Saturday, March 13, 2004

TGIF!

I can't believe it. A weekend without a deadline hanging over my head. It's been so long I'm forgetting what it's like! Lately, if it's not one thing, it's another. As much as I moan on this blogsite about how much there is to get done, it's just all hot air, really. Deep down I know if I didn't have stuff going on, I would wither up and die with boredom. If I didn't channel this energy into something constructive and productive, I'd probably end up in jail for mischief...

The weather's been so good lately, I'm looking forward to doing stuff outside. When Ross called from Boston on Monday, he said it was snowing. I took this pic this afternoon, and as you can see, the blossoms are out in full force on Beach Avenue.

What I have slotted for this weekend, work-wise, is:

1) finally finish off my taxes so I can get my refund!
2) attend Anglican Church to collect data for my ethnography paper about religious rhetoric.


In case there are any Anglicans reading this, I'd just like to say that I have never been to Anglican Church, and that my use of the word rhetoric is not in the pejorative sense. I'm taking Advanced University writing, so the entire field is referred to as rhetoric studies. Just thought I'd clear that up. Why did I choose the Anglican Church?

a) there are several in the West End and around the downtown core
b) if I attend my brother's church (the one I grew up with), I would be less objective, and it would mean waking up early on a Saturday; somehow, this seems harder after a tough week -- I need to break myself into the weekend!
c) the Anglican Church is an old church, and one of my objectives is to examine the modernization of religious messages. The reason why I didn't choose Catholic is because it's more of an inherited religion -- people will more likely identify themselves as Catholic if their parents were Catholic, even if they were non-practicing. There seems somewhat less of a need to modernize Catholicism, although this is more my impression rather than a statement of fact and I'm certain that there are Catholics out there who would argue this. In any case, I chose Anglican because although it is an old church, it has adopted some (relative to Catholic) progressive policies (ordination of women as ministers, gay marriage) and appears to position itself as attempting to be more relevant to its constituents. I understand that within the Anglican Church there are different levels of conservatism/liberalism, but I chose to study a church in an urban setting as it would seem to address relevancy to a modern way of life more than a suburban or rural church.


Fun Fair at Kits Point??
I returned from Sechelt late on Wednesday night, and found it oddly bright outside. Where was all this light coming from?? My office/bedroom was flooded with light, and there were massive stadium-sized lights on the beach by my apartment, across the water at Kits Point. I've just done a Google search, and according to Katkam, it's just a film set. I was wondering why there was no advertising, no press junkets, no information whatsoever. Vancouver, as a location for all kinds of filming -- feature films, commercials, made for TV movies, etc. -- can transform itself in a matter of hours. I can't tell you how many times I've unintentionally walked or driven through a film set over the years. It's bizarre, but interesting, to observe the transformation. One minute you're standing on a city streetcorner, and the next block over is New York City, complete with NY shops, cars with NY plates, cafes and NYC police.

Dining Out For Life
Eliza and I had much more fun this year working Dining Out For Life. Last year it was pissing down with rain, there was a hockey game (in Vancouver that does tend to keep people indoors), and the restaurants we had assigned to us were all over the city -- Kitsilano, Main Street, downtown. Some restaurants closed early, one didn't even know why I was there, and the rest all mentioned at some point or another that it was a pretty slow night. This year, the weather was good, people were dining out, and there was no hockey game going on. Everyone was in good spirits, I never had to wait long to get the boxes, and I'm very certain we made a lot more money than last year and hopefully beat the total raised from two years ago.

What Eliza and I had to do was pick up the donation boxes that were placed at each of the participating restaurants. There were about 150 in total, but we were assigned about 10. In some places, people found us a pretty curious sight: me with a name tag, running in and grabbing a box, then running out again to jump into a canary yellow Mercedes SLK. Kam, of Kam's Place Singaporean restaurant, joked that he would only give me the box as a trade for the car. Driving around in a yellow sports car is like putting wheels on a neon sign!

Project Empty Bowl

While we were out driving around, I asked Eliza to cruise by the Virgin Megastore window so I could take photos of the display. I alluded to a debacle on Tuesday, the day of the installation. It all got sorted out in the end, but let me just say this is the second display. The first was dismantled. I only learned about this yesterday, and I was mortified and apologized to the Virgin Megastore marketing and promo manager by e-mail. That is the last time I will let something I'm responsible for go unsupervised (unless I know the people involved first-hand). This is generally my policy, but as I had to be in Sechelt -- ironically, so I could work the other A Loving Spoonful project -- Dining Out For Life on Thursday, I couldn't be around to be involved in the installation at Virgin. Karen played it down, but personally, I was embarrassed.

The bowls on display at Virgin are the largest and most flamboyant of all the bowls created for Project Empty Bowl. Because the windows at Virgin are so large, the posters created for them were special ordered and -- I'm sure -- very expensive. Karen picked out the "loudest" bowls to showcase there, and the pics I took below are two very ornate pieces that we were hoping to display at Holt Renfrew. I'm going to go there sometime over the next few days to take photos and see what they've done with the displays.