Category Archives: Art, Theatre, & Film

Awesome

My friends are awesome. Most of you know this, because you are either a friend in real life, or you have read here before how awesome they are.

Today’s proof of awesome: Ceri just bought me a knitting pattern so I can make a lightsaber for the boy. Ceri is made of awesome.

I’ve been having a really tough time lately for a variety of reasons. This, and the news about how advanced the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World movie is (they’re filming in Toronto this spring!) have been the highlights of the past two days.

As of Monday afternoon I’ve also been negotiating another book project. Not mine, exactly; picking up someone else’s anthology collection after their departure. More news once things settle and we see where they are.

Mission Accomplished

The boy has been successfully initiated into the world of Star Wars. So much so that he played ‘oh no the walls are closing in we have to call the robots!’ in the bath last night. He also pulled a blue towel over his head and told us that he was ‘the little one with the one eye and two wheels’, which took me a moment before I understood that he was pretending to be R2-D2.

He says ‘Tith Lords’ in the most charming fashion, called Chewbacca ‘Rawbawca’ for a bit, thought X-wings were pretty cool, and asked where his own lightsaber was as soon as Obi-Wan handed one to Luke. ( “Erm,” HRH temporized, because of course we have a pair; we just didn’t want to hand him one and watch the ensuing devastation as he gleefully swept things off shelves.) We’re currently escaping Hoth in ESB.

And the final seal of approval: When we played the Star Wars soundtrack yesterday afternoon, he danced like a truly crazed thing. And he asked for it in the car this morning.

Excellent.

Link Salada

Because I prefer tea to tossed greens, thanks.

Man who cut pages from rare books gets 2 years in jail: “[A] Harvard-educated historian pleaded guilty to 14 charges involving the theft of illustrations from rare books. He admitted using a blade to cut out 150 pages, including plates and maps, from books in the British Library in London and from the Bodleian Library in Oxford. “As an author, you cannot have been unaware of the damage you were causing,” said Judge Peter Ader as he passed sentence […]. “You have a deep love of books, perhaps so deep that it goes to excess.”

Listening to Schroeder: ‘Peanuts’ Scholars Find Messages in Cartoon’s Scores. “When Schroeder pounded on his piano, his eyes clenched in a trance, the notes floating above his head were no random ink spots dropped into the key of G. Schulz carefully chose each snatch of music he drew and transcribed the notes from the score. More than an illustration, the music was a soundtrack to the strip, introducing the characters’ state of emotion, prompting one of them to ask a question or punctuating an interaction.”


The Society of Animation Studies has created the Emru Townsend Award. “Society for Animation Studies members may now apply for grant awards in the assistance of research and travel for those intending to present at this year’s annual conference.” (Via Tamu at fps.)

Forty-Three Months Old

This is going to be a short one because Christmas happened, so there was lots of other stuff journaled about the boy to refer to if you want update-type stuff.

Poor kid, he was sick on Christmas Day, then sick with bad colds not once but twice in the next ten days. It made for a very tense holiday period because we couldn’t toss him out in the snow the way we wanted to. So there was a lot of book-reading and movie-watching instead. This is the month that will be remembered as the month the boy officially entered the world of Harry Potter. Sure, he’s kind of known about it before, but this month he watched the first two films (Harry Potter and the Hogwarts Express, and Harry Potter and the Flying Car. What, you know them by different names?) and really got into them. He can name all the houses and identify that he’s a Gryffindor (“That’s the house I live in!”). The basilisk in Chamber of Secrets makes him a bit anxious, but he’s pretty brave about it. Of course, being brave means watching the snake from behind a chair or casually from around the corner in th hall, but he does it. The other day he requested a lightning-shaped scar drawn on his forehead, which e wouldn’t allow to be washed off for three days. He then dashed around with a rolled-up piece of paper in the shape of a wand, pointing it at things and saying ‘magic words’ that resembled people’s names from the Potterverse. This exchange occurred in my office:

    SPARKY: [points his wand at the computer monitor] Dumble-a-dumbledore! [makes a static/lightning strike sound]

    MAMA: Wow. What was that?

    SPARKY: That was my magic wand! Look, all the letters are gone from there!

    MAMA: Uh-oh!

    SPARKY: Yeah!

    MAMA: Well, can you put them back now?

    SPARKY: [earnestly] No! They’re all in the wand! And I don’t know how to get them out!

(I see through you, small child. I know you’re trying to get me to stop working to play with you. )

We’re currently reading the Magic Tree House series of books, and he’s really getting into them. (I, on the other hand, am going crazy with all the sentence fragments, and am calling a halt to the month-long odyssey at the end of this story arc.) He’s getting better at reading, too. He can somewhat reliably read ‘cat,’ ‘dog,’ ‘in,’ ‘out,’ ‘wow,’ ‘mouse,’ ‘book,’ ‘train,’ ‘Canada’ (you had to know that one would be among the first words read), ‘home,’ and others I’m forgetting. I think we’ll try the Nate the Great series next. I tried reading him the first Time Warp Trio but his sense of humour isn’t quite there yet.

