Broken Area

So we're going shopping a day early because Isabelle is having a dinner party (well we are, but she invited people, is doing most of the cooking etc) so we needed some stuff, so why not just do all of the shopping.

I'm off to the COU meeting in Toronto next week, so if anyone wants to meet up for a drink or 12, let me know.

Isabelle is still arting away, she's taking a course this spring and there have been things that have made it frenetic.

If you come to our house to eat you know you will eat well and drink well, but we don't stand on formality.

I'm back to writing these things a bit before we go to make my life easier. (I do have such a rough life what with the good job and the sabbatical and the great family, I really am hard done by...)

Jon came shopping with us this time, which added an extra layer of Jonnosity.

Isabelle is taking a new course this summer, it involves 'intermedia' which is the idea that you take some piece of art in one medium and make art in another medium out of it.

We talked some about the fires in Fort McMurray, that whole thing has been insane. Pretty cool thing though is that so far there has only been one reported death. Amazing that. Indeed, at the LCBO they were taking red cross donations, the feds are matching donations, and so far 26 million has been raised.

Everything was fine once Jon got his cracker chips....

Isabelle told the story of how she was involved, or is involved in this flower art thing. I don't want to say much more other than it is a pretty good story, and we had a discussion about art and about how Isabelle is Bono (not really, but it's funny).

Nobody goes shopping on Wednesday afternoons, which is good, as we got done very quickly.

I saw some great stuff at CO3, and lined up quite a few Spit and Twitches guests, so that should work out for me. As usual when I take podcasting gear somewhere I don't end up recording....

You may remember a previous episodes, entitled 'Dave's Record Collection' wherein the music was ripped from some of my old vinyl. Well, Isabelle went to a sale of some sort and picked up a bunch of records. So, today the music will come from those albums

It is finally spring, and we got into the spirit of it last night by having our first backyard bonfire. Lots of people do that up here, and we are no exception.

We had a meeting at Jon's school with the director of his program and with other support people about how Jon is doing and his future. It was great.

We then had a heartfelt discussion of various goings on at work. Finally, Isabelle backed the car up to the house to help me carry in the groceries. It is the one nice thing she will do for me this week....

We talked some about confidence and how women tend to have lower confidence levels than men, and, how people, both women and men, view women as less qualified for virtually everything than men.

We then had a pretty good discussion about graffiti, but, it seems I forgot to push record.... Anyway, there is a graffiti problem in Sudbury and a guy has installed night vision cameras to capture the perpetrators in the act. Is this public art? Not sure. Is it vandalism? Yeah.

I did record us talking about Isabelle working on a film project with a friend of hers. It all sounds pretty great.

Back to shopping and back to winter. Or at least snow. We got about 10 cm of snow last night and I for one am opposed to it. Indeed, I refuse to shovel the damned driveway.

We went out a little later than normal today, which explains the later release time. The nice thing is this allowed Jon to come with us. I always enjoy his company and his help while shopping.

Isabelle went to the market today before we shopped and she bought stuff. She also met an alpaca farmer, so you know, that's kinda cool.

It seems like everyone today at the grocery store was old, like way old.

We ended up talking about how different the US is from Canada and why. Spoiler alert, we don't know why.

sabelle spent yesterday visiting a friend who has a pottery studio.

Of course you know what Isabelle does in such situations, she makes pottery cows. So, we talked a bit about why she likes drawing, painting and potting cows.

This led us into a discussion of 'selling out'. I don't think that is actually a thing, I think it is called 'paying your bills' or 'doing your job'. That said, it does feel cool when you have something that is made by a person rather than a machine. Why? Well I don't think either of us are sure, but it just seems right.

Anyway, so, that was our Saturday shopping trip, enjoy.

Maddie had a very brief visit with us as she was up for the psychology honours thesis conference. The conference went well, but Maddie's plane was delayed quite a bit on the way here. Everything worked out. We had quite the discussion in this one about work life balance.

I've decided to make movie theatre popcorn. This involves coconut oil and something called Flavacol, which you can see pictured in this post. I am way more excited about this than I should be.

Today we started out with a recording from our voice mail of a telemarketing scam about taxes. I didn't answer the phone as I did not recognize the number but I googled it. They try to get you to think they are the IRS, or in Canada, the CRA. The best part is how poorly done the recording is.

Wait, Isabelle forgot her wallet! Oh, yeah, I'm sitting on it....

Isabelle has been doing all kinds of stuff this week, like running an open mic, having a few of her pieces on display in different places in town, and, getting a parking ticket.

Isabelle is still watching Highway Thru Hell.

We talked a bit about language, especially written language, and how you English is pretty prescriptive when it comes to conventions about punctuation and such. We both agree, however, that we use too many exclamation points.

We finished up by talking about codes of conduct and how everyone is offended by everything.

We're off on another Saturday adventure! Look, I write part of these posts before we even go shopping, I don't know what we're going to talk about. This is why each post starts out with this generic bit. OK, fourth wall back up....

So off we went, a bit of a detour this week as we had empties to return. I broke a bottle in the beer store.

Isabelle's art needs a home, and her program's current home is sort of in flux. I have mastered the art of saying things that would get others in trouble, but people just say 'oh, that's Dave'.

On the way home we spoke mostly in French. This was prompted by what was on the radio. We talked a bit about the importance of learning another language and how it makes you just a better person in general. People seem reluctant to take the opportunity though.