2007 So Far - Part 1 (End of January through June) 


Has it really been almost nine months since my last entry? 

So much has happened, too, that I'll probably have to split this entry into several parts. To help me jog my memory, I decided to flip through my calendar. This is what I found:

February: No entries.
March: My birthday. Uneventful.
April: House-sitting ended. Back to in-laws'.

Obviously, my year got off to a cracking start, and it seems pretty clear why my blog entries kinda stalled. Fortunately, May was a bit more eventful. But before I get ahead of myself, let me just quickly address two issues I mentioned in the previous entry:

* * * "On the Lot" * * *
At some point early in the year, I found out that I would have two TV series starting up--one in the summer and the other slightly afterwards. This forced a decision: To enter myself in what is essentially a game show with the chance to win a million dollar development deal with Dreamworks or forget about the whole thing to stay home for a series that actually involves my chosen profession: music. I opted to forget about "On the Lot" and get ready for the series. It's not a decision I regret, either.

* * * Video podcasting * * *
Well, I'm sure you can guess what happened with that: Absolutely nothing! You, as my faithful blog readers, would've been the first to know if I'd put anything up online. In a determined and positive move, I got as far as setting up a YouTube "director" account (I've since forgotten the login information) and even explored some other video-posting sites. Alas, when it came time to come up with ideas, I got side-tracked. The thought of letting "Due North" sit and fester on the shelf while I waited for my immigration stuff to come through so I could apply for a grant and wait for that to come through (or possibly not) and then probably have to wait six months or so for it to snow... well, that bothered me. Too much waiting. Plus, whenever I sat down to come up with another video podcast idea, I always ended up back at the same place: Alberta Beach (where the main character "Cam" in "Due North" was supposed to be from). Then it hit me: Hey, why not make a podcast series just about him! I could call it a "prequel" and introduce the character and the town. What a great idea, I thought...

... and the more I thought, the more I developed it. And the more I developed it, the more complicated it got.

... and then I decided that it was too good (and had too much depth) to shoot on my crappy little camera. (Even when I bought the GL-1, it wasn't broadcast quality, and now, in this age of HD, it's really starting to look sad. Good enough for a podcast? Yeah, probably... but if I ever wanted to do anything with those podcasts, I'd have to re-shoot.) So I didn't exactly do nothing through these months: I developed "Alberta Beach" fully enough to write a complete treatment and get it ready to pitch. More on that later.

So... moving on to May:

Sometime towards the end of April, I got a call from my immigration lawyer. She told me that my landed immigrant status had been approved, that I'd be receiving some paperwork, and that all I needed to do was to leave the country and re-enter. The weather had turned, the snow had melted, so my wife and I decided that we'd head for the Fraser River Valley, check out some of these places we'd read about online, and while we were there, duck down to the U.S. (Abbotsford is about five minutes from the border with Washington state.) Anyway, I really didn't fancy another long and tedious trip down to Montana. I've seen just about enough of the 10 hour stretch of highway 2 between Edmonton and the border. Remember all of that stuff with the van when we first moved up here? Yeah... I really wasn't up for that drive again.

The trip out to the Fraser River Valley was a lot farther than I'd realised--nearly two days to get there--but as we descended from the Canadian Rockies onto the Sumas Plain, all of the driving was worth it. The Sumas Plain runs basically from the mountains in the east to the Vancouver area to the west and is a basin with hills to the north and south and the Fraser River running right through it. The area gets a lot of rain, and in fact, the plain has the tendency to flood. Consequently, the wealthier housing is up the hillsides and the po' folk live in the flood zones. I suppose that's always the way it is, though, regardless of flooding: hillside houses have nicer views. Anyway, the entire area is lush and green and beautiful, and it lived up to just about every expectation I'd had, although I have to admit that I was a little disappointed by the towns. Still, with housing less expensive than Alberta, what did I expect? All-in-all, we came away from the trip committed to moving there. I took off early on a Sunday morning, spent five minutes in the U.S., crossed back into Canada again, and had suddenly put all of my work worries and legality issues behind me. It was strangely uneventful. The border guard told me that my rights would be exactly the same as those of a Canadian citizen except that I couldn't vote. Being a wise ass, I asked if I could run for office if I promised not to vote for myself. Don't joke with border guards. She disappeared for fifteen minutes to research the question (apparently none of the border guards knew the answer, so they had to make a call), and, in fact, that was the bulk of the time I spent at the border... getting an answer to a joke. Brilliant.

We only stayed for three nights in Abbotsford and then had to turn around and drive home. In the end, we drove for four days to spend three days there. It was tiring...

... and that basically ended May, but now with my immigration papers in hand, June was looking like the "can do" month: It was time to take care of a few things.

Number one was getting onto the bank account: accomplished within a half an hour. The next task was to form a company so that I could freelance as a composer up here. That took a bit longer, but the actual meeting with the accountant was only about an hour. (Accountants incorporate you up here; in California, it requires an incorporation lawyer.) That set the wheels in motion, but it would be several months before Powell Factory Films Limited would formally exist. I'd been using the name Powell Factory Films since 2001, but somehow, as a company legally registered with the government, it felt far more legitimate.

