Cyber-Toaster

 Our toaster, which we'd owned for a couple decades, decided to break down. It was very reliable and even died reliably ---- on the week of cyber Monday. We replaced it with this beauty later that same day. 

Theatre dysfunction

 Since Frederick passed, the Adult Theatre in SockVile has fallen on bad times. 

New sheep drawing

 While the first sheep drawing is not yet fully complete, William dove into the sequel drawing. He'd finally found a fair image of the original painting in a book and I'd taken it in and got it printed to the size of the paper. This time William is jumping straight to ink, not doing a pencil drawing first. It seems to be a more effective approach. 

More old cameras

 Another of the cameras from my basement shelf that I'd painted over five years ago. 

Drawing further along

 Getting ready to take drawing in to class to show work in progress. No crit today, but there is still a need to demonstrate progress. 

Drawing progresses

 

Family supper with Robby

Cousin Rob is town overnight from Winnipeg. He is passing through on his way to Alberta to visit some other family. 

Sheep drawing

 William re-started this drawing of sheep replacing fairies in a painting about A Midsummer Night's Dream. The pencil drawing he'd done on the first draft wasn't detailed enough so it was just causing him more work than help. 

Christina Stojanova lecture

Christina did her final public lecture (as a faculty member) today over zoom. She talked about her research project on Caroline Leaf, which was intellectually engaging. I do wish she'd done a more personal take on the whole thing, given that we might not see her speak in this way again. 
 

Photo class

William is making good use of Risa's photo lab with printing pictures and binding flip books using her new book binder. 

Nicole Banton MFA exhibition

 Nicole defended her MFA exhibition a few days ago. She is one of Robert's printmaking grads and was in my methodologies course last year and she went to Japan along with William. I am intrigued by the illusion of crumples in all of the images presented in the show. 

New fish

Fish died the other day. Hadn't named it, even though I'd had it at least a year. Bought a turquois guppy. Catfish seems okay with the new roomie. 
 

Ernie Dulanowsky memorial

 Ernie dies suddenly last week. I'd listened to his performances quite often but didn't know him well. A pillar of the sound art community. 

Tea at mom's church

 Had a "Don List" sighting today at mom's church where we had come to have tea and look at their sale. Bought a puzzle. Don and I talked about Filmpool for a few minutes. Seems the consensus is that the organization is gone for good, not just for six months. This might be the biggest part of the revival. 

The Weather

 Picked up Fred from his class today and sat around with him afterwards for a while. Margaret had found a library book about weather on the prairies with great pictures. If Fred wasn't so enthralled with it, I'd have been reading it myself. 

Students finish shooting

Bit cold but the light was nice on the last day of the in-class shooting with my students today. All went well and I think they work together fairly well (which is the point). 
 

More painting

 Getting back into my groove in class this week as the session comes to an end. The black and metal old cameras are really where I am most strongly grounded. Similarly, Lori is jumping back into her chickens and having fun too. 

Painting

I'm looking at my list of cameras that I painted as I was getting started: basically the first 100, and returning to them. I'd like to get up to 600 before my exhibition in May. It is wonderful to continue borrowing cameras and if anyone has more to lend me, I'd be very happy. However, with winter coming and the rest of life so nuts, it is comforting to have dozens of cameras that I've not looked at in OVER FIVE YEARS to pull from. 

William's letter to the editor

This morning Margaret says that it looks like William has a kindred soul as she reads me a letter to the editor in the Leader Post newspaper. She asks me to guess who wrote it. I was a bit stumped but throw a could guesses out there, people who care a bit about design and fonts. "No", she says, then shows me the newspaper. True enough, there is no one that similar to William, the only one who would have written this was William himself. Total surprise to us. 
 

New dogs coming

 George has emptied the garage (first time in about 15 years) so he can house his new dogs there. I slipped in and took this photo while he's on the road going to fetch them. 

Fred's birthday

George hosted his extended family for Fred's birthday dinner party this evening. We stopped in for a few minutes to get a slice of Safeway cake. Conversation seemed focused solely on Simon's barbeque skills. We will not discover until tomorrow that when we were not in the house, the conversation was about George's immanent adoption of two dogs who will live in the garage. 
 

Police cars

 This week I've been seeing police cars with sirens lit up more often than usual. Once a day I think. This one is in front of the library as I'm picking up Margaret. 

One Million Hits

This blog has not had over one million hits. I'm not sure why/how I get as many as I do these days. Probably a bot reading it and preparing to replace me. 

painting coincidence

 I painted this microscopic camera today. I've painted it once before, and that happened to be on this very day, in this same place, exactly five years ago. 

First snow

 This didn't fall for long and will be melting in a couple of days, but a clear reminder of what is coaming. I wore my new Docs even though I knew it would snow. I have new insoles as of a few days ago. Also learned the Ernie, who worked at the show place on 13th and who made my old insoles, retired a couple years ago. Hadn't heard. 

Pizza day

 Afternoon at work meeting with students and then with Erik to walk about Last Mountain Lake cultural centre exhibition for next summer. Very pumped about that and looking to ramp my painting output up again. Hungry day so made pizza. 

Tables and chairs

 This morning I met up with Lori and Shim and Tate for coffee at mom's to see her new table and chairs. She's talking about them being too high now, which is what she liked about them when she sat on them tor an hour and purchased them this summer. She'll love them soon enough (or cut the legs down). Later, our own outdoor chairs and tables got a second tarp and are ready for snow. 

Roboting with William

William wanted new photos of the robot today. The remote tablet wasn't holding a charge so William, the only person who usually operates the robot, couldn't perform and shoot so I became the robot today. I did hand signals and gave gang signs. 

Ruth Cuthand retrospective

 I feel a bit guilty for not trying harder to stay awake during the talk between Ruth and Felicia Gay at the Ruth Cuthand retrospective at the MacKenzie. Only a bit, because I felt fantastically refreshed and had some savage conversations afterwards. 

Lunch with mom

 Mom dropped her phone (her land line, which was hooked to the wall - I didn't even ask how) so she needed a new one. We went to London Drugs with the broken one in hand, got an almost identical replacement, then went for lunch. It took longer to assemble it than it did to shop for it.