So, just to review:
Dark Knight on Friday night. It was well past time for me to have seen it, I know, but having children changes the number of opportunities you have to go to the movies, as well as really altering the economics of the “night at the movies”. And actually the primary reason we went out at all was because Sarah more-or-less kicked us out so she could play with the sitter.
Anyway, quite a good film I thought. The best thing was probably the combination of the writing of Ledger’s role and his performance of it. The worst thing was Bale’s “Batman voice” which just about made me laugh outloud several times–he could certainly take some lessons from Kevin Conroy. Boy, it was long though–too long to painlessly endure for someone who had consumed a large pop!
Saturday morning was Sarah’s first dance class. Parents are not allowed to stay in the room during the class–which was a surprise to me, but makes sense. Sarah seemed to enjoy it, and was delighted to show us her new “moves”. Next week will apparently include some tap-style dancing, so we had to get her some new shoes–not tap shoes per se, but just shoes with a hard rubber sole that will make a noise.
We took our luncheon at Tarek’s, as we have been doing almost every Saturday for a couple of months now. At this point Sarah gets food that’s not on the menu, and doesn’t have to order it–she’s got a “usual”. Saturday afternoon was shopping for some new clothes for Sarah, which I found weirdly exhausting in the same way I always find clothes shopping to be exhausting.
Saturday night was this month’s HGPA Tournament. The tournament reached a $550 pot, which is pretty impressive for the buyin levels and the number of people that were there. Without going into boring detail, let me say that I went out on the bubble
Sunday involved a family trip to the Word On The Street festival. I always expect this to be better than it is–after I’ve seen the Strange Adventures booth, and the Bookbinder’s Guild table I’m usually done looking for myself. Most of the retailer booths seem to be full of overstock and remainders, and the local publishers for the most part don’t thrill me. And in a year when Christy Conlin, Lynn Coady, and Alistair MacLeod all fail to appear, the local writers don’t have much for me. Consequently my experience of WOTS over the last several years is a combination of a small comics convention when I’m on my own, and a children’s book show when I’m going around with Sarah.
The first involves the creators that Cal brings in for the show–often the locals, like Darwyn, Hope and Mal (before they moved), Steve McNiven, etc. plus he usually brings in some people from Toronto. This year’s creators included more of the locals: Mike Holmes, Faith Erin Hicks, and Mark Oakley, among others. I got to the show in time to see Mike & Faith’s panel, and managed to get some books signed/sketched by them. Here are the books I got marked up at the show:
I got Holmes to mark up my copy of Shenanigans, a book that includes many very familiar faces among the crowd scenes:
I also got Faith to do a doodle in my copy of Zombies Calling, while we chatted about her forthcoming book, and her next two projects with First Second:
And then I had a chance to catch up with Mark Oakley, with a chat that focused primarily on his new kid’s book/game, rather than on Thieves and Kings. I picked up a copy of the book, and Mark did a Rubel sketch in it–he seemed a little hesitant about signing a book where he hadn’t done the art, but he got over it:
Sarah was delighted to go to some of the storytelling sessions, and to get her face painted, so the show was a hit for her too.
After the show we walked down the boardwalk to catch one of the free concerts–in this case the Steve Dooks Trio. You may recall that we’re fans of Steve’s. Sarah was the youngest attendee by almost 30 years, and Trish and I were also significantly younger than the rest of the crowd. We stayed for the first set, enjoying both the music and Sarah’s ability to be well-behaved in that kind of scenario (especially when she’s digging the music), but not wanting to push it. In addition to the good music I enjoyed a couple of tropical cocktails and something called a Wasabi Club, which was actually pretty good. The set was introduced by Olga Milosevich–who might be the first radio personality that looks in real life just the way I pictured her.
While we were watching that show Hurricane Kyle was warming up outside, and the walk back to the car was pretty fiercely upwind. We got home before the rain started and settled in for a lovely night of listening to the gale force winds. Apparently most of the rain was on the west side of the hurricane, and we just got the winds. Shockingly, we managed to keep power through it all.
And that’s the weekend that was.
