I seem to leave big gaps between blog entries, especially when lots of stuff is happening. And lots of stuff seems to have happened since my last entry, which makes it even more difficult to write a quality entry. I’m sure I won’t be giving any of the things that happened adequate quality coverage.

Anyway, when I got back from New York, I had two days to get myself together for a trip to Toronto. I was renting my place to a TV production company to film a few scenes for an upcoming late-night sci-fi program that will air on HBO and The Movie Network. Fortunately, the place wasn’t too messy, so I got it cleaned up and prepared for strangers to be here. I didn’t want to be here at all while the filming was happening. I’d probably have a heart attack seeing how 40 strangers hauling heavy gear treat my stuff and my home. So, I just make sure that all delicate things were put away, and that things were generally clean and tidy.

I headed out to Toronto on Wednesday afternoon. I checked into the Travelodge at King and Bathurst, which would be my base of operations for the next few days. This place defines clean and sensible business accommodations. There’s nothing fancy about it, but it’s a good place to sleep at night, and you can’t beat the location. The room had a small fridge so I could buy some food for breakfast and snacks. It also had decent free wireless Internet so I could stay in touch.

That night, I got to see and perform in Project Project, which was a lot of fun. It happens every Wednesday at the Comedy Bar, and is a great place to experience some experimental improv forms. That night, they had two guest beat poets who read some highly entertaining poems, which were then used to inform a montage of scenes. It was kind of like a poetic Armando.

Thursday night, I was at the Comedy Bar again for the Toronto Improv Festival. I was shooting photos of the acts. Before the show, the stormy and unsettled weather had turned the sky a sort of surreal orange and pink.

I also performed a set with James as Raging 180. We did a grounded monoscene set in our loose form, which involves a rant a la Bassprov. Our characters were roommates, and we just showed a slice of their lives. We haven’t performed together in ages, but I still felt comfortable on stage with James. I would have liked our rant segment to be more intense, but it was still enjoyable to do, and I think interesting to watch.

Friday I did a lot of shopping. I bought shirts, jeans, a jacket and socks. Sometimes I find it hard to buy clothes, and sometimes I find it too easy. Since I was kind of on holiday still, I was in “easy” mode.

That night, I was at the Bad Dog, shooting and performing with Big in Japan. There was a good crowd there, and we put up a decent set too, based on the suggestion “Righteous.”

I checked out of the Travelodge on Saturday, and went home to Hamilton. I had to see what was up with my place after the TV people left. Actually, it wasn’t terrible. It was a bit dirty, and they had left all my lights on and air conditioner cranked, but overall, it wasn’t a disaster. I discovered later that all my food in my fridge had gone bad because they’d unplugged the fridge to record dialogue scenes, and had forgotten to plug it in again. No big deal. They’re reimbursing me for the cleaning, the food in the fridge, and the dents and scratches on the walls. I talked to my neighbours, and apparently this was quite a big deal. They had blocked off serveral blocks around my place, and there were dozens of trailers, equipment vans and generators filling the streets. There were about 40 people tromping in and out of here at all hours. I’m hoping my neighbours weren’t too put off by all the commotion. I’m looking forward to seeing how this all turns out.

Since I’ve been back, I’ve been booking a lot of shoots. It’s mostly headshots, but some model portfolio and glamour stuff too. I’ve got two shoots next week at restaurants in Burlington for that magazine I mentioned earlier.

Studio-wise, I made a couple of purchases. My background support system finally arrived. I’d ordered it in June, but it was out of stock, and took forever to get here. Manyk was kind enough to lend me a hand in helping me pick up the rolls of black and white paper, and getting the thing securely installed on the wall.

It’s supposed to hold three rolls, but one of the pieces is broken and needs to be replaced. They’re sending me a new part by UPS. It’s not a big deal right now, since I only have two rolls of paper anyway. I’ll use the third roller set to hold a bar from which I can hang fabric or other backdrops with clamps. I’m loving this new background system. Because the rolls are continuous paper, I can curve them out onto the floor and have nice seamless backgrounds. It makes it so much easier to do full-body photos than before. Here are some of my photos from yesterday that I took with the new background. Oh, and there are a couple I included just because I like them.

The new floor is done, thus completing the final large component of my renovations this year. I can’t say enough good things about End of the Roll and their installer, Jean Paul. The flooring itself was about $1-2 per square foot cheaper than equivalent stuff at Home Depot or Lowes, and the installation was $1 per square feet less than those places too. So, over 540 square feet, that’s a significant savings.

Jean Paul and his assistant Joe were very professional, meticulous and very fast. They finished the entire space, including installing new quarter-round at the baseboards in one day. They moved my furniture for me, and even hid the Ethernet cabling under the baseboards, so the place looks very tidy. Afterwards, they swept, vacuumed, and carted out all of the dust, packaging and garbage that they’d generated during the job. I know that if I’d attempted this job myself, I’d probably still be working on it in a month, and it wouldn’t look nearly as good. The only hitch was that my bathroom and closet doors need to be shaved down so that we can attach the reducers that connect the new floor to the old floor.

