grade two

To the filkers out there: Don't forget that the deadline for e-mail Pegasus Award ballots is today. You can find voting ballots here.

The photo above is of my Grade 2 class in Earnscliffe Public School in 1969. You can click on it to see a larger version. There are two children circled: me and my friend Cathy Rutland. My mom made the dress I'm wearing.

I used the class photo in a birthday card I made for Cathy, who turned forty yesterday, and we both spent part of lunch trying to figure out how many kids we could remember. The answer: not many. I remember having a crush on Bobby Faltynek (top row, third from the right, manic grin). I remember, years later, hearing that Chuck Huber (second row, third from the right) had died in the line of duty as a firefighter.

Very strange, looking back at this class photo and seeing it from two perspectives: (1) as a little kid again, clearly remembering these children as my peers, along with the insecurities and crushes and heartache and joys, and (2) as an adult seeing a bunch of little kids who are younger than my niece Sara is now.





Cathy and I took yesterday afternoon off to celebrate her 40th birthday. We had lunch in the Elmwood Spa restaurant, and each had a spa treatment; she had a Moor Mud Wrap while I opted for a Swedish Massage. After our treatments, we spent a few hours in the water therapy section, alternating between the steam room, sauna, whirlpool and pool.

During one of our stints in the steam room, one of the cleaning staff took away our robes, which were hanging just outside. Have to wonder what they were thinking, since they must have heard us talking inside! My glasses were inside the pocket of my robe, and both of us had the combination tags to our lockers in our pockets as well. While Cathy searched the laundry bins in case someone had tossed the robes there, I wandered (blindly) out to the water therapy front desk, to tell them what happened. They got my glasses back, and wrote down our locker combinations on slips of paper. No one apologized, which I found odd.

Of all my friends, I've known Cathy the longest: thirty-three years. Kind of cool, knowing a non-family person that long, because each of us has a longterm context on which to base our friendship, and have seen each other go through many changes in our lives. I also have found that I feel an extra special bond with friends who knew my mother and my brother Jim.

Anyway, it was a wonderful sort of afternoon, lazing about in steam rooms and whirlpools with an old friend.

I'll be working through most of the weekend to make up for my indulgent Monday (spent in Ottawa) and for yesterday, but it was worth it. :-)





Links/News:

Four years ago, Andrea did a Guest Blather.

Five years ago, Jeff met Scott Snyder and Adam English for the first time.

poll: more chocolate

Had a crabby day yesterday. It was the kind of day where almost everything irritated me, from the obnoxious spam e-mails once again insisting that I wanted a large penis to the hassles I've had with Grocery Gateway trying to get a refund to problems I've been having with outgoing mail recently.

Have any of you ever had this kind of day? Inevitably it progresses to the point where every little thing that happens only serves to confirm my overall sense that the world was Out To Get Me.

"Did you SEE the way the traffic light turned red JUST AS I GOT TO THE CORNER?"

"Eep, just dropped my toast. Now, just watch it land on the buttered side down. SEE? SEE THAT?! WHAT DID I TELL YOU?!!"

etc.

By late afternoon, even -I- felt like slapping myself around. Good thing Jeff wasn't around.

Then it was time to drop everything and take the subway up to Finch to meet Allison and Jodi for dinner. By the time I got to Bloor and Yonge, however, I was starting to de-froth. I also started to feel like the world's biggest whiner. I mean, it was only last week I was telling everyone how happy I was.

And so I did what I usually do in this kind of circumstance. Reminded myself of some of the bad times in my life, what that was like. Mentally compared that to what things are like now. I'm healthier and happier than I have been in a long time, and have a wonderful husband, family and friends.

And then I remind myself that I never ever want to become the kind of person that gets so obsessed with what are ultimately trivial irritations in life that she forgets the overall picture. I'm sure you've all met this kind of bitter cynic, the kind who is so afraid of life disappointments that she protects herself (or himself) with sarcasm and put-downs, both of herself and other people.

I think I'd rather suffer through a lifetime of penis enlargement spam mailings than become like that.

Anyway, by the time I got to Finch, I was fine. And hanging out with Allison and Jodi at the Pickle Barrel was way fun as usual, ending the day on a high note.

But back to chocolate...

I feel compelled to continue my chocolate poll from yesterday a step further, please forgive me. I actually added this poll question to yesterday's topic, but decided to delete it because I realized it deserved an entire Blathering to itself.

The poll:

Boxed chocolate: Choice and Strategies?

By boxed chocolate, I mean the boxes of chocolate typically used as gifts, often with two trays of a variety of chocolates, filled or otherwise. Some come with "maps" giving information about what types of chocolates there are in the collection, and how to identify them.

