sara sleeps over

Sara stayed overnight on Friday for the first time; she brought Dolly and Bunny with her. She was a tad nervous at first. When some loud fireworks from the Air Canada Centre scared Dolly and Bunny, we watched some of Walt Disney's Snow White before going to bed again.

In the morning, Sara showed me how to make Slugs, which are basically rolled-up pieces of bread with peanut butter and jam, with two toothpicks stuck in to look like eye stalks. Sara said that you're supposed to use olives for eyes, but we didn't have any so we just stuck with the toothpicks. They were pretty yummy! Sara was kind enough to provide the recipe for me:



On Saturday morning, we went to the One-of-a-Kind Craft Show. Jeff and I try to go every year. I'm not keen on the crowds, but some of the crafts for sale and on display are amazing. Even if you're not planning on buying anything, it's worth strolling the aisles just to look. We all did a bit of Christmas shopping (yay! so now I've officially started). I get a Christmas ornament for Ruth every year, and Sara helped me pick one out...a little cloth pig in an angel's outwit, with gold wire wings and a wand.

Whenever I see one of these craft shows, I get all nostalgic for my crafting days out in the country. I used to make wreaths from scratch, for example, going on walks in the forest for materials to make the base, decorating the wreath with flowers and herbs I had grown and dried myself. I used to make handmade paper, greeting cards, small Christmas ornaments out of coloured felt and beads and lace. I don't much of that anymore, sadly. Though I suppose it's not so sad, really, because it means I have other hobby interests that I've chosen to pursue instead, like playing the harp and making comics (which reminds me; I must update Waiting for Frodo and My Life In A Nutshell soon!).

When I was much younger, I realized that I was torn between a number of careers. I loved music, art, writing AND computers. I envy those who are born pretty much knowing what they want to do later in life, whose professional aspirations are unwavering beacons in the future, a solid guide to what courses they should be taking, what schools to pick. I always knew I wanted to be a writer, but I figured that would be more like a hobby, that no one could ever making a living just writing (and realistically, that's usually the case). I remember my high school art teacher being mightily disappointed (almost ticked off) when I opted for music instead of art for my "artsy" part of the curriculum.

But I digress.



After the Craft Show, Jeff, Sara and I went to the Silver City on Eglinton to see Monsters Inc. with the rest of Sara's family. Sara and Annie were super-hyped...they both knew all the characters and plot weeks before seeing the actual movie.

The pre-show had only trailers, no tv commercials, which was a blessing. Still, the girls covered their ears during the loud "WOW HERE'S ANOTHER COOL AND EXCITING GRAPHIC TO SHOW YOU WHAT A COOL AND EXCITING COMPANY WE ARE!" logo clips. Jeff noticed that some other kids in the theatre were covering their ears, too. Anyway, Sara loved the movie, Annie found it a bit too scary in bits.

Jeff and I met Parki at a nearby coffeeshop after the movie, and we drove to Orangeville to visit with Jeff's mom. Her newly renovated house looks fantastic (and as usual got Jeff and I all nostalgic about country living), and I drooled over her kitchen. Yummy dinner: barbecued salmon with vegetables over a potato pancake (I'm sure I'm not using the proper culinary terminology, sorry), with raspberry pie and ice cream for dessert. I was suffering badly from cat allergies; I'll have to make sure I bring some pills when we come visit for Christmas.

'Twas a busy 24 hours, so Jeff and I plan to have a pretty quiet Sunday. I'm still going to the LOTR gathering at Starbuck's at 2 pm, though. :-)

I'm still experimenting with LiveJournal. I'm finding that the user interface is not as clean or consistent as the one for Greymatter, and that LiveJournal is not as easily configurable as Greymatter. It's fine for those who are happy with the existing templates, but I'd like to be able to do more customizing. The database storage aspect still appeals to me, however, so I've already started converting some of archives while I fiddle about with my templates and send wish lists to Bryan and Reid.

If you'd like to see what I've been doing so far, feel free to take a look at http://lj.samurai.com/users/ohi/. Please note that I'm making this URL available only because I figure some of you might be curious to see the tweaking process. Most importantly, note that this journal is NOT official yet (please don't link to it or complain about broken links/graphics)...it's still very much a work in progress. I'm still tweaking it on a daily basis myself and will be turning table borders on and off, messing with the format, and so on. The archives aren't near complete, and not all the links and graphics work.

And before posting a "I don't want you switching to a new format" message (I remember these from last time :-)), PLEASE do pause for some reflection. This is my personal journal. A public journal, yes, but non-commercial. My past experiences with online public/personal ventures have made it clear to me that there is no way I can possibly keep everyone happy, and that it's not necessary a good thing to TRY to keep everyone happy. After the new journal's official, feel free to complain and nitpick, but please do remember that I retain the right to ignore you. :-)



Today's pics:

- Jeff and Sara heading across Yonge Street to the movie theatre.

- Sara's Slug recipe.

- Sara at the piano. She was showing me some of the Christmas carols she had learned, and then started improvising some stuff. Jeff was astounded (she can already play far better than he can :-)), and I was beaming with pride.

- Sara and Annie just before seeing Monsters Inc. They were even more excited because it turned out that the cover of the most current theatre magazine featured Liv Tyler as Arwen in Lord of the Rings.

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?