rgF2F

(updated 9:05 am with Luisa bdy news and more details about harp strings than you probably want to know)


Hey, it's Luisa's birthday today!


Went to conduct our ritualistic gastronomic F2F at the Pickle Barrel last night with Allison and Jodi, then back to Allison's for more album idea talk as well as to watch the half-hour "Making of Lord of the Rings" episode. Allison laughs at me because I am SO hyped to see this movie even though I hadn't even read the books at the beginning of the year. The "Making Of" didn't do anything to diminish my hypedness...it looks SO great! Plus according to Allison, the previews of LOTR have already gleaned rave reviews.


This is a good and bad thing. Good, because it means chances are good that I'll like the movie. Bad, because I'll go in with abnormally high expectations. Ah well, it'll just mean I'll have to see it more than once (ah, the hardship!). The same sort of thing happened with Harry Potter...I didn't like it quite as much as everyone else on first viewing, liked it more and more with each repeated viewing.


This Sunday, Allison and I are going to the first gathering of the Paramount LOTR Virtual Line Party, an event organized by Luisa. Should be interesting...other than Allison and Luisa, I won't have met anyone else before. Even Allison and Luisa haven't met yet. :-) It's entirely possible that everyone else who shows up will be a high school student (or younger!).


Sara is coming over tonight for her first sleepover with Jeff and me! We are very excited! I'm also a little nervous. Will we have enough to entertain her? Jeff was wondering last night whether she shouldn't have planned something special, an event, an outing. But then we realized that our 7-year-old niece isn't visiting to be entertained, she's visiting to spend time with US. Or at least that's what we're telling ourselves. :-)


We're going to see Monsters Inc. with Sara and Annie tomorrow.





Harp trauma: While I was working in my home office yesterday afternoon, Gwyneth Paltrow's F34 #31 string broke! She can't have been feeling neglected, since I had just been playing her a few hours before. The string snapped with a terribly loud TWANG. Not sure about you other harpers out there, but seeing my harp with a newly broken string is truly a soul-hurting experience. I have to order more from a place in Vermont.


With some awkwardness, I put on the new string (I don't quite have harp knots down pat yet) and tuned it. Like new guitar strings, the new string hasn't quite settled yet, so I've been playing it quite a bit...some Christmas carols, as well as sightreading through a Kim Robertson arrangement of The Maids of Mourne Shore. Since I had no more back-ups for this particular string, I figured it was safest to get some more, just in case.


I found out that I can't just order my strings from a place like the Sylvia Woods Harp Center; they need to be custom-made. So I phoned Vermont Strings and talked to a very nice woman named Joan. She was concerned about the fact that this particular string had broken twice in a row, asked me for details about the specs for the strings on either side. Turns out that for custom-built harps like mine, the harp strings are designed specifically for the particular harp. Sometimes the harp builder does this, sometimes the harp string expert does it...deciding what the string is made of, how many wires or fibers are involved, tension, etc. If you put wrong strings on a harp, it could damage the instrument. Much more complicated than I realized! The one string I was re-ordering cost US$8 to replace, yikes. A tad more expensive than guitar strings...


You non-harp people are probably dying of boredom, so I'll shut up about that now. :-)


Links:


Ex-Beatles George Harrison died from cancer yesterday. More info here.


Today's pics:


-- Me, realizing Christmas is only next month. Done in Painter.


-- One of Allison's and John's Lord of the Rings cups from Burger King. A tiny switch near the base turns on a red light that illuminates the goblet from inside. Geeky but fun.


Today's Poll: (Suggest a question)

Have you started your Christmas shopping yet? If you choose YES, realize that you will be making me feel all that more guilty for not starting mine yet. :-)

wedding dresses

Had fun going wedding dress shopping with Helen yesterday afternoon. We started at the bottom of Spadina and worked our way up, then to the west to Queen and Bathurst. The shops we visited ranged from tiny offices lined with racks of remainders and discontinued styles to plush galleries where dresses were exhibited on busts and you could sit by a fireplace and drink tea (presumably while recovering from seeing the hefty price tags).





