#176 - Bird and a Donut

Another busy day at the animation studio approving paintings, crew meetings and paintings of my own to work on.

I was woken from a sound sleep at eight am by an overenthusiastic painter who likes to let everyone know they started at eight by saying a cheery hello to the crew. We have company policies that limit communications to work hours, but I don’t think this person knows that.

I ignored them and decided I need to mute the Teams app on my phone during sleep hours. I guess I could use the do not disturb function, but I always forget to set it. And then the next day I forget it is still on.

I imagine there are fancy settings that already exist for this and I will now have to go learning about not being disturbed at eight am. We make animated cartoons for children; there is no need for eight am anythings unless you are the child watching them!

And that is the desperate cry of a night owl.

I made myself a cortado with toast and jam to soothe my soul. I was having some splendid dreams too! Cheese dreams, but I hadn’t even eaten any cheese the night before. What a waste of REM nirvana. (Not the bands).

I did some approvals that had appeared overnight from two of my painters, and then it was time for our Monday meeting at eleven. The meeting lasted a little over forty-five minutes, so I grabbed my wife and we took our afternoon walk, cutting it short to make sure I was back in time for a one PM meeting. One PM meetings should be banned. Noone wants to talk to people after their lunch. Okay, I don’t want to talk to people right after lunch.

That meeting went until two and then I was able to put on my earbuds and get painting on my own work. That lasted until about four thirty when the boss, going through the episode, found things she needed done or appeared missing, and the status of anything that might be outstanding. It took us until about five thirty to wrangle everything into place, leaving us in a good position for tomorrow.

Robyn and I were due at our friends' for dinner at six, and I still needed to make myself beautiful. That took about twenty minutes, and then we were out the door for a dinner of homemade steak and shrimp quesadillas. They were absolutely delicious, and we both ended up having seconds.

Their cockatiel flew over to me and appeared to be very excited to see me. It always flies to me and then sings. Tonight it was going absolutely crazy with a loud display. It sings songs like the Addams Family theme when it’s happy. My theory is that it really likes my socks and my beard. Why? I believe it is because they have the same colouring as the bird. My socks and beard are grey and white. The bird is also grey and white.

I think it sees my feet and beard as some kind of reflection of itself or as another bird. It’s tried to make love to my socks on more than one occasion, and that is a sentence I never thought I would utter.

All that aside, I choose to believe that the bird recognizes something good in me and graces me with its affections for that reason and that reason alone.

We followed that up with some chatting and coffee with homemade chocolate donuts. Then we watched the SNL UK edition, followed by Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

The UK version of SNL featured Tina Fey as the host and a new troop of British comedians. I wasn’t familiar with any of the cast other than Tina Fey. They put on a good show; some of the skits didn’t land and others were good. There was a fellow who played Lady Diana Spencer that knocked it out of the park.

The cold opener was good and featured the Prime Minister avoiding a call from Trump and deciding to leave a voice memo instead.

Their first offering felt a bit American, which is no surprise considering it’s a spin-off of SNL. I think as they get more comfortable being themselves that their British sense of humor will assert itself and the show will become its own thing.

The more they lean into their own style of comedy, which I prefer to the American sensibilities, the better the show will get. I think of all the other shows, like The British Bake Off, and how they have managed to have satellites shows in other countries that have worked just fine. I wish them luck, we all need more laughs these days.

By this time, it was nine o’clock and I still haven’t written a thing for the entire day, meaning I owe 2026 words for the challenge.

But I had to wait to get started as we needed to make a pitstop at Walmart to pick up some groceries. We were just picking up a few things, not a full shop, and it didn’t take too long, but it was ten PM by the time we returned home and put away the purchases.

I played a quick game of chess, which I lost, to keep my streak going.

And then it was time to fire up the laptop and say hello to you all.

“Helloooooo!”

I’d like to stay up late tonight and write lots of words, but tomorrow is an in-studio day and you know what that means… getting up early to catch a train so I can do the same work I do at home. I hope I am making the CEO of the company that forces us to do this happy. I feel like someone should be getting some joy out of all this effort. It just isn’t ever going to be me.

And unfortunately, I drank to large vanilla hazelnut coffees at our friend’s house because I had no energy when I got there. I will likely not sleep well tonight as a result. Maybe I should stay up late and write, but I feel like I should at least try to sleep.

