favourite chocolate bar

Signed up for Toronto's 10th Annual Word On The Street literary festival on Sept. 26th later this year. I'll be renting a small booth (very small :)) in the Writer's Block area for Inkspot.

Had my annual checkup at doctor's yesterday; was poked, prodded, measured, blood-sampled, pronounced fit.

Allison, Jodi and I did some recording for Judith Hayman's album last night. Tonight, Allison and I are getting together again tonight to do some practising (Jodi is sick :( ).

Thanks for the congrats on the UK Overseas GoHood. We've met Lissa and Phil already, and I already feel as though I know some of you others even though we haven't met, yet. :-)

MY NEW FAVOURITE CHOCOLATE BAR:
A relatively new chocolate bar by Cadbury called FUSION. Chocolate with crispy bits and caramel...yummmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I first heard about it from Rand a while back, but only saw it for the first time during a visit to Sugar Mountain recently.

dominican republic

I will be away in the Dominican Republic for a bit; I may be able to blather while I'm gone, but on the whole I'm going to try stay off the computer. :-) Talk to you all when I get back...

back from dominican

Jeff and I got back from our vacation yesterday. He got burnt a bit; I wore SPF45 the entire time and only got mildly singed on the last day on part of my back where I had been careless with the sunscreen. I've never been much of a "lie on the beach all day and bake" sort of person, so I brought a bunch of books and (*gasp) some work to do. The phone lines were a bit weird, though, so even though I had a laptop I was out of email touch most of the time. I'll have to make up for it this week, though...looks like it's going to take me a while to catch up.

Jodi and Alisa have got me hooked on Laurell Hamilton's vampire-mystery books. Plowed through two of them this past week, and Jodi's going to lend me the next four.

Karen Bertke asked me to post the following:

Our Cincinnati based convention has been moved to a new hotel and our convention is only one month away...† The Blue Ash Hotel was doing renovations and their renovators torn the hotel to pieces without hope of getting it back together in time for our convention March 19-21st (can you say breech of contract?).† Could you put out a link on your page or a note on your blatherchat to get the news out? ††† MILLENNICON MINUS 2 will be held at the Regal Cincinnati at 5th & Elm (150 W. 5th St.) Cincinnati OH 45202.† Hotel prices remain $69.00/night, parking will be paid by the convention organizers.† See our updated webpage http://www.mvfl.org for more details.

ONE MONTH (plus a bit) UNTIL FILKONTARIO, WOOHOO!

eye test

Ack, trying to catch up on work. Was hindered by an eye check-up in the morning...the drops used in one of the tests made it impossible for me to read anything for several hours, including a computer screen (AUGH!). Had my eyes poked, prodded, checked, was grateful that my prescription hadn't changed (my eyes are bad enough as it is :-)). Although I'm not particularly enamoured of eye tests, I'd go for an eye appointment over a dental appointment anytime. Besides, the checkups happen infrequently enough that I'm still fascinated by the whole process. Even by the cliched eye chart...do you think they ever change the letters? As a child, I always toyed with the idea of memorizing the whole chart for a lark. This time, I was also asked to read the first paragraph of a very dull story in small type. I tried to compensate for the dullness by putting extra excitement into my reading; I don't think the optometrist appreciated my efforts, though.

Okay, enough blathering, plunging back into trying to catch up after my holiday...

Officemusic: STUNT (Barenaked Ladies)

5:30 a.m.

Started work at 5:30 this morning...woke up for utterly no reason, tried desperately to fall back asleep after I saw the clock. And of course, the more one TRIES to fall asleep, the less one is able to. Too many "to do" items kept pouring into my head; I ended up giving and going to my office to work.

I forgot to mention that I got some beads put into my hair in the Dominican. Several women were on the beach doing it for 20 pesos a braid (roughly CAN$2). I asked for three, and got to choose the beads I wanted (you get three per braid). The braids still haven't fallen out, and they look rather silly here in wintery Toronto...but I can't bring myself to take them out yet. Every so often I'll hear them clacking a bit, and the memory of Dominican sunshine will help me get through my post-vacation work overload.