Derik Badman's Journal

Spring has arrived but today there is frost. We actually had dinner outside Friday it was so nice, but things have chilled off since then. Still, the daffodils have come up everywhere and our new grass seed has sprouted, short bright green spikes in the dirt, each day a little fuller, a little wider ranging. The tree that hides behind our garage, just barely visible depending on which window you look out, has sprouted its varegated pink flowers. I really should identify it (Edit: Lianne identified it as a "leonard messel magnolia").

Been taking morning walks again, after quite a long hiatus when the weather was so cold and I lost the habit. In this case, this week, it is because I ran out of coffee and forgot to add it to our weekly grocery list. So I've walked down to the new cafe in town, nice to be out, but further eroding my pre-work time. I suddenly seem to have too many projects where before I had none. Haven't gotten back to the comics, because I've been working on this game.

A bumper crop of publications in the mail lately: comics, books, zines, magazines. My cleared off desk has piles again of the unread, the partially read, and the read but want to reread or write a bit about it. Got a new Jane Irish exhibit catalogue from Locks Gallery for an exhibit up right now. I saw it was up but not being likely to go (I'm not getting on the train to get into the city), I just ordered the catalogue. It's a disappointment, not seeing the show, because I only recently discovered her work (I think I just pulled a catalogue off the shelf when last we were in Locks, probably for a Jennifer Bartlett show), and I'd really like to see her work in person. They tend to be large and detailed, so the reproductions in the book clearly don't do them justice. Her work is figurative and bright, but expressionistic and political with a hearty use of appropriation and allusion. I really love it.

Been watching the latest seasons of Doctor Who, with Jodie Whittaker, and quite enjoying them. I gave up on the previous doctor's seasons back when they were on. In the first season of her run, there is no overarching sci-fi plot, but there is an ongoing plot for the companions that is not really wrapped up in the sci-fi elements. The Doctor's extreme pacificism is stressed frequently but also occasionally undermined by the actual plots. In the first episode she let's this killer alien dude go, and then in the last episode of the season we find out he caused all these deaths and trouble subsequently and you wonder that she maybe made the wrong decision. Yet at the end of that one they still just lock the dude up in some kind of stasis (surely, to return in a subsequent episode?).