Saturday, January 16, 2016

January 15th 2016

Remember I mentioned that thing about Ted looking up DIY the other day? Well he woke up ready to burst with enthusiasm about any and every project under the sun. In fact when I arose he had already painted a colour wheel and was working towards a Lego stop motion animation. He's done them before, but a new purpose, a new reason to make a new one.

Seeing as he was so into his projects for the day, we focused on a little at-home-ness. Harriet was settled, I had a new book, and the house was as if a bomb had exploded somewhere in the back half of the house, but that was ok, I could handle that. Until I just couldn't and I had to tidy.  We finally had a free bin, so I managed to control some of the cascading rubbish, controlling the edges of the crazy that is Teddy in full project mode. Harriet happily focused on producing a watercolour for her DIY project. She used some of the techniques learnt the other day from the YouTube videos (hey, she isn't going to learn these skills from me, so thank you sharing people of the internet) and produced a wash background and then some other stuff. That's about as technical as I could get. She combined it with her other love - succulents.






 Then we had hightail it out of the house around midday to maintain sanity.












We had a few more things to offload to the op shop, so we performed the drop off with perfunctory skill (the result of much holiday de-cluttering experience) and then headed in. Harriet was intent on securing some new clothes for Yuki, I was hoping to lose Ted somewhere in the aisles and browse the books along the way.

In the children's books we managed a small score - three Star Wars encyclopedia-style books and a huge Mythology book that had its own embedded quill in the back cover. Ted was finally intrigued into silence, while I was excited to find a few books I'd been looking for on the shelves. I've actually read most of these, but am hoping to convince my book club into considering The Other Side of the World for next month (and that was even before I found it in the op shop!).














Even more exciting than a great book haul is a practical haul. I unearthed this gorgeous leather satchel and decided what the hell, I'm going to buy it. Expensive as it was (for an op shop find) I decided to purchase it and have been smug and elated ever since. Perfect for carrying around a laptop and some books to a new job, even if I do say so myself.


Then, as mentioned previously, we were back home, cleaning the house in anticipation of going out to see Quentin Tarantino, Fred Schepisi and Tom Keneally discuss The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. The horror of it all was that the screening was at The Star Casino. To know me is to know I am not a casino person. I was walking around in cloud of bewidlerment until a lovely staff member came up to me and gently queried "Tarantino event?" to which I gratefully fell into her arms sobbing for directions out of that snaking, labyrinthine design.

Have you ever seen The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith? Me neither. Tarantino had said he wouldn't do the event unless it was projected in original 35mm film and the difference in cinematic experience was staggering. For one - you could *hear* the projectors whirring. For two, there was a depth to the colour that was unlike anything in the digital realm. For three, it had that upper corner dot to indicate the time to switch rolls and you could hear the rolls cranking as they started up. It was sublime. Of course the plastic cup of red wine balanced precariously on my knee sort of killed the olde worlde vibe a little.

After the Q&A they were also screening Mad Dog Morgan, but we had babysitter timetabling issues and chose instead to head to the bar downstairs for a chat with our friend Mister Dave. Our chat was held under the cinematic-style glare of multiple enormous screens beaming sports from around the world. It was truly the stuff dreams are made of. The kind you wake up from with a cold sweaty sheen and the scream still lingering in the back of your throat.

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