How do I jump back into the swing of things?

Something has been wrong with me, something has been holding me back. I haven’t touched my site, I haven’t touched my art. I’ve had ideas for comics, but I don’t write them down. Or even try to draw them out. This fact used to worry me, and as days would go by I would feel bad about not updating my comic. I haven’t even really touched my photos on Flickr, and there are stories there. I wrote a blog entry in the back of one of my notebooks at school. I wanted to talk about Otakon, and what happened in Baltimore. But I feel if I write about things that happened so long ago I’m only doing it to fill in those gaps.

But the point is there HAS been a gap, and I don’t really feel the need to talk about the filler. I want to get back into the swing of this. I want to write blog posts, I want to draw comics, and I want them to be about what’s going on NOW. So will I finish the iPod comics? Probably not. There was a joke there, in which the guy there told me to cheat Apple by trying to paint the water indicator. I found it funny at the time, but is it funny to me now? No, I mean, the warranty on that iPod expired already. In basic terms, my website, my content, mine mine mine.

But, for clarity, and if I ever decide that this post is stupid and I do want to one day talk about anything cool that I did, I give you this list!

- Exploring King Eddie, and discovering the higher parts of Toronto.

- Going off with a group to Woodstock to explore an abandonded refinery, church, and a police station. (… Not because we were caught, it was abandonded too.)

- Otakon! 3 days in Baltimore, one day spent in Philadelphia because of a delay. Basically my first time on a plane.

- Starting school! Getting some pretty cool classes on my schedule, and one that is pretty much ridiculous.I want to show what my life drawing class is all about.

- Hobo dens! I keep finding old buildings downtown, smell funny, full of garbage, probably not safe to venture too far into them.

- Kind of being in an Improv Everywhere experiment? We came pretty late to the Mp3 Expirment Toronto. No worries though, since I’m joined Improv in Toronto. (Even trying to build them a site, oh irony.)

- Exploring a factory in the Junction. (Oh, I haven’t even posted the few good photos I took.) Very, very cool, and could have been caught by a pretty lazy security guard.

- I started, and stopped, playing DnD. Further dwelling into geek-hood.

- Theatre work. Something I’m sure to talk about more and more, as I’m in a program at The Canadian Stage Company now. As well as lighting crew at my school. (So far, so awesome.)

- I’m sure I had a bunch of little rants prepared to blog about, but if I’m not angry enough to remember them anymore… Well… Whatever, right?

I think I’ve been a big fan of lists lately. What about the future?

- More talk about The Canadian Stage Company youth program! Can you tell I’m super excited for this?

- It’s getting colder, does this mean staying in more and making art? A return of my freezing room most likely.

- Halloween! I think the holiday has pretty much worn me out, but I’m sure I’ll find some people to entertain me. I do have to beat my previous pumpkin though. Maybe a robot this year? And of course, I need to find something ridiculous to wear.

- I’m sure I can get some comics down on paper. Lets go back to the world of pens and pencils for a bit.

After that, I figure I see what the future holds. I’m keeping an eye on you, Mr. Website, don’t worry.

A new site! Well, the same site. But different. It will be different. Once I figure out what goes where and how everything fits together. Moving your site isn’t exactly simple.

But hey, it’s here. Some major changes going down in the next little bit. Site is going to be a little dodgy for a bit. Sorry for the mess, it’ll be all fixed eventually.

Welcome.

I just walked outside to take the recycling out, and you know what hit me? The beautiful scent of the weird trees in our front yard. They bloomed, and I have no idea what type they are, but it smells so nice out. I guess spring is really here… Finally.

… Now just two weeks of bliss until the summer humidity shows up.

I was looking at this photoset when I had the idea to look up places right here at home.

I found an interesting site, mostly telling me that a lot of really cool places are out there! Or… Were, lots of demolition going on. I asked a friend about some places downtown, and was led to the King Edward hotel. Apparently there are a few abandoned sections in there? Including a ballroom. I found a couple of these signs, and I got scared off. Next time I’m bringing somebody with more balls. (”I suggest a male.”)

Unsure of where to go next, I decided to walk in the general direction of the CN tower, trying to stay off the main streets. While I was there I was surprised at how many tourists will face rain to take an expensive elevator to the top of the tower. What else surprised me was paying $2 for the worst ice cream cone I’ve ever had.

Decided to wander towards the lake shore. It was raining just a bit, but the walking was keeping me warm. Walked around on the harbor, and wanted to get on the other piers, but it seemed to be protected? I didn’t investigate further, maybe next time I will, pretend one of those boats is mine. Just had my little photo shoot with this big sailboat I found.

