earth: the final conflict

Earth: The Final Conflict was filming in our neighbourhood last night, supposedly until 5 pm. Didn't see any interesting aliens, unfortunately, but then again we only passed by the location once. WINDOWS SNOBBERY: Rumour has it that, as of this week, Mac users can no longer access the official Star Trek site, startrek.msn.com. In order to browse the site you must install software, versions of which are only available to Windows 95 and Windows NT users. Hope all you Americans are having a great Thanksgiving long weekend!

site redesign

Still working on the site redesign of Inkspot to accomodate banner advertising. Don't worry, no advertising on the UT site. :-)
I did some babysitting yesterday. My 8-month-old niece Annie can crawl now, but only backwards and on a hardwood floor. She gets very excited about it. While I babysat, Sara and Ruth went out to do some shopping. Sara came home with a tiny metal wind-up frog toy which she called the "jump-done" frog. I asked her why it had this name, and she said, "Because I wind him up and then he jumps, and then he's done." Makes perfect sense. CONGRATULATIONS to Mark Osier, who successfully defended his thesis yesterday! Woohoo, Doctor Mark! :-) Today I get to meet one of my "Inkspot employees" for the first time...Noah Chinn. I'm having coffee with him at Shopsy's to give him his cheque. I asked Noah to describe himself so I would recognize him when he came into the restaurant, and he sent me a JPEG. :-)
SITE OF THE DAY: Lynda's Homegurrrl Page - excellent site, if you're interested in webtechstuff at all. I've made a lot of use of the web colour resource pages lately.

bad cook

Met Noah, very nice guy. Major Babylon Five fan...it seems like everyone is watching this show except me. Worked til late last night. Got distracted while working online and burnt a pot of potatoes. I only remembered the potatoes were on the stove when I started smelling something burning. Ack! Rushed to the kitchen and spent the next hour fixing things up again...dumping the potatoes, scraping the black gunk off the bottom of the pan, opening all the windows and doors to air out the charcoal smell (but keeping an eye out for my neighbours coming out of their apartments so I could shut the door before they could see what a bad cook I was!). Had to 'fess up to Jeff...he thought one of our neighbours down the hall had been smoking again. Went out today and bought a deodorant candle, Country Garden Potpourri baking soda (to sprinkle on the rug and vacuum up), a room spray deodorizer. Certainly does mask the charcoal smell, but now I feel like I'm suffocating in a field of flowers. *gag. SITE OF THE DAY: Symptoms Of Internet Addiction.

mom-in-law visit

Thanks to those of you in Blatherchat who sympathised with my pot-burning experiences...I found it a great comfort. I've burned many things since I got on the web, including a pot of home-made soup I made for Allison a while back. We ended up ordering in pizza instead. =:-O And Rand still teases me because I once referred to "cooking" tunafish sandwiches for him and Paul Kwinn when they were visiting.
My mother-in-law visited last night, which was fun. She asked me if we could possibly do some websurfing, and of course you know how much I hated THAT idea. :-) My mil does a lot of swimming (she swam in the Olympics at Melbourne in the fifties!) and wanted to look up some training information. We checked out SwimInfo among other places. Afterwards we watched Third Rock From The Sun...though I don't watch a lot of tv, I really enjoy that show. :-) I remember thinking it was a stupid idea, though, when I first heard about the series.
UT practice tonight...we'll probably be going over stuff for Confusion.
Looks like the Canadian postal strike is ending tonight at midnight! Though the postal workers are being called back against their will...some are threatening to purposefully misdirect mail to the wrong locations.

cowardly scumbags

So my dad was robbed yesterday. :-( He's a retired schoolteacher but keeps pretty active, including going to the health club on a regular basis. Yesterday someone cut off his combination lock and took everything in his locker, including his wallet, credits cards, $150 cash, new cellphone, and keys (keys to the house, car, garage, etc.). Major hassle to replace everything, of course, and he has to replace all his locks. No other locker was touched, so it seems as if he was specifically targeted. Doesn't look hopeful that the person(s) responsible will ever get caught. :-( OTHER NEWS: Jodi and I are going to see Alien Resurrection early tomorrow...I hope it's better than the last one. First Christmas party of the season later in the day. Jeff and I have been invited to about eight xmas parties this holiday season...I'd better dust off my obnoxious flashing xmas light musical party hat. Don't think I'll be doing much Blathering until Monday, so have a great weekend, everyone! (p.s. sadly, I was just kidding about the party hat)