Tuesday, May 31, 2011

dollars to doughnuts

Bit of frustration today. I worked at home in the morning and went to the office in the afternoon to shoot more Sockvile images. However, I had forgotten that I had stopped last week on account of not having any more of this fake moss we'd bee using as ground cover. The students got it from a dollar store. I had to leave again to look for some but couldn't remember where a dollar store was. The south Albert Street one burned down and I thought there was one near the Harbour Landing Walmart but there wasn't. The 13th avenue one is gone and there isn't one at on Broadway anymore either, although they are wrapping one of their apartment buildings in plastic along there. Gales didn't have what I wanted. I finally went to the east end and found it, although the search of the store was annoying and the wait in line was unbearable. I think in hell everyone has to shop exclusively at the dollar store.I didn't get doughnuts.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

soup

Filmpool AGM today, was re-elected to Board.
William made soup for supper, a tomato base with basil and parsley dried from our garden last year. It was very good. 



Saturday, May 28, 2011

Saturday

Today was the final day of the Cathedral Festival. Margaret was there all day, primarily with the art croquet. I took William and we connected up with two of his friends. They really liked watching the melee battles with the Society of Creative Anachronism. Eventually we ended up at our house, so I basically listened to the boys role play some sort of cyborg battle story for five hours. This evening we watched "The Illusionist", Sylvain Chomet follow up to "The Triplets of Belville". It was great. Certainly unconventional in its story, a bit melancholy but amazing.

Friday, May 27, 2011

cold returns


Perhaps it was the rain, perhaps something else, but I was cold and unenthusiastic all day. I did manage to shoot more backgrounds for Sockvile but only after sitting and staring at them them for most of an hour. I did a couple of variations on the opening title, on strings and again on sticks.This evening at the festival the Filmpool did their screening under the stars. I showed a shortened episode of Professor Delusia because they were looking for one minute films, twenty in all, to celebrate the festival's 20th ear. It was raining and cold and the blues band (and I should note that I'm not a fan of blues bands at the best of times) played too loud and ran an hour past the scheduled end time. William didn't mind it for a while, he grooved with the tunes (see video below). Filmpool had to wait to screen after that. Ug.


Thursday, May 26, 2011

a day behind

Late last night I realized that today would be Thursday and I hadn't done my prep to teach. The holiday and the teachers strike has put me a day off kilter. Worked out okay, we had film processing to do and we watched the early Bunuel films "L'Age Dor" and "Land without Bread". This evening was some more festival, a walk down 13th ending at the candy store and free caramel covered marshmallows (hand made and much better than they sound).

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

on the road?

Today was the last day for the main Sockvile design team. Emily and Noelle are leaving town and have completed most of the necessary sets and backgrounds. I photographed some of them last week and will need another day to shoot these.
This evening we went to a couple more events on 13th Ave, an opening at Mysteria and some sound art at the Artesian and an open house at the architecturally-interesting early learning centre.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Festival pulls ahead

This evening the model train collective, who have an amazing basement filled with detailed machetes from real locations in Canada. Every year they open it up for viewing for just this night.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Cathedram festival begins

This afternoon the Cathedral festival began with its parade and party in the park down the street from us. We did some drawings in the comic room and saw a very talented performance artist who poses as a statue. He is amazingly convincing. He moves but very slowly.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

grass is greener

Margaret taught William how to dig out dandylions today. The lawn is looking great. This morning while it is too cool to do much outside, we watched last week's episode of Dr. Who written by Neil Gaiman. Great story, very odd of course.Yesterday we also had an early celebration for my sister Sharon's birthday (below with William assisting on candle). We didn't see them again today, things just got a bit nutty and a second dinner party felt like too much.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Johnny Depp

This afternoon I took William and my niece Michelle to the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It was fun and lacked all the muddle of the previous ones. A few days ago William and I on an impulsive went to see Rango, the ILM animated film with Depp's voice. I'd highly recommend Rango, I enjoyed every minute of it. The Hanz Zimmer score (he scored both these movies as a matter of fact) kept us glued to our seats until the end of Rango's credits.

Friday, May 20, 2011

more strikes to come

There will be two more days of teacher's job action next week, taking William out of school for Wednesday and Thursday. Since Monday is a holiday, that gives him a two day school week, Tuesday and Friday. It also makes the third Thursday he has been off school since the beginning of May when I began working with Trevor Grant all day each Thursday on a course (3 out of 4). I spent much of this afternoon running errands with William, finding components to rebuild an alternate Sockvile puppet, purchased the new Harry Potter movie on blue ray on a three day special for $15 as well as the complete "Plants vs Zombies" games he's been loving on line this week. This comes with a promise that he gets back to his reading. This evening we watched three new episodes of Dr. Who.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

More sockvile

We shot a bit more Sockvile today, mostly stills of the backgrounds to greenscreen into the other video, but I also animated a few seconds of the Partybot 3000.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

busy?

I was going through my pockets today and discovered the receipt for the tub I bought yesterday. I guess the bathroom renovation is actually going to start. Mom called to see when I was picking up my share of the perogies she and I made together on Friday (I got about seven dozen). My mind has been so full of a mishmash of thoughts that I can't seem to remember things I was busy with twelve hours ago.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

pedagogy

I spent most of today working on a pedagogy document. I've been working on this document, on and off (mostly off) for six years. It's only 12 pages long and I think I wrote four of those today, but it really is an onerous beast of a document. I sent my draft out to my committee to revision and now can go to bed. What a way to spend a Saturday.