Reading

William finished the last Harry Potter book today, taking just 11 days (over 600 pages)! Here he is reading at the cafe at the Mendal in Saskatoon yesterday:He's already deep into the new Animorphs books I found for him, finishing one of them before supper time (book 41, " The Familiar", 143 pages).

Trip to Saskatoon

We drove up to Saskatoon yesterday after the toilet was fixed. Margaret got word that the Sheriton had great water slides so we booked it for one night and they were quite good. There were two slides and two hot tubs. We spent a couple of hours last night and then got back in after breakfast this morning for another hour and a half. Margaret conducted a workshop on artist trading cards at the Mendal while I went to the new Paved space and got a bit of a tour. I was surprised to find that Tim no longer worked there and then discovered, upon talking with his partner Donna Wawzonek whom I ran into as I was leaving, that last year he left not only his job but her too! Wow, am I ever out of the loop! I found William a bunch more Animorphs books at the newly located (same building, much bigger space) 8th Avenue Books because he was asking if he could get back to that series after he finished Harry Potter. I'm glad I did because he read about 150 pages of "Deathly Hollows" today and will likely finish it tomorrow.

Margaret's birthday updated with one picture

While I was at work, Margaret got to spend her birthday serving cake to her parents as they fixed the wax seal on our toilet. The cat was very curious.

Margaret's mother and Sylvie the cat

It seems that this is a rare birthday with virtually no photos of the birthday girl!?!?

chase my tail

We met with William's teacher today, that went well. William had the rest of the day off so Margaret took him tobogganing while I did some grading. I went to the office in the afternoon and finished shooting my super-8 films "Memories of Uncle's House". Margaret worked this evening so I baked a lemon cheesecake for her birthday and we watched the missing episode of The Brave and the Bold then about half of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (which William was surprisingly engaged with considering all they did was stand around and talk for the first fifteen minutes) before Margaret got home. William didn't buy into the wire-fu for a minute though. We had to tell him they have special kung fu skills that let them walk on air. Margaret's present today was the complete Wooster and Jeeves televison series on 8 dvds. Now I've got to get back to my notes for tomorrows class. I've not had time to get my window weather stripping in and them installed and now our toilet is leaking.

grading

This morning I went to pick up fresh colour film development chemistry from Don's Photo. Kodak has now discontinued their one gallon C-41 kits so I will need to start buying 5 gallon kits. The problem is that the stuff doesn't have a very long shelf life after you open it and I can't dive into a big processing project in the middle of term. Luckily I was able to get a small kit, but it will likely only do two rolls of 16mm before it is depleted. I got back home to read through some student scripts and the cat went to sleep on my shoulder. Other than one meeting, I spent most of today responding to comments from students about their projects; some in person but mostly over email. I wasn't at the office long enough to progress very far on my super-8 film; I'll need to complete it tomorrow.

a closer look

Ian Toews came to my Film 400 class today, always an honor. We watched a whole episode of Landscape as Muse featuring John Chalke; I feel inspired to take a ceramics class now. Before that I put about three hours into my One Take Super 8 film which required many magnifying glasses.

Thanksgiving

I'm feeling less well every day, although it might be just exhaustion rather than the flue since I don't actually have any flu symptoms. Today I redesigned my One Take Super 8 idea to allow me to get it done in time since I didn't get response for my Shakespeare project early enough. Onto the back burner with that, and on with "Uncle's House" (working title). I'll be able to shoot it tomorrow and the next day and have no problem making the 16th deadline.
The puttying of the windows continues.
William and I went to the Lawson pool and swam for a couple of hours. He is far better at swimming that he demonstrated to the teachers last month, which resulted in him wearing a life jacket all the time instead of jumping into the deep end from high boards without one, as he did today.
We went to Richard and Gerda's for Thanksgiving supper. There were 20 people there. Gerda gave William a box of old Bionicle parts, a huge treasure! I had a nice chat with Joanne and Norm; they are always so great to talk to but we don't socialize like we used to. Food was very good of course. Gerda found a discontinued Polaroid camera for $5 with 8 shots remaining in it of unused but discontinued film. They shot all 8 at dinner, essencially turning the camera into a paperweight. Here is one imaged, copied with a hand held digital camera with no proper lighting:

long weekend

We are going to a Thanksgiving due tomorrow, today was mostly a work day. Margaret's mother Gertrud came over yesterday and today to help re-putty the storm windows. I scraped old paint off and cleaned them after the puttying. I'm shocked by what a poor job I did at painting them last week but the conditions were very poor and I was very rushed. At least I got a first coat on them. The putty job will take at least one more long day, maybe two.
This morning I worked with William to help him shoot his One Take Super 8 film which he is calling "Sylvie Bingles Lego and the Jet Pack". We still have to do the soundtrack but I have a plan for that which should be cool. Margaret spent much of the day baking pies and, her new passion, bread. I wonder what sort of madness is required to be a baker as many of the bread recipes I see contain food that just shouldn't be eaten (things have have soured or formented or just about rotted seem in order only there).

in the dark

Today my Film 412 class processed their 100 feet of film in the darkroom. I guided batches of four at a time at four stations so we were able to get through all 1600 in about 3 hours, but then I had to process some tests and ray-o-grams we did last week so I ended up darkrooming for 4 hours. The bad part was that it snowed all day and we couldn't dry film on the lawns like I prefer. Here is me working with hand processed film at Phil Hoffman's Film Farm back in '02.

Another one down

This afternoon, with the four day weekend stretching ahead of him, William finished the sixth Harry Potter book, "The Half Blood Prince". 606 pages, 23 days. He'll start the seventh and last one this evening.

We had a bit of a reward by me and Paul taking him out to see the 6th movie again at the Rainbow.

that's class!

