last run

So I've given up trying to run outside until the spring. I had fantasies (see my illustration above) of being one of those avid runners who runs outside in all seasons, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen. I used to have a bit of asthma, and I've found it comes back when I run in cold air. Rather than go back on inhalers, I think I'm going to stick to treadmill running until it gets warm again.

Unfortunately in Toronto, this means probably not for another five or six months. :-( Sometimes I do envy you Californians! Canadian winters last waaaaaaaay too long.

NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow. So does OVFF. Instead of trying to keep up with my Blatherings over the weekend, I'm going to be writing my NaNoWriMo novel, so it's unlikely I'll be posting much (if anything) until sometime next week.

Going trick-or-treating with Annie and Sara tonight!

Links/News:

One year ago, I started my first official day as a freelancer since Inkspot was shut down, and I posted a thank you to concoms.

Two years ago, Dave Clement, Tom and Talis sang the Hockey Monkey song at me over the phone.

Five years ago, Jeff was featured in the Oct/Nov issue of Profit magazine.

butterfly fiasco

Went to see Tuck Everlasting last night with Jeff, Kristen, Christine and Christine's sister Jen. I thought the film was okay but not great, more like a made-for-tv movie or an after-school special, not nearly as good as the book. Had some nice music, and I liked Sissy Spacek.

The photo at the top of today's Blatherings was taken last week. The cocoon appeared one day on the corner, with no explanation. A few days later, it "turned" into a butterfly:





Note the lurking feet behind the Roy Thompson Hall sign. As soon as anyone got near the butterfly, one of two marketing people ran out and gave them MSN fridge magnets. I took one out of curiosity.

"It's better with the butterfly," the guy told me with a grin as he handed me my magnet.

Dear lord.

Is that what marketing/PR has come to? Who CARES what the product is actually for? What happened to the days when companies tried to lure in customers by promising them (gasp) a good quality product and reliable service instead of relying on gimmicky (and IMHO, somewhat arrogant) promotion of the marketing logo itself?

Links/News:

See 20 minutes' worth of clips from the Harry Potter movie here (15 scenes).

While doing my daily surf for publishing news, I came across this story entitled "Microsoft butterfly promotion doesn't fly in New York. It was only after reading the story that I realized that MSN is promoting a new Internet service.

Yay, the Internet Registry of Canada is being charged for fraud. The company had been mailing out official-looking "renewal" notices to anyone whose domain notices had been about to expire.

One year ago, I was going home from OVFF. Lots of photos in this entry, including one of a United Airlines security guy wearing plastic gloves while going through my carry-on luggage post 9/11, including checking the lining.

Two years ago, I posted that year's OVFF report with photos.

Five years ago, I was being interviewed by the Winnipeg Free Press about Inkspot as well as looking forward to Scott Snyder's CD release party.

NaNoWriMo/OVFF prep

Hey, Allison has a brand new spankin' online journal! Do check it out.

Today's artwork was provided by my 5-year-old niece Annie. The picture at the top is a drawing of Sara, and one below is a self-portrait. The clothing and hair is accurate to life (Ruth says it's what the girls were wearing that day).

You'll all be relieved to hear that my Blatherings will probably start getting shorter for the next while as I frantically finish NaNoWriMo prep, some other writing projects due this week, and prep for OVFF on the weekend. Looks like I'll be performing in Andrea's & Graham's concert, the Pegasus Awards concert (helping Daniel & Melissa Glasser perform Dark Man and The Lady), and recording stuff for Andrea's upcoming CD. Sadly, neither Allison nor Jodi will be attending OVFF this year. :-(

For those of you who have been tempted by the idea of writing a 50,000 novel in thirty days (I know you're out there) in NaNoWriMo, it's not too late! Sign-up is free, there's no obligation, and you can back out anytime. You don't even have to idiotically put your neck out on the line and tell everyone about your commitment, like I'm doing.

Plus I just got my first NaNoWriMo newsletter, and it looks like they're offering free NaNoWriMo stickers and pencils to all participants (and if that isn't incentive enough to write a novel in a month, what is?). The site will also be offering an optional escalating word count tally and novel excerpt post for those who want to make their efforts public. I plan to post my word count tally but not excerpts.

