#375 - Giant Worms and Oxtail

Up early to catch the train into the city and I felt pretty good.

I was in no rush to get there early so I ended up on a slightly later train. I listened to my Dune audiobook the whole ride and enjoyed every second of it. It was wonderful to just sit and listen to a good story while I travelled. Soon the unwashed masses, well... soon the over-perfumed masses melted away, and I was whisked away to another world, another universe even.

I have to say; the day did start a bit rougher. I couldn’t find my entry fob for the studio, and then I got all the way into my car and realized I wasn’t carrying my wallet, which had my pass for taking the train. I didn’t let it get me down, and soon the audiobook was soothing me.

Perhaps it was the fact that I didn’t care much about what happened today at work. Perhaps it is more accurate to say I was indifferent. I took a leisurely walk down the Esplanade towards the Berkeley Café and waited for them to prepare me a sausage, egg and cheese croissant. It’s become my new breakfast sandwich. While I waited, I ordered a chai tea latte from the Starbucks down the street, and it was ready for me by the time I walked there.

Since getting on the train my day had improved. My supervisor had written a message that she wouldn’t be in today, and that meant I would be in the hot-seat. No mind, it was good practice for what my life is going to look like in the future. I had to sit in a meeting to make sure we had all the assets on an upcoming show as well as make sure the rest of the painting got finished for the show we are working on.

I stopped for lunch and ate some left-over spaghetti while I listened to our corporate overlords talk about profit and grinned like Cheshire cats every time they mentioned AI. They made us some company logoed sugar cookies to celebrate the new corporate branding.

Some of the people from other companies under the corporate umbrella had some biting questions and called out the CEO live. I have to give the questioners and the corporate folk some credit for asking and sort of answering the hard questions.

I can’t remember any of the questions being truly answered, but it was entertaining as far as Townhall meetings go.

And the cookies weren’t too bad either.

But before all this, before the day was filled with busy work, I had to have a heart to heart with one of our painters who has been handing lower quality of work lately. And with the team we have, anyone whose work declines is noticed immediately; the team is made up of really good artists.

The talk went well and was received by the artist in the spirit it was given. I think the painter knew their work was not as good as it should have been, but appreciated me speaking to him and he appreciated hearing the truth.

After lunch, I had to prepare for the meeting. This was my second time going through this episode. You find things each time and I had the other notes from the rest of the other departments to bring up more things in my mind. I finished my analysis just as the meeting started. Th eone department I pay attention to is the layout department, because we are basically looking for the same type of things.

I felt that between the two of us we found more than enough and had plenty of questions that the directors were able to answer.

While that happened, my art director had gone through all the work we had done and approved almost all of it. There was one revision that was so small as to be laughable. I immediately started exporting the approved files to the render farm so that our scene setup depart metn would have plenty of work in the morning.

And then the render farm failed!

Ah!

I contacted one of our Technical Directors immediately to see if they could do a quick fix.

After about an hour they came back with one working machine, and I sent all the files to it. I’d let the farm work all night and hopefully in the morning it would all be done. My plan was to check how things were going when I got home and just before going to bed.

I thought I was done for the day, but then I noticed even more files had been approved by the art director. I went through the process of marking them as approved and sent them to the farm as well. This meant I left the studio forty-five minutes later than usual, but it felt good to get so much done today.

I left the studio feeling in

I left the studio feeling fine and strolled to the station. My intention was to stop at the Nespresso store at Union Station and grab some of my favorite coffee. But, like all things I like, they had discontinued it. I found an alternative and grabbed some pods for kiddo #1 that prefers iced coffee. Then I headed down the way and stopped at the food court to get Robyn some oxtail from Roywood’s Caribbean restaurant.

Happy wife, happy life as they say!

I had a half an hour wait for the next train to arrive, so I sat down and wrote for a bit while I listened to a transit officer ream out two guys with electric bikes. The officer was busy inspecting all their batteries and telling them they couldn’t take the bikes on the train. Apparently, the batteries needed to be checked by an authorized electrician every year, who would then put a little sticker on it saying it was safe.

I found the whole interaction a but humorous. The cyclists were the meekest of the meek and the officer was a very large man in all aspects, who towered over them menacingly. The officer seemed to be enjoying his sense of electrical superiority over the tiny cyclists.