That Costco Vanilla-Hazelnut is a tasty brew that I couldn’t pass up. I take full responsibility for the series of bad decisions that led to this current situation.

I read a bit more of “The Mythago Wood” last night and was able to get more into the story. Its an enjoyable read so far and it has a fair bit of atmosphere. I wasn’t sure if this was going to land in the “Didn’t Finish Pile,” but now I think I will read this book to the end.

I see that “Project Hail Mary,” the movie, has the biggest box office number of 2026, bolstering my theory that this year will mark the return of the moviegoer.

Amaze! Amaze! Amaze! (Hail Mary reference).

There is a slew of new productions slated to come out this year and there are some heavy hitters like Dune that are sure to draw people out. The movie theater where we saw The Hail Mary Project had the most people I have seen in a theatre in years. It was goo dto see everyone coming out again. We love to go to the movies, and there were times we would go once a week.

Until recently, there hasn’t been very many movies that I wanted to see. All that is starting to change, and I am the happier for it.

And again, Disney, I am looking at you. No one needs another live-action version of an animated feature film. Surely you can come up with something new. If you are having trouble, go read some books and lease the movie rights from the author.

And speaking of making less than great things. Paramount has canceled the third season on Star”Feet” Academy. The second season was greenlit before the first season even aired. So, there will be a second season and that’s all.

Can’t say I’ll miss it.

I ordered a hanging planter for my wife yesterday, and it arrived this afternoon. Its basically a curtain rod with brackets, some black cord, planter holders and some pots. We mounted it above the kitchen sink window which gets plenty of southern light.

It should make a nice addition to the room and give us more area to have plants. We do enjoy having living things in the house. And the wifey enjoys having plants, and I enjoy making her happy.

She’s kept to her painting a day streak and is up to #29 as of tonight. She posts them on Facebook and LinkedIn. People have been commenting and messaging her about them, leaving encouraging thoughts. Many seem to really enjoy seeing what she has created every day as it adds a little bit of joy to their lives.

Robyn’s been applying to animation jobs everyday since her lay off. Not much work out there unfortunately, which led her to start thinking about what else she might do instead. She has been pursuing the idea of getting her Personal Service Worker certification to help people in need. Helping people is one of the things she would like to do.

She filled out a job application for a position to assist people that have Down Syndrome and received a call for an interview the next day.

This is great news and at worst it will give her some practice interviewing again as neither of us has had to interview for a job in decades. I wish her the greatest of luck in her new pursuits. The layoff has meant she needed to redo her resume, another thing neither of has had to do in ages, as well as relearn how to write cover letters in this new day and age. There are various programs offered by the government that she is taking full advantage of to get help in these areas.

This weekend she will check out the local college courses and get the full tour. The youngest and the oldest in our family could be attending the same school come next semester. Mother and son could be college buddies and have lunch together in the cafeteria. The kiddo would probably love getting a ride into school more than anything.

Today on our walk it was snowing again. Winter is throwing its last tantrum. I hate to see the tulips popping out of the ground and then being covered in a layer of snow. They don’t seem any worse for the wear and if anything, there are more green bits poking through the soil than there was last week.

I haven’t seen any sign of animals attempting to get at the tulips, which are safely ensconced behind a chicken wire fortress. I’d install laser cannons and auto turrets if they were legal and cost effective. Maybe even set up a small-scale minefield to defend against those ravaging rabbit marauders and skulking skunks.

I received a nice blue notebook from the head company that owns the studio I work for. I decided, after successfully embossing my little leather notebooks this weekend, to try the embossing on it. I used a different heating element, a mug warming plate, to bring the brass logo up to temperature. I put it on the cover and applied pressure with a C clamp.

Turns out, the brass got to hot and it melted bits of the cover off and left a less-than-ideal impression. Should have used the method that worked the last time I did it, but oh no!

I was too lazy to go downstairs and give it a try.

Today, when we were in a meeting, one of the painters was being a bit of a grumoy old man. We were joking about it and then he said his name literally translates to:

“A Happy ray of sunshine.”

And we all burst out laughing, because he was the furthestthing from it today. It was all done with good humour, and it was maybe the highlight of the meeting for me. I made a notation in my work notebook about it. One day I will flip through it and it will put a smile on my face.