![]() Slightly frazzled Life for the next several weeks is complicated - closing the house, clearing out everything, changing addresses, cancelling services, storing cold-weather clothes, getting ready to spend winter in Mexico, and working a show, (West Side Story - probably a dumb idea), moving Barbara’s car and license to Ontario, health cards changes, credit card changes, continued probate regarding the will - the list seems endless! When December arrives - it will be done. ![]() Registration of a car from out of province - If you ever have to. First, you need an Ontario address. For most, this is probably straightforward, but in this instance, not so. Not only was Barbara moving to Ontario, but the address she was moving to had been sold. We used one of my son’s addresses as we initially decided to travel (not rent an apartment just to leave it vacant for 6 months). You need the address to change your driver's license. Once you have an Ontario driver's license (which requires the eye test) you can proceed with the Ontario vehicle registration. Now you need a safety check. Once that is done you need to show proof of Ontario car insurance. We had a bit of a block here as it seemed to get Ontario car insurance you needed to show Ontario vehicle registration - a catch-22. That was ironed out and new plates were received. It’s a long process, with several trips to Service Ontario and calls to insurance companies. Complete by October 6 (it took at least a week) ![]() Barbara left from Windsor airport on the 6th for three weeks, to spend Thanksgiving and visit with her kids, family, and friends out west. Holly and Kim arrived Monday evening of the 10th. They stayed until Thursday afternoon - we got a lot done. The first significant achievement was taking down the canopy in the backyard and along with as much junk as we could get in the car - took it to the dump. Kim the "Discount King” started posting things for sale on FB Marketplace. I’d started tech week for West Side Story and each night when I got back (around 11:30) things were gone - sold! Most of the outdoor furniture went, chairs and the workbench, and other items - sold! Kim also fixed an upstairs drain, took apart the complicated IKEA queen bed in the basement, file cabinet to St Vincent de Paul's (and other loads went there). Holly, Peter, and I made a trip to the lawyer and the investment firm for the never-ending process of signatures required for probate. ![]() West Side Story A friend asked if I would be willing to volunteer to do mic’s for the show. This job requires one to put the small portable microphones on the bodies of the actors, tape the pickups to their faces, monitor battery levels and make the switches. Switches happen when two or more people share a mic. Someone will start with say mic 7, then after a few scenes come to me, I will take it off them and put it on another person. Then it might move back to the original person. This show has a few - not too many - switches. I decided to help out and take the job (volunteer) as this could be my last show for some time, or who knows - forever. Spending 6 months away, I will miss any chance at set design - which is my preferred job. This show is great - yes most of us know West Side Story, but the kids (and a few adults) are very talented. For some, it’s their first time ever doing live theatre and everything is new for them. We started tech week - nightly rehearsals from 6 till 11, on Tuesday. On Friday morning we did a school show and then opened Friday night. This is not the usual and made for a very long and tiring Friday. Ticket sales were very good. On Sunday (Oct 12?) a first. Just as we were preparing to open the second act, the fire alarms went off. The Capitol Theatre had to be evacuated. Everyone went into the streets and waited. We were all allowed back in when the alarms went off again, and out we came. It was determined that the “hazer” (a device that adds smoke to the atmosphere) had added too much and set off the alarms. We had been running the hazer all week, but during intermission, the curtain was down and collects the “haze” backstage. At the Thursday show the bed used in the scene where the girls sing “I Feel Pretty” snapped in half, and someone forgot they were supposed to be on stage as were missing for two minutes. The show came to an end, it was a great success and I met a lot of really nice people - shout out to Murray, Mike, Ryan, Kyle, Carson, Gina, Jolie, Evan, Juan, Johnluke, Rowan, Stephanie, Alex, Robin, Floyd, and more.., ![]() Work continues on Mondays and Thursday evenings for Windsor Light Music’s “A Christmas Carol” for which I’m the set designer, though admittedly the director has probably made more decisions than have i. It’s a very complicated and expensive (double the usual set budget) set yet it will look great on stage. Moat likely because of the house closing, I will not be working the show. On Thursday (October 27) my 3 sisters arrived and we continued to empty the house of contents. The next day we interned Mum and Dad and then I headed for St Catharines with a loaded car. Made son John’s place by 6:00 (4-hour drive) but he was headed to Pearson airport to pickup his partner - Laurel - who’d been way up north near Hudson Bay teaching. They and the dog (Mabel) arrived back by 9. The next morning we visited then I headed to Port Credit to unload more stuff at my x’s and son James'. We erected the Christmas tree I brought, we ate some shepherds pie then at 7 I headed up to Pearson to pick up Barbara. Then we were off to Brampton and the Waters house - which was empty as Kim and Holly were in Windsor - for an overnight. The next morning - October 30th - we drove back to Windsor. Read Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World Joan Druett 2007 FTW: "It is 1864, and Captain Thomas Musgrave’s schooner, the Grafton, has just wrecked on Auckland Island, a forbidding piece of land 285 miles south of New Zealand. Battered by year-round freezing rain and constant winds, it is one of the most inhospitable places on earth. To be shipwrecked there means almost certain death. Incredibly, at the same time on the opposite end of the island, another ship runs aground during a storm. Separated by only twenty miles and the island’s treacherous, impassable cliffs, the crews of the Grafton and the Invercauld face the same fate. And yet where the Invercauld’s crew turns inward on itself, fighting, starving, and even turning to cannibalism, Musgrave’s crew bands together to build a cabin and a forge—and eventually, to find a way to escape." Running Away to Sea: Round the World on a Tramp Freighter Douglas Fetherling 1998 FTW: "At a low point in his life, the prolific Canadian writer Douglas Fetherling sought to clear his head by taking the kind of trip that many of us dream about – going round the world on one of the last of the tramp freighters. The four-month voyage carried him (and a handful of other travelers) some thirty thousand nautical miles, from Europe via the Panama Canal to the South Pacific, a region with a future as fragile as its past is romantic. There the ship, a converted Russian ice-breaker renamed The Pride of Great Yarmouth, traded at some of the most fabled – and some of the most disreputable – ports in the southern hemisphere. The return voyage, by way of Singapore, Indonesia, the Indian Ocean, and Suez, was just as memorable."
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AuthorI believe we are what we think. What we think depends on what we feed our brains. This is a partial record of what my brain has been eating. Archives
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