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A Nice Family Gathering

Posted on by Patrick

A Nice Family Gathering

Last night we head­ed south with some friends to see the play A Nice Fam­i­ly Gath­er­ing, pre­sent­ed by the ADLIB dra­ma club as the inau­gur­al play in Bois­se­vain’s brand new the­atre.  The new the­atre is a love­ly space for both dra­mat­ic pre­sen­ta­tions and movies.

The play is about a Min­neso­ta fam­i­ly gath­er­ing for Thanks­giv­ing din­ner — the first such gath­er­ing since the death of the father ten months ago.  He was a busy man, Dr. Lun­deen, so busy that he nev­er man­aged to tell his wife how much he loved her.  Now he’s back, as a ghost at the feast, and he wants to let her know how he felt.  There are just a cou­ple prob­lems:  only his son, Carl, can hear or see him, and Car­l’s not that enthralled with the idea of help­ing his old man.  After all, in life, Carl Sr. was rather a dis­tant man, and not, in Junior’s eyes, much of a father.

The oth­er prob­lem is that Mrs. Lun­deen has invit­ed a date to supper.

A Nice Fam­i­ly Gath­er­ing is a great sto­ry; it’s fun­ny, it’s touch­ing, it delves into the dynam­ics of fam­i­ly and grief. The act­ing was uni­form­ly strong; every­one on the stage did a fan­tas­tic job.  The sin­gle set was well-con­struct­ed, and evoked a small-town house to perfection.

In short: kudos to every­one involved.

After the play, my friend Cheryl said, “I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me.”  Me, too.

I’ll end on anoth­er oft-quot­ed tru­ism:  “Hap­py fam­i­lies are all alike; every unhap­py fam­i­ly is unhap­py in its own way.”  A Nice Fam­i­ly Gath­er­ing is a sto­ry of an unhap­py fam­i­ly striv­ing for happiness.

Today’s Excitement

Posted on by Patrick

Well, appar­ent­ly a cou­ple moose wan­dered onto a school play­ground and had to be tran­quil­ized. My cowork­er said there were six police cars there when he went by.

But the real excite­ment was at our house.

I woke up about 5:50 AM and thought, That sounds like keys in my lock. I threw on some clothes and went down­stairs. There was a guy in the porch — appar­ent­ly I’d left the out­side door open last night, whoops — try­ing to fit his keys into my lock. I got his atten­tion by smack­ing the wall next to the door, intend­ing to tell him he had the wrong house. As soon as he saw me through the win­dow in the door, though, he start­ed try­ing to ram his way in with his shoulder.

OK, I thought, if you’re going to be aggres­sive, you can talk to the police. I grabbed the phone and dialed 911 as I head­ed upstairs. Mean­while, he set­tled down and went back to try­ing his keys.

While I was on the phone with 911 he start­ed bash­ing again. About five min­utes into the call, the police arrived. K and I watched from the upstairs win­dow as they pulled him out of the porch and out to the squad car. (As K point­ed out, it’s odd­ly reas­sur­ing to hear some­one yelling “GET DOWN! GET ON THE FUCKING FLOOR NOW!” Well, as long as it’s not you they’re yelling it at, anyways.)

Turns out he’s a dude in a band from Toron­to. He was stay­ing a cou­ple doors down, and got crazy drunk — the porch smelled like whiskey when I was talk­ing to the con­sta­ble — and end­ed up at the wrong house. The police point­ed out that if they pressed charges, it’d be 6 months to a year before it went to tri­al, and the odds of get­ting mon­ey out of him to repair my door (which got cracked in the mid­dle, but still locks) were next to nil. They sug­gest­ed that, if he had mon­ey to repay it now, we could set­tle it civil­ly. I con­ferred quick­ly with K, and we said all right. We guessti­mat­ed a price for a new door, and the offi­cer came back with the cash.  Pre­sum­ably he got paid for last night’s gig, or some­thing. Then the police drove off with him to let him snooze in the drunk tank (I assume).

As I went to work, I noticed there was a lit­tle SUV with Ontario plates in front of the house. At lunch it was gone.

So, to sum up: Drunk guy tried to bust his way into my house. The police that came to my house a) arrived quick­ly and b) prob­a­bly were spared moose detail. Every­one’s safe and sound, if a lit­tle rat­tled. (Well, K and I are all right. I don’t care much what Mr. Toron­to feels like.) And I get to go door shop­ping, apparently.

Shopping list

Community Service

Posted on by Patrick

My award

So this happened.

In mid-April , one of the admin assis­tants from the Pres­i­den­t’s office caught up with me at cof­fee time and said, “You’ve been select­ed as this year’s recip­i­ent of the Board of Gov­er­nors’ com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice award.”

I said, “Huh?”  I had­n’t even know I was nom­i­nat­ed.  (I still don’t know who nom­i­nat­ed me; it’s a pri­vate, con­fi­den­tial deal.  But I do thank who­ev­er it might have been.)

I was told I could have up to six guests attend the Uni­ver­si­ty’s con­vo­ca­tion, if I want­ed.  Unfor­tu­nate­ly, my wife was unavoid­ably out of town on the date of the cer­e­mo­ny.  My moth­er made the trip from the big city, though, and X, my so-called “judo wife”, came along as well.

Sev­er­al peo­ple asked me if I’d be mak­ing a speech; I told them that I had­n’t been informed one way or the oth­er if a speech was expect­ed, so I had­n’t pre­pared any­thing.  I was ready to ad-lib some­thing short, though, if the need arose.  My boss end­ed up in the seat beside me on the stage, in the sec­ond row of the plat­form par­ty.  As the grads were fil­ing across the stage to get their sheep­skins, he leaned over and whis­pered, “So how long is your speech?”

