pocari sweat

Sorry, I couldn't resist using that phrase as my topic header today. What is a Pocari, you ask, and why would one want anything to do with its sweat? The package in today's Blatherpic was purchased at Tokyo World, which is a small Japanese goods store adjoining Wow Sushi, a place we have lunch every week with friends. I bought this package to add to my collection of Bizarre Packaged Foods (I'll have to put up a Web page of my collection so far). Check out the "Body Request" text halfway down the package front...what the heck does this mean???



Anyway, I did some research online. Apparently Pocari Sweat is a sports drink that is popular in Japan, manufactured by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. The word "Pocari" has no real meaning, but was chosen because it sounds "relaxing, easeful, light". "Sweat" has connotations of diligence and effort, at least that's how the English word seems to people in Japan. Here's some more info.

Anyway, had lunch at Wow Sushi yesterday with Jeff, Bryan, Greg and Scott from One Trick Pony. After, we picked up some Pocky and other stuff from Tokyo World. My new favourite Pocky flavour is White Chocolate Mousse, by the way. Yummmm.



Allison and Jodi came over in the evening for a practice. We had planned to have dinner at the Swiss Chalet down the road but were horrified to discover that it was gone, the windows covered in paper. Or at least I was horrified, since I like Swiss Chalet (especially the Chalet Sauce) and it was one of the few reasonably-priced semi-"fast food"-type of restaurants left in this neighbourhood.

We recorded a new song to donate to Interfilk (mystery song, identity to be revealed at FKO) as well as taping a rough version of the Titanic song (the one I heard Joey sing at Consonance) with Allison's and Jodi's vocal parts so I can try to figure out a third harmony part if I can.

Only one week left until FKO, woohoo!

Today's Blatherpics:

Pocari sweat.

Bryan (foreground) and Greg.

Allison and Jodi at UT practice last night.

jockette

So I'm trying out a new piece of equipment at my gym called an "elliptical trainer". I generally stick to the rowing machine and stationary bike, but Jeff and I are going on a 10-day backpacking trip with some friends later this year, and I figure I need all the help I can get. :-) On a canoe trip, my least favourite part are the portages (where you have to hike on land between lakes, carrying your canoes and other supplies/equipment), and I figure the hiking trip is going to be like one long portage.

I'm back into a regular workout schedule, finally, and am realizing that a large part of the motivation is having a clearcut goal in the shape of an event coming up. Getting in shape for our canoe trip on the Nahanni River is an example. I've never been on a real backpacking trip before, so am a bit nervous about it. We'll be going with our friends Alison and Jeff. We've been on a canoe trip with them before; they're great fun.

Anyway, my typical workout schedule is going to the gym 3-5 times/week these days. I do cardio for about half an hour (gradually increasing this) on the elliptical, rowing machine, or stationary bike. Then stretches and crunches, followed by weight training for about 20-30 minutes. There are days when it takes tremendous willpower to get to the gym. There are days when I can't wait to get there and work out because I need a stress outlet or am just feeling antsy. I usually take my Walkman or MP3 player, so use that as an opportunity to listen to more music. These days I've been listening to Jeff's and Maya's new CD, "Retro Rocket Science", and some Ookla The Mok.





Today's Blatherpics:

T-shirt that my friend Scott Dixon sent me from Ireland (he's a history prof at the University of Belfast) for my birthday, which is next Thursday (Katy's birthday is the same day, by the way!).

I get tremendous amusement out of Scott's drawings, and he knows it. This one came with the following inscription:

C. Scott Dixon as Robert DeNiro
A special birthday sketch by the master impressionist
on this
Your Birthday
(and there is a shirt in the envelope as well)

lissa's baby!

The photo above is an ultrasound picture of Lissa's baby. Looking forward to seeing Lissa next week at FKO!

Spam

As some of you already know, I've always hated spam. Having had many e-mail aliases, I tend to get a lot of it. Yesterday, I counted 118 pieces of e-mail spam offering everything from printer toner to having my penis enlarged by four inches. Now that I'm not doing Inkspot anymore, my daily e-mail load is much less, but this means that picking out "real" pieces of e-mail from the growing amount of junk is becoming more and more difficult. I used to look forward to getting e-mail, back when the Internet appealed only to academic geeks. Now, however, the spam "noise" is getting highly annoying. Not sure what to do about it...I've tried filtering, changing e-mail addresses, changing my mailto: links, all to no avail. I've given up and am just trying to ignore it.

Blatherings now available in PDA-friendly format!

For those with Palm Pilots, I've created a Blatherings page with no left navigation bar and no graphics. Those interested should add the following channel to their Hotsynch schedule: http://www.electricpenguin.com/pda/blatherings.html.




Copyright (c)2000 Ruth Ohi.

Today's Blatherpic:

Lissa's baby!

Illustration from one of Ruth's books, "Into My Mother's Arms". Ruth used Sara as a model. I've been gradually revamping Ruth's Web site. Do check it out!

reading modes

A quiet weekend (yay!).

I did a lot of reading, finished off Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier. LOVED this book. It's roughly based on the Hans Christian Anderson tale of The Wild Swans. I'm eagerly awaiting the next two books in the trilogy.

There's something enormously satisfying about reading a completely engrossing book for hours (ideally in one sitting). I'm not sure what other reading experiences are like, but I have different reading modes:

Info-gathering: When I'm reading a book purely for reference information, I tend to scan pretty quickly, skipping to bits that are directly relevant to what I'm looking for.

"Popcorn" novels/beach reads: These are paperbacks I get to read for distraction and that don't need a lot of focus, perfect for reading on the airplane or on the subway (and in the bathtub!). I tend to read these pretty quickly.

