conspiracies, spice girls, naked women

Great weekend! Contata was absolutely splendid, the New Jersey folks (as usual) were wonderfully friendly and welcoming. Jeff reports I missed quite a bit of excitement while I was away, too.
Apparently the Spice Girls were in town and did an interview at CityTV, a few blocks away from our building. Queen Street was shut down, and thousands of young fans swarmed the area. Jeff says he could hear the screaming from our apartment. Also, the French won the World Cup. Jeff was driving our friend Harry (visiting from New York) to our building when they noticed a young couple strolling casually into the parking garage...the woman was completely naked except for a flag draped over one shoulder (obviously in celebratory mode). Another friend of ours commented upon hearing the story that Jeff should have run up to the woman and said, "You know when you have those dreams where you're walking around naked? Well, THIS ISN'T A DREAM!" Our friend Harry's comment: "And I thought New York was a wild city..." :-)

Found out yesterday that the extremely obnoxious drilling noise I've been hearing for the past weeks hasn't been from construction on the floors above my office...they're from construction work being done on the scadding on our building (stonework), and eventually the work will move around to our side of the building, where it will last for weeks. Egads. The noise is already making it difficult for me to work, and sometimes sounds like a drill working its way through the ceiling just above my head. How on earth am I go to keep sane when they're working on the wall just outside my office??? I'm going to start investigating construction-type noise-blocker head-thingies; I'm not going to be able to get any work done otherwise. I'm already turning the volume up on my CD player to try to drown out the current noise and it's not working very well.

Allison will be writing the official con report very soon (she gets her keyboard fixed tomorrow), but Contata highlights for me include: hassling Mark Osier (who was Toastmaster) and seeing his reaction to the MARK OSIER TRIBUTE PACKAGE (thanks to those of you who contributed to this conspiracy! sorry we didn't have a chance to contact more of you), seeing Howard filking! (woohoo Howard!), meeting new friends and getting reacquainted with old ones, sampling Mike Browne's homemade truffles, checking out some of the concerts (unfortunately we didn't get to hear all of them because of having to do prep stuff for our own concert), but did enjoy hearing Gary Ehrlich, Carson Gaspar, Roberta Rogow, Jane Mailander, Steve Macdonald, MarkO, some great mini-concerts on Sunday. Mark pointed out (quite evilly) that I was very silly to have posted our playlist a while back in my blatherings! :-) He had prepared a parody of "Battle On!" to do as an intro to our concert, but unfortunately (fortunately for us, HAHA) didn't have the time to do it. The "untitled" item I had listed in our playlist, by the way, was actually a song that Jodi, Allison, and I had written in honour of Mark, which we ended up singing as an intro to HIS concert.
You can see the lyrics to Parody Man online. :-)
Sherman, we sang the parody you wrote for Mark in open filk, and he was highly amused. Speaking of parodies, Gary wrote a brilliant one of Teenybopper Love! He says he should have it up on his website soon (check out his songbook).
I also had fun talking Pilot-talk with Stevemac, who brought his own Pilot and computer. He hotsynched my Pilot and gave me some very cool apps and text files which I am still having fun going through. More Contata details and hopefully photos.

Had some (unwelcome) excitement on the way home, when Allison's guitar DIDN'T ARRIVE AT THE TORONTO AIRPORT WITH US. :( :( After many frantic phonecalls and talking to airport officials, we discovered that her guitar was never actually put on the plane, and wasn't even registered in the computer as ever having been tagged! Talk about every guitarist's worst nightmare. It was so depressing have to finally leave the airport to go home without her guitar. Good news the next day, though...Allison's guitar had been found in the Newark airport!!!! It came home on the next flight to Toronto, and Allison reports that it was delivered safely to her home yesterday. MAJOR RELIEF. :-)

Anyway, a very fun time and more details coming soon in our longer report. If any of you have Contata reports online, please let me know and I'll post the URLs here, if you'd like.

armageddon

Went to see Armageddon last night with Jeff, Reid, and Luisa. I wasn't all that keen on this film, but it probably didn't help that I'm not a Bruce Willis fan (I also got tired of all the slow-motion scenes...slow-motion happy children oblivious to doom approaching from above, slow-motion happy couples kissing, slow-motion astronauts trying to save the world, etc.). Had dinner at Kit Kat on Queen Street afterwards.

It's become a bit of a surprise for me recently to find out how many people are actually reading my Blatherings. On the Friday of Contata, I met with one of my clients/advertisers at the hotel in New Jersey...they suggested the meeting because they found out that I was going to be in the area by reading my Blatherings and then following the link to the Contata website! My father-in-law said he was at a conference recently where one of his UK friends knew more about what was going on in Jeff's and my lives than my father-in-law did because of my Blatherings (hi Godfrey! :-)). I've also received email from writers and editors who surf in from Inkspot about various blatherings topics.

Some people have even suggested installing a "Debbiecam". Although I'm not keen on the idea of having a live camera in my office (do I -really- want my 37,000 subscribers knowing that I'm sometimes still in my pjs when I send out issues of Inklings every other week??), I think it would be fun to track down a cheap computer cam to take snapshots of anything interesting I happen to come across day-to-day.