Here is my class posing yesterday for their picture in our studio. Department head Christine Ramsay arrived a minute later so made it in time but is not in this image. There are only two students out of the 26 missing; one was late, the other was ill. In the official picture, I am also there.
I spent today getting materials together for Friday's class, reading student scripts, taking William and Rowan to acting class, and trying to ward off the flu that Margaret has in full force.

missing disc

Today we did some class pictures then I wanted to discuss a number of issues around collaboration. I then promised my students I'd show "Wheat Soup". However, I lent a copy of it out a few months ago and made a new copy but forgot to return the copy to my office. I was left in the embarrassing situation of not having the film to show. I ran some Peter Greenaway shorts and a couple of old student films instead.

heating up

I didn't paint today. Gertrud had to watch William after school since I was in a meeting and Margaret was at work. I've not seen much of Margaret over the past couple of days. She went to Marla's yesterday and learned to bake bread, something she's been excited about for some time now. I went out last night and she was asleep by the time I got in. Today I was at work all day, a Monday that was filled with meetings that I cannot discuss in my blog. William started selling magazine subscriptions for his school so it'll be time to renew my "Entertainment Weekly" again. I got it to replace what used to be the good parts in TV Guide before it turned to crap. I don't even see it on the stands anymore; was it canceled completely? I can't remember the last time I complained about it but it may have been in one of my earlier blogs. Anyway, William is getting so much more independent, going to the neighbours' houses by himself and so on.

recoat

I was talking with Rachelle Viader Knowles the other night at the MacKenzie opening. She is just back from her sabbatical and says she tried to do a blog for a while but lost steam long before I did. We discussed the problem that if you talk about your work, you often face the problem of saying the same thing every day since big sabbatical projects take a long time to complete. On that note, I can only report that once again I worked on painting the house today. I am significantly closer to completing the windows. One storm window needs to be replaced or rebuilt and then painted. There are three other windows that require some paint as soon as the glazing putty is dry. The remaining seventeen storm windows are painted but many need glazing and cleaning (paint on glass scraped off) before being hung. I am planning to let the paint dry all week and then bring them into the house for glazing/cleaning next weekend.

eat work eat work eat watch work

Busy Saturday. It started with eating black forest cake at Margaret's mom's for George's birthday and then back home to begin painting storm windows in the garage. Space is cramped so can't line up many windows and thus cannot maximize my time (which is severely limited). We went to the annual fowl supper at my mom's church. Back home we watched Ghostbusters 2 (we watched the first one last weekend). I also began making a series of videos about our cat which I will begin with a punk-style title sequence. I'll put them up on Youtube likely in a couple of days. Here is a sneak peak of one:

news

Between yesterday and today I made some authentic Italian gelato. I roasted the hazelnuts and simmered them in whole milk (brought up to Italian whole milk standard of 3.7% rather than the 3.25% of Canadian whole milk), then pureed them and drained all the milk into a bowl and discarded the nuts and used the milk in the recipe. Add egg yokes, Belgium chocolate and vanilla and a lot of straining and simmering until the mixture is finally left in the frig for a few hours. By this time it was too late to make gelato so it sat and waited until this evening and I broke in the Kitchenaid ice cream maker (prepared the day before by putting it in the freezer) and finally, after about 18 minutes of stirring, it was an amazingly edible substance.
This evening, before the MacKenzie opening, we finally cleaned the fish tank. We've never let it get so dirty as it was now; I had to use a glass scraper to remove algae from every surface of the glass and then scoop it with the net. I'd delayed the cleaning because I didn't want to suck up the baby fish. There were three remaining about a week ago but now there are two. They are getting pretty big. About ten days ago the swordtail mother died, I have no idea why. She'd been swimming around with her head facing the surface for a day, then that was it. I can't find that as a symptom on line but her gills were red and that could mean ammonia poisoning, so our long delay in the cleaning was probably the culprit. The two young ones seem strong and active and are growing really fast.
I talked to the lab (Technicolor) in Vancouver today. My answer print of my new film, Grain: summer (I Can't See the Forest Through My Dreams)" should be shipped to me on Monday. It is playing in less than two weeks at Antimatter in Victoria. I'm excited to see it; it sounds like the timer spent a long time trying to make it look just right (a challenge with my work since there is no "right").

good day

William seem to have had a really good day, which I've very happy about because he's been having too many bad days lately. He brought samples of grain to school that he collected from the farm and he got to do a 20 minute presentation to the class where they sat and quietly listened to him. This is when he shines. Later on I asked him about singing "O Canada" in Cree, which I know they had been learning with the first teacher. Although he has a good ear for music and an amazing memory for words, he has claimed that he doesn't know it. I then offered to buy him a chocolate frog (which come with one trading card of a Harry Potter wizard in each pack for SIX DOLLARS) if he could sing it. After about 10 seconds of thought he rattled it off. We picked up his frog from Dessarts on 13th avenue on the way to his acting class at the Globe. Margaret and I went shopping and bought the ice cream attachment for the Kitchenaid mixer so we can finally make ice creams without all the additives. Margaret's brother came over this evening, having finished the harvest last night at midnight, and had some birthday cheesecake that I made last night (a particularly good Saskatoon berry one).

cut thin

Today I met with the last of my 26 forth year students about their projects. This, as I think I said before, is really what the program is about. A sharing of ideas. I discovered years ago that the more good ideas I'm able to give during these sessions, the better I feel at the end of the day. It has become a challenge (that I'm often but not always successful at) to give each student at least one idea that they like and that they would not have come up with on their own at each of these meetings. My guest lecture with Robin Schlaht today was well timed as I'm not sure what I had left inside me to teach. After class, the first of the repeat customers came in and I managed to find better advice for him this time than in the first meeting, so I'm exhausted but happy. This evening I cut some farm fresh (organic of course) potatoes up into french fries, added some olive oil and salt, and froze them to try to make my own (cost effective) frozen fries. Margaret is worried that they might not freeze right and perhaps they'll turn mushy or brown. I'll see tomorrow.Margaret and William took the afternoon off to observe/help the harvest. Margaret's brother George is also in town, spending his birthday on the combine.