Average reads: These are books that I enjoy all right, but are not totally engrossing, so I'm easily distracted. These take me a loooooooong time to read because I tend to read them in bits and starts.

"I'd like to own this in hardcover" books: I always hope to find this type of story. It's the kind you can't bear to put down, where you can lose yourself for hours without noticing the time (sometimes burning dinner or missing appointments as a result), stories so well-written and engaging that you actually begin to slow down near the end of the book because you know that it might be a long time before you can find a book that you enjoy as much for the first time.



Jeff and I went for brunch with Parki yesterday morning, hung out at his place afterward. I fell asleep again in the armchair (did I tell you that Parki owns the most comfortable armchair in the entire world?) while Parki and Jeff talked. I don't usually get that attached to furniture.

Jeff wasn't feeling well, so stayed home while I went to my sister's for dinner. To all parents: do your young children ever come out with bizarre questions or observations completely without warning? Annie tends to do that a lot. In the middle of the evening, she suddenly announced excitedly, "HEY! My heart is beating!" She went to each of us so we could put our hand on her small chest to prove it. And you know what? Suddenly the fact that Annie's heart was beating DID seem pretty exciting to me. As I felt her chest's rapid "bappity-bap bappity-bap" (she had been running around the circuit of the house with Sara), I thought about the fact that five years ago, she didn't exist. Then she was just a lump in Ruth's stomach, and then I saw her actually being born. And here she was, grinning up at me proudly, holding my hand to her chest so I could feel her heart beating.

Keeps me from getting too jaded about life, it does. :-)





Today's Blatherpic:
My friend Bryan Fullerton celebrated his birthday the Friday of Consonance weekend. Because I was in California, I wasn't able to attend, but sent my present along with Jeff to give to Bryan. My gift was a stuffed gorilla wearing white shorts covered with red lipstick marks, and some chocolate. I put these items in a wonderfully garish Teletubby gift bag which Bryan had to carry home. >:-)

ago

Filk community news

New additions to The Dandelion Report (filking.net): New columns by Allison Durno and Bill Sutton. Allison's is called "FILK FORTE" and is a regular reader survey. Bill's column is "Another QuarterNote Header From Bill Sutton", and will offer opinions on topics regarding music in general and filk in particular.

Greg McMullan and Maya Corbin are engaged. The wedding will take place near Boston on October 6th. Many congrats and good wishes, Greg and Maya!

Eli Goldberg reports that Christine Lavin's Webmaster just posted the lyrics to Bob Kanefsky's parody, "Santa Monica Ballooning", on the site.

Frolicks with nieces

Jeff and I took Annie and Sara to the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario) yesterday. Even though Ruth had told us that the gallery was hosting some March Break activities especially for children, I figured we'd be spending most of our time looking at paintings (and was wondering how many minutes it would take for Annie and Sara to get bored).



I didn't have to worry. In fact, I estimate that we saw less than 10% of the activities and special workshops that the AGO had for kids this past week. Activities included wall magnet collages, building block sculptures, painting, making flowers, drawing with markers on slides and looking at your artwork on a projector, playing dress-up (they had an amazing assortment of costumes), creating creatures out of coloured styrofoam shapes, making sailboats out of empty Tetrapacks and scraps of coloured paper, string, and foil.

Speaking of Tetrapacks, someone at the AGO must have connections with the company that makes Tetrapacks. There were Tetrapacks everywhere. Some guy even built a CN tower out of them! They had a little ceremony when he put the top on the tower.




After lunch, we wandered a bit through the galleries. Sara took us to her favourite areas: the Food section (modern art, with a giant hamburger in the middle of the room), the sculpture section, section with the story painting. The latter was the most interesting experience...Sara obviously had a favourite painting in this area. She pointed out a rather sombre painting, and spent the next five minutes telling us the story behind it. As she talked, I realized the story was about the "Judgement of Solomon", and that Sara was doing a pretty darned good job outlining all the important story details. When I got back, I looked up the story online:

"Judgement of Solomon", from 1 Kings III, v. 16 ff: Two harlots came to King Solomon disputing about the rightful mother of a child. One claimed that her own baby had been swapped for the other's dead baby during the night and this was denied by the other. The king asked for a sword to be brought and said "Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other". The rightful mother of the child pleaded that the child's life should be spared and given to the other mother. The dishonest mother said "Let it be neither mine or thine, but divide it". On hearing this Solomon instructed that the child should be given to the woman who wanted the child to live - saying "She is the mother thereof".

She left out the part about the women being harlots, so I'm hopefully assuming she didn't know that bit of the story. I also couldn't help but notice that a few adults looking at nearby paintings edged surreptitiously closer as Sara described the story behind the picture.

Just before we left the AGO, Jeff bought both girls a small rubber duck that caught their fancy in the store (don't ask me what rubber ducks are doing at the Art Gallery of Ontario). Annie named hers "Looking". Jeff asked why she picked that name, and she replied, "Because it's always looking at me!".

Went out with Brian and Bryan in the evening...we had dinner at Terroni's, the best pizza restaurant in Toronto. Came back and watched "Triumph of the Nerds" on video. I know, I know...it sounds very cheesy, but it was actually a highly entertaining and interesting documentary about the history of personal computers, with a focus on the personalities rather than the technology.

They all mocked me unmercifully for starting up another online community even though I'm supposedly on sabbatical.










Today's Blatherpics:

Annie and I dressing up at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

CN Tower built from Tetrapaks.

A giant craft room at the AGO, one of the many special features being offered during the March Break. Each table had a different type of craft and/or demonstration, manned by several volunteers.

Larkin and Brittany this morning at Marche, where we had brunch with Jeff's dad-in-law.