Shameless Self-Promotion Friday Fun!

Categories: Ash | Work work work

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Fire Fire House On Fire

Well, as I pulled away from the house tonight on my way to running clinic, I was waving to Sloane perched in the front window. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Turner go into the kitchen, Sloane still banging on the window screeching Bye Bye Mama!! as I turned my eyes to the road.

And I returned about two hours later, flushed in the face and hungry, ready to settle in for the evening's screening of LOST. When I came through the door, Turner was on the couch, calmly eating his dinner. Seemed late for him to be eating, I thought. "What's for dinner?" sez me. Turner replied, "There's more of this on the stove... and you'll see the disaster in there for yourself when you get to the kitchen."

As Sloane had finished her meal just before I left for the running clinic, Turner had taken the high chair tray and set it on top of our stove. I'd seen him do it before, and it always made me a bit nervous - when I was eight years old I'd single-handedly put out a fire in our family kitchen caused by a paper bread bag too close to the electric element. Today the tray got set down, and I went out the back door, and Turner took Sloane to the front window to wave at me. When I'd seen him go into the kitchen from my vantage point in the car, he'd just smelled the burning plastic and was going to investigate. I had no idea, of course, so I left, and Turner faced the whole show solo.

A fire is always a pretty serious thing, particularly indoors. Turner put out the flaming high chair tray with our fire extinguisher pretty much toot suite, but if you've ever used a fire extinguisher for real, you know that it makes one hell of a mess, and that the chemicals suck all the oxygen out of the air, so you have to evacuate the area pretty much immediately (you can't breathe very well - no O2 to feed the fire, no O2 for your lungs, see?). So Turner and Sloane decamped to the front porch for a while, waiting for the house to air-in a bit. Rooney had had the good sense to hide in my office, so he stayed put. When T and Sloane returned, the girl was put in front of her beloved Ernie dvd while Turner spent the next hour picking bits of semi-crusted blue plastic off the stove and sweeping up about ten pounds of fire extinguisher detritus, all the while picturing the zillion ways we were so lucky and how, in a completely different set of squillion ways, it could have been so much worse.

So, uh, the high chair tray is ruined, to say the least. The linoleum, never a favourite pattern for either of us, is definitely destroyed, now, too. And melty bits of plastic tray have apparently fused into the front element, from where it dripped during the blaze, so that's shot.

But we're alive, and our house isn't burnt down. And there are some pretty serious pictures to tell the tale's aftermath.

Yo, please, everybody: make sure you have a fire extinguisher. If you live in Calgary, they're available for about $40 at that fire equipment store on 9th Ave in Inglewood (independent retailer).

Categories: House | Turner

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Jana Johnson

I've never really written at length about my cousin Jana here. I'll just say she's one of my favourite people in the whole world. Last year she moved back to Ontario after eight years in Calgary, and I was, very simply put, devastated. For a very long time I had to pretend that she hadn't left, I just hadn't seen her in a long time, because when I thought about her being gone from the city I'd just start to cry. She was always intending to move "home" to Ontario, but I really thought I had a few more years with her here. Sloane was just born and I really wanted Jana near me. It was a very sad time. I was glad for Jana and Jay, because I 'get' the whole loving-Ontario thing. Wanting trees and lakes in your life. The humidity. Being close to family and old friends. Yeah, I get it. But I was sad for me, and not having Jana here anymore.

Anyway, despite the distance, we make a pointed effort to see Jana as much as possible. It's convenient that they landed outside Kingston, in the midst of the jumble of southern Ontario and only 20 minutes from the city where Turner and I went to university. So we see them about twice a year, thereabouts. Jana and Jay are Sloane's guardians in the event of me and Turner being simultaneously hit by a bus, so it's a good idea that everyone bond in these early years. But besides that, life just feels more balanced when Jana's in it.

I should point out that Jana and I are cousins, but not first cousins. It gets a bit complicated here, so try to stay with me. Jana's mother Bonnie is my grandmother (Gloria, my Nanny)'s first cousin. Bonnie's mother Vera is Nanny's aunt. But Vera and Nanny are about the same age. This is because Nanny's mother Irene was one of many many children in her family. Irene was the eldest, and one of the last kids born was Kip, Vera's deceased husband. There were at least twenty years between Irene and Kip, so when Kip married Vera, she and Nanny were contemporaries. Hence Nanny's daughter Val (my mom) and Vera's daughter Bonnie (Jana's mom) grew up together. They were cousins. But, like, cousins once removed or something like that. And then me and Jana are about the same age, and we're cousins. For a long time we thought we were fourth or fifth cousins - counting up the skips between generations and whatnot, and not being genaeologists, we just made it up whilst we went along. But under most circumstances we were just "cousins" and left it at that.

Turns out, thanks to the ever-great Susan Gustafson of Nakusp and her encyclopaedic understanding of relations-within-families, that Jana and I are second cousins, twice removed. Take note, all.

In my email this afternoon was this note, one of the many reasons I love my second cousin twice removed, Jana. Worship her at your convenience:

From:	"Jana Johnson"
To:	"Ashley Bristowe
Subject:	YAY!
Date:	Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:16:31 -0600

Categories: Family | Ontario

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A Short List Of Sh*t Going Down 'Round Here, Y'all

Let me preface this post by stating that, of late, we've been working batshit insane hours. Sloane started playschool last week (Turner found a daycare nearby that had a spot: I'd say more, but I get too mad about the whole situation. Suffice it to say that she's got a spot, not the one we wanted, but it's a nice place and it's close) and since the moment we first dropped her off it has been go go go go go.