on this day

On this day in history:
It was the year 2005 and the weather was nice and father and son headed out to the Qu'Appelle Valley to touch the sky.

cold

It turned cold today so even though I woke up very stiff, I spent most of my day sitting around on kitchen chairs playing games. Pretty good day over all. Margaret won at Carcassonne.

so close, so far

On Friday I taught my class. Of course I had my last minute panic trying to get all the materials together including little baggies of washing soda for each student so they can reticulate. That night we watched "Ghost Busters" with William, he loved it of course. He's been asking about it for a couple of months and I've just been waiting for the right time.
Yesterday I painted all day, getting the tope on most of the window trims. I'm only missing one window; the one that I need to move half my kitchen around to be able to unhook from the inside. Soon. It is rotting and I'm not sure if I can repair it or if I'll have to try to find a replacement. The next thing is to shift to white and begin painting windows themselves. There are only six on the building and they only need paint on one side but then there are 18 storm windows and they need paint on both sides and many of them need new window putty as well. I've been waiting for a point when I can empty space in the garage to lay them out and work on them but that prospect is quickly becoming unrealistic as we just had our last day of nice weather and winter could start any day now. Last night I went to my sister Lori's to help celebrate my brother-in-law Al's 50th birthday. Lots of people, nice time. I ate some great food that didn't agree with me including a spring roll and a macaroon; too much fibre - lost some sleep over them. Speaking of cookies, the Oreo cookies we bought recently are better for you because they have "30% less fat per two cookies than regular Oreos". What I want to know is how much less fat is there in one cookie?

brain imploding

Finished a second day of meetings, mostly with my students to discuss their projects. Probably the best part of the job but also exhausting. I never have time to eat, opting to continue talking with one student until the next is at the door. Tomorrow relax; just have to teach for three hours.

William cheering up

Today in class I worked through the visualization exercise I learned in grad school for developing characters and modified it for them to run through scenarios in groups at their tables. I'm beginning to believe strongly in this table system I've assembled to accommodate the 26 of them in one room. William's new classroom is also table-based, which William was adamantly against just two days ago. However, he now seems happier about school. We went to the open house and had the new teacher's ear for a half hour or so and feel pretty good about it all. The room they are in is a bit spartan but brighter and airier that I imagined the basement could offer. The teacher was nice and seemed thoughtful, although it is worrisom that she's been on the job three days and no one has introduced her to the other teachers yet. There are always pros and cons to getting a new teacher: enthusiastic but without having field tested her strategies.

anxiety

I think I've been having an anxiety attack that has lasted about three days. I'm taking every little email I receive as a personal attack but compulsively check it every time I'm near my computer as if I'm just looking to drive myself mad. Is there a fear of email phobia? I'd have to add it to my fear of phones that I've developed recently. The weekend was full of vinegar but not paint (Margaret was pickling and I got no painting done) so now am waiting for next weekend to work on the house again. The painters are apparently done the second floor and most of the windows still open (after some effort). William has a new teacher today. He was very upset to be moving to the basement for a new classroom and I had to take him all the way in or else I as certain he would have just sat in the hallway for the whole morning but in the end he had a good day and seems to like her. Below is a 2o year old picture of me in Saskatoon working on a film crew when we discovered that we didn't have a take up reel for the Nagra tape recorder so we had to unspool an old roll of tape for the reel. There is no connection between this photo and anything going on today except perhaps for the feeling of things being not quite right.

sorting photos

I was sorting photos and getting stuff printed for the album last week and reminded myself of this photo series that William and I made in Penticton this summer. It's based on the "flying" technique that McLaren did for "Neighbours" in 1962 but William actually suggested it without that reference so I finally got around to putting it together into a video. I posted it to Youtube, my first such posting all year.

getting hot

Summer is finally here. 31 degrees today (I can't find the circular degree sign in most word processors and blog fonts are even more difficult/limited). I helped out with William's class trip to the pool this morning then spent the afternoon and evening getting ready for class tomorrow. The painters are almost done. I started writing a new "Grain" script but I'm not sure if it should be in my voice or someone elses. I will be hiring some voice people very soon to run some lines from my version of "A Midsummer Nights Dream" since I want to shoot a test scene before the colour of fall is gone. I've been working on that script again, alternating between creating more difficult to read hand notes in the margins of the book and typing those same notes into a screenplay program to format it. If I ever catch up with the computer, and since I've just begun typing act 5 I just might, I will dispense with the paper book (which I've been using since 2000!) and work directly in the computer - something I was much less comfortable doing ten years ago). I am starting to feel like I'm finishing things, even if they aren't big things. The lab in Vancouver say they struck a test print of my new film and so that will be coming soon. I finished reading the third Popeye comic strip collection, which took my months because the image and text size is so small I can only read it for a few minutes a day. I also finished two of the Mike Hoolboom books I ordered in: "Everybody Loves Nothing", a catalogue of work by Steve Reinke, and "Projecting Questions?", a really fantastic catalogue about Hoolboom's gallery work from a couple of years ago. He has some very strong and critical viewpoints about gallery video that I found pleasing; everything he says is profoundly obvious, at least once he says it. A must read (except for the rather obtuse academic gymnastics in the chapter on "the invisible man blog" which just tries too hard to be smart that it says nothing much at all).

House painting

Over the past couple of days the upper story of our house is being painted. I'm not sure how long it will take, probably just one or two more days although the windows will certainly take a bit more time than the large expanses of walls. They are working only from ladders because, they told us, they could not afford the insurance for scaffolding. Apparently scaffolds lead to carelessness and accidents more than ladders do.

ich habe einen kater

I think I've picked up a bad case of cat head.
The long awaited new Lego Bionicle movie: "The Legend Reborn" came out today. I picked it up first thing this morning and William watched it twice after school. I caught it the second time. It was all right although at times it was quite sloppy. Two scenes in particular bothered me. In one, the main character is in a cavern of ancient technology and triggers a gateway to open. He is surprised and jumps back. The scene then cuts to the group of characters 2/3 of the way down the stairway with the opening far behind them. Where was the moment of nervous first steps into the darkness? Cutting room floor? Later when two of the heroes have been captured the same main character declares that he will go alone to rescue them and the other heroes must stay behind to protect the villagers. He then turns and exits amid musical cues that lead us to believe his new mission is under way. Cut to him standing on a hill side watching the sun set and one of the characters from the previous scene walks up behind him and says "I thought I'd find you here" and they have a chat about the likely position of the hostages. Very obtuse. All the key creatives had European names. All the actual animators were Asian. I sense some major disconnects in the production.

