more wrevellings

Went back for more wrevellings last night. Learned lots more about misc.writing, which seems very similar to rec.music.filk in many ways. Where people in rec.music.filk get together at filk cons or housefilks, the misc.writing people get together at these "wrevels", usually hosted at someone's house. People at this wrevel were from Chicago, Michigan, and the Toronto area. Sat around, talked, ate (shepherd's pie, salad, fiddleheads, chocolate cake, blueberry cheesecake), talked some more.

I'm a fiddlehead fan, by the way. Such a pity they're only in season for a few weeks. I had actually bought a small bag of them earlier yesterday and had some for lunch, as well. Fiddleheads, for those of who who don't know, are fern tips. You have to harvest them at exactly the right time. Throw them in boiling water, then mix with butter and pepper...yum. They taste a bit like asparagus.

Got a call from Writer's Digest today, got introduced to the editor with whom I'll be working (for my book), talked deadlines. Right now I'm working on a detailed outline, using the outliner in Microsoft Word 98. Anyone else familiar with this feature? It's pretty handy, and makes it easy to rearrange chapter sections, etc.

Dave Clement's arriving later today, must do some housecleaning before he arrives. Also must make sure I have enough chocolate. :-) Jodi and Allison are dropping by later tonight.

dave and sam visit

Had a *great* visit with Dave Clement, who was in town to see Sam Baardman perform at the Levity Bakery yesterday afternoon. Relaxing, low-key weekend...a bit of music here and there, but mostly just hanging out at my place and talking.

Dave had brought a big paper bag with him...left it on top of the coffee table (where it was a centerpiece for most of the weekend) but then ignored it. Allison, Jodi and I were dying of curiosity, of course, but were too polite to ask what was in it. Last night, however, Dave finally said that he had waiting for us to ask about it, and was surprised by how long we had resisted! :D Turns out the bag contained one large chocolate bunny for each of us, yum.

Sam's gig at Levity Bakery went wonderfully, and the place was packed. Judith and Dave Hayman were in the audience, as well as Sam's brother. Went back for Chinese food at my place after, though Sam had to take off for a couple of hours to do a radio interview for CKLN. Everyone must buy his new CD! (which will be released in a couple of weeks; we got to hear a raw version and were quite blown away)

Quite enjoyed getting to know Sam better last night, too. Conversation ranged from recording stuff to folk festival stuff to Jodi's songwriting webpage to food. Food poll of the evening: what is your favourite popsicle flavour? Allison & I voted strongly for banana, Sam and Dave preferred orange, Jodi leaned towards grape. (What about the rest of you? Don't laugh...this is an Important Question; you can tell a lot about a person from their preferred popsicle flavour)

Said good-bye to Dave at the airport about an hour ago. The airport people gave me a temporary pass so I could hang out with him until he boarded the plane (I didn't realize that was possible), so we got some extra time together. Sam's leaving in about an hour.

Woohoo! Jeff and I have tickets to the 12:30 a.m. Wednesday showing of THE PHANTOM MENACE at the new Festival Hall theater a couple of blocks away from here. The 12:04 and 12:15 a.m. showings were already sold out.

star wars tonight!

Jeff and I have tickets to see Star Wars at 12:30 a.m. tonight, woohoo!

Looks like the Talis Kimberley interview might actually be ready for posting within the day or two.(I'm just waiting for her to approve the final text before linking it up)

Oops, Allison pointed out in blatherchat that Dave gave us chocolate BEARS, not bunnies. She is absolutely right. I haven't yet broken into mine yet.

Visited with Annie and Sara yesterday (I had been missing them terribly)...went to a nearby park, and then came back to the house for a pillowfight. For pillowfights, I take off my glasses (rendering me almost completely blind, much to the delight of my nieces) and then sit there while both Annie and Sara attack me with pillows, shrieking. From time to time I throw pillows back at them, but mostly I sit there to be battered about, and also try to make sure Annie doesn't fall off the edge of the bed.

Today, my building is testing the emergency generator to make sure the building is Y2K compliant.

