Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Shoot, I posted this yesterday but it didn’t show until today. Ooops!

We didn’t end up making it down to Fort York, since tomorrow Caitlin and our friend Michael are running a fish sandwich place called The Last Splash at The Stop, a community centre not too far from here, roughly at Davenport and Lansdowne, and printing for their staff shirts didn’t fit into Michael’s busy week so I did a last minute dash to print them at home with transfer. Caitlin did the hard work of ironing them into place and buying the shirts, but I ran around town getting ink and transfer paper. And of course I did the design. You can click the picture for a closer view — it’s based on “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by Hokusai (Michael’s concept — I just did the graphic design heavy lifting), with fish jumping onto a cresting fish sandwhich. Turned out nicely I think and the cheap print-at-home iron-ons look quite good and were 50%+ cheaper than having it printed elsewhere.

Anyway, I think there’s a small waterpark / splash area there so in addition to going there for lunch I’ll head up with Nefarious to have some play time. If she’s not too burned out that is, because tomorrow morning she’s got an hour of intense workout at her gym, followed by another hour of jujitsu. She’s training full-on this summer and if she keeps up this pace will likely double her strength over the next few months, so hopefully her mother can find her a similar program down in the States and commit to taking her on a regular basis (here it’s four times a week, but I admit it’s very easy since it’s in our building and she can just walk there), when she figures out where she’s moving this time that is.

Other than that we went and saw Prometheus today (and Nefarious saw Madagascar while we did that) in “UltraAVX 3D”. I know it’s gotten mixed reviews but I thought it was great, really superb sci-fi, and pretty much the whole last hour of the movie was just one giant moving three dimensional HR Giger painting. It was far more “Giger” than any of the other movies in the Aliens series, and was also more of a true sci-fi film (I won’t give it away, but it’s a fascinating twist on directed panspermia). I certainly recommend it and I would think that most people who still bother to read my blog would certainly be among the satisfied viewers.

Speaking of “aliens”, We also finished making the molds for a ring that Nefarious designed and sculpted a few days ago and cast the first one, setting a pair of CZ in it as well. It is of course a multi-eye’d alien, I think influenced by her love of Futurama and the fact that she recently watched a few of them that I’d downloaded. I told her that I’d make a couple of them and put them in my shop, with the profits (minus costs) going to her… so if you like it, it will be available soon and works great as not just a ring but also a keychain or a pendant, and she would be beyond thrilled to be able to earn money from something other than chores and report card grades. Again, you can click to zoom.

This is only the second ring she has designed, the first being an amazing wolf ring done in lost wax. I can’t find a picture of it on my blog to link to because it was a present for her mother and I guess we wanted to keep it a surprise, but it was really a beautiful ring, very organic and lifelike.

Anyway, I will post again when it is available. I had something else I wanted to mention here, but apparently the memory leaked out of my swiss cheese brain and the floor is so dirty here that I don’t really want to go looking for it, but if it shows up I will mention it another time. I’m off now to see what wonders people have posted to my Facebook feed so I can go share it on my growing wall of mod wonders, and then to install ScummVM and some oldschool graphical adventures on Nefarious’s tablet for her to play. If I am to believe her, she’s in electronic media deprivation, since her strict dad has cut her use down to “before breakfast only” from — and I hope there’s a certain amount of “but mom let’s me” kid scam here — four hours a day on weekdays and ten hours on weekends. I have observed a direct correlation between mood and electronic use, and I can pretty much guarantee that if games or TV are used for more than about an hour and a half in any given day that there will be trouble sleeping that night as well as general rudeness and behavior issues. Plus I prefer doing other stuff anyway on a selfish level — even if we’re stuck here in the house, I’d rather be playing chess or something.

Although she did completely trounce me in chess the last time we played — in defense of video games for a moment, she has been playing chess against her Nintendo DS or something, and she’s getting very good. She’s always been a solid chess player, but was weak in the endgame and even if she could get to a dominant position on the board, had trouble fully closing the deal. Now she seems to have that part figured out and very effectively coordinated a checkmate against me rather quickly. I don’t know if I should be a little ashamed of my own intellect, or profoundly proud of hers… Maybe a little of both, but definitely skewing to the latter. If I am to continue bragging, she’s also lightning fast on mental bath, and while she only knows the basics — it’s not as if she can do trigonometry or complex algebra in her head — she’s quite often faster than I am and almost always accurate. Anyway, I could go on and on but I know I’m boring you with the same stuff you hear from every parent in the world. The only difference here is that it’s actually true. Hahaha. But it really is. If you don’t believe me, just wait, she has the potential to do great things… I wonder what she will choose?