William finished reading the 760 page "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" this evening. He started it on July 9 and has now started the sixth book.

meetings

I am the new Fine Arts rep to Campion Collage and went to my first meeting over there today. They were very friendly, introduced me to everyone, served coffee, and talked a bit afterward. Unfortunately the retreat conflicts with their sherry social on Friday.
This evening we had our Filmpool Board meeting. Margaret was at work so I took William with me. He watched some Harry Potter while we met.
The painters came today and did an hour of scratching at the trim which apparently constitutes their prep for painting our house tomorrow.

around home

I felt pretty good about the weekend. I didn't do anything I'd call exciting but I did a bunch of small things that did more good than harm around my house. I fixed a gate, I painted the trim around the windows on the north side of the house, and I found a replacement window for one of the storm windows for the kitchen. If I did this every weekend, I might actually finish all of or renovations in a year. Winter will come soon and derail me of course, but it's still a dream.

Last night I woke up with a headache and got up and watched the first half hour of "Sergeants Three" with the rat pack. I had noticed it on TCM a few weeks ago at the same time I'd noticed a big poster of it prominently shown in the background of a Godard film so I recorded it. It ends up being a western remake of Gunga Din with Sammy Davis Jr doing the Gunga Din character as a freed slave. Mixed feelings about it; I love Dean Martin but he's no Cary Grant.

birth

The swordtail had babies last night. Margaret claims to have counted eleven of them. They are small and hide in the rocks and we've not yet done anything to protect them such as separating them or purchasing porous objects for them to hide in or even to purchase baby fish food, although I have been grinding up the existing foods so they can eat it and I have also fed the fish extra today to disuade canibalism. They are too small and fast to get a good picture of.

Mars Mission Lego article

A little piece I wrote about Mars Mission Lego for a local web publication is finally up. Take a read. pass it around. I think he's looking for readers as well as for more articles of a diverse nature.

falling behind

William was home sick this morning and Margaret had commitments so I stayed home and got not much of anything done and then had meetings all afternoon and Margaret worked this evening so I watched Brave and the Bold with William until 30 minutes ago and so now, two days into the term, I'm half asleep and trying to read things that I promised to read and am feeling I'm already behind. *sigh*

first day of classes

I had my first day of Film 400 today. Due to sabbaticals, I had suggested that the two groups of 12-15 be combined into one group so today I rearranged the tables into four blocks instead of one large one so as to accommodate all 24 that I was expecting. Two extras came who registered at the last minute. I was left without a chair for 3 hours and one student had to go hunt for his own down the hall somewhere. Other than that, we had a pretty good session.

thoughts on films

I completed a fair draft of my Splice Magazine article on Shawn Fulton today. I have a feeling I should go back into it and do some changes but they didn't seem immediately apparent and I needed to get it to the editor so he could know how long it is and make space (1900 words, a bit longer than my usual articles). This evening I went to Quentin Tarantino's WWII fantasy "Inglorious Bastards". It was a lot of fun. Hitler was really sweaty, you could not help but hate him. It was set in a world that film is the most important thing in society to the point that filmmakers even write the history. Hmmm, perhaps that's the history we have come to have these days...?

a hard day out

Today we had breakfast at my sisters and say my cousin one last time, then we went to the farm and I did some painting on the inside of the "cottage". William was in an incredibly bad mood all day but in his first calm and happy-ish moment of the day, he shot this video of me.

Of course, at 9:30 when he's supposed to wind down, he was a perfect gentleman again.

changes in the family

Last night Margaret thought that the top fin on our catfish (Kidder) was looking ragged. I didn't think so but today started to believe. I watched for a while and finally started noticing that the orange and black swordtail (not the pregnant one) was being too aggressive. William and I returned her to the store and swapped her for a really pretty guppy. When I was a kid, guppies where what we usually got; they were small and plain and died quickly. They are still small but not plain at all. Until further notice, only the catfish has a name. They are easier to return or lose that way.

restored

Today I finally finished restoring "Daytona: A Happening", a film by Jean Oser that was accidentally cannibalized for found footage sometime last year. Luckily most of the parts were intact. I accidentally destroyed a six inch part in the process and have another six inch part that part that I could not locate a home for. There are a couple other gaps but overall it is there.
Jean Oser was a film editor and a great filmmaker in his own right. He made quite a few short commissioned films in the fifties and sixties (industrials when such things were still pretty cool). He then came to teach at the UofR where he became one of the most influential people in the creation of a film community and film industry in Saskatchewan. The films he made are housed at the Saskatchewan Filmpool and are unlikely to be housed collectively anywhere else in the world. While many of them likely exist in other collections or in the archives of their commissioning companies, no one else has them collected as "Jean Oser" films. This one in particular is a fast paced short about motorcycle racing. Made in the 60s, it is filled with odd bits of slang. At one point the narrator points out that when the race is over, the action hasn't stopped and we see the rider necking with a sexy girl. It was commissioned by the Triumph Motorcycle company.
It was Paul's birthday today: HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAUL. We had pizza and cake. His brother Mike came to town and surprised him half way through supper. Then we went to the opening at the Dunlop. William was doing a number of drawings and had them laid out on the floor. Two people, including one person who is a programmer at another local art gallery, walked by just as he'd finished them and stepped directly on them. What kind of people go to art galleries these days?

New family again!!!