The only thing left was to get an Alberta driver's licence. By this point, the insurance company was beginning to whine about the fact that I still didn't have a local licence and refused to issue anything more than a temporary policy. The company in California that we'd financed the van through was claiming that, because we still hadn't sent them proof of insurance up here, they were considering enrolling us in their own insurance plan. This was definitely something to take care of ASAP, but I had to wait until I got a bank statement sent to me in the mail. You see, you need proof of residency to get a local licence, and with us still living at my in-laws', nothing (except the bank account) was in our name and sent to "our" address. (A gas bill, phone bill, or other type of recurring statement was all I needed.) The licence, alas, would have to wait. Still, it felt great to be getting things done.

In the midst of this flurry of activity, my 9 ball team played the regional finals, a spot we had won at tri-annuals almost a year before. Winning the regionals would mean a trip to Vegas in August. I still hated 9 ball and just didn't feel very confident. Knowing that I'd probably be shaking like a leaf from the pressure, I decided to hit the tables for a few days before regionals and try to "wood shed". By the time I played my first match, I was smokin' hot. In fact, I won my first match 18-2 against another three!

* * * A quick bit of background from February * * *
Ah, poor Anne. At some point in February, it emerged that during his birthday party at the pool hall (his birthday fell on a pool night), her fiancé, Jake, had gone off with Val and screwed her in the women's bathroom. He'd been drinking heavily and blamed it on that. In fact, Jake's drinking had really started to spiral out of hand. When this transgression came to light, Val was away on holiday in the Dominican Republic with her dad, Orest, the crusty old Ukranian who was featured in the entry "Folding Tin". They were celebrating the fact that she'd sold her mobile home and collected somewhere around $70,000. Of course, she walked right into the middle of things when she got back two weeks later, but amazingly, all was resolved to the relative satisfaction of all involved.

A few weeks later, it happened again.

Jake continued to drink heavily, things disintegrated, and Jake ended up leaving Anne and moving in with Val who, after selling her mobile home, had moved in with her dad. How weird is THAT?! The three of them are still all living together, and in fact, they all went on a couple of trips together over the summer in a camper! Bizzaro. The upshot? Jake, Val, and Orest were booted off the team. (I, in the meantime, had quit their other team, 8 ball, because we had no tri-annuals win, no birth in the regionals, and consequently, no reason for me to hang around.) So... back to the regionals.

* * * A quick re-cap of the CPA "Equaliser" handicap system * * *
All players are given a skill level based on their win/loss record and overall performance. The rankings are from 1 to 9 with 9 being the highest. In a given match, only 23 total ranking points can be played. This was a bit of an issue for our team seeing as Jake (ranked a 7), Val (ranked a 4), and Orest (ranked a 3) had been summarily dismissed. This was our line-up:

Anne: 2, Me: 3, Al: 5, Alvin: 8, and Garry: 9. Total count: 27.

This meant that we could only play four matches. In the regionals (or any CPA finals), that's fine actually: All you need is 50 points total with three wins or 51 points in three or more matches (which is impossible to do without winning all three anyway). Okay, enough explanation.

We went on to win our first round in a remarkable way. As I said, I won the first match 18-2. Anne squeaked out a 12-8 win (if memory serves--the less noteworthy match results might be a bit fudged). This meant all we needed was 20. Al played, but he lost so it was up to our 9, Garry Hauck (pronounced "how-k"). Now Garry had returned home in the wee hours of the morning from a tournament he'd been playing in Vegas. He drove for 13 hours straight just to be at the regionals! Amazing... but to say he was tired would be an understatement. Having said that, he's a professional pool player. (In fact, at one point several years ago, he was ranked in the top five Canadian 9 ball players.) Garry's a good friend of Anne's which is really the only reason he plays with us, although I do know he likes the rest of the team a lot, too. So... 9's need 75 points to win, and Garry played a 7 who needed 55 to win.

Garry beat him 75-1. That works out to a 20-0 match win. It was one of the most remarkable exhibitions of total control and domination I've ever seen in pool. So, we were through to the next round!

... and then the bad news. My win had been so resounding that I was bumped up to a 4 immediately after the match... right in the middle of regionals! Let's go back to that math again using the four-player line-up we'd fielded for our first round victory (and had planned on using for the whole day):

Anne (2) + Me (now a 4) + Al (5) + Garry (9) = 20.

Nothing wrong with that, right? Uh, not exactly. There's a subsection of the "23" rule which says that you can only play 19 skill level points in the first four matches. Garry was out.

We lost our next round, but with it being double elimination, we were still in it. It would be the next round that would either send us to the finals or on our way home.

Anne and Al played first and, between them, only scored 20 points. That meant that between our 8, Alvin, and me, we needed 30 points and for both of us to win. I was, apparently, unaffected by the pressure of the regionals and actually had another decent match in me: I scored a 17-3 win. That meant all Alvin had to get was 13 points. No problem. Alvin was somewhat of a "star" player in his own right--former Alberta Junior 8 ball champion who had taken his own teams to the Vegas finals a few times. We all sat back to watch Alvin's 13-7-or-better win.

Well, it didn't happen. He got fairly-well beat up by a 6. If I remember correctly, it was a 4-16 loss. Ouch.

So that was the end of that, but I can't say that it was a bad thing. During the build-up to the regionals, pool had become an increasingly important part of my life. Not to say that I love the game any less now, but it definitely got shunted back to "hobby status" where it belongs.

Part 2 . 

Posted: Mon - October 8, 2007 at 02:20 PM          

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