New Year's Eve

 Lovely steaks off the bbq for supper before enjoying an online concert with Pink Martini (a band Margaret has wanted to see in concert for years but the closest they ever come is Vancouver). Of course it's not the same as in person, but many things are better (cameras on stage, making it much more intimate). There was also a lot of fireworks down at the stadium in the middle of it all. 

Talisman game

 Geremy followed through on a bunch of the fixes on the Allan-mod of Talisman and we started a new game. The boards are scaled correctly now and most of the cards will orient correctly. One of Allan's friends joined in but it appears that table top simulator, the very cool steam "game" that allows us to play in this way, does not work on Macs. Ouch. 

Dark Shadows LP

 For the past couple of months, William and I have been working our way through the first season of the 1966 soap opera Dark Shadows. Today a late Christmas gift arrived - the vinyl record of the music from Dark Shadows (containing a few spoke word pieces). Great to paint to. Wow, such a cool surprise. 

Risa and the trifle

 Risa's birthday event this year was that over 50 of her friends converged online with a focus on walking through the creation of trifles (thanks to guidance from Rachelle V. K.). Margaret had done much of the prep ahead of time which was fortunate since she had to run around helping her parents with some groceries and such and came in late. Regardless, it worked out great. I painted which everyone cooked. I did actually whip cream, roast almonds, and do a couple other small services. 

Daily camera paintings

 Dove into some painting. William has been online with friends quite a bit and I'm enjoying just some holiday music and the new subject matter (this is one from Grant. Yesterday I did a polaroid from Jana. I also borrowed a handful of cameras from Risa). 

Boxing day Cthulhu pie

 Sugar high continues. Don't know how many more days I can eat the amount of sugar we currently are taking in (except for the turkey yesterday and the perogies Lori gave us). Pie today was still awesome (and scary - see  yesterdays gift theme). 

A Lovecraft Christmas

 It seems that the prevalent theme of gifts this year was Lovecraft-based. I got a cd and lyrics book for "A Very Scary Solstice" which contains a set of Christmas standards re-written with Lovecraft-based mythology, all very well done. There was also a dvd of Call of Cthulhu done (somewhat) in the style it may have been done if it were to have been made in the 1920s. William got a tentacled drinking glass and a collection of stories. Other weirdness was yet to come. While we stayed home, it was quite pleasant. 

Christmas eve

William and I drove around delivering cookies to a few old friends (such as Geremy above). Grant lent me a few of his dad's cameras including a Speed Graphic and a Rolleiflex. 

 For the first time in 25 years (the year we Christmased in Rochester) we have not gone to Margaret's parents' house for Christmas eve. Had a nice evening. Didn't open any gifts (that felt fine to me), just played some games and watched "The Bishop's Wife" (returning to the traditions of my youth of watching corny old xmas movies on the 24th). 

Are we ready for Christmas yet?

 Are we ready? Are there nanaimo bars? I say yes. Is there snow? Nick says yes. 

Baking is slowing down. Did 10 or 11 batches, but with no visitors this may be too many. Sending them out to friends and family but looks like there will be many left over. 

Unknown dangers arrives on solstice

 Mysterious and dangerous looking package arrived today. It's been a strange solstice. Sleeping has been limited. We saw the sun from rise to fall. 

Perfect snowman weather

 Snow came down and the weather was just warm enough to make everything sticky. I made a small family on the front walk but they melted by the end of the day. Gerri-Ann dropped in with some cookies. 

Returning to the Tarot

 After a few months away from them, William has resumed work on his personalized tarot deck. 

zooming with friends

 Zooming with Leslea, Leif, Brianna and Teagan with a drink or two. Catching up for first time in months. 

Monster cookies

 Made up a recipe for monster cookies. Coconut, chocolate chips, white chocolate, walnuts, oatmeal, and the basics. Biggest cookies I've ever made. 

Tree decorated

 Ornaments onto the tree. It's a bit smaller than usual so limited to some favorites. 

Sylvie helps William study

 It's existential philosophy. Does that explain things?

Birds are back

 Finally re-filled the bird feeders. It took them a couple days to notice. Cats see this pov. 

New bathroom window

 Margaret ordered a new window for the bathroom. It needed to be custom built somewhere. Two guys came this morning and installed it, quickly and with no mess. 

Dunlop show

Didn't spend much time with this show that is currently up at the Dunlop. Some stuff about sports and uniforms that sort of lay there on the floor, literally and figuratively. 

Baking

 Did these cookies from the great magazine from a couple years ago. It required a 10 minute beating of eggs and sugar that I don't believe I did last time. It creates an amazing texture. 

Diana camera

 Painted the Diana camera Rob lent me. Watched the Neutral Ground AGM at the same time. 

Rob Pytlyk cameras

After my last undergrad class of the term (went well, I'm not celebrating since I really enjoyed meeting with them all every week) Rob Pytlyk dropped in with two cameras for me to paint. Super excited about both of them. This came out of me posting my lists on Facebook yesterday and beginning a number of conversations about borrowing cameras. 
 

return to Betacam

 Dragged the Betacam up to resume painting it. I knew when I got it earlier this year that the one painting of the whole camera would not suffice. I prefer to paint small things and enlarge them and this is a very big camera. This time I painted just a portion and enlarged it about 10-20 percent. 

What I saw driving

 Drove Margaret to Steve's shop to get her tire repaired and we passed SaskPower which seems to be getting a major overhaul. Funny what  you don't see when you only go out once a week. 

Shot some kodachrome

 I'd not thought about it much when he did it, but Richard gave me a roll of Kodachrome to use as a test roll on the Nikonos camera he lent me. It was fun to try to use. Loading and unloading was a challenge. I'd like to see the images. Kodachrome only develops as black and white. I could do it myself but I'm not really in the mood these days. I looked up what Film Rescue can do and it's impressive (when things work out) so I've packaged it up for them to develop and scan. Will take quite a while though. 

not a camera

 I ran out of cameras to paint but fortunately had this cool keychain shaped like a camera (you can see it leaned against the canvas in the bottom right corner) that Deb Potter gave me last week. 

New way of playing old Talisman

 

We took Allan's original modifications for Talisman for an online spin this evening. Four of us playing, all online, and able to store game to continue later. Still requires Allan to interpret things since not all the rules are available yet. 

Back to painting

One week away from painting but did this Polaroid One Step this evening. This is the last of the re-dos of my first 12 paintings that I did of cameras, all of which were on paper instead of panels. I'll likely start doing more of my cameras a second time now, perhaps taking more liberties with reality. 

Glitch text

 Everywhere I look I find new incarnations of glitch art. This is something on TCM coming in a few days. 

Telecine

 

Transferred some student experimental film to video with makeshift telecine. 

Talisman scanning

 Earlier this weekend we played a bit of the game Talisman using the tabletop simulator on Steam. Geremy had never played. The original version is quite disappointing compared to Allan's mod, but we had some fun. Out of that game and conversation came the suggestion that we add Allan's modifications that he created twenty years ago (when we were all young and had endless time for such side projects). I started to scan all his cards (looks like about 2000) and Geremy is going to do the computer conversion stuff. 

Film and Fish

 Ran around and picked up physical film from a few of my students today. Campus more dead than usual. On my way home I bought two fish. I've been missing them.