The catfish has been out of sorts the last few days. I think it is a combination of him being overfed and being lonely. We stopped feeding him and today he started being active again, proving this to be in part true (he was always very active when he was hungry then docile after eating). This evening we bought two swordtails and he is much happier and active already. They require warm water, which is something he likes as well, so I also got a heater. Cowtown had one that was much cheaper than the others because it was some random shipment they weren't supposed to get (fell off the back of a tanker from China?), so it was six bucks instead of thirty. The fish cost three dollars each so not a big investment but certainly worth the extra over the 49 cent goldfish if they manage to live more than a month.

Sylvie the cat is also doing great. She is a bit insecure about being apart from us which is fine since that means she doesn't wander far when we let her off her leash. She's still mostly an indoor cat but she likes being outside with us and she climbs the treehouse and goes under the porch and deck (she's only 1/5 the size of the old cat so can go amazing places).

Neg cut

Today I did the neg cut for my film "Grain: Summer - I Can't See the Forest Through My Dreams". What this means is that I cut the film negatives into two rolls with the even shots on one roll and the odd shots on the other roll with appropriate lengths of black leader in between them. The lab needs it this way to make a print. I should be receiving the optical sound track any time now and then I can send it and the negs to another lab and they can make me a print that I can show with a projector. Usually this is done with a specialized hot splicer in a quite sterile environment but since my films recently have had such a wrecked aesthetic (due to all the hand processing) I have been doing the neg cutting myself on any table that I can find enough space on and I've been using a tape splicer instead of a hot splicer because I never did get the hang of those things (lots of stinky glue and if you don't do it right it falls apart later). I've not finished a film like this since my last "Toxic" film (#5 was the last one completed as #6 was done early). I think I finished Toxic in 2004 so it has been five years. This will be the first 16mm film I've completed without the late Rick Doe of Calgary's Local Film Lab since the early nineties. He printed "Doubt" (1997), "Life is Like Lint"(1999), and all 6 "Toxic" films (2002-2004).

writing?

I spent much of today writing, although I admit I became frequently distracted and caught up on little things on the computer like burning back up files and searching for meaningless stuff. William and I finished watching The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy this evening (the BBC television show of course). It's always great. I first saw it when it was pretty much new in the early 80s, either right at the end of high school or in early university. I saw it a few times, and even taped it. I got rid of those vhs tapes a couple of years ago, even though the blanks cost about six or seven bucks back then.

on the clock

This afternoon I met with John Hampton and we looked at the videos he's been editing. We are to preview all four of these shorts next Friday so he needs to whip them into shape. The two he's headed up are really close, we just need to review the other two which are in Mauricio's hands and he's out of town right now, coming back soon I think. William and I watched Harold Lloyd's "Safety Last" this evening. I recorded in a few weeks ago along with a number of other Lloyd films from the same time period and we've been watching them one at a time (they are around an hour each). I skipped a couple others to watch it as he was heavily referenced in the "Back to the Future" films.

Ted Godwin

I don't know how this happens but four months ago Margaret and I missed the Ted Godwin opening at the MacKenzie Art Gallery because of a number of conflicts, first and foremost being the dinner with Chrystene Ells following her defense. We usually go to the MacKenzie about once a month so I had no worries about seeing the show. Well last night I got thinking about modern art and looked to see when the Godwin show ends as I still had not seen it and it closed TODAY. Margaret and I managed to convince William to leave the house and come with us so we all saw it two hours before closing. Pretty good work, glad I saw it.

Shawn Fulton

I met up with Shawn Fulton in a park this afternoon and we recorded over an hour of an interview in preparation for an article I want to write about his really cool super-8 films. William and Sylvie also came. Sylvie climbed a tree very well, limited only by her leash. William bumped his head and cursed the planet for his pain and hoped that we crash into the sun. He really didn't cheer up until we were at grandmas and got some new Lego (Indiana Jones Jungle Cutter). We all went over to Ed/Faith/Marin/Rowan's house and they hosted a bar-b-que and made it a bit of a surprise party for William. We stayed rather late but there's an even louder party next door so it won't be an early night anyways. Sylvie has started being more playful, probably because she is becoming more comfortable here but probably also because she is de-wormed and de-ear-mited. She has some sort of fur covered ball that she goes nuts for.

no space

We spent the better part of this morning at the vet with Sylvie. She weighs 1.4 kg and had more mite infested gunk in her ears than I would have believed possible. She also needed a de-worming pill, ointment in her eyes, and other orifices probed. We were able to test some other cat foods and found some things that she likes (Science Diet is current favorite). She seems to have forgiven us for her hour of hell and is likely able to hear much better now.
I spent the afternoon working on my scores for Modern and trying to prepare notes for my next Splice Magazine article and this evening watching the first two "Back to the Future" movies with William.

First day back to school

Today was William's first day back at school. He started grade 3 with a teacher who is new to the school and is in a grade 3/4 split. In the morning we all walked to school together, including the cat so his friends could see her. We have a leash and harness for the cat so she can go for walks with us. I think she's nervous about the outside so maybe she'll be more of an indoor cat. We got to the school a minute or two after the bell so most kids didn't see her, but we'll try again. William seems to have enjoyed his day.
I had a good meeting with Janine and reviewed the 9 short videos she has made that interconnect as her MFA project. Really starting to work. Strangely, she is pulling farther and farther away from the shockingly violent aspects of the stories and gravitating towards small anactotes.

The cat we got yesterday, Sylvie, is really small. She's apparently 5.5 months old but is not much bigger than a kitten and some people have pointed out that she should be bigger. She won't eat the dry cat food that they were giving her at the Humane Society but is really hungry. I am suspecting that she was surviving on the small amount of wet food they gave each cat as a treat in the morning. She ate a lot of raw beef and chicken today. Last night she slept with, and sometimes on top of, William. She is with him now.

