garbageman's daughter

Sick today, ugh. Jeff seems to have caught some bug, too. Didn't see Vince Vaughn yesterday, but was impressed by the number of people that could crowd into our little hallway. The crew had lined the walls with thick cardboard and the floors with an extra layer of carpet in order to avoid damaging anything when equipment was moved. I almost felt like a celebrity myself whenever I used the elevator, other tenants excitedly asking me what was happening, had I met any stars yet, and so on. Read a great story yesterday called "The Garbageman's Daughter" by David James Duncan, from a collection of stories called River Teeth (thanks to Rand for lending this to me)...now I'm very keen on getting my own copy of the book. Checked amazon.com but found out the book was out of print and supposedly difficult to find. Of course I consider this a challenge, and am determined to get hold of a copy before Christmas. I downloaded a tamagotchi clone for my Mac yesterday and tried it out for a few minutes...unfortunately the novelty has long since worn off for me, even with an extra feature where I can set up an "autofeeder". To Anne: some Englishman is keeping 55 tamagotchis alive?!!! I swear I would go stark raving mad! To Lissa: yes, I definitely must update the UT comic...maybe I'll do that later today. Any ideas, anyone? Sea Monkey update: there are only six (6) left!!!!! And Sigmund looks worried these days. To Phil: I was eating my lunch when I read your terrible puns, and nearly choked on my chicken. I am trying out various log stats program. You can check out my stats for the past couple days via WWWStat, for example. Today's site is courtesy Anne Walker: United Media comic page.

schoolhouse rock

Hey, Jodi's Muse's Muse site was chosen as Cosmic Site of the Night today! Congrats, Jodi!
I've started a sort of daily blathering on the main page of Inkspot, mostly publishing news. Jodi, Allison and I are going to a Schoolhouse Rock concert/musical at the Annex Theatre tonight...apparently a bunch of rock bands are performing songs from that fun series of educational cartoons. Should be fun!
I'm going to the cottage for five days starting tomorrow, and I'll be without a computer (oh the horror! the horror!), so expect no Blatherings during that time. It's sort of strange, comparing the state of technology now to back when computers were a rare and precious thing, and we had to line up in high school to use a single battered-looking keypunch in computer science class (now this really dates me, doesn't it?), clutching our sweaty pile of cards and praying that the ol' Wang would hold out at least until we got our assignment finished. What was everyone's first home computer? Mine was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I, sneeringly nicknamed the Trash-80. I can't tell you how thrilled I was to see that first "READY>" prompt appear on the screen for the first time. Spent hours laboriously typing in BASIC programs (a single typo would prevent the program from working correctly, and my brother and I would spend even more hours reading the code aloud to each other while checking it against the screen to debug it), saved them on a regular cassette recorder connected to the computer. Now I get impatient if a webpage takes a few seconds too long to download. Once I got to university I bought a Mac (The First Mac, pre-Classic) and have been with Mac ever since (now have a Power Mac 7500/100). We're thinking of turning one of our old Macs into a fish tank. Site of the day: Britannica's Birthday Calendar (who was born on YOUR birthday?)

topics

Q`?J??te before we take off for the cottage...blatherings topics! I am actually compiling a list to use on those mornings when my mind is completely tabula rasa and I am uninspired. I accept ALL topics, no matter how banal. I may not USE all topics, but feel free to suggest them in the blatherchat or send them to me with "blathertopics" in the subject header. Our neighbour across the hallway is moving out...I wonder if it was something I said? :-) Have a great long weekend, everyone! p.s. The Schoolhouse Rock show last night was cancelled!!! :-( One of the actors was sick. So Allison, Jodi and I decided to go window-shopping along Bathurst St. instead. Lots of "natural earthy" stores with homemade soaps, recycled products, that sort of thing. Expensive!!!

sea monkeys

Only five Sea Monkeys (tm) left! They look a bit nervous, as if they've suddenly become aware of the Sea Monkey graveyard lining the bottom of the container (sorry for being so morbid, but that's certainly what it looks like at this point). Going to a Marillion concert with Rand and his friend John Kalisz tonight at The Guvernment. Like The Who concert, I'm going more for the experience than because of being a longtime fan. :-)
Site of the day: The Advertising Graveyard - ads that didn't make it, ranging from hilarious to utterly tasteless (you have been warned).

marillion

Concert last night was lots of fun, and I would definitely go to another Marillion concert if given the opportunity. I found it odd that I seemed to be the only non-Caucasian person in the crowd (which consisted predominantly of white males). Mark Kelly (the keyboardist), by the way, was very easy on the eyes. ;-) Afterwards we went for sushi at Fune (the restaurant with the floating boats I've mentioned before). My Sea Monkeys (tm) nearly died last night when John inadvertently spilled some of the water, not realizing that the top was loose when he picked up the container. All Sea Monkeys survived the harrowing experience, and in fact seemed invigorated by their brush with mortality. Site of the day: Rhyming dictionary.