Like they are making taking public transit more enjoyable than it already isn’t.

The entertainment ended just as they announced the track number for my train and I packed up my parcels, food and laptop and headed for the tracks overhead.

The train was an all-stops. I might have preferred an express tonight, but it gave me more time to write, and I probably needed that if I was being honest. These trains are usually less busy, but generally noisier as they have people on board who are going to events and are justifiably more excited than your average commuter.

As I listened to m audiobook today, I got to experience a more detailed explanation of the things Paul Atreides was experiencing as he became more adept with his gifts. The author explained things and went into more detail, like the fact that Paul had been trained to be mentat. Like a living computer. It adds to his abilities he gets from his other training and his bloodline.

A far richer experience than in the movies. In fact, the mentat story line, the mentat of the Atredies was cut from the movie almost all together.

The other aspect that is interesting, is that Duke Harkkonen is more nuanced as the villain in this story. He is portrayed as a very careful and calculating man. Not prone to making foolish or emotional decisions.

And of course, we start to understand Lady Jessica’s fear of what her son is becoming because of how fast the change happens and how fast he overtakes her own abilities. In the movies, her fears for her son are toned down too much, I think.

But this is one of the joys of experiencing books over other mediums. The book is always richer in character thoughts and emotion.

It’s hard to believe that tomorrow is Friday already and the long weekend is nearly upon us.

I found out today, that some really good people I have worked with in the past did not get hired by our company. They were made to take tests and even with thirty years of experience, they weren’t chosen. It completely blows my mind that they would be passed over. It makes me wonder who they hired if the company passed on these people.

I truly don’t understand how my company thinks anymore. Their choices boggle my mind. What is the world coming to?

I suppose it doesn’t help that all the people making the decisions are mostly in Ottawa. They know very little about the Toronto talent pool. And the new show runner is from LA, and he knows barely anything about the Canadian artists.

For these talented artists with years of experience, it must be hard not to feel a little insulted by the company I work for. My heart goes out to them. How must it feel to know you have the talent, but even that talent and experience don’t mean anything anymore?

Once I got closer to home, I regretted not picking up a BBQ chicken sandwich for myself at Roywood’s. My stomach began to growl loud enough to startle some of the other passengers and I lamented that there wasn’t likely much to eat at home.

At least I’d know that my Robyn had a tasty bit to look forward to.

I was able to write about sixteen hundred words during my travels home. Not great, but not terrible either. It meant I still had some work to get done this evening, but it shouldn’t amount to a half and hour’s work or more.

A little rest, some food and then back to getting my word count in.

I ate some sushi when I got home. It was some of that grocery store sushi, not great, but not bad either. Heated up in the microwave it gains some street cred.

Robyn joined me and devoured her oxtail. She asked me to join her on a short walk afterwards, and although I had only just got home after being away for at least thirteen hours I agreed to join her.

The walk felt good and the weather was nice and cool, but I was most happy to get int bed and put on the tv. We watched Seth Myers and The Daily Show before I went to check on the render farm for work and Robyn read her book.

I was happy to see the render farm was still working away and that all but twelve of the files had been rendered already. I transferred the finished files to our scene setup departments folder and watched two short YouTube videos before coming back to the room to do a bit more writing.

Kiddo #1 appreciated the iced coffee Nespresso capsules I got her. Apparently, she had been talking about wanting to get more to Robyn just this afternoon. It’s always surprising when you voice a want into the universe and the universe delivers. It’s happened to many times in my life to be a coincidence.

Kiddo #2 is busy downstairs baking a birthday cake for his best friend. He puts a lot of energy into his friend’s birthdays. I asked for a cake for my upcoming birthday and all I got was stink face in reply. It wasn’t an outright no, but it wasn’t an enthusiastic yes, either.

I think I’ll end the night listening to the Dune audiobook again. I seem to wake up in them morning happier when I have had that kind of evening. I purchased the second book in the series as well, because I have little knowledge of what happens as most of what I know is from the movies and from people talking about Dune in general.

Seeing as it is already eleven PM, I think its time to get me earbuds in and lie down and let the narrators take me to that other universe that is more wonderful and terrible than anything we have here in our own world.

Until tomorrow.