...and MORE family

Here is the new addition to our family: Sylvie, an orange female cat about 5 months old adopted from the Humane Society. She is exploring the house and didn't mind the car ride around town today. She is pretty quiet and purrs a lot. I've left it to William to decide if she is his cat or the family cat.

More family

We went out to the farm this afternoon/evening to have a bar-b-que with Margaret's aunt Dianne and two of her sons, Margaret's cousins Tom (an architecture professor at UofT) and Frank (a musician in Edmonton) and five sons of theirs. William took a while to accept the venture but eventually had fun with water fights and playing a bit on Frank's violin.

no more vacation

I dove back into work today, actually answering all of my email that accumulated over the past couple of weeks! The office was pretty quiet, only Darrell and Andrea were there so I managed to get through things by noon and started trying to write my new Splice article this afternoon. I posted the program notes from my Calgary screening on my other blog for those interested. I took William to get more back to school shoes and we also got him a second pair of Levis. He's into jeans now and when we were in Lethbridge I found him some Levis at Winners so now that's what he wants to wear (just like dad). Downtown is crazy with the AC/DC concert happening this evening. We just drove past the swarms of people heading towards it; more black t-shirts, wrinkles, and grey hair than you can shake a stick at. I'd be so embarrassed to be going to it.

Midnight post script.
It's quiet now. The sound of the AC/DC concert carried very well to our house so we had to close our doors and listen to 1940s radio dramas all evening. I processed 3/4 of my apples into sauce but didn't have the time or energy to properly can them so they sit in a large pot plus some uncanned jars in the frig beside the three pies Margaret made (in case you are wondering; No, we don't have anything else to eat in the house).

what's cooking

I finished the sound editing and mixing for my audio for my new film "Grain: Summer: I Can't See the Forest Through My Dreams" this morning. I'll ship it to Toronto tomorrow to have an optical soundtrack made. I finally tracked down the last place in the country to still make those for 16mm film and I committed myself to making four more films to be finished on film with my Canada Council grant. I will make one of them on 35mm, which won't save me any money but may be slightly less questionable by the labs (very few labs still make prints of 16mm either). It is about 10 minutes long and is about vacations. It will play at the Antimatter Film Festival in Victoria in October.
Yesterday I baked William a cheesecake for his birthday. He asked for coffee flavour! Today he tried out the climbing wall at the science centre: he got up about 30 feet which is about 1/3 of the way. He wants to try again tomorrow.

our cat

I woke up early this morning and started thinking about my cat, wrapped in plastic, frozen in my deep freeze. I couldn't stay in bed thinking about him so I got up, put on some work jeans and runners, and got a shovel. I found a good spot in our garden which wouldn't be disturbed and dug him a good sized hole about 2.5 feet deep, as deep as I could manage. I told Margaret what I was up to and she thought I should consider William in the process. He was up late last night and slept in but once he was up I immediately told him what I was doing. He asked to help so I went out with him and he dug a bit more with me. Meanwhile Margaret had wrapped the cat in a blanket and tucked one of his toy mice with him as well as the goldfish Big Gil and others. William carried him to the hole we'd dug. He'd not gotten much lighter and still must have been 16 pounds. I helped place him in the hole and William insisted on covering him one shovel full at a time with the dirt. We have a stone from the mountains to mark the spot, a stone Margaret will soon paint.
We got this cat in 1996. I'd been working for the tv show "Utopia Cafe" in its final season and a new girl was hired as an intern. She had been traveling and didn't have a place to live so in September she'd been sharing a house with someone else from the show who had a cat. This stray orange cat whom she named "Tony Big Balls" for apparent reasons had been prowling around their back door and she'd taken to feeding it. However, she couldn't take it in since it fought with their resident cat. It was warm so they had no worries. Some of the next details are a bit fuzzy in my memory but for some reason they connected up with a woman who had a personal crusade to help cats and adopted many of them off the street, getting them fixed and having them registered under her own name, regardless of whether or not they had a previous or current owner. Returned in this state, Tony no-longer-big Balls disappeared into the night, returning to their back door after a few days with serious fighting injuries. With no money for a vet, she had no choice but to call the humane society to have him picked up. Her next call was to me since she knew that I had just purchased a house (our possession date was Oct 1). She begged me to go to the humane society and adopt him; the humane society had no tolerance for the cat crusader and her set-cats-free-on-the-streets attitude so Tony was not long for the world. Margaret and I went down and adopted him, renaming him Baron Munchhousen. However, the house was not yet ready to be lived in as we were doing a lot of painting and sanding of floors, things we could not have a cat around for. We housed Baron at Mike Grzesina's apartment for about ten weeks and Mike fed and fed and fed him until he began to take the shape he was known for. At Christmas, when Mike needed to leave town, our hand was forced and we needed to stop our renovations and move in.

Vacation day 12

We got up early and packed the car and were driving away at 9am, saying our goodbyes through my brother-in-law as my sister and niece were both still asleep. Last night I suggested that if we do manage to leave early we'd be able to stop in Drumheller and see the dinosaur museum. William was actually more excited about seeing the five story t-rex again, so that was our first stop. We got lost coming into town and again going from downtown to the museum and again trying to find the highway to connect back to the trans-Canada. In our confusion, we did find the hoodoos and stopped for a minute. Arrival time was about 10pm in Regina.
If you read this daily, you may want to go back 11 days as I just posted all of the vacation posts. I wrote many of them two days ago in Calgary but just saved them unposted until this past hour. Just press "August" on the sidebar to your left of this post and it will allow you to scroll backwards through the month without pressing the "older posts" button. Enjoy.

