Look Happy

            On Wednesday I knew that Nick Cushing was going to be coming into town from Hamilton and in the late morning he sent me a message to let me know that he would be here at around 12:30. Close to that time I received a call and I thought it was him but it turned out to be someone from my dentist’s office. The woman told me that she was calling to confirm my appointment for Thursday at 13:00. I told her I hadn’t made an appointment but wondered if this had something to do with my denture. She confirmed that my artificial teeth had arrived so I told her that I could take the appointment but asked if I could also have a cleaning when I came in. She said I could, so I knew what I would be doing early the next afternoon.

            I vacuumed half of the kitchen and the entire bathroom, and then cleaned the bathroom sink. It seems that baking soda works better than Comet or Ajax for removing stains from the basin. I was about to start cleaning the toilet when Nick called. I tried to answer the phone but it stopped ringing while I was trying to unblacken it. I looked out the window and he was downstairs anyway so I let him in.

            Nick had brought along some software that I needed for video editing, as well as a copy of Photoshop. After chatting over tea in the kitchen we started installing the video editor but the installation took a long time and Nick had art supplies to buy for making tiki masks, so he left. I heated up the potato and ground chicken soup that I’d made the night before and had it wit two pretzels, then I took a siesta.

            After 45 minutes Nick called to say that he’d decided to not leave town right away and offered to come back over to show me how the program worked. I said okay and went back to bed for about fifteen minutes until the phone vibrated, but call display showed an 866 area code, which meant that it was a bill collector, so I lay back down and let it finish ringing. Shortly after that I heard Nick shouting “Christian!” up at my window. He had just called but it must have been while the other call had been coming through. Another coincidence was that while he’d been shouting up at my window the same woman who’d looked at him funny the last time he’d shouted up was also walking by again.

            We opened Corel Video Studio and selected a file that I wanted to edit but the sound and video would not synchronize inside the program, so all the bells and whistles of the program itself were meaningless to me if I couldn’t apply them. The main reason though for Nick bringing me the program was in order for it to automatically install the codecs that I needed in order to be able to use Windows Movie Maker to edit my videos. I opened Movie Maker, imported the same video and this time it worked, and in sync, so installing Corel Studio was worth it just for that. Nick said that even after Studio is uninstalled the codecs would still be on my computer.

            We also installed Photoshop and Nick showed me the basics of how it works. I opened my book cover in it to see if Photoshop had solutions to some of the problems I’ve had completing that project with Microsoft Paint. In most cases it seems that Photoshop would have been better to start the project with, but it’s not as good for manipulating pieces that have already been put together. There are a couple of functions though, such as “smudging” and the ability to alter the angle of things, that I might be able to utilize.

            We chatted until I had to get ready to go to work, and then Nick left.

            I was scheduled to work for a photography class that evening at OCADU but as I was preparing to leave I remembered that there was a new release form that I was sent that I had to sign to indicate that I wouldn’t sue them for reproducing my photographic image. The form was an attachment in the model coordinator’s email, but when I tried to print it I only ended up with the left half of the form. I tried a few things and then finally saw there was an option to open it in Google documents, then I copied and pasted it into Word, changed the font so it would be all on one page and then printed it.

            I only had to work from 19:30 to 21:30 but I would get paid for three hours anyway. The instructor was a guy named Surendra for whom I remember having worked a couple of times a few years ago. Back then he had a tendency to pose the models by hand, so I told him that it was inappropriate and he said he wouldn’t do it, but then ended up doing it anyway, so I complained to the coordinator. This time he directed me with words and hand gestures like he is supposed to do but he still poked me a few times with the light meter.

            When I arrived in the classroom he was critiquing photographs that his students had taken. This was obviously a continuing studies class since they were all middle-aged. Finishing his look at their homework overlapped into my work time a few minutes. He started by demonstrating how to light me and how to use a light meter and the lit part of me and on the shadowed part in order to work out what F-stop to use. When he took sample photos he had to ask me a few times to look happier, so I imagined feathers coming out of his head in order to make myself smile.

            Then the students took turns shooting me and some were less nervous about it than others. One made me smile by telling me that I was very easy to photograph. Another guy remembered drawing me about 23 years ago when he was taking 1^st year illustration at Sheridan College. I was glad that no one asked me to smile with my mouth open because since I’d forgotten to put in my denture before leaving home, I would have refused.