snow

Whoa, it SNOWED yesterday! Quite the blizzard, but the snow seems to have all gone. I hope that was the last of winter.

Went to my sister's for dinner last night. Annie was so excited that she spent most of dinner (she only ate a few bites and then was done) hanging onto the back of my chair and jumping up and down in a frenzy. "Play now? Play Dorothy?" "I'm still eating my dinner, Annie."

Annie can say my name properly now! I kind of missed her old pronunciation, though, so was pleased when she lapsed while she and I were playing hide-and-seek. Each time she finished counting (she always wanted to be the one who did the finding, never the hidee, and her counting was always an imitation of what she thought counting was supposed to be like), she's yell "I come!" (translation: "Here I come!") and if she couldn't find me immediately, she would start calling out plaintively, "Beebee! Beebee!" At which point I always took pity on her and started making little giveaway noises, or letting my foot stick out from under my hiding place and waving it around, etc.

After that we played Dorothy. Annie was always Dorothy, and I was either the Witch or the Tin Man. If I was the Witch, I would chase her ("and I'll get your little dog, too!"). If I was the Tin Man, then I would start rusting if it rained, at which point Sara and Annie ran to get oil for my creaky joints. Sometimes I got to be the Scarecrow, but I didn't really understand what I was supposed to do as the Scarecrow (except hold up my arms and stand in the middle of the cornfield, which really wasn't all that exciting). On rare occasion I was allowed to be the Lion and chased after Annie while she ran down the hallway, shrieking.

haircut

Got a much-needed haircut yesterday. I tend to get my hair cut only when my bangs are so long that I can't see my computer screen. Is that pitiful, or what? VERY chatty hairdresser this time (I've reverted to my old habit of walking into the first salon I can find without making an appointment in advance). Instead of gritting my teeth, however, this time I tried an experiment and tried to be even MORE chatty than the hairdresser. I'm sure he felt like hitting me over the head with his scissors by the end, but at least it gained me the illusion of temporary control (I was sitting there almost totally blind without my glasses, after all, with a stranger going at my head with a sharp implement).

New article up in the "Filkers On Filking" section...A Guide For Filk Czars by Gary McGath.

Also, I've added some photos to the FKO report. I still have some more in my camera (i.e. of Harold Groot and others), will add them when I finally get the film developed. If any of you have other scanned FKO pics, I'd love to know about them! Especially any photos with all three of us in them.

Many thanks again, by the way, to Allison for writing the report. Without Allison, our con reports would likely be non-existent or very dull at best. She remembers things that Jodi and I don't, and is also the archivist in the group.

Allison pointed out to me, by the way, that some of the reports in our UT con report section were missing. I've updated the page. Sadly, it seems that certain convention reports have gone permanently missing, probably lost when Jodi and I shifted servers. Humble apologies to Allison for that. It takes Allison a lot of time to write these reports, and Jodi and I do appreciate it. We're going to try to make extra copies of reports from now on (at least a hardcopy version) to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.

wensleydale

I am so pleased, I have found Wensleydale cheese. And what's the big deal about Wensleydale cheese? Well, it's the theme cheese of the claymation series "Wallace and Gromit". I'm a big W&G fan. My desk calendar is a Wallace & Gromit desk calendar. Those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about might want to check out the Wallace And Gromit website. Anyway, I found Wensleydale with cranberries in it...tres delish.

I think I must have imagined the snow a few days ago...it's back to spring again. Snow in April? Ridiculous. It's usually in the spring that I miss living out in the country. Not much green around here, really, unless you count the feeble-looking over-manicured excuses for trees in the nearby park. Lots of asphalt, though. I normally don't mind it, but in the springtime I always get a bit wistful for green. Believe it or not, I used be into gardening bigtime. I had a rock garden as well as flower beds around our house. Bursts of daffodil yellow in the forest every spring (we planted tons 'o bulbs out there), lily-of-the valley a few weeks later. Picking lily-of-the-valley (at least this is what I was told) helped propogate them, and I revelled in picking fresh handfuls for the house every morning; the fragrance is one of my favourites.