The final step is to paint the baseboards and quarter-round black. I’ll get the paint today.

Fresh blueberries, strawberries, almonds and yogurt. I love summer.

I forgot to add the ground flax seed before taking the picture, but it was mixed into the final product. The flax seed slows down your body’s absorption of the fruit, so you get more bang for your breakfast buck. Great source of omega-3 fat too.

In other news, painting is done at my place. It was a huge job. It required about 8 gallons of paint, and several near-death experiences on ladders. I probably could have gotten it done sooner, but I was tied up with working, and sheer non-interest in the tedium of the job. However, now that it’s done, I’m pretty happy with it. Yesterday, I also removed the carpet from the studio area, so it’s down to bare concrete now.

New floors are supposed to go in on Monday. I chose a Cumbrian Maple laminate.

I think the dark color will help “ground” the room, since the brightness of the walls have really opened it up. My Monday floor installation schedule might be thrown off though, because I might be hired for a full-day shoot on site that day. I would have to postpone floor installation until after my Chicago trip next week. Either way, I’m pretty happy.

If everything goes ahead as planned, I’ll have a new floor by Monday night. If I have to change plans, I’ll make some money to help pay for all of this!

The Chicago trip goes from Thursday until Sunday next week. We’re taking Big in Japan to the mecca of improv, the Chicago Improv Festival. We’re pretty excited to be playing there. We’ll be playing at the Second City Skybox on Friday, June 6 at 9pm.

We’re so ready for this trip. For the last couple of months, Big in Japan has been blowing the roof off of the Savannah Room shows. Our rehearsals have been intense and productive. We have our own show now, called Big in Japan OMFG which runs every Tuesday night. And every night, I feel like we’re doing great work, advancing our style. We’re feeling invincible up there. Even last night, when most of the team was involved in the Combustion Festival and couldn’t make it to OMFG, Sean Magee and I did a two-person set that rocked hard. I can’t wait to take it to Chicago.

UPDATE: I’m hired for that full-day shoot on Monday. The floors will have to wait!

I haven’t posted much about what’s going in in my life lately. Nothing bad is happening. Lots of good things have, actually. Here’s a few highlights:

• Jason Mraz concert with Hesi. That was a lot of fun. We got there late, thinking we’d missed some of Jason Mraz’s performance, but it was just his opening acts, which were also fun. I particularly enjoyed Bushwalla, a hip hop artist who wasn’t afraid to be a bit goofy, but still made serious music.
• Renovations are slowly getting underway here, as you might have guessed from my recent entries. I purchased paint today, and got a ladder in here, so there’s really no excuse not to start painting. That’s going to begin on Wednesday. I’ve also torn up the carpet a bit to see what’s underneath, making sure the floor is in good shape for putting laminate on top. I’ve decided to pay to have someone else do the flooring, partly on the advice given in blog comments here. Thanks folks.
• I did a full weekend intensive workshop with Zach Ward from the Dirty South Improv theatre in North Carolina. It was great to get a refresher workshop on improv. I haven’t had any critique of my improv for quite a long time, and taking the workshop was a great way to get that, from someone who is hella funny and a true master of comedy. I know my improv, particularly tagout skills are improved from having taken his class.
• Big in Japan is going to Chicago at the beginning of June for the mecca of improv festivals, the aptly named Chicago Improv Festival. We’re also applying for the Del Close Marathon in NYC, which happens in August. We’ve been there for the past two years running, so there’s a good chance we’ll go again. I’m excited about the team. In the last few shows, I think we’ve done the best improv we’ve done as a group in ages. We’ve got shows every Tuesday night at the Savannah Room.
• I taught a three-hour photography workshop at a high school in Oakville today. I enjoy this kind of volunteer work. It allows me to corrupt young minds with my own particular ideas about art and photography. Muahhahaha! When I got there, the teacher was leading a drama class. She’d already told them I do improv, so they demonstrated their improv skills for me. They were so into it. I offered to come back and do an improv workshop with that group later, which would be a total blast.

That’s all I have to report for now. I suppose there’ll be more boring pictures of my renovations to come soon!

Well, I’ve finally got my furniture moved around. It helped enormously that some university students found my Craigslist ad for my old desk and picked that up for $25. I also sold them the Couch From Hell, my 200 lbs of pull out bed from the 70s. That was a bonus, because I didn’t know how I was going to get rid of that thing!

Now, my studio space feels spacious. My living room is slightly cozy, but I still haven’t figured out how to arrange my furniture in there. It’ll do for now though.

The next step is to paint. That begins next week. After that, new floors. I have almost decided to pay someone to do the floor installation for me. It’s a big job and there are lots of things that can go wrong with it, so allowing the pros to do it will get it done quickly and let me get back to work faster.

As for paint, I did a Photoshop mockup of the colors. I’ll be using a light cream color and a chocolate brown. I am still deciding if I would like to have some accent walls in blue. What do you think?