Katherine in town

 Everyone out to the farm as soon as breakfast passes the gullet, so we got only a brief visit with Katherine this morning. 

Homework even heavier

 Strange that even though William has far less school pressure this  year (having completed his exhibition) and that he spent a lot of time preparing for his courses and assignments over the summer, and has one fewer classes, he is still drowning under the weight of beginning of term assignments. Kicked around with him until 2 am, on a Saturday night, while he completed just one of his proposals due this week. Included Leesa as one of the artists who has inspired him. 

Leesa Streifler in Moose Jaw

Great opening at Moose Jaw Art Gallery with career retrospective of Leesa's art. Icing on the cake was that William had a chance to talk to Robyn about a future collaboration. 
 

Delicious food

 Last night Kevin got an extra box of blueberries, very ripe and needing immediate use, so gave them to us. Margaret made three pies today. William and were driving home from University. Got message from Margaret to take these out of the oven (thankfully not burned) as she had to leave them and go to work. Also in car, a DJ says that he will put chocolate chips in his pancakes but he "draws the line at bacon" - telling us this because it is national pancake day. Of course we made bacon pancakes. De-lish. 

Busy day of everything but work

Watching season 1, episode 8 of Loudermilk and a hobo character in the show pulls out a phone and tells Siri to phone the police. Suddenly my phone activates and tells me that it will be calling the police in three seconds. Fortunately there was a cancel button. When I tried to tell Margaret about it, I almost re-triggered the same event. 

Went to foot clinic today. Confirms arthritis in my feet. Health troubles are expected but also endless. 

Painted after the food doctor. Knowing I'd be late, I'd painted the background last night. 
 

Storyboard

 Why does anyone let me teach storyboarding? 

macro lens

 Tested out using a Mamiya macro lens to re-photography 35mm movie film frames today and the results were magnificent. I hadn't really set up to properly guide or register the film but the focus and exposure where solid. 

Fire with Chyrstene

 Chrystene came over and we sat around a smokey fire where I burned way too many papers. We chatted about a range of things, mostly about the university, my paintings, her new deaf project, the NFB, and after William came out and joined us, about his work and the garage. 

Hasselblad 500 C/M

Mostly stayed home today and caught up on work and did a painting of Sean Whalley's camera. 

Spooky cereal

Looking forward to snacking on this when the new season starts. I wish they were doing more with those small travel cereal boxes. They always were an excuse to buy and eat cereal that you shouldn't. Long ago I taught William that these were for camping trips and how to open the box with a knife and use the wax paper liner as the bowl. Wouldn't you love to buy an 8 pack of them with basically a sampler of crazy new cereals? 
 

Dolls

William moved the dolls that he bought for their clothes to his drawing studio today. Perhaps this will be a new project. I claimed one of them to make a monster out of. 

Balkwill centre

 

Painted at Balkwill again. Want to ramp up my paintings again, but so many other responsibilities these days. Tim and Sandee were raising a new culture days flag as we left. 

mini-frig

Defrosted the basement mini-frig. Had been on my list for some time and it suddenly struck me that if I don't get on it asap, winter will come and it will be a big pain to do it and I'll leave it until spring. As it was warm today, I could just carry it out to the deck and let it melt there. 

Robot complete

 Emma and William finished the robot today, after a year and a half of tinkering. Keep your eyes peeled for its first public appearance. 

William has a cold

 Possibly triggered by working in the rain the other day, William is a font of snot this weekend, with his chest majorly congested. He worked in front of the fireplace. 

Online animation

Shooting extra material and demos for my online animation course. I recorded all of my audio a month ago, and shot a lot of video demos a few months ago. However, the audio is much longer than the video so I need to dig for more material to complete these. 
 

Cemetery visit

 Took mom out to the cemetery for a short visit. She really wants there to be a proper place to put flowers. 