First of all, do you like boxed chocolates? Or do you prefer chocolate bars, where you get more of one specific type of chocolate? What is your favourite type of box chocolate? Do you use the chocolate map, or prefer to sample randomly? What are your favourite types? Least favourite?

My favourites: chocolate-covered cherries, and anything with dollops of caramel.

If you picked a chocolate, took a bit of out of it, disliked it, would you force yourself to eat the rest, or would you throw it out?

There are so many ways of comparing box chocolate and the strategy for approaching box chocolate to Real Life that I won't even try. Besides, you've probably already heard the most cliched examples already.

Links/News:

For those going to OVFF: The OVFF concom sent me guest bios and programming info this morning; I've posted it. FYI, someone else will be taking over hosting and maintaining the site after next weekend's conference.

One year ago, I was leaving for OVFF.

Two years ago, I was a speaker at the Surrey Writer's Workshop in B.C.

Four years ago, Tom and Andrea did Guest Blatherings.

Five years ago, Scott Snyder and Adam English did Guest Blatherings.

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Today's Blatherpics:

Helen (who posts as "antonlerchner" in Blatherchat) and Alec, who got married in London on Oct. 12th.

poll: chocolate bars

I don't usually create detailed outlines for my books, which is one reason I'm purposely doing so this time around, as an experiment for NaNoWriMo. I've never liked writing detailed outlines because I find them too restrictive, but with one month to write 50,000 words, I can't afford to go off on tangents and plot dead ends ("Holy cow, what was I thinking, killing off the main character?").

I'm also being more diligent about writing out character descriptions and motivations. Don't want one of the lead character's hair to change from brown to orange 2/3 way through the book, after all. Characterization is always a priority for me when I'm writing fiction. If a character doesn't seem to take on his or her own personality while I'm writing, the story isn't worth writing.

My experience co-writing the short story with Michelle was educational that way. We sketched out a rough (very rough) plot outline before we started writing, so I tried to stick with it, but started having tremendous difficulty with one spot because one of the lead characters kept wanting to veer off from our established plotline during one of my contribution turns.

"Let her," Michelle told me.

"But...but...I thought we agreed that she'd do XXXX at that point in the story!" I said, horrified.

"I know, but why don't we let her do what she wants, and we'll see what happens?"

So I did, and we adjusted the rest of the story accordingly, and it worked.

Sometimes, however, my characters need reigning in with a firm hand. They go power-mad otherwise, wreaking havoc with my carefully constructed character dynamics, or turning into people I know. I always have to be careful about the latter, because that's a whole other kind of restriction I want to avoid for lots of reasons.

Suppose character X starts turning into Jeff, for example. There's no way Jeff is going to read through my story and NOT recognize himself. And then how will he feel when he finds out I have him doing and saying all kinds of horrible things? Also, I don't want to be restricted when I'm writing the story ("The real Jeff wouldn't do that, so I can't have character X/pseudo-Jeff do that either").

But I do admit that nearly all my story characters almost always have a bit of someone I know inside them, even if it's a really nasty sort of character you wouldn't want to run across in real life. I don't do it on purpose; it just happens.




Many thanks to Jeff and Parki for getting rid of the bugs in my Blatherings RSS feed. You should be able to subscribe to:

http://www.electricpenguin.com/blatherings/index.rdf

or click on the nifty RSS badge/link in the footer of this page. I just have to remember to include full paths instead of relative paths for my images so that they show up in the feed, and I'm also going to start including brief entry descriptions for those who do the RSS thing.

Jeff and I went to look at two more houses yesterday. Both were nice, but the locations weren't ideal. The second house offered chocolate bars and sandwiches which was nice, but not enough to make us put in an offer.

Which brings us to today's poll: chocolate bars.

What are your favourite and least favourite chocolate bars? Dark or light? Do you consider yourself a chocolate snob?

My favourites include: any pure chocolate (NOT CAROB) bar, Black & White (I think that's the company, it's from the UK?) chocolate bars, Caramilk, Mars, Milky Way, Skor, Hershey's Cookies'n'Creme, Fusion, chocolate bars with crispy rice bits mixed in. I tend to prefer chocolate bars without nuts. As for dark or milk or white, I like them all. Having to choose one type as my favourite would be like asking a parent to choose which of her children is her favourite.

Least favourite: Crispy Crunch.

Answer in Blatherchat





Links/News:

One year ago, I posted a photo of airport security soon after 9/11.

Four years ago, I talked about the pros and cons of working at home.

Five years ago, Scott Snyder did a Guest Blathering.

