this before it seemed natural?
Today I finished editing the videos I shot documenting the secret garden dancing last year. Mostly it was just trimming head/tail of single performances, but I did do some editing on the big pelican performance since I was able to shoot it twice, once at the rehearsal and again later in that day. Other performances that were done twice didn't intercut well as the time of day differed too much (evening/day), but this big piece was in full day on the creek and looks pretty good. This afternoon I created my new video, but the sound isn't recorded so it's not posted yet.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

246

I tried to get my new video done but just couldn't get it right. Instead, I made this (unworthy to post as my weekly video, but might as well blog it). From lack of movement, the compression went crazy on it, very pixilated. Oh well.

Monday, March 3, 2008

245

Was in edit room much of the day, I had Trudy there starting to put detail such as titles into the End of Life work, and I was finally catching up on some of the dance videos I shot last year. I'm fairly happy with what I've done with Tanya's dance, but I still haven't handed the tapes I shot of New Dance Horizons Secret Garden dances over to them yet. I wanted to do some tweaking. It'll take another day to finish that up, perhaps later this week.

Margaret noticed this in the Princess Auto flier this week.


note: "hoarding"...? Margaret thinks they must really know their customers well.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

245

It was cold again today so I stayed home while Margaret went to work. I tried to figure out how to bring an Excel spreadsheet into my web site. I could bring it in, but it no longer functioned as a spreadsheet and so would be very difficult to modify as well as to create versions of. If I had no need for future updates, I could go through the work of establishing the links to the one hundred films listed, three times, once for chronological listing, once for alphabetical, and a third time for genre. However, as I do want the ability to update and I don't want to set up 300 links, I think I will seek help.
Daniel came over. I finished a video I shot of William and him playing with cars, it's fun. However, I forgot to ask Leesa permission to post it, so I won't. I did put together this silent time laps of building the submarine that went with the shark William got from the tooth fairy. I think that the shark is the favorite animal of the tooth fairy, it looses teeth its whole life. Maybe she recycles children's teeth into teeth for them...?

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Chrystene was out shooting the last of her pick-ups for Sisu today. I wasn't able to join her, but the weather was good so I hope it went well. William was finally back to normal today, the tooth pulling thing threw him off a bit, and this being a five day weekend for him made it all a bit strange. As it is Saturday and there are colour comics, William went and drew his own. I try to "read" the images, but am invariably wrong. Then he told me the story so I ran and got the recorder and got him to repeat it (although many things changed in that 3 minutes between then). See video below.

I got into the edit room and finished my pass over the End of Life video. I have it down to 90 minutes, although I was hoping for 10-15 minutes off of that. Next step is to start making it look snazzier, some titles, graphics, 2nd unit images, etc. I also brought home the last of the web clips for my site, I now have all the content except new ideas that keep popping into my head, so all I need is my interface for indexing the film lists. Hopefully soon. Then I will be ready to put it on-line. I'm only days away!

We watched "The Mouse on the Moon" this evening. I've had it sitting on the hard drive for a couple of months, avoiding watching it since the disappointment of "The Mouse That Roared". These were both very funny when I was young, but Peter Sellers just seemed overdone and un-funny in the first of these films. The second does not have Sellers, but was directed by Richard Lester. He seemed to find humour in the script, rather than Sellers's posing, and in the end it was interesting for William (although he was upset that the rocket wouldn't go faster) and for us, as the political satire was nearly in tact.