catalog frenzy

So I bought a Wallace & Gromit desk calendar half-price the other day. Are any of you familiar with this series of animated shorts? If not, you definitely must rush out and buy or rent some! More info available at http://www.aardman.com/wandg/. My favourite character is the Evil Penguin/Rooster.

Another site to check out if you're as obsessed with mail order catalogs as I am is Catalogsite. I ordered about two dozen catalogs while at their site during the Christmas holidays. One of the most intriguing-looking is ComputerGear, which has some cool gifts for techgeeks.

Jeff actually came home for dinner last night! Brought a friend from work, Helen Waters (who was responsible for the IT'S FROM CANS! graphic I posted a while ago). We had my chicken stew (I added ham for variety) and no one died from it. Pumpkin pie for dessert...I had accidentally ordered it instead of canned pumpkin when in Grocery Gateway. Bad news, since I'm nuts for pumpkin pie and immediately (I mean immediately) ripped open the package and had a piece when I realized it was part of my order. Jeff doesn't like pumpkin pie, so I knew I'd end up eating the whole thing unless I did something drastic. So I sent it home with Helen. :-)

Interesting article about Star Trek: Insurrection (thanks, Reid!)

Officemusic: Desire of the Rhino King (Adrian Belew)

p.s. Looks like we're getting ADSL on Jan.14th, woohoo!

oscars

So is it my imagination, or are the Oscars getting more boring every year? I only caught part of the show last night).

Visited Sara and Annie last night. Sara is learning about Picasso in her art class. When I was four, we never learned about Picasso. She knows more about Picasso than I do.

FOUR MORE DAYS.

one more day til FKO

Apologies for the lack of blatherings...I've been in revved-up workmode so I can take part of Friday off.

Ran through our concert set last night at practice and put the finishing touches on our Interfilk donation basket. The basket contains a bunch of chocolate and fun stuff (including a candy drill, Kinder Eggs, Jelly Bellies, Godiva truffles), a stuffed penguin, a bottle of plum wine, a copy of North Coast Cabaret (has a live recording of us performing The Neurotic Love Song), a tape full of 90 minutes of UT song & silliness recorded during the last four practices in Allison's living room, and lyrics/chords to *all* the songs on the tape.

Songs on the tape: Marvin, Life Is A Bowl Of Oreo Cookies, Me and Babylon Five, Silence and Memory, Temper of Defeat, our three "Pegasus parody" songs (including the third song that will never ever be heard in public ever ever, and no...don't ask us to sing it in open filk because we will have to decline! =:-O), We're Urban Tapestry, The Truth Is Out There, Truffles, Homecoming, Friendship Song, The Road Home, Another Story, Parody Man, Jelly Belly Song, Mr. Jelly Belly's Coming After You, Ich Mag Schokolade, Hey Tom!, Duct Tape Man, Battle On!, Monday, Twinkle In His Eye, Like The Dorsai, It Said What?, Home to FilKONtario, This Is A Filksong. Sum total: 27 songs (none are available on any of our albums), approx. 90 minutes. Two of these songs were written last week and will be premiered in our Saturday concert.

One copy of this tape and lyric/chords will be donated to the FKO Interfilk auction. One other copy with lyric/chords will be donated to the UK Filk con (for those of you who don't know, we've been invited to be Overseas Guests in Milton Keynes next February! For more info about this con, please email didgeri-12@oreos.demon.co.uk).

Anyway, here's the chorus to the last song in our concert this Saturday...it pretty much sums up Allison's, Jodi's and my feelings about this coming weekend:

Bring me home to FilKONtario
Stay, sing with me we'll
be all right, sing all night
with my friends at FilKONtario.

Gary's Consonance report is now online. And hey, Lyanne, I saw your message in Blatherchat...looking forward to seeing you! Steve & Andrea...I never heard that Jerry Springer anecdote. I'm going to have to look up Jerry Springer websites to figure out how to draw him...

Hope to see some of you tomorrow night...

briefly

Came home to a work-related crisis so will have to postpone FKO-related blatherings a day or two until I've had a chance to catch up. We had a WONDERFUL time, and it was great seeing many of you there! More details (many more details :-)) soon. If any of you have FKO reports online, please let me know!