I'd forgotten how much fun shopping for wedding dresses can be. When else in your life can you try on drop-dead gorgeous dresses you know you can never afford but want to see what you look like? Helen had intended to also try on drop-dead ugly dresses for fun and for me to photograph a few (I was pushing for her to try on a shiny mermaid-style wedding gown), but this didn't quite work out mainly because of all the shops we visited, only one let me take photos. The shop that did allow it warned us that most bridal shops are paranoid about photos because they're worried about design ideas being stolen.





Helen's running commentary as she tried on the dresses was pretty amusing, and had one shop clerk laughing so hard that I thought she was going to drop the dress she was holding. I don't think she's ever had a customer quite like Helen before. :-)


Helen didn't buy anything, but did see some dresses she didn't totally hate. By late afternoon, we were both suffering from wedding dress overload and were hallucinating about beads and sequins and white lace, and all the options were starting to blend into one.





Helen's friend Adina joined us at the last shop, and then we went across the road to have tea and split a maple-pumpkin pastry. Then Adina went to dinner with other friends, and Helen and I opted for the Festive Special at a new Swiss Chalet that opened just down the road from my apartment (I think I mentioned recently how much I love Festive Specials).


Met Amanda at the Paramount for an early evening showing of Harry Potter. It was Amanda's and my fourth time, Helen's first. I am shocked to report that Helen was (I can barely say it) NOT ALL THAT CRAZY ABOUT THE HARRY POTTER MOVIE, and she disliked Ron's character (!!!). Sheesh! Maybe drycleaning chemicals had seeped into her skin from all the dresses she had been trying on. :-)





It was fun commiserating with Amanda about being so sick of the same pre-show commercials and trailers. I think that alone will keep me from seeing Harry Potter in the theatres again. Plus I think four times is enough, even for someone like me. :)


After Harry Potter, we met Jeff and Bryan to help them move into their new office space, which is part of the office of One Trick Pony. Very cool space, even nicer than our old Inkspot office.





I'd be jealous except that the fact that Jeff moving into his own office space means that he won't be home, which means I'll get more work done, woohoo! ;-)





Blatherpics:


- First three pics were taken at the first wedding dress shop that Helen and I visited on Spadina Avenue.


- Adina met us at the last shop, and then we went across the street to a tea shop.


- Amanda and Helen at the Paramount, just before the showing of Harry Potter.


- Amanda and Helen helping Bryan and Jeff move into their new office space. Note the fervent expression of ecstatic exertion on both their faces.


- Amanda and Helen briefly rest in the new office space after their efforts.




Today's Poll: (Suggest a question)

Have you ever been a member of a wedding party? (not including groom or bride)

Guest Blatherer: Helen Waters

From Helen:


I'm back in Toronto for a couple of weeks. Went into a Tim Horton's today, not because I particularly wanted a box of Timbits, but just because I could. I must be homesick, the experience struck me as highly profound.


For those of you unfamiliar with the Timbit, these are tiny round donuts, available in assorted flavours and usually purchased in a box (although I do believe you can buy just the one).


Contrast to the spherical speciality of 's-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch), Holland, Bossche Bollen — cream-filled profiteroles the size of your head!


Apparently, there are strict rules governing the dimensions and consistency of the Bossche Bol (courtesy of http://www.bosschebol.nl/, poor translation by Helen Waters in the style of Yoda):

"A real Bossche Bol measures 6 cm high and precisely 8 cm in the middle. The perimeter of the bottom is 25.1 cm. The weight is 145 gram, of which 85 grams must be real confectionery cream. 35 grams of real chocolate goes into the sauce, and there sits now the speciality."

So if the circumference of your dessert is 25 cm or 25.2 cm, it's just a giant profiterole. Good to know. I wonder if some poor sod has to measure all the chocolate balls? I want to be a Bosschebollenmetenbeheerder (Manager of Bossche Bollen Measurments). Imagine all the rejects! MMMmmm!


