cottage report

Had fun at the cottage, very nice weather. Swamped with work right now, sorry for the short blather. More later, I hope.

Later: Found the first issue to PalmComputer Magazine, a magazine for PalmPilot owners. Wow, didn't realize there were THAT MANY of us. Interesting magazine, some good graffiti hints, got some good pointers to online Pilot resources. Don't know if I'd get this regularly, though, we'll see.

Had lunch with Bryan Fullerton, my system administrator for Inklings. Gave him his cheque, talked a bit about the Toronto Webgrrls, which sounds interesting.

Started writing a children's song on the weekend at the cottage, hope to have it finished in time for Jodi, Allison and I to perform it at Contata in our kids' concert.

Looks like a snapping turtle might have taken up residence in the lake near our cottage! Other wildlife sighted on the weekend: garter snake, chipmunk, loons, fish, mouse, seagull. The mouse was found on the path to one of the cabins, spreadeagled as if it were sunbathing. Either it suffered some kind of attack mid-run, or someone accidentally stepped on it late at night (we were all surreptitiously checking the bottoms of our shoes for fur). Poor wee thing. Jeff picked it up with a stick and flung it into the lake, where a seagull (appeared from nowhere!) swallowed it whole within a few minutes. Eugh.

David Goulden's back from his trip to Halifax! We are going riding again this Wednesday. I am too embarrassed to tell him that I did not go cycling at ALL while he was gone. I am so bad.

too much to do, too little time

Inklings was mentioned in the July/Aug issue of Writers' Journal (p19), which is nice except that the author of the article seemed to confuse the website with the newsletter.

Booked my flight to California for the end of the month (I'm going to a writers' conference in L.A.), booked my hotel. I'm looking forward to the trip, except I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to survive for a WHOLE WEEK WITHOUT ONLINE ACCESS. There, there, girl...you can do it, I know you can (Debbie pats herself on the back reassuringly). Uh-oh, I'm talking to myself...not a good sign, is it?

I've pretty much finished this week's issue of Inklings, just need to do some final touches as well as last-minute admin stuff. Part of the reason I'm a bit work-stressed this week is because I'm (1) catching up on the email accumulated while Jeff & I were at the cottage this past weekend (2) I'm taking Friday afternoon off because Urban Tapestry is going to Contata.
(woohoo!!!)

Allison and I are going to see "Needfire" at the Princess of Wales theatre tonight (Celtic show), looking forward to it!
Allison's spacebar is broken. Her email to me now comesoutlookinglikethis, which I find both endearing and hilarious all at the same time. I am trying very hard not to tease her about it, though I guess I'm not doing a very good job at that since I'm mentioning it here, am I?! :-)

Yesterday I mentioned the squished mouse. Joel Polowin has kindly contributed a moving poetic tribute:

Somebody's mousie, by the side of the path

Somebody's mousie, lying still as death

Someone's favourite murine got talked of on the Web

When he ran onto the path and then got stepped on by a Deb... :-)

two days until contata

Drowning in work. I am SO looking forward to Contata this weekend!

Took about 45 minutes off to check out the Comdex show at the Convention Centre a couple blocks from here. I used to browse more slowly at these technology conventions, collecting all the freebies I could find :-), sitting through dull demos in hopes of getting free software (I got a full copy of WordPerfect this way...I gave it to my dad). Now I speedwalk methodically up and down the aisles, only checking out booths in whose products I am very interested. I exerted some self-control and only picked up a few freebies this time: a few pens, fridge magnet, bottled water, jellybeans, some computer magazines. The only booth I found particularly interesting was the Palm Computer booth, but even that was way too crowded for me to get a chance to play with the Palm III. Congrats to Paul Kwinn, by the way, who is the proud new owner of a Palm Pilot!

Thanks to Bob Guest for sending me a tape of his song, Phenylethylamine (find out more info from his webpage), which was apparently inspired by my complaints about the rumoured impending chocolate shortage. :-) Cool song!

Puzzlebox has their own website!!! Check out http://www.puzzlebox.net/.

Allison and I went to see Needfire last night. Great show!!! Very entertaining, cool effects, excellent musicianship and dancing.

technocool

It's sort of funny how everything that was geeky and nerdy back when we were kids is now Cool, isn't it? Star Trek, for instance. Computers. Technonerdboys. I had to laugh at Scott Snyder's blatherchat comment the other day:

The question is... Where were all the women who appreciated
TechnoNerdBoys when I was young and date-able? Hmmm?? It seems
that NOW it's the hot thing... but when I was in high school/college
(the first time...) I couldn't BUY a date! (Must've been a
combination of the pocket protector and the tape on the glasses
-- too much testosterone....)

Peachtree Saga continued...My groceries came, woohoo! I think the main problem was that the driver had problems finding our building. To prevent this from happening again, I'm going to including some navigation instructions in the "extra notes" field each time I order from now on. I was very pleased with the grocery order...everything came in good condition (including the fresh produce), and the order matched the list I had printed out from my web order. Plus Jeanine had thrown in a couple boxes of Allan's "Misty Mints", which I'm finding very addictive. I'll bring a box to Confusion this weekend (and try not to eat them all on the train). In any case, I'm willing to try Peachtree again in a couple weeks. Stay tuned for a report...

I'm leaving for Michigan tomorrow, so there may not be blatherings until Monday. I'll be visiting with my relatives until Friday, when I go to the convention. Hope to see some of you at our concert with Ookla on Saturday, 11-12! UT is also participating in a Kidfilk from 1-2, as well as in the Trek/B5 jam later that night. I do recall that Chad Childers had a computer room, so Allison, Jodi & I may be able to do a bit of Blatherchatting on the weekend, depending on scheduling.

steamy

Humid today! Went cycling with David this morning; we decided to take it a bit easy since neither of us had cycled for a few weeks. Even though we went at our normal time (7 am), the Martin Goodman Trail was remarkably crowded with joggers, rollerbladers, and other bicyclists. We took a longer break than usual midway through our ride, gabbed a lot about David's Halifax trip (he's promised to bring pictures next time). I'm starting to get into the habit of using my toe cages (before, I just let them hang beneath the pedals because they were too much of pain to get into) and I find it really helps, plus there's no annoying scraping noise when I take sharp corners. :-)

Going to UT practice tonight, last practice before
Contata.