7 Quick Takes (IX)

1. This past weekend was the long weekend, of course. As I believe I mentioned already, I spent five hours of Saturday working. Indeed. On Sunday I went to St. Thomas' and had an epiphany, which I have somehow forgotten. This was upsetting. And on the Monday we (that's my mother, father, and I) toured the boats I've been working on all summer, and then went North to visit Fort McKay and the Bridge to Nowhere, two notably spots in the Fort McMurray surrounding area. I did other things that weekend, but I can't really recall many of them. I went to the bank, at the very least.

2. Somewhere in there, the Monday I think, I took numerous photographs of fungi. You will see next week how this is relevant: I had written posts on Saturday that will be published sometime in the near future. I forget the exact dates I programmed in. Eventually it will be my pleasure to show them to you.

3. I have now finished working at the Marine Park. On Tuesday we cleared out the paint and I cleaned up a fair amount of the yard in the afternoon. On Wednesday I was interrupted at Heritage Park (you'll see in what later) to go and help my supervisor move pallets and anchors around with the CAT lift. When we were done there, just after lunch, he took me back to Heritage Park and said that, minus a few hours work here and there, I was done at the Marine Park. I was now on my new project...

4. Except not really. I spent much of Wednesday editing storyboards. Summer students are great in many ways. Among these ways, however, sudden and total absence at the end of the summer is not included. Numerous storyboards somehow got slated as good for publication when someone decided to give them a quick look...and discovered they were unedited. Since my employers have caught wind of my knack (stark raving obsession) for grammar and style, I was asked to harness that compulsion and get my red pen out. This is what I was interrupted doing in the last post. And I did some more when I got back. It's not that they were truly awful, but there were some errors which would look pretty bad if they got on the walls. For instance, "5,000 thousand" was a funny one that no one had caught. The grammatical nonsense was less funny.
This is why you never ever try to publish your work without someone else looking at it. You miss things because you read what you meant to say.

5. And after that I still didn't really get much work done on my project, because I was busy helping prepare for a move. Heritage Park is getting a facelift; the Gift Shop is moving to the front entrance, Reception is moving to where Collections currently is, and Collections is sharing what is now the Gift Shop with a new Children's Programming Space. This move is happening today and over the next few weeks. I am lucky enough to have really and for truly coincidentally booked my vacation time for the beginning of the move.

6. One of the days in there my folks and I watched Point Break. I actually now own the movie. Have you seen Hot Fuzz? I love that movie. Anyway, there's a scene where Nicholas Angel (such an awesome name) and Danny Butterman are watching action movies. One of them is Point Break. The viewer sees a particular emotionally-charged shot, in which Utah (Keanu Reeves) cannot bring himself to shoot a masked man, and fires his gun into the air in frustration. Later in Hot Fuzz, Danny himself repeats the same action.
I had never seen Point Break before this, but I as familiar with that scene shown in Hot Fuzz. It was nice to at last see the movie it took place in, to get a feel for the context, and to understand the emotion it was imbued with--and thereby imbued Hot Fuzz.
Anyway, it was a good movie.

7. And now I'm on vacation. After work I packed, had a two hour nap, and caught the red eye to Pearson. On that flight I got a bit over an hour of sleep. Then I took a complex transit route, involving a bus, two subways, a train, and a cab, to my brother's apartment in Oakville. Then I waited outside his apartment for his class to finish, during which time I dozed for about fifteen minutes in the grass. Eventually Nick let me in, and now he's gone back to class, and I'm writing out my 7 Quick Takes on his computer. Which, obviously, brings me to right now.
I have realized two things about my trip. 1) This is the first time I'm on a vacation in which my destinations and suchlike are entirely self-directed. I am not with my folks or my friends or a class or even a group of strangers somehow organized, like a retreat or something. Even though I am visiting friends at each step of my journey, I make the journey alone. 2) This is also the first time I've slept outside, on public property, since I was a little kid. I've slept in vehicles like trains and buses before, but not on the grass. Huh.

Make sure you visit the Quick Takes Queen.