Today's Blatherpic:

	Pumpkins in the Byward Market, Ottawa.
	Display in the gift shop at the Canadian Mint, promotion for the Lord of the Rings collector coin set. Frodo is wearing a Canadian Mint cap.
	An indoor mall in Byward Market.

ottawa

(written on Monday afternoon)

I'm typing this in the Tea Store in Byward Market, Ottawa. The opposite wall is covered with shelves of loose teas of every flavour imaginable. Behind me is a wall of teapots and teacups of various descriptions, from overly-cutesy cat-shaped pots to one-cup pots decorated with wild designs to plain coloured porcelain teapots with warming stands. I spent about ten minutes browsing the tea collection before deciding on maple, a flavour I've never tried before. Yummmm...

This morning, I took a tour of the Parliament Buildings, took in the view from the top of the Peace Tower, listened in on part of a House of Commons session. Major security. For access to the Parliament Buildings, I had to remove my various layers of outerwear, empty my pockets, turn on my computer, turn on my cellphone, my Palm. The security guard checked every item in my knapsack, including unscrewing the end of the miniature screwdriver on my keychain.

To get into the observation area of the House of Commons session, I had to check my coat, my knapsack and my camera (no photos allowed). Two things that I noticed about the session right away: (1) Most of the seats were empty, (2) Nobody seemed to be listening to the House representative speaking. The second was the most bizarre. The fellow kept addressing his remarks to the "Mr. Speaker", but not even the Speaker seemed to be paying attention. Everyone seemed to be in his or her own little world, reading through their own notes, writing, or having conversations with a neighbour. The person speaking didn't seem to care, though, but just kept reading aloud from his notes. I assume this was just to get whatever he was saying on record, but surely there has to be some more efficient method.





After visiting the House of Parliament, I had lunch at the Earl Of Sussux. I was crossing the park on Parliament Hill at noon, and as I headed towards the National Gallery (which, I am sad to report, is closed on Mondays and Tuesday), a nearby church tower started ringing its bells. This was not just some ordinary ringing, either. It started as a few repeated dongs on the same bell, but then other bells started chiming in, higher and lower, in what seemed like a carefully choreographed performance (if it was random, then they did a marvellous job at choosing what bells to ring when). I was astounded, delighted, mesmerized, and stopped in the middle of the park, unable to do anything else except listen.

I worked on my laptop during lunch (chicken primavera), then went on a tour of the Canadian National Mint. No pictures allowed, but they let me keep my camera. We saw a rather cheesy 10-minute film at the beginning of the tour. Minimum information, maximum "we're so WONDERFUL we're the BEST you want to buy our COLLECTOR COINS". The half-hour tour around the facility was interesting, though. I hadn't realized that the Canadian Mint produced some foreign currency, for example, for those countries without the facilities to make their own. The Winnipeg plant handles daily use currency, while the Ottawa plant produces collector coins.

Very cool to see huge sheets of gold and silver being flattened, then cut into "blanks" before being rimmed (adding rims to coins apparently extends their life considerably), stamped, cleaned and packaged up. The tour began and ended at the Mint gift shop which, not surprisingly, heavily pushed collector coins of all types.

Going back to my maple tea and my writing now, but I have to say that I'm enjoying wandering about Ottawa more than I expected. Don't think I'll get to the National Library this time; I'm much more of a linger and savour type of tourist than "see a zillion things in as short a time as possible" type. Guess I'll have to come back to Ottawa sometime!





Links/News:

Four years ago, I had lunch with Reid, Luisa and Jeff.

Five years ago, the teacher's strike was imminent.

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Today's Blatherpics:

Were taken in the Parliament Buildings yesterday. More Ottawa visit photos in upcoming Blatherings.

hike

Yesterday afternoon, Parki, Angela, Jeff and I went for one last hike. No moose this time, but we were shadowed for a while by a very friendly gray jay who was obviously hoping for a handout. Sadly, we had nothing to offer him.

Parki and Angela went back to Toronto, and Jeff and I drove to Ottawa and checked into the Sheraton. When we went up to our room, however, we found that another guest was already there! Both he and we were somewhat surprised; fortunately it looked as though he had just checked in (i.e. hadn't yet changed into his jammies or whatever else he had planned for the evening). Jeff and I went back down, got another room key.

While Jeff is at his client's all day today, I'm going to take my laptop and check out some of the local sites as well as do some work. The hotel's only a short walk away from Parliament Hill, National Library of Canada, and the National Gallery. I've only been to Ottawa briefly once before over ten years ago, and didn't see very much...my main memory of the city is that it was cold. :-)





Links/News:

One year ago, Jeff Bohnhoff did a Guest Blathering.

Five years ago, I was reading Winter Rose.

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Today's Blatherpics:

	We take a break during our hike yesterday. Jeff brought a thermos full of hot coffee and Swiss Mocha mix, yum.
	Parki makes his grilled red pepper sandwiches (other ingredients include goat cheese, alfalfa sprouts, fresh basil).