Just because I was into gardening didn't mean I was -good- at it, however. I used to pour over seed catalogs every winter and order all kinds of flowers and herbs for spring planting. Once I planted a whole plot of wildflowers. When the seedlings came up, I noticed one particular kind of wildflower with distinctive leaves throughout the plot. I decided to transplant this wildflower to its own section of the garden, and spent an hour or so toiling in the sun doing so...it was only a day or two later that I noticed the same "wildflower" throughout my entire garden. I had painstakingly transplanted a whole plot of WEEDS. Sigh.

My lack of green thumb extends to houseplants as well. The first present Jeff ever got for me was a spider plant, back when we first started dating. I remember, even at the time, feeling vaguely sick with horror as he handed over the precious item (The First Gift). I warned him that houseplants didn't tend to like me. He laughed and said that it was impossible to kill spider plants, that they were super-easy to care for. He told me how he still had a plant that one of his ex-girlfriends gave to him years ago (why was he telling me this??) and that the plant brought back good memories of past friendships, yada yada yada.

Anyway, I killed his gift in two weeks.

Now Jeff won't let me near any of our houseplants. :-)

By the way, Haagen Dazs has come out with a new "caramel" flavour that is to die for.

bike check-up

Took my bike in for its spring check-up this afternoon. I use Urbane Cyclist on John St., just north of Queen. The people there are really great, especially Eugene, the bike guy. He remembered my bike right away, even though I've only taken my bike in once before, asked me where my front fender was (I told him we took it off because Jeff & I couldn't get my bike into the trunk of the car otherwise).

While I was chatting with the bike people, a couple of couriers came in. Wow, did I ever feel like a geek! I'm not sure what other cities are like, but Toronto is definitely a bike courier city, at least downtown. There's a strong community of them here; they even have their own websites! :-) Even during the imaginary blizzard last week, you could see them whizzing around, scarfs wrapped around their faces, shoulders hunched against the wind. I could never be a courier, even if I had more bike experience...I just don't have the chutzpah. Heck, this afternoon was my first time out on a bike this spring and my nerves were a wreck by the time I got to the bike shop...Queen Street had crazy traffic as well as bumper-to-bumper streetcars. Yikes, get me to the Martin Goodman Trail!

Hey, Inkspot was listed in the May issue of Writer's Digest as one of the best websites for writers (check out page 28).

Getting together with Jodi and Allison tonight.

food movie

Jeff and I rented a couple movies over the weekend.

BUFFALO 66 was a gritty, black humour movie that I wasn't sure I liked at first, but thoroughly enjoyed by the end. Not a movie for everyone, though. I found the main character particularly fascinating...I found myself rooting for him in spite of how much I disliked him at first.

EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN is an excellent food movie! I highly recommend this to anyone who liked TAMPOPO. But boy, did it make us both hungry...we snacked throughout. :-) Chinese, with subtitles.

Anyone know of other good food movies? Ones already on my list:

Tampopo (my favourite) - subtitled, Japanese noodles
Babette's Feast (second favourite) - subtitled, French cooking
Big Night
Like Water For Chocolate - subtitled? can't remember
Eat Drink Man Woman - subtitled, Chinese food

Had a meeting this afternoon in Orangeville with a group of people we're travelling with in early fall...a two-week canoe trip in the Northwest Territories, on the Nahanni River. The trip is led by a man-wife team based in Orangeville. We went through our itinerary (we're staying the first night in Yellowknife, then by float plane to the Nahanni), equipment list (warm sleeping bags, etc.), meal obligations (each of us is responsible for one appetizer, one dessert...our guides will take care of main courses), how to handle bears, etc. I'm terrified and super-excited about the trip all at the same time. I'll feel much better once I've had some more canoe trip experience under my belt this summer, and perhaps some white water canoeing experience.

Jeff and I used to live out near Orangeville and it was fun to catch up on some of the local news. Current hot gossip is that Tom Cruise has a place in the area. Apparently he stays there occasionally when he does filming in Toronto, and of course his EVERY MOVE is recorded by the Orangeville residents. He went to the Orangeville Mall recently for a $12 haircut, for example, and some butter tarts. :-)

We had lunch at my mom-in-law's restaurant, Oasis. Really, really yummy food, and I'm not just saying that because a relative owns it!