Officemusic: INTO THE FIRE (Phoenix)

2:17 pm Seems there are already a bunch of people in line for the midnight showing tonight at Festival Hall! I'm going to start lining up at about 5 pmish with our friend Scott Murray; Jeff and Helen will take over for an hour or two this evening so I can come back and do more work. It's supposed to pour rain tonight; oh joy. Anyway, we might have a laptop with us...if we do, I'll post in Blatherchat from line tonight. Are we technogeeks, or what? :-)

lining up for star wars

Sorry I didn't blather yesterday, but Jeff opted not to bring a laptop...it pretty much poured rain from about 7 pm through the night! Yes, Jeff, Scott, Helen and I stood in the rain for all those hours. Are we mad? Perhaps. But there was something to be said for standing in line with other mad people. :-) I did send some email messages while in line, via Scott's pager thingy (talk about geeky...Scott and I were getting email messages on our cellphones and his pager).

Quite the party atmosphere in that line-up. People had brought lawn chairs, cards, Walkmans, food. Luisa came by after work to say hi (she and Reid are seeing the movie this morning). Vendors set up stalls nearby, people in chocolate bar costumes strolled up and down the line. Lots of Star Wars costumes about, of course. :-) We got photographed by Toronto Life magazine, interviewed by two radio stations. Lots of media people wandering around.

The theatre/Paramount people went out of their way to keep us happy (it was also opening day of the mega-theatre complex). Some highlights included:

• Free massages! Volunteers from the Sutherland-Chan clinic were giving mini-massages to anyone who wanted one.
• Free food: Kraft dinner (one of the sponsors), popcorn, Pepsi
• Fire juggler (lighted cigarettes for those interested), magicians, acrobats on stilts
• Occasional free t-shirts, caps
• A balloon sculpture guy who also did an impressive balloon-swallowing trick
• A trio of drag queens in outrageous costumes who did hammy medleys
• Free rain ponchos when it started raining :-) Interesting how the rain seemed to enhance the experience (in a weird, twisted way) rather than putting a damper on the event. I overheard one guy behind us on his cellphone telling a friend, "Every part of me is soaked, I've been sitting here for hours, I'm freezing to death, but you know what? I wouldn't have missed this for anything." We actually missed being rained on, having chosen a location underneath the roof overhang (ok, so maybe it was Jeff's idea which I earlier mocked...turned out to be a good thing after all :))
• Amazing percussion sculpture thingy. Difficult to describe...it was sort of like a parade float, except that it was covered in colourful pipes and ribbons and drums and bells and other noisemakers. Several people in brightly-coloured costumes were beating out some fun rhythms; some people in the crowd were dancing.
• Folky guy duo that were actually pretty good; unfortunately, I missed hearing the group name
• Photographer wandered about taking Polaroid photos (for free) of anyone who was interested...after a minute or two, you got your photo in a cardboard folder labelled with the theatre logo on the back and the words "I Survived The Paramount Opening Line Up May 18, 1999" (I'll post the photo in blatherings once I get it scanned)
• Free tape... Title: STAR WARPED: MUSIC INSPIRED BY THE TICKET LINE-UP (compilation from Universal Studios)
  
  

re: the movie itself...I'd rather hold off on comments until all of you have had a chance to see it. Jeff took some pictures of the theatre and line-up events on a digital camera; I'll post them later today if I can.

Anyway, we ended up getting home about four hours ago. What am I doing up? Because I have an appointment later this morning, and also have to get some work done.

3:52 pm: Hey, the ducklings in the little pond across the street (beside Roy Thompson Hall) have hatched! Each year around this time, you can usually see clusters of business people pressing their faces against the glass hallway that runs along the side of the pond, checking out the progress of the nest (a pair of ducks nests on the pond every year). Anyway, looks like the ducklings hatched very recently...there are nine of them, very fuzzy and VERY cute. They were swimming around the pond when I went by about an hour ago (yes, I was one of the people with my faces pressed against the glass). :-)

spiny norman

Saw Shakespeare in Love again last night, this time with Cathy. Enjoyed it just as much. :)

Visited Helen with Brian and Jeff last night afterward, and was introduced to Helen's hedgehog, Spiny Norman (in spite of the name, Spiny Norman is a female). Spiny was really cute! Bizarre-looking, though. Looked incredibly like one of those scrub brush thingies that some people use to clean their shoes, except smaller. Spiny could fit on one outstretched palm, and made little snuffling noises. Helen used tweezers to feed live mealworms to Spiny, who obviously loved them; her head would snap forward for a second, and the worm was gone. Helen says that sometimes Spiny mistakes the tweezers for the mealworm, and has broken a tooth. I don't think Spiny is very bright.

The roads around our area (downtown corporate area) are still pretty bad, and our car was sliding around as we headed out for Helen's. Toronto has a snow removal problem right now, mainly because the plows can't completely plow roads when cars are parked along the curb.