Walked over to what seems to be the abandoned Canada Malts Co. building. Completely covered in fencing, barbed wire, and motion sensing lights. This would be a dream to sneak into though. After walking all the way around, and taking tons of pictures, I continued down the harbor. I wanted to walk farther down, all the way to Harbor front. But then it started coming down like crazy. I was completely soaked very quickly and there was no shelter around, just the new house built. I decided to get away from the lake as fast as possible.

What followed was a lot of walking. The good thing is I noted a lot of places for future exploring, as my will to sneak around buildings was diminishing. I decided to cut through an alley, and found a short ladder onto a roof, which I decided to check out. What I found was some really cute graffiti, lots of connecting roofs, and essentially a giant puddle. My shoes were already completely soaked through, so I didn’t care anymore. I climbed up to a bit of a higher roof, and found some cool skylights. I’m not a complete weakling after all! Wanted to search around more, but the buildings around were actually being used. Actually, what would they have done? Next time I’ll search around longer.

I was tired, and walked back towards the subway station I came from. Took lots of side trips down alleys to take pictures of future spots to explore, and eventually gave up and grabbed a bus. (With a very wet bus ticket, I add.) Soaking wet, I went home. It was a great day though, and I look forward to exploring more on a nicer day.

All links lead to my flickr photostream.

One flew west, and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

I decided to faithfully work for the school show this year. Frankly, it was tiring, long hours, lots of sitting around doing nothing… And yet I still want to do it all over again next year. I worked on the audio crew, just the 3 of us. We were told we had to make sound effects. One early Saturday morning we walked around the neighbourhood around the school collecting noises. Something about 3 teenagers walking around, we’re just asking to be hassled. One guy swore at us as we were collecting the noises from this downright creepy revolving door. My favourite though was just this lovely hummer owner. We needed to get sound effects of cars driving by, and we needed them to honk. I suggested making a “honk for the earth” sign. There we stood in the middle of a busy street, when a Hummer sped up, into the lane right next to us and stuck his middle finger out the sunroof. Typical, right?

So we finished our sound effects, only to find out: Almost none of them were being used, and our actual job, which we were told a week before the show, was to buy and set up all the microphones for the show. We later find out almost none of those are actually used either.

So for 2 weeks I was stuck at the school till around 10, weekends included. Force to go on food runs for people to Wendy’s, working with a crazy sound “expert”, running from the booth to the stage, tapping mics, taping mics, re-taping mics, crawling under scary stage extensions… Only to find out I didn’t have to at all. Our expert was annoying, he talked a lot about nothing, and mostly just made the school buy lots of useless stuff. That and everything he did for us, we actually switched back before the show. The most annoying thing he did was dump extra cables on us. Un-labelled cable lying around? That we have to return? It was difficult, and I’m not even sure how that turned out…

It wasn’t all hell though… The cast was great, and the show turned out amazing. Hanging out in the booth with our slightly weird stage manager was great. The audio crew had a lot of fun in that booth. Oh the booth, 2 couches, 1 TV with cable, and so many talks of heroin.

Should I even mention our director? I fear for my life, so I think I’ll leave that out…. And by that I mean she really is a lovely person. Lovely.

Lastly, and I need to get a picture this. Our school has giant glass windows for the hall outside the theatre, we spelt out “Cuckoo’s are Coming.” Of course when they were taking them down they took the time to write out “COCK” and of course I find that amusing. :3

Photos can be found on my Flickr account.

Things change, and I have to recognise that. So here are a few edits to my previous blog posts.

Starting with the TTC rant:

I haven’t been taking the bus for about a week, so I just found this wonderful new design on the buses. It’s not completely new, but they made the seats in the back of the bus, on the raised section much, much better. I was simply… Happy, when I saw them. More leg room, and they moved the seats around so now people CAN stand back there. It’s delicious, thank you TTC. I’m a happy rider.
Spoonifur.com blocked:

Now, I don’t know why… But spoonifur.com is no longer blocked at my school. Maybe somebody finally decided to check up on that? I had an email prepared to send out and everything, but I guess they got to it first. My pornographic deeds will once more be spread across my school network. Very, very nice.

A look into the future:

The last two weeks, and this current week have been increasingly taken up by the school show. When I’m not dead from all day rehearsals, and this week of actual shows, and the saturday giant clean up… I’ll write a post to remember the hor- amazing time I’ve been having.

Lastly, just enjoy the photoshop sketches. Any comic ideas I’ve had dissapear too quickly. Man, I hope this posts this time. Spoonifur.com has been acting weird.