I replied, “I real­ly won’t know till I’m done.”  He laughed soft­ly and sat back up.

As it turned out, I did­n’t need to say any­thing; I just stood next to the Pres­i­dent, look­ing pret­ty, while she read off the bio I’d sub­mit­ted.  Then she hand­ed me the framed cer­tifi­cate, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er (a friend of mine, as luck would have it) snapped some pho­tos, the crowd went wild, and I sat down.

After the cer­e­mo­ny was com­plete, we stuck around for some fur­ther pho­tos.  X talked me into let­ting her do the kata-guru­ma lift for the cam­era.  In our fan­cy clothes.

(If you don’t know what kata-guru­ma is, check the video below.  Note that X put me back down on my feet, as we did­n’t have any mats backstage.)

And that’s how my week­end went. How was yours?

May Long Weekend, 2012

Posted on by Patrick

Here’s where I spent my weekend:

Ontario Open Judo Tournament

The Mas­ter­Card Cen­tre in Eto­bi­coke, Ontario, site of the Ontario Open judo tour­na­ment.  I was there as a fresh­ly-mint­ed Nation­al C ref­er­ee.  The judo was fast, the venue was chilly — that con­crete holds a deep chill — and the peo­ple were great.

My wife asked me if I’d go again.  Yes. Yes I would.

Typography

Posted on by Patrick

I was fid­dling with the Evans site this evening — adding a post about dona­tions, etc — and came across this post, which made ref­er­ence to the wp-Typog­ra­phy plu­g­in. I installed it on the Evans site and had a look.  I must say, I’m impressed.

It allows for hyphen­ation, for one thing; it also han­dles wid­ows and orphans, some­thing that I vague­ly under­stand.  More impres­sive­ly — at least to me — it also han­dles “smart” quotes prop­er­ly.  Smart­ly, in fact.

This is a buga­boo of long stand­ing for me; I find it irri­tat­ing to see con­trac­tions like ’tis start­ing with an open­ing sin­gle quote rather than a prop­er apos­tro­phe.  This plu­g­in seems to solve it.  (If “’tis” is spelled right in this post, it’s thanks to the plugin.)

Pedan­tic? It sure is.  But we all have our pet peeves, & for what­ev­er rea­son, improp­er punc­tu­a­tion is one of mine.  And I’m glad to have stum­bled across a tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion to the problem.

Update: I see from the notes on the theme I’m using that wp-Typog­ra­phy is in the Rec­om­mend­ed Plu­g­ins list. I thought sound­ed vague­ly familiar…

Moving Home

Posted on by Patrick

Since it did­n’t get accept­ed for the AE Sci­ence Fic­tion micro chal­lenge, I’m revamp­ing my short sto­ry “Mov­ing Home”, expand­ing it a bit, and plan­ning to sub­mit it to some mar­kets when it’s polished.

The “micro” in micro fic­tion was def­i­nite­ly a chal­lenge; the sto­ry had to be less than 200 words, includ­ing the title.  When I fin­ished the first draft, it was about 300 words, which meant I had to trim it by a third.

If I’d been smart, I’d have saved the orig­i­nal 300-word ver­sion, but I just start­ed to hack and slash, remov­ing colour and com­bin­ing thoughts.  It was a good exer­cise — it forced me to choose my words very wise­ly — but I think I had a bet­ter sto­ry before the slicing.

Now, though — now I’m try­ing to recov­er what I sub­tract­ed, and it’s not there any­more. Well, it is, but it’s not exact­ly the same.  I’m chas­ing les mots justes and they’re elud­ing me.

Just one of those things, I guess. At least, with­out the 200-word lim­it, I can tell the full sto­ry. I’m not sure how long it’ll end up; I guess I’ll know that when I’m done.

 

Horns, by Joe Hill

Posted on by Patrick

Horns is a page-turn­er.  Most nights the only rea­son I stopped read­ing was because I had to make a choice between find­ing out what comes next and being use­ful at work in the morning.

The sto­ry con­cerns one Ignatius “Ig” Per­rish, who wakes up one morn­ing after an ill-remem­bered night of drink­ing to dis­cov­er that he has grown horns overnight.  They look a bit like dev­il horns, and they hurt to touch.  He dis­cov­ers the horns seem to have giv­en him cer­tain pow­ers, too:  peo­ple can’t help but reveal their dark­est secrets to him, and they don’t seem to remem­ber talk­ing to him.

Ig’s girl­friend Mer­rin died about a year ago, a hor­rif­ic sex-mur­der; all the evi­dence seemed to point to Ig as the cul­prit, but he knows he did­n’t do it.  The evi­dence con­ve­nient­ly van­ished, and no one was ever con­vict­ed.  The towns­folk all assumed Ig’s rich par­ents bought off the jus­tice sys­tem to pro­tect the fam­i­ly name.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Horns, by Joe Hill” →

Some sage writing advice

Posted on by Patrick

…from none oth­er than Neil Gaiman.

You being lazy and unmo­ti­vat­ed and not writ­ing allows anoth­er writer, who does sit down and write, to get pub­lished in your place. Mag­a­zines and pub­lish­ers only have so many pages, so many annu­al pub­lish­ing spots. You’re let­ting some­one else who wants to do the work get published.

So very true.  Write faster, Johan­neson.

Via Neil Gaiman’s Tum­blr site. (Tum­blog? Tum­blma­ba? Twit­terkiller? Nev­er sure what to call those things…)