A new Lego video that I think is funny.

the next generation?

still in a fog

I missed my regular meeting with Janine this morning, mainly due to the fact that I'm in a fog and can't seem to snap out of it. I have some lucid moments, fortunately one came after I got her email saying that she'd given up waiting for me and sent me the documents she needed me to read and I then promptly read them and gave my comments. Hopefully that will make up for my absence a bit. I've finished one of my three syllabi, two more to go. William has retro-70s day tomorrow, so of course it lands on me to find stuff. I have a great peace sign and my basketball jacket from the 78-79 year (we were city champs, no thanks to me). I'll post a photo tomorrow.

school

William went to school this afternoon. He said he felt "fine" and that he wanted to go, but reports are that he was in a bad mood, "not 100%" . I guess he's still sick. Margaret has thoughts about keeping him out of school tomorrow. I have opinions that I'm beginning to doubt. I appreciate a upper case Sick, like the ear infection the other day, or the chicken pox, or plague or whatever. If William was upper-case Sick, then we could watch tv all day long in the spirit of resting. When he's just-a-bit-out-of-sorts-lower-case sick, then it's more questionable how much fun staying home should be.
I was teaching tonight, second last week of term has begun. I'm sick (lower case) and could barely hold myself upright most of the day. My thermos of quadruple espresso pulled me out of that, as usual.

New Lego posting

This morning William slept in and we were going to rush him to school as he said he felt up to it. Margaret called ahead and found out that the students were mostly in the gym all morning watching movies while teachers met with their students individually regarding goal setting. This seemed a low priority for rushing so we took it easy, ate some breakfast, had a freaking wonderful cookie I made last night which is basically a merange and Belgium chocolate cookie, and we built a bit of Lego. I need to work on my syllubi now, but first I posted the Sherlock Holmes Lego onto William's blog.

revised Dr. Who

I revised the Dr. Who Lego video that I put on William's blog yesterday and threw it up on Youtube with a much more satisfying background. It's also shorter.

repeats

Today William and I watched some Dr. Who, which was a repeat for me of course as I need to pick and choose from episodes to find ones that won't upset him too much (many of the new episodes are quite frightening). We watched the two part season ender to the first season where Rose is disintegrated in the game show but in actuality is teleported to the Dalek ship. The Doctor rescues her and sends her back home so to make a last stand against the Daleks but she realizes that she is the Bad Wolf and returns to save everyone, except the doctor who is killed and regenerates. Some thrills, but also a key episode for showing parts of the mythology. Then we made cookies, repeating the same recipe from last week. William is getting better quickly, now that he has drugs from the doctor (not Dr. Who, a real doctor) yesterday. I finally picked the video on Lego Tardis back up and am trying to finish it. For a 36 second clip for William's blog, I've killed much too much time on it. I'm trying a bunch of things I've never tried before in trying to construct the background, although I'm still far from satisfied.

strange

William has an ear infection and stayed home all day. Margaret was at a workshop for work all day, so I stayed home. Not feeling great myself, so it was good to have a rest. William was wondering about Dr. Strange's mentor and we have to question who names their baby "the Ancient One"?

it's who you know

I conducted a grant assessment/jury workshop in class today, something I've done twice before. Each of the students writes a short grant application and I copy them without the student's names on them and they all read them and discuss whether they should fund them. This year I mixed three old ones in, two which received positive feedback and one less popular one. Even though back four years ago when they were written the same conditions applied, the reaction to these was significantly different. The students somehow didn't trust these additions, doubting the ability of the filmmakers. It's quite ironic in that they doubted the feasibility of a project that ended up being completed on even less resources than listed in the application they read.

even sicker

I'd hoped William would be better today but he was worse. He complained of an ear ache which eventually became a headache. I had to work (met with Mauricio and gave him notes on next changes to workshop video, amongst other things) so Margaret was home all day with him. This evening he missed his much loved acting class. Margaret and I both had commitments so luckily Margaret's mother came and watched him.

