#320 - Friday Friends

I woke early this morning at around six am and happily turned over to go back to sleep.

By nine I was getting messages from painters who needed more work, so I shuffled out of bed, wiping at blurry eyes and managed to find some assignments for them. Having accomplished that I headed downstairs to get some caffeine. I chose earl grey vanilla and microwaved one of those loaded egg, potato and bacon bowls.

The high protein meal hit the spot, and the tea made me feel better.

I had a meeting to learn about some new software that was developed internally. My supervisor showed us how it worked and why we would want to use it. In the end it is a system to allow our storyboard artist to reuse backgrounds from earlier episodes. It gives information about how large the painting can get; it’s file name and some other data that is useful. This system can then generate a list for our layout department and make it easier to see what layouts can be reused and what new ones should be created.

Every year we strive to become more efficient because we get less time and fewer resources to accomplish the same tasks. But it’s one of the many ways we strive to keep our studio competitive.

Today I focused on getting approvals done and revising certain paintings. I really would prefer to see more of them all together for this episode, so I switched to doing some revising that required more of my time. I was also interrupted many times with requests from the painters. It’s part of the job, but the interruptions take time to recover from.

We finally managed to get to the park for our lunchtime walk for once. It felt like it had been forever and a day since we had last walked there together. There were plenty of dogs and dog walkers around, which wasn’t too surprising as it was a beautiful day.

During the walk we thought it might be a good night to have some friends over for drink on the deck, so we sent out a message to two different couples.

Returning home from the walk, we both got back to work. The rest of the day was uneventful, and I just kept my head down until about five thirty.

I went downstairs and found Robyn already on the deck reading her book. I left her to her peace and quiet, she had to do her support work tonight for an hour and headed upstairs to watch some YouTube videos.

She left to do that, and I came back down to make a roast beef sandwich, slicing up one of our home-grown tomatoes. The tomato was delicious and fresh, adding a lovely flavour to the sandwich. We should have a bumper crop of tomatoes in the coming weeks.

I brought my novel down to read while I waited for our guests to arrive.

Only one of the couples was free this evening and it was lovely just to sit and chat and have a nice night. It had been too long since we had seen these friends, and it was nice to catch up. The only good part about not seeing people for a while is all the things you have to tell each other.

It made for a good chat. I poured some red wine for myself and one of the others, while the other two drank non-alcoholic beverages. We accept all kinds here.

They stayed until about ten thirty since one of them had to get up at four thirty to work a twelve-hour shift as a machinist. It was a short visit, but also perfect.

With our guests on their way home we headed upstairs to watch an episode of Silo. It was another good one. Halfway through, kiddo #2 came into the room to tell us he now had a girl friend. Which after the mixed CD was no shocker to me or his mom.

Kiddo #1 was also out on a date to the drive-in with a guy she had told she wanted to end things as she is moving back to Halifax after the summer. He responded by asking if they could still go see the movie. How these two handle relationships is a source of amusement for both Robyn and I.

We were allowed to finish our program in peace. After it ended, Robyn resumed reading and I started writing for the day.

My plan is to work on my story tomorrow and try to get the opening finished, leaving me most of Sunday to finish it. I have no idea what is going to be about other than it has to be contemporary fantasy. A genre I have never written in. But this is something I run into routinely throughout the course of this mentorship. She really has me writing in all kinds of genres.

I’m looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow and working on my writing. I also plan to watch some tutorials about the contemporary fantasy genre tomorrow as well. It might give me a few advantages about the genre before I dive in.

I think that’s about all for today. The end of the week always leaves me feeling a bit wrung out. Time for bed.

Until tomorrow.