Happy birthday to Katy Dröge and Janna (Lyanne Quirt's pet rat)! It's also my birthday. :-)

rice paper and fko highlights

Neat...a couple copies of Rice Paper magazine landed in my mailbox today, and I found that they'd made my interview the cover story (see cover photo)...the cover blurb reads: "Centre Stage in Cyberspace - The World of Debbie Ridpath Ohi". (stop laughing, Allison and Jodi!) They did a great job at writing up the interview (they make me sound so much more interesting than I really am), and obviously did a lot of behind-the-scenes research via the Web. There's even a paragraph about Urban Tapestry and filk. :-) Speaking of interviews, looks like I'm also going to be mentioned in an article next month in Sympatico Netlife magazine. The fact-checker called yesterday to verify...well...FACTS. :-)

Got my official book contract from Writer's Digest, woohoo!...mailed it off today.

Sorry for the lack of blatherings lately; I've been struggling to pull myself out of the accumulated work and recovering from a spam attack on my list. Hey, we found out from Randy Hoffman that two of our songs ("Cuz He's A Guy" and "Sex and Chocolate") are going to be airing on Dr. Demento! Very cool.

We'll be posting an official FKO report this weekend, but here are a few of my personal highlights (lots more in the official report):

• Having Mark Osier show up! MarkO wrote our bio for the program book, by the way, for which we will get revenge someday. >:-)
• Finding out that Katy Dröge was at FKO! Another total surprise. This was after others (who were in the know) had sadly told us she wouldn't be able to make it.
• Meeting Rika from Germany, Katy's friend. SUPERnice, and multi-talented.
• Handmade card and portrait of Choco-Vampira from Taunya Shiffer.
• Meeting Don Neill's family for the first time.
• Hearing Joey Shoji sing "Cranes Over Hiroshima". First song I ever heard him sing. He had asked me to play flute accompaniment (without mentioning what song it was). I started tootling along, but then gave up and reached for my tissues instead. :-)
• Seeing photos from Tom and Dave's guest stint in the UK! Nice to be able to connect faces with some of the names (of course I recognized a bunch already).
• Joel Polowin's chocolate-cheesecake brownies in the con suite!
• Finally getting hold of the new Phoenix CD (Katy kindly sold me hers).
• Seeing old friends again.
• Chocolate rhino from Dave and Tom.
• Hearing Gary Ehrlich & Joe Neff's parody of "Sensitive New Age Guys" (when are the lyrics going up on your page, Gary?)
• Filk Hall of Fame awards...many happy tears. :-)
• Having Interfilk guest Harold Groot be our Guy on "Cuz He's A Guy" in our concert!
• Getting a birthday card and handmade beaded lizard from Lyanne Quirt.
• Seeing our Interfilk basket go for $550! Allison, Jodi and I were utterly floored (insert jaws hitting floor here). To Steve Brinich: thank you thank you thank you thank you for supporting Interfilk!!!!!!!!!!
• Lloyd and Yvonne Penney's con suite chili, yum!
• San Francisco chocolate from Joey (wow, it even comes with instructions)
• Seeing Karen Linsley's and Lloyd Landa's spankin' new CD, ROAD TO ROSWELL!!!!!!!!!!!!! They got their CDs hours before FKO officially opened. I was also thrilled to see my name in the credits, too. :-) (I play flute on a couple of tracks)
• Chocolate pasta from Paul Kwinn (I'll be reporting on the result in my Blatherings, never fear)
• Hearing the choral workshop perform under the tutelage of Ed Stauff...wow, they were great!
• Playing Battleship with Steve Macdonald on our Pilots (after he beamed it to me). We are SUCH technogeeks, aren't we? :-)
• In our concert, hearing the whole room sing along on the course of our last song ("Home To FilKONtario")...made me want to cry.
  
  

Lots, lots more...see our report this weekend for details. The FKO concom did an amazing job, and it will be a convention we will never forget.

I also have to confess I fell in love during the convention. (Geez, I hope Jeff isn't reading this)

Leo Neill. Friendly, empathic, a killer smile that would melt any woman's heart. Leo and I hung out as much as we could during the convention, but we knew our time was limited.

Did I mention Leo is 11 months old? :-)