New fish

 One of my two fish died the other day. Margaret picked out this molly today. It seems to be getting along with it's shy catfish tank-mate. 

Treaty Days

William was out in Fort Qu'Appelle a couple of days this week, helping with some faculty contributions with dance and costumes. Van out to the site was full so William drove out with the Dean. 

Columbian Duo

Today Jhazley and Esperanza finally met. Jhazley is one of my MFA students, and Esperanza finished her MFA in our program a couple years ago. 
 

New wood for paintings

Cut Masonite into 9x12 panels to paint on. This will be at least a year's worth (four sheets creating 160 panels). Cut them to size in Visual Arts woodshop. Meanwhile, Jesse took a screwdriver to the forehead. Not so fun. 
 

William planning drawings

 William planning out his last term drawing class. It is a story book about sheep. More to it than that, but is starting to plan out the pages on newsprint. Very free and fun at this point. 

Gerri Ann's cottage

 Gerri Ann and Steve invited us out to the beach today to have a studio tour and much on some wonderful bbq. Weather was great. No mosquitoes, but a bunch of wasps. 

Wordle

 Every time we forget to do the Wordle, our winning streak is broken (even though we didn't lose). Margaret lost one this year, but otherwise we just forget from time to time. Finally we broke our previous 93 winning streak and have reached 100. 

Classroom lights

I try not to dwell on the little things so have not complained for the past couple of years using our 179 classroom where only 2 of the 3 banks of the lights work, and the two that do work have switches that are not intuitive. This summer they got fixed and it made me feel really good. Now the south switch turns on the south lights, the middle controls the middle and the north controls the north. Small things but WOW. 
 

First day of class, errrr... work

 Classes start today at the university. This is William heading off to class, but actually he isn't taking the class, he is a teaching assistant for MAP 001, which is a required course for our students to help them orient to university and learn good ways of successfully being in university. William has three classes left for his degree and will be in class of later in the week. 

Supper at Mercury

Took Fred to the Mercury for supper. I think my club sandwich was the best choice of entrées today. William was less happy with his burger so we shared. 
 

Hanging out at home

 Deck time. Margaret had to spend hours with her dad today (George is on the farm as it is a holiday) but William and I mostly took the day off. Mike was in town so we converged on Kevin's house for the afternoon. 

Swamp Fest day 2

Margaret got back from Calgary this morning and we all headed to Swamp Fest to listen to music and play some croquet. Charity Marsh is playing in this band. Had a short but nice conversation with a young woman who has never played music before but is part of one of the bands playing today. She will just be playing a couple of chords on the keyboard and otherwise hanging out as a performer at a festival for the first time. 
 

Swamp Fest day 1

William split his wage with David to have a helper on the island, running the kid's croquet. After some sort of token exchange, kids can design a wicket and add it to the course and then play a round. 

Fred

 Margaret, Lori, and mom are all away in Calgary so I didn't have lunch with mom but I did pick up Fred from his class and had a coffee with him at the house. It is hot out again, but he had a long sleeve shirt, undershirt, sweater, and leather jacket on when I picked him up. As it is over 30 degrees outside, I convinced him to take off the jacket. 

Ken-franstein

William working night and day getting ready for Swamp Fest. Today he took one of my Ken dolls and made a Frankenstein monster who will be in the windmill as part of the croquet course. 
 

Emma at work

 Emma has been working at a place called Sticks and Doodles which crafts a lot of fun decorator items out of wood and metal and magnets and things using big laser cutters. Today there was a grand opening of the new storefront space with friends and family invited. Great to see her and to discover that one of my students from last year, Chansong, is also working there. Small world I guess. 

Gas fireplace

Installed gas fireplace today. Fortunately it is a cool day as we needed to run it for a few hours to burn off various junk. It was very comforting and inviting. 

Amy's closing reception

 Terrific turnout at Amy's closing reception today. Perhaps 50 or so people, maybe more with coming and going. Her defense went well, so I've heard.