Vacation day 11

Today was William's Birthday. First thing this morning Margaret presented him with the foam tipped bow and arrow set that he was instantly in love with. She'd picked it up in Penticton before she knew we'd be watching Mythbusters about crossbows. After breakfast, to my surprise, William relented in his daily requests to return home and agreed that it might be nice to stay in Calgary for a day! We were basically ready to get on the road but instead we did some shopping. I picked up the $30 worth of stuff I wanted from IKEA (plus the $55 worth of stuff I hadn't intended on getting, but that's getting off cheap). Sharon took William to Toys R Us and he picked up an Agent's Lego set (she pointed out that he took much longer to choose a slurpee flavour than the Lego). I made peanut chicken, at his request, and as I'd not made a cheesecake (his cake request was "one of dad's cheesecakes") so he settled for Oreo cookies and a movie for desert (we watched "Arctic Tale" on their big screen tv). It was a nice relaxing day.

Vacation day 10

. (image: chocolate frog)

We got the earliest start of the trip today, about 8:45. We picked up some chocolate from the local preservative-free chocolatier as we left town. We made only two stops, one in Revelstoke and another in Banff, and otherwise pushed through to Calgary. Good thing as the passes around Golden are closed at night. In Revelstoke we saw, but didn't tour, the Nickelodeon Museum which could be worthwhile next time through. In Banff we went to the old hot spring pool, the only one I've been to there (I was last there when I was about William's age or a year or two older). My brother in law Paul's birthday was yesterday and there was still ice cream cake that Michelle made left over. We put new candles in it and sang for William; his birthday is tomorrow.

Vacation day 9

William wanted to return home today but we stayed an extra day to go on the authentic steam train ride. However, today is Tuesday and the train only runs Thursday to Monday so we were left to just do some hiking. It seems that the landscape had a message for us: "DON'T WALK ON US"! William stepped on a cactus and when I went to rescue him and pushed a different cactus deep into my ankle. Margaret pulled out the thorns and they ended up pushing into her had. In pain, we limped back to the car, went back to the condo for leftovers. I forgot the AC power cable for the dvd player and Maureen doesn't have a dvd hooked up to her 50" tv until this weekend. We watched an episode of Mythbusters where they built crossbows from paper, ending the day on a high note.

Vacation day 8

(image of our cat from fall 2005)

First thing this morning, William and I went back to the rock wall and he succeeded in climbing all three (he only finished one yesterday and didn't get second chances). This afternoon we went to a vineyard and did a wine tasting (a cool experience but one that could exhaust you if you tried to do all of them here, there are MANY). We picked up from fresh fruit, pulling a peach and some grapes right off of some trees, then went for ice cream. While enjoying our over-sized cones we got a call from Margaret's mother informing us that our cat, Baron Munchhausen/Mr. Guy/Kitty, died last night. He passed in his sleep in his favorite chair. He was my first real pet. We adopted him as a young and rather wild cat back in the fall of 1996 and he moved into our house the same day we did. I'm glad that he went so quietly without any apparent suffering, but I'm very sad we couldn't have been there with him.

Vacation day 7

The beach wasn't busy at all. Maureen thinks that the forest fires, which haven't touched this area, have nonetheless discouraged tourists this year. I built a sand castle then I played Mothra and defended it for quite some time against William who played Godzilla. Eventually we entered the rather cold water. We went to the used book store where William found a couple Animorphs books he didn't have before and I picked up a book about Disney. We went to the Penticton Art Gallery where they had a small but very exciting show of Bob Masse rock poster art which included pencil drawings, colour separations, and finished posters of these quintessential psychedelic art. This evening we went for mini-golf and William climbed the adjoining rock wall.

Vacation day 6

Today we left Creston and went off course a bit to see the house made out of glass embalming fluid bottles near Boswell. Margaret had read about it a couple of years ago and just realized at an information centre that this is where it is. It was cool. He loved the spot by the lake and decided to build there and recycle bottles from his career at the same time. Since we'd come this way, we continued north and took the long (free!) ferry ride over the lake and drove though Nelson where we met Anita Levesque & Bradley Smith at the Oxygen Gallery during their open gallery day in town. We arrived in Penticton at supper time or so and spent a great evening in Maureen's pool.

Vacation day 5

We left Lethbridge today but, as per our pattern, did not get away until nearly lunch. William dined mainly on a bag of almonds. The roads into the mountains were full of maintenance delays and it rained a lot. We stopped at a very nice museum at Frank Slide. However, the event the museum focuses on took only 90 seconds, so the museum was a real case of all form, no substance. We stopped for the night at Creston. We chanced a little motor inn and were very happy. We got the last room. It had three queen sized beds but we got it for the price of a regular room. The outdoor pool was small but was heated and William and I had an hour of fun dueling with pool noodles. We went out to eat and William, still moaning a bit from an almond he'd chewed earlier, suddenly spit out his crown off one of his molars. It was one that had been put in surgically when he was about 3. Not only that, but the tooth had broken away horizontally level with the bottom of the crown. It bled for a minute but then stopped. It was not sensitive to cold or to eating. We put a call in to his dentist, Dr. Kristie White, and she called back to say that a partial root canal had been done to that tooth so if he isn't having pain then to just keep it clean and go on with our holiday!

Vacation day 4

This morning Bob took us to the Birds of Prey park near Lethbridge. We got to pet owls and hawks and saw eagles and a vulture very close up. William has been wearing nothing but his hawk t-shirt throughout this trip so he was pretty pumped. This afternoon we met up with Deric Olsen and his family. Deric has a position at UofLethbridge now teaching film production. William and his daughter get along well and would certainly be close friends if we lived closer together.

Vacation day 3

I got up early this morning and drove Nicole to work. The air mattress isn't giving me the best sleep but the house is quiet so that's nice. We went to Heritage Village again this morning and after lunch went to my sister Sharon's. My nephew Chris is leaving for Europe in a few days so we got to see him one last time before he goes. We drove through the rain to Lethbridge this afternoon, listening to Harry Potter 4 in the car. We are staying with Bob and Brigitta, old friend's of Margaret's parents. Their grandson Nicholas has lots of Lego and a new dog, Jerry, so William had a good time. Before bed the three of us all read different Harry Potter books.