home sick

William stayed home sick today, which tied me home in the afternoon as well. We listened to some audio plays off the computer but I refused to put any tv on; being home just-a-bit-sick must not seem too pleasurable, else he'll have ailments more often. Taught tonight. Some Sherlock Holmes (on right now) with Margaret while we munch on naniamo bars, yum.

meetings

This afternoon the screening of the workshop video to the elders went well. I stopped at the Filmpool on my way home to review my notes with Gordon regarding the Filmpool five year plan as I couldn't attend the meeting this evening. I wanted to get William to sleep early so I had him in the shower at 6:15 when the Filmpool called, unable to get quarum for the Board, I conferenced called for 2 hours. Bed is now finally made after big milk spill in it this morning, so I think I'll use it.

cookies

William wanted to experiment with baking today, so we made cookies. I made suggestions as to ingredients, beginning with the idea that cookies are made of sugar, flour, egg, and butter. Proportions and specific ingredients after that were mostly his own. here it is:
William’s Crazy Chocolate Coconut cookies

½ cup butter, softened
½ cup white sugar (heaping)
2 eggs
½ cup coconut, shredded and sweetened
1 cup flour, heaping
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla
½ cup mini m&ms

Turn on your oven, so it can pre-heat to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Using your stand mixer, cream the sugar and butter together really well.
Add the eggs, and vanilla. Mix some more.

Add remaining ingredients and mix well.

Now, spoon a blob of batter into your hands, and roll it into an eye-ball sized sphere, and place onto your cookie sheet. Keep your blobs about 2 inches apart, to allow the cookie to spread.

Once your sheet is covered in blobs, you can place it into the 375 degree oven, and bake for 9 minutes.

Do some lego while you wait.

When the cookies are done, take your cookie sheet out of the oven, and let the cookies cool for 5 minutes before you try to move them onto cooling racks.

They turned out great.

annoying artifact

Last night we caught up on "Life", Margaret and my favorite show these days. We were behind because I missed an episode when they moved to Wednesday. Luckily Paul had recorded it on his computer. Less luckily, the episode title: "Jackpot", which was in the opening shot of the recording, remained burned in to the image for the entire hour. It often seemed appropriate as the word situated itself on top of various people in the frame, often people who had won jackpots.

annoying artifact

Last night we caught up on "Life", Margaret and my favorite show these days. We were behind because I missed an episode when they moved to Wednesday. Luckily Paul had recorded it on his computer. Less luckily, the episode title: "Jackpot", which was in the opening shot of the recording, remained burned in to the image for the entire hour. It often seemed appropriate as the word situated itself on top of various people in the frame, often people who had won jackpots.

Art openings

Two big gallery events today: Loretta's reception following her MFA defense at the MacKenzie preceded the African video show curated by Sheila Petty at the Dunlop. Margaret had to work so William and I swooped past both of them and chatted a bit, but didn't stay long. We watched Curious George when we got home, even though he's not really interested in cartoons most days. They were watching episodes of the new Curious George tv show while the class was being tested for reading levels individually outside of the classroom, so he'd developed a fondness for it. He's never read the books and, even though I have one in the house somewhere, I don't think I read itto him more than once.

it's not thursday unless...

Met with Mauricio this morning and we worked together to get some last minute changes to the End of Life workshop video before we show it to the elders next week. Half hour after Mauricio left town I noticed that one of the title we discussed was overlooked, so I'll have to get to that later. I showed Carl Bessai's Out of Orbit McLuhan documentary in class today. Interesting to see a slightly younger Elizabeth McLuhan in there; I'd not watched it in a couple of years - since before I'd met her. Was going to bake this evening but built Lego for first time in a month instead. Put two of the Mars Mission sets together that have been in pieces for about a year.

Baking

I baked a cheesecake for Margaret to take to work tomorrow. I never take baking to my work.

Rememberance Day

Caught up on a few letters and put my three year binder of academic support material together today, as well as made Naniamo bars (see blog this time last year) from my mom's recipe. William had friends over and I slipped out and did some shopping.