Further:

The secret to a real Bossche Bol is therefore following a special and extremely mysterious recipe for the chocolate topping. Namely, the chocolate must not be too soft, because then drips it off the ball. But it must also not be too hard, because then breaks it with the first mouthful you take.


Briefly, only if the chocolate sauce has precisely the right structure can it be called a Bossche Bol. There are only a couple of bakers in 's-Hertogenbosch (here is one: note outstandingly bad use of background tiling) who manage the art and it is therefore not crazy that locals also frequently call them "chocolate balls".

Timmy Ho's strict rules governing the dimensions and consistency of the TimBit: "bite-sized donut hole".

Timbits: spherical delicacy from Canada	Bossche Bollen: spherical delicacy from Holland

-- Helen


Blatherpics:


A CD compilation that Helen made for me when I moved to Philly. You can find details about it here. Better yet, check out Helen's very cool Web site. Helen cringed when she saw that I chose this CD cover, saying that it's her least favourite because she didn't have much time to work on it. So if you want to see her other CD covers, be sure to check her site.


Today's Poll: (Courtesy Helen)

Would you rather have a Bossche Bol or a TimBit? (YES for a Bossche Bol, NO for a TimBit?)

livejournal

(updated 10:10 AM EST)


So I'm thinking about switching my Blatherings to LiveJournal.


I've been using Greymatter for a while. While Greymatter is a much better method than my old method (which was modifying and posting everything manually), I have a few beefs/concerns with it, namely:


- Every time I change the main template, I have to rebuild all the entries. With the number of entries I currently have, this generally takes at least five minutes. If anything screws up midway (if the power goes out, or some other glitch interrupts the process), I am in trouble. It hasn't happened to me yet, but I've learned enough about the internal workings to know that it would take major effort to make things work properly again (if I could). LiveJournal is database-driven, so theoretically I shouldn't have that problem.


- I can't delete entries. I can "close" them so that they no longer appear, but the data remains.


I never considered switching to LiveJournal or Blogger up to now because I didn't like the idea of all my files residing on someone else's server. If I had switched to Blogger, for example, and the company went under (which was a concern during the dot-com crisis...from what I hear, the company is now basically just one guy), I'd be worried about all my files disappearing. Not so much of a concern for new journals, but I've been posting entries online for five years.


But my sys admin Bryan (my technohero) recently (last night) installed LiveJournal on the server. Reid already uses LiveJournal (but currently uses the paid hosting system on the LiveJournal site) and has started looking at the code for possible tweaks. Having Bryan and Reid involved means that my journal entry files would be under my control, not someone else's, and that if I wasn't happy with some aspect of LiveJournal, I could try bugging Reid to fix the code. :-)


So I'm currently playing around with a test journal on Samurai's new LiveJournal site, considering the possibilities. There are some things about LiveJournal that I don't like, but maybe they can be fixed. We'll see.


Switching to LiveJournal would also give me a chance to convert ALL my Blatherings archives to the new format, rather than having an archives section and a separate "really old" archives section. AND it will give me a chance to clean up my template design (Reid has been complaining about the fixed table width, for example).





Our friend Helen is in town! When I came back from the gym last night, she, Angela Bradfield, and Reid were here, with Scott showing up in time for dinner. I cooked another Moosewood recipe last night, Pasta Primavera. Helen was shocked; I think she's more used to the sight of me putting a frozen dinner in the oven than of me chopping fresh vegetables and doing "real" cooking. :-) I was going to marinate some chicken last night for Tandoori chicken tonight but AUGH, I forgot to get cardamom. Kathy Johnson says she's going to take me to the Indian spices section of Toronto where I'll be able to find things I need for garam masala like cardamom and whole nutmeg.


After dinner, we watched the Star Trek edition of "The Weakest Link". I had only seen the show once before. Couldn't really get into it; I find the host too mean. Yeah, yeah, I know that's the shtick, but I still don't enjoy watching it. Last night was kinda fun, though, because I was already familiar with the actors. Wil Wheaton sure came across as an arrogant git, didn't he?