There is some kind of parade/celebration thingy going on in Metro Square today, across the street. Lots of bell-ringing, crowds, colourful balloons, flashy costumes. I think I might go check it out at lunch...who knows? Maybe there'll be free food. :-)

In my CD player today: THE NYLONS - "One Size Fits All". Tape player: SQUEEZE - "Argybargy".

truffle thief!

Didn't get any free food yesterday, mainly because I ended up eating lunch in front of my computer. I'm bad. I did take my binocs and check out the action across the street, though...looked like some kind of "Hotel Olympiad".

Did a much-needed office purge yesterday. Reorganized my office filing cabinets so I can find things again. Got a snailmail letter from my niece Brittany! Well, it was in her mother's handwriting, but I'm sure Brittany transcribed. Anyway, she sent a few pictures, one which is posted as today's Blatherings Photo.

Finally finished unpacking from Contata yesterday and was horrified to find out that I had ACCIDENTALLY (really!) STOLEN MARK OSIER'S CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES. On the last day of the convention, Mike Browne gave us and Mark packages of truffles to take home with us, and one somehow ended up lying on top of my carry-on bag (Mark must have put it there, though why he trusted me with his truffles I'll never know). Thinking they were UT's truffles, I stuck them in my bag and forgot about them. When Mark started complaining in email about his truffles being missing, however, I began to clue in...

Officemusic today: Scott Snyder's BARDIC LUG (my tape player), PHANTOM OF THE OPERA SOUNDTRACK (my CD player).

stuffed grape leaves

Went riding with David this morning and I got to see his Halifax pics. We're going to try to do cycling twice a week instead of just once, but this will depend on whether I can get up at 6 am two times a week. :-) The main problem is getting enough sleep the night before, a bit difficult in a household with a night person.

Went out for Greek food with friends Fred & Allie last night...I had stuffed grape leaves, yum (I was introduced to this delicacy a while back by Tanya Bellavia and got hooked). Fred and Jeff had a game of pingpong afterwards. Jeff used to play pingpong a ton when our friend Scott Dixon lived with us for a summer (in '93). They kept a running tally over thousands of games, and miraculously, they ended up with a tie score (in terms of number of winning games) by the end of the summer. They had a tie-breaking game, and I confess I don't remember who won! I do remember a lot of swearing and the occasional thrown pingpong paddles over those months, but we were all still the best of friends by the end of the summer so it must have turned out all right. :-) Scott teaches history at the University of Belfast now and also got his thesis published (you should all rush out and get it! It's called "The Reformation and rural society: the parishes of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach 1528-1603", Cambridge University Press).

Did some babysitting yesterday. Annie calls me "Beebee" and gives me air kisses when I say good-bye. Sara cut her own hair a couple days ago. According to Ruth, they were at the dinner table when Sara went into the bathroom and shut the door. She stayed there quite a while. When she came out, she opened the door a bit and backed out, refusing to look at anyone, then ran into the kitchen. Her grandmother had caught sight of Sara's bangs, though, and whispered, "I think she cut her hair." Ruth called out, "Sara, did you cut your hair?" Sara apparently opened the kitchen door a wee bit and explained that she cut her hair because her bangs were bothering her. When she saw that no one was horrified or laughing (though Ruth said it was REALLY tough not to laugh...Sara had cut her bangs extremely short and also crooked), she came out and came back to the dinner table. I don't remember cutting my own hair when I was little, but Ruth remembers cutting hers. Personally, I think it an admirable venture of Sara's...just think how useful it will be to be able to cut one's own hair in the future! No outrageous fees, no having to deal with over-talkative hairdressers...

Sara turns four in a couple of weeks, and I still have no idea what to get her. :-(

Officemusic today: CD player - Holly Cole's GIRL TALK.

canoe rescue

Spent the weekend at the cottage...did a lot of reading, napping, some swimming. Jeff taught me how to do a "canoe over canoe rescue", which would be useful on a canoe trip and one canoe dumps. He purposely dumped his canoe and went into the water and showed me how to pull the dumped canoe upside down and across my canoe (to empty it of water). Amazingly, I didn't dump my own canoe in the process. :-)

Freddy Brown reports having a good weekend at Toronto Trek (unfortunately we weren't able to attend...it was the same wknd as Contata), where he was filk guest.

Puzzlebox has a message board! Go to http://www.puzzlebox.net/ and click on "Puzzlebits".

Graham Leathers opened at the Fringe Festival recently and reports that the show was very well received! You can check out Gray's tour page for more details: http://www.mbnet.mb.ca/~gleather.

Had dinner at my sister's last night after coming home from the cottage. While Jeff played with Sara, I hung out with Annie. She has learned to bow. I found this out by watching her play the xylophone a bit, and then get up to bow. Her bows are still a bit wobbly, and she'd fall down about a third of the time, but she does seem like bowing a lot. I started bowing to her to see what would happen, and she delightedly bowed back. We had quite a bowing session going for a while there...it was all very Japanese and polite, with Annie solemnly sticking her diapered bum up in the air and occasionally tipping over.

Officemusic: RAVEL PIANO MUSIC, Volume 1 (Louis Lortie, piano), CIRCUS (Erasure). Started with Ravel, had to resort to something noisier :-) to cover up the sounds of the drilling outside.