Christmas baking

I made cookies today while working on a report from home. Roads were really icy so I didn't go out until the afternoon. Does it count as Christmas baking if there is no snow on the ground and I wasn't listening to Christmas music? I did draw the recipe from my really great "Christmas Cookies" book. We went to the MacKenzie Art Gallery this afternoon and saw Loretta Paoli's MFA show. It fit into Margaret's obsession about time travel, I think she's becoming disconnected from the time/space continuum these days. Yesterday she wanted to turn a block before our turn, think we were 20 seconds in the future. What is next?!?

Lazy Sunday

I was the first to get dressed in our household at 2:30pm when I went to visit Donovan's film set as he shoots his Film 400 project. William put on pants when we were required to go to Margaret's parents house at 6pm, after the sun was down. I baked biscotti and worked on my Midsummer Nights Dream screen adaptation."The smallest biscotti".

busy Saturday

William and I spent our morning in pajamas watching (most of) Return of the King. This afternoon we went swimming - he forgot his goggles and was really grumpy about it so Margaret went and got them and then he had a great time. After supper we went to a house warming party that William didn't want to go to but then met kids of an economics professor there and didn't want to leave. We had to go early as we had tickets, complements of Margaret's mom, for the symphony. Just as I have found that I see films through William's eyes, I heard this symphony (Tchaikovsky's fifth) through his ears. He was restless and couldn't wait for it to end. When does that symphony end? It keeps promising to end, but then just keeps going and going like the damn rabbit. William played with Ed Willet's daughter during intermission and after the show so he ended up enjoying the evening after all.

Sherlock Holmes

Last night I presented some films at the "Re-Examining Arthur Conan Doyle: An International Symposium" a the University of Regina. Here is what I said.

New student video site

This evening was the One Take Super 8 Event. It went well. William stayed for the whole thing for the first time. luckily he has no school tomorrow as it didn't end until 10:30. My film was in focus, although a couple of the mirror shots were too dark. It went well.

i've set up a new youtube site where my students are required to post the assignment i gave them, which was to draw images from the public domain internet.org site and make a found footage video. They are also required to give an image back to the world, uploading it to the same site. the videos they made will be HERE.

Watson presentaton

I finished writing a draft of my presentation on Holmes and Watson I'm reading on Friday night. I'll have to time it, am getting worried that I'm too wordy and I think they are just there to watch a movie. I have clips selected (except for a Rathbone episode which I can't face right now). Tomorrow I'll need to collect the clips onto one disc and test the disc, then I'll be ready.
William's friend Rowan was sick this evening so William went to acting class alone. Actually, it wasn't acting but theatre: they spent the hour doing paper mache, creating a set piece for their end of term project (a huge flower, William made four petals). William's new teacher is Daniel Maslany who was a student of mine a couple years ago. The world turns.

Dr. Watson I presume

I'm almost ready for my Sherlock Holmes presentation on Friday night, but still wanting to watch a couple of more things. My talk is half written. I'll still need to copy the clips onto one dvd for convenience, otherwise I'll be cuing up disc after disc and will get all off track. Presenting to Phd's is making me nervous.
I taught all evening so didn't turn on the US election at all. Glad, would rather just read about it in the morning once votes are actually all in.

cable guy

The cable guy was on time today. Last night i called because I lost the internet, even though the tv was still working. He replaced a few of the connectors and the modem, it's working great now. I realized last night as I was forced to use the phone to get my internet fixed that I'd gladly give up the phone and use only the internet.
Yesterday we cleaned up the yard, got the garage mostly empty so we can use it, and put stuff away for the winter. Today, as predicted, was rainy.

Áll Saint's Day

It's Thomas and Veronica's last day in town and we converged on Paul's house for an intro game of Agricola, which was pretty interesting. Mike was in town too. William played Lego and watched Attack of the Clones. At 5:00 everything crashed as Margaret was finished work but I wanted to finish the game (was on second last round) and William suddenly crashed from lack of good food. He had to hold out until my parents' church fowl supper at 6:30, after which he was good again and we hit a little party at Terry and Rudy's followed by a drop in at our next door neighbors' Halloween bash in their garage (two bands). William was almost begging to go to bed.