The NaNoWriMo site added a message board this year, where you can get advice from old pros, find out better ways to procrastinate, get recommendations for good background music, etc. Lots of entertaining reading, though one of the earliest pieces of advice from experienced types was "Don't spend so much time reading the message board!" There's also a private messaging facility which I've been using to contact people I want to interview for my NaNoWriMo article. I've also been getting some private messages from people who recognize my name from other online projects, like the following:

Does this mean no more "Waiting for Frodo" in November? :-)


One of the things that appealed to me about this insane worldwide project is the tongue-in-cheek writing by the creator throughout the site. Here's an excerpt from a little last-minute pep speech on the main page:


Ok, now get back to your sweet, succulent, novel-free lifestyles. Spend time with loved ones! Gaze emptily at walls and park benches! Share a final Pabst with your buddies at the dive bar! Go dancing! Prank call your boss! Build a hobo encampment in your backyard! Buy a monkey and teach it to kickbox!


:-)

Check out NaNoWriMo at www.nanowrimo.org.





Links/News:

One year ago, I talked about buffet strategies.

Five years ago, I updated the short-lived Urban Tapestry comic (sorry, no longer online).

poll: trick-or-treating

Worked yesterday morning, then had lunch/brunch with Jeff, Parki, Lindsay and Wendy. Lindsay, Wendy and I went to Parki's afterward to sample some a chocolate Sacher-Torte that a friend had brought him from Vienna, drank tea, chatted. Okay, so my sample was somewhat bigger than the others. Parki loaned me a honking huge PHP Programming manual (Wrox).

I had planned to indulge in a decadent Sunday afternoon nap when I got back, but ended up writing instead.





Jeff and I are going trick-or-treating with Sara and Annie this Thursday night. Sara is going as Sarah from Sarah, Plain and Tall, a children's novel by Patricia MacLachlan that she read a while back and really enjoyed. Annie is going to be Arwen from the movie version of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

Remember trick-or-treating strategy when you were a kid? How disappointing it was to get an apple instead of candy? How houses that gave out chocolate bars instead of the orange-and-black wrapped tooth-loosening candy were way more popular? When people put pennies into Unicef boxes?

The picture below is of me at age 4, about to go out trick-or-treating dressed up as Snow White. My mom sewed my costume. I'm not sure exactly why Ruth is wearing that scarf. Whatever the reason, it looks pretty pitiful that I'm sitting there in my cool Snow White costume while my little sister probably thinks she has a cool costume, too, even though it's just a scarf around her head. I look reprehensibly smug about it, too.

Poll: Are you doing anything kid-related on Hallowe'en?

Handing out candies? If so, what kind? Are you taking your kid(s) out trick-or-treating? What are they dressed up as? Are you going to any Hallowe'en parties in costume? If so, what costume?

Answer in Blatherchat

Links/News:

I've updated Waiting For Frodo today and yesterday.

One year ago, I posted my OVFF report.

Three years ago, Allison, Jodi and I were practising before leaving for OVFF.

Five years ago, Jeff and I went to a U2 concert but left partway through.

Today's Blatherpics:

	Parki and Lindsay and Wendy on Parki's couch. I told them not to smile, to make the photo look like a album cover. I asked them what they wanted to call themselves. Their answer: "Sphincter-hosen".
	Another couch shot.
	Ruth and me in 1966. Ruth looks darned cute, don't you think?

adventures in cooking

As November and NaNoWriMo approaches, I am becoming more and more frantically involved in finishing my current novel. I have written and deleted the last two chapters at least three or four times. Also finished my Press Kit column for Writing-World.com.

I opted to stay home and work on Friday night while Jeff went off to do gaming with the guys in Scarborough. Didn't feel like going out or doing any real cooking. In fact, I didn't really give serious thought to finding food until I was suddenly starving, around 8:30 pm.

What to do? I snooped through the pantry and fridge. Nothing appealed to me. Canned soup? Blech. Instant noodles? Blech. Then I checked the fridge and saw that I still had two Veggie Delight patties left. The product sounded so healthy, delightfully so, when I ordered it from Grocery Gateway. I tried cooking them in my George Foreman grill clone, but they ended up as sodden masses. I figured that I had just chosen the wrong cooking method, however, and decided to give them another go.

This time I opted for the method suggested on the package, which was to coat the bottom of a frying pan with cooking spray, then heat the patties on medium heat for eight minutes. Except the two patties in the package were frozen together. They had a square of paper between them, but I only managed to tear off the paper around the edges when I tried using it separate the patties. I tried a spoon. I tried a knife. Nothing worked.