We are encountering the three-year-old push for independence and control of his environment. There’s a lot of “no” and “after I finish this” and “no, you do it,” which are fine in some contexts and just sheer frustration in most others. We know he’s being better-behaved at school than he is at home, and it’s somewhat frustrating to hear people say, “But he’s such a thoughtful, well-behaved, polite child!” Yes, we know that, and it would be nice if he demonstrated some of that at home these days. I know he’s working things out, and pushing to ascertain boundaries, and testing structures to make sure they’re consistent, but wow, it gets old fast.

He has joined the first-ever local pagan three-to-nine-year-old kids’ circle, and had a blast at the first introductory session with masks and the drum and snacks. I’m so excited about this, because he’ll hear about elements and deities and seasons and cultural celebration from someone who isn’t me, so he’s more likely to listen. (It’s just the nature of things, and I understand that.) And at school they’re doing a month-long unit on sound and music, so he comes home with all sorts of little tidbits of information there too.

The other day he picked up two bits of thread from his snowsuit and twiddled them together in his fingers. “I’m knitting!” he told HRH when he glanced in the rearview mirror. HRH told me this story when they got home and I couldn’t help but think of Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe story about Sam and his hockey team knitting. He’s bright, he’s eager to learn, and I’m sure it won’t take long before he’s wrapping string around sticks and somehow managing a rough approximation of a knitted object.

Other Liam-themed posts this past month:

– Mama is cool because she has awesome movie music
– Liam rediscovers The Philosopher’s Stone
– poor Liam is sick on Christmas Day

Finis!… Except Not

I finished knitting HRH’s eight-foot-long banner of Harry Potter geekitude, AKA his Gryffindor scarf, yesterday morning. I turned it inside out, wove in all the ends, and blocked it in the basement. The tassels were supposed to go on last night.

Except I do not have a crochet hook with which to do them, and everything else I suggested to myself also did not work. (Christmas tree ornament hook! Candy cane! Unbent paper clip!)

Argh.

I suspect I will be pleading with Ceri to allow me to stop by tonight in order to collect a crochet hook. Or possibly Mousme, as she may also have the smaller size circular needles I need for Bodhifox’s hat. Because after two inches of ribbing and stockinette, it is clear to me that I need to start over with a smaller needle size unless Captain Fox wants a hat that looks like lace. Stupid yarn. (It’s very pretty, really, but not his type of thing.) My gauge swatch lied AGAIN. You see why I cannot trust these things? [ETA: Oh, aha, I have a size 8 circular needle. It’s an Addi Turbo, and I don’t like it as much as my bamboo needles, but I’ve got one and that’s what’s important.]

We had some Family Dramah over the weekend (two separate incidents, actually) and as a result some of our weekend plans were skebarded. The one good thing about the Dramah is that everything is better than it was pre-Dramahtic Incidents. HRH said that this holiday would go on record as being One Day Too Long, although I suspect it was actually a good five days too long and we were all gritting our teeth for those final days until none of us could take it any more. We ended the holiday period by taking down the tree and decorations last night (in about thirty minutes, bang zap pow!) and watching The Empire Strikes Back (the original theatrical version, thank you very much).

And now, the first thing I get to do before I settle down to write is submit an invoice for my December work! What a lovely way to begin the work week.

Grumpy

So there’s been all sorts of lovely things happening lately, but some disappointments too. Such as today, when the boy woke up with a hacking, barking cough, which was enough to send HRH to the phone to cancel our much-anticipated trip out to t! and Jan’s place for the day.

I love my boys, I truly do. But I’m used to them being gone for most of the week, and they’ve been home for a full seven days now. This plus all the holidaying has drained me pretty badly, and I’m turning into the Irritable Me that I’m not so fond of because I haven’t had any time to myself. I have an outing planned for myself tomorrow, which will help.

The boys are currently watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (which has been renamed as “The Hogwarts Express” by Liam) on the new TV and the boy was just dancing with excitement in the middle of the room, riveted by the Sorting Hat sequence. He jumped and cheered when Harry was sorted into Gryffindor house. “Gryffindor! Just like me!” he exclaimed. He’s enchanted (no pun intended) by the characters and the settings. I suspect that he doesn’t remember the first time we watched it with him in the room a couple of years ago. We’re currently reading the Magic Tree House series before bedtime, but seeing how much he’s loving the Potter universe I may try reading him the first book soonish. I suspect I’ll be making him a Gryffindor scarf as well, which would thrill him to no end because not only will he have a Hogwarts scarf, he will match his Da.

I suppose I will go sit with them and knit, since I can’t focus on work when the boy is running in and out of my office. I managed to get about nine hundred words of Orchestrated written yesterday while he napped, which cheered me up a lot, but there’ still lots of work I want done by the end of the year. I have a pile of cello work to do as well at some point. If the office downstairs is empty I may go down there in a bit to practise.