Helen's engaged (her wedding's in Scotland in May); I'm going wedding dress shopping with her later this week. :-)





Links:


Wil Wheaton's online journal: I had never seen this before, but apparently he had complained about the Weakest Link show on it. I tried checking the journal just now, but it had a "closed due to high traffic, up later today" notice.


Paramount Virtual Line Party continues. Luisa has gotten involved in event planning! If you're in the Toronto area and are excited about the upcoming Lord of the Rings movie, check out this page plus the new discussion forum.


'Harry's' Trailers Come With a Hitch: thanks to Josh Allen for this link about 'pre-show' trailers/ads.


Blatherpics:


- Reid on his iMac at our place last night.


- Angela, Helen, and me. Helen has peanuts in her hand.


- Peppermints from Helen. The joyous-looking couple on the canister: the Dutch prince and princess. Unfortunately the can got a bit banged up enroute from Amsterdam.


Today's Poll: (Suggest a question)

Are you wearing a watch right now?

ehru

I spent most of yesterday with my niece Annie. It was one of the first times that I've had Sara or Annie all to myself, and I found it was a much different experience than hanging out with both at the same time. I found myself feeling almost shy with Annie at first, as if we were getting to know each other for the first time. Annie was oblivious, of course...she was obviously overjoyed about getting me all to herself for once. :-)


After hanging out at our apartment for a bit, we went to the du Maurier Theatre Centre at Harbourfront; Ruth and Kaarel had tickets to some of the kids' "cushion concerts". Yesterday's concert featured George Gao on the erhu, a Chinese bowed instrument...very cool-sounding instrument. He did a couple of solo pieces, but the main story was the story of Hans Christian Andersen's The Nightingale, which Barbara Budd narrated as Gao played in the background.


I don't think the ehru really grabbed the childrens' attention...or maybe children's concerts are always like this. Almost all the kids were fidgeting and restless by about the midway point, some babies started crying.


"When is the show going to be over?" Annie whispered into my ear about ten minutes into the performance. She was pretty good, though, and sat quietly through the rest of the performance, patiently waiting for it to be over. While waiting in line, she had befriended a little girl named Mackenzie; the two sat close together on the floor cushions.


My favourite Annie-quote happened during the ten minutes before the performance began; things were pretty chaotic as we all trudged in and found our seats on the floor or up in the stands. Lots of kids running around, grabbing cushions, yelling.


"Babies," sighed Annie. "First they're born to their mothers, then they all run away."


I gave Annie a hug. "You're not going to ever run away, are you, Annie?"


Annie grinned and squirmed out of my arms. "No, Auntie Debbie."

---

Our friend Helen is visiting from Amsterdam! She'll be staying at our place tonight, then going to Amanda's. We'll likely see Harry Potter again sometime this week (Helen hasn't seen it yet). :-)


Food/fitness update: So I actually seem to be sticking to my goal of eating better and getting back to a regular workout schedule since OVFF. I go to the gym about five times a week, am cooking at home more. Whilst browsing through Chapters recently, Parki pointed out a new Moosewood cookbook that's just come out! Augh!!! I am resisting the urge to buy it until next year (budgeting, y'know). I love my current Moosewood cookbook (Moosewood Restaurant Lowfat Favourites) but I know there are now at least two Moosewoods out there I don't have.


Enjoyed practising some Christmas carols on my harp last night. I am SO in love with my harp, it's scary. Also having fun starting to do some improvisation and composing on it. Jeff's going to show me how to convert tapes I record on our four-track to digital, so I can make some homemade CDs. I'd love to write/arrange/record some harp and flute stuff for fun. I also reallyreally want to hear Kim Robertson in performance sometime.





Blatherpics:


- Annie, earlier this summer.


- Sara's Dolly. As you can tell, Dolly's well-loved. Sara took Dolly to Brownies' camp this past weekend.


Today's Poll: (Suggest a question)

Have you attended a classical concert within the past twelve months?