In retrospect, I should have just popped the frozen patty sculpture into the microwave for a few seconds to soften them up enough to separate, but I was too hungry to wait.

They'll separate more easily if I heat them up a bit, I thought confidently, and threw them into the frying pan, paper and all.

At first things looked good. I heard sizzling, and a yummy fragrance arose. After a few minutes, I tried separating the patties. No dice; they were still frozen solid in the center. Hm.

I cooked them some more. They started crisping on the outside. Tried separating them again. Nope.

I started panicking with the outside surface of each patty started turning black, and I began scraping the softened patty mush off the frozen bit each side, hoping that eventually I'd get to the center. This method finally worked, except that I ended up with a misshapen mushy lumps consisting of overcooked bits and undercooked bits all mixed together.

I did take a photo, but it was so gross-looking that I couldn't bear to post it. I kid you not.

But by this time, I was so hungry that I ate everything anyway. It was okay-tasting, but the texture was truly revolting, probably similar to what it would be like to eat wet paper pulp, or day-old cold cheese pizza that had been put through a blender.

Then I got a craving for chocolate. I know, you're all shocked. Maybe it had something to do with my recent chocolate polls, but I suddenly had to have some chocolate, even just a little bit. But AUGH, there was none in the pantry, none in the shelves, none in the fridge.

On a whim, I decided to check the freezer. AND THERE WAS CHOCOLATE! (insert sound of angelic choir here) Okay, so it was only white baking chocolate (stop grimacing, Joey), but still...! It even came in little neatly wrapped squares. I have no idea how long it had been there. I know I must have been the one to buy it and put it in the freezer, but I had no recollection.

I took out a square and unwrapped it, tried gnawing on it. It was frozen solid.

This time I remembered the microwave, put the square on a plate, stuck it in the microwave. Jeff and I have a Junior Samsung microwave oven left over from the Inkspot office because our original microwave stopped working and we never got around to replacing it. Anyway, none of our plates fit into this tiny microwave except for the smallest saucer, which still has to be inserted on a tilt (making it impossible to microwave anything slightly liquid unless it fits in a mug).

Anyway, I stuck the unwrapped square on a plate and tilted it into our microwave, zapped it for ten seconds. Checked. Still frozen, but the plate was somewhat warm. Zapped it for 30 seconds. Checked. Still frozen, but the plate was much warmer. In fact, one side of the plate was almost too hot to touch.

Hm, not good. Maybe it wasn't frozen after all, but just petrified by old age.

I'll bet you're all thinking that at this point I decided the heck with it and zapped it until it melted and ran off the plate and burned and exploded in our junior microwave, aren't you?

HA! WRONG! I gave up on the microwave idea completely, took out the still rock-hard square, began gnawing at it. Didn't taste half-bad, really, once I managed to actually get a piece off the darned thing.

And that was my adventure in cooking yesterday. I'll bet you're all dying to come over for dinner, aren't you? Just give me some warning so I can order more Veggie Delights.

Links/News:

Andrea has asked me to record some flute and possibly vocals on one of the tracks ("Saxophone In Spring", a song we co-wrote) on her upcoming CD, which I'll be doing sometime during OVFF. Many thanks to Bill Sutton for arranging to bring recording gear!

My songwriting music theory column has been updated on Muses Muse, for those interested.

One year ago, my American friend Andrea had to translate my Canadian English for a waitress in a Cincinnati restaurant. I also visited my editor at Writer's Digest/F&W, which is also when I pitched my Market Watch column idea. 9-month-old Nicholas does his very first Guest Blathering.

Three years ago, Jeff and I moved furniture into the new Inkspot office with the help of Scott, Helen, Parki and Doug. Ruth "thanked" me for giving Sara and Anne a tape with Aqua's Barbie Girl song recorded on it multiple times.

Four years ago, I danced alone in my office and my friend Andrew did a Guest Blathering. Andrew (who works at Apple in California), by the way, has a Movable Type blog that will especially be of interest to technonerdboys/girls.

Five years ago, Jodi, Allison, John & I had brunch with Scott Snyder.

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Today's Blatherpics

Can't recall where I took this photo, sorry. I do remember Luisa was with me, whatever restaurant it was, and we both liked this bottle of olive oil that was on the table.