Contracts ahoy: thanks to recommendations provided by the ever-lovely Alexis Bahry, I've been running around on architectural shoots for the last two weeks, taking photos of buildings in Midnapore and Cochrane and southeast Calgary. These being my first forays into industrial work, I've got The Fear. (Hell of a motivator.) When the weather forecasts are incorrect, I have anxiety attacks. You may be aware that in recent years the tv meteorologists are basically making shit up, right? You should see my blood pressure.

Turner and Koentges and I have been negotiating a collaborative contract that we can't really talk about just yet, except this: they'd do alternating biweekly pieces, and I'd do the photography for both. The idea was proposed to us back in August by an editor we all love. We've been at the negotiating table for nine weeks, sending samples and shooting head shots and mainly asking every so often what's going on, since we as the "talent" remain mostly in the dark while the money people talk to each other. Turner and Koentges and I could really use the income, if you dig, and boy, we were salivating at the prospect of "being paid properly" as per the original terms of the pitch. ...But suddenly, yesterday, the deal started skating on thin ice. We're not sure why. It's not over yet, but it's been stressful. We still don't know what's going on.

LOST is finally back on television, thank god.

Turner's in the second round of a pitch for a big American magazine that we've all heard of. The editor has given him guidelines for the re-write and once this new draft goes in he'll take it to the editorial board with his recommendation. Turner's been slaving over the fifteenth draft of the thing for a few days, and starts to sweat whenever I bring it up. If they take this piece, it could save our year and make Turner's name in the US. Cross yer feckin fingers for us.

In more plebian news, I applied for a job at a well-known department store photo studio, and got it. At $12.50/hr it's not the hottest job in this market, but the next stage for me is learning a lot more about studio lighting and I'd rather be paid than have tuition for a course come out of my pocket. It'll be mostly babies and families. I start training next week.

I smashed a veddy expensive lens. I had rented it to do some extra-snazzy photos on the weekend, and I dropped it. For any of you Nikon fans out there, it was the AF-S Nikkor 17-55mm 1:2.8G. ...Yeah. It retails for almost $2K. Accidents happen, sure. And the ever-amazing Kevin of the Calgary Vistek rental department was supportive and nice about it, but in the end I have to pay for the damage (of course), and we won't know the repair bill for about a week. So I'll just shit my pants until then, if that's ok with you.   

John and Fifi are pregnant. Not that we've seen them yet in person since the news was announced, but hopefully things with them are well. In the midst of the rest of all this: Congratulations, Mr. & Mrs. Bristowe of Mackenzie Towne SE!

The doors. They're not in, yet. Stephanie and Mike have shouted themselves hoarse at the Totem down in Midnapore, to no avail. We don't know what's happening, except that all of western Canada is in a labour-and-supplies deadlock because of the black hole of the tar sands up in Fort Mac. Resources and energy and time and money and people from all across the country are inexorably sucked into the gravity of Fort McMurray's economy, and we can only assume that our doors have ended up there, along with everything else. We're getting set to seal the back and side doorframes with insulating plastic to keep out the "winter".

I joined the "Learn to Run" clinic at the Running Room with Alexis. I am not in shape, anymore. I come in last. Okay, not quite last as in absolutely the last person, but I'm always among the last 3 or 4 people to finish. I can't run the 2:1 (two minutes running to one minute walking) and at today's run we move on to the 3:1. I enjoy the running clinic in retrospect each week, but during the running clinic I have a rough time. I feel like a big wobbly sausage. Y'all, nobody wants to feel like a big wobbly sausage.

The Canada Council application. It went in, at the beginning of October. All of you out there in internet land who've done a CC application know the pain of which I speak, here. The tension, the meticulous detail-checking, the taking everything down to the post office and insuring the hell out of the purolator envelope because damn, that pile o' paper is potentially worth thousands and thousands of dollars if the stars allign correctly: yeah, that. 

I've been assigned to do photos on a story Turner's writing about urban sprawl. Which means that I'm chasing around town trying to find shots that can properly illustrate the piece, but without falling back on the typical pictures of identical houses or traffic jams. I'm finding myself picturing various scenes I'd like to shoot, all of which would necessitate the hiring of models. I don't have the budget for models, and I've mentioned about how the weather forecasts are total guesswork, so there's no certainty that I could even use the models on any given day if I actually did hire them. As an M.Sc. in Planning I'm also feeling professional pressure on this shoot to produce a set that's absolutely spectacular... or at least something I can send back to my advisor at Guelph with a post-it attached: "I know my thesis sucked, but check this out". Last night I was roaring around northwest Calgary at midnight in the fog, getting lost in the swirly cul-de-sacs of Royal Oak. Please. Please. Please help me find the decisive moment somewhere out here in suburbia. I have four days left.

And, the best for last: Out of the blue this week Brucio invested in my burgeoning photography business with the surprise purchases of a Nikon D200 and a new Mac powerbook. From whence the provenance of these gifts come is beyond me, but lord knows we do not look the Brucio gift horse in the schnoz. Thank you, Brucio!

 

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Work work work

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