Vacation day 2

We spent the day in Calgary. Margaret bought a family year pass into Heritage Village so we went there and did a few old rides and saw some of the sites. William really loved the school house where he sat at a desk and wrote on the small chalk board. In actuality, I'm counting today as a work day rather than vacation as I am presenting a package of films I curated from the collection at the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers. I ran two documentaries on Cannibals. About a dozen to fifteen people were there, relaxing and enjoying the "Sofa-Cinema" and the discussion afterwards ran at least 90 minutes. My niece Nicole came with me and engaged well with everyone. I think she connected with some of them afterwards regarding the comic convention on this coming weekend.

Vacation day 1

Today we drove to Calgary for the beginning of our vacation. We got a late start, about 11 am, so didn't arrive at my sister Maureen's until after supper. Maureen's house is Spartan since she moved all her spare furniture to her new condo in Penticton BC last year so we had to bring an air mattress to sleep on. William is disappointed that we are not in the mountains yet and it took me a long time to cheer him up. In the end it was my Coby mp3/video player that turned the tide as he was able to watch little 2" videos I'd loaded on it. I thought it was broken a few months ago but it seems to have either fixed itself or it was the usb cable I'd been using.

I don't know what I did today.

Painted trim on front window this morning. I don't know what else: the day sort of filled with stuff. I did discover that my ill fated copy mp3 player that I declared broken a few months ago is working inexplicably. I think the problem may have been in the cable I'd been using to connect to the computer. If it wasn't working, then it was getting no data or no power or no neither. Have programmed some films for Tuesday night: here is a censored version of the program notes (so that the titles remain a secret until the night). I'm worried about the health of my cat. For the past few weeks he's been breathing very heavily, even when he's sleeping. He also hasn't been eating as much or as voraciously. He's old.

day with William

Margaret worked all day. Last night William insisted that he wanted to sleep in this morning since he had to get up for his 9 am camp all week. I was concerned that we'd not get Margaret to work or else not have the car but at 8:05 this morning William got up and came to our room. I asked him if he enjoyed sleeping in this morning and he said he did. We had to hit both Superstores to find two more of his favorite shirt (blue long sleeve cotton with image of a bird of prey). I've decided we shouldn't kill ourselves trying to offer him choices all the time but instead let him wear what he wants and multiples of just that. This afternoon Mike and Paul came over; Mike is in town for a cousin's wedding reception. After they left, William and I watched Star Trek 5. Yes, I know it's one of the worst ones, but we enjoyed it well enough watching it together. It was a boy and dad day.

Fridays are not a relief

Today I finished off a bunch of administrative stuff for work before my vacation starts. As I write this I realize I have another important thing to send in regarding booking equipment and materials for my classes, so my weekend will not be work free. I also read through a horror script that an ex-student sent me and fired off a few comments. Feature scripts are difficult to digest quickly, the structure is as important, if not more important, than the individual moments and dialogue. William finished his animal camp at the Science Centre. He fought about going and fought every morning about getting up, but really enjoyed it and has lots of stories. Overall he really enjoys education.

secret programming

Next week I'm presenting films on a cannibal theme in Calgary from the 16mm collection at the CSIF. Today I wrote up my notes for the screening but they prefer not to let the exact titles they will show become public until the event, so I won't publish those notes yet. This afternoon I edited music from my recordings with Jeff Looysen to be used in place of Raoul's music which got lost from the Film Frenzy film from 2008 that has not yet been disseminated to the participants. I think it would be nice to get those out to those people while they are still interested in the Filmpool so to maximize the chances of recruiting them as continuing members.

sweat

Last night I had an amazing dream that I didn't have a headache. However, other dire things were happening to the world. I then woke up to find that the world was fine but that I had a terrible headache that wouldn't go away. Eventually I ended up on the couch with ice on my neck watching Harrold Lloyd films on Turner Classic Movies. Great fun. I watched another one (all silent) with William this evening.
Following up on a promise I made the other day, I spent my morning hauling boxes out of Margaret's mother's crawl space so they can do some renovations down there. Margaret, George, and I had cleaned up that space 18 years ago but since then it has accumulated more and more and more stuff. I carried about 85 loads up to the garage, mostly two boxes at a time, half of the boxes being filled with old German books. I've not sweated that much in a long long time.
This afternoon I helped (or actually I observed) Bernie and his father inspect and start to repair the flatbeds at the university. I really hope we are able to put the belts on properly when we get replacements in.

recording

I recorded music in the studio today. With Jeff Looysen I recorded a new pass for "Modern" as well as the incidental music I need for "Grain" and will also be able to use some of the session potentially to replace the lost music from the Film Frenzy workshop film I made last year. This evening I recorded trumpet for "Modern" with Nigel Taylor. It sure takes some lung power to play continuously for 15 minutes.

more paint

Holiday Monday today: I started painting the borders around the windows. I'll need at least one more full day working to get it done and I need to do that before the painters come to do the upper floor. I think they are supposed to come in early August, but we've not had any word from them in over a month.

Weekend with Carl

Sorry for brevity of last post. I actually had a very busy weekend. Carl Bessai was in town. We went to the farm yesterday and drove all over the place looking for places his father grew up, went to school, and was buried. Carl and each of his three brothers are drawn to return here every few years to retrace their heritage. We were glad to host him and his family. Other than talking family, we talked a fair amount about film. He thinks that Regina should have a film festival (an international feature film festival) to be part of the circuit that includes Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver. He is certainly right, although festivals are renowned for their ability to consume more hours than anyone has to put into them and I'm not in a position to do it myself. Would be cool though. We didn't get out to Moose Jaw but we talked about Sukanen for a while. He referred to the ship in his feature "Emile" which he directed with Ian McKellen a few years ago. Carl was an obvious choice to be an external on Chrystene's "Sisu" thesis but the personal relationship would certainly have got me into hot water. Carl had a last minute change of plans and had to leave town first thing this morning instead of tomorrow. I spent the day re-laying the patio by the garage. We drove by Paul's house and looked at the absence of his garage that was torn down the other day to make way for a new garage.