stardust

Went to Richmond Hill yesterday for a practice with Allison and Jodi. We have one more practice before Conchord.

During our practice, we also ran through more songs, including our contribution to the Totally Tasteless and Tacky Revue at Conchord, which will likely be a...er...unique performance of Library Boy :-). Nick Smith and Paul Kwinn have kindly agreed to help us with this song, the poor things.


We're putting together a donation package for the Interfilk auction which will consist of:

- a one-of-a-kind Urban Tapestry t-shirt (made by me), XL

- small framed cross-stitch with music theme, handmade by Allison (the cross-stitch, not the frame)

- CD with two sample tracks from our upcoming album! Songs on this CD: I Am Stardust (song by Lloyd Landa; Karen has given us permission to cover this song on our album) and Friendship Song (three-part a capella song written and arranged by me). The songs were mastered by Chris Conway at Oblong Studios in Leicester, UK. The recording engineer for "I Am Stardust" was Gerry Tyra, who recorded our concert at Consonance in California last year (Mar/2001). "The Friendship Song" was recorded by Keristor Systems at our concert at Didgeri-Douze in Milton Keynes, England (Feb/2000). The recording and mixing engineer at that convention was Chris Croughton. Thanks to Jodi for getting this sample CD together.

I love "I Am Stardust"; it's such a gorgeous song. I can't focus too much on it when we perform it, though, because I feel like crying, thinking about Lloyd. Full of wry humour and generosity, Lloyd was a tremendously talented songwriter and musician; the filk community suffered such a tremendous loss when he died.


I'm every mote of dust
In a ray of summer sun
Every shining point of light
In the winter night above
I'm inside the very heart of you
Yet galaxies away
I am stardust, stardust
Looking for a home.

(Excerpt from I Am Stardust, by Lloyd Landa)

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Today's Blatherpics:

Karen and Lloyd, at Toronto Trek two years ago.

writing

Happy birthday to Amanda Snyder!

My goal for this month is to write at least 15,000 words for my novel before I leave for California. I'm up to 4,500 words so far. I've always tended to over-edit myself as I write, which slows things down. One of the useful things I learned while collaborating on the short story with Michelle is how to force myself to just keep writing and not worry about editing until later.


Working on my book on a daily basis is tremendously satisfying rather than bits and pieces ever few weeks, plus I'm gradually getting more efficient. 500 words a day was agony at first. Today I wrote 1800. My goal is to get the first draft of this book done by the end of August. It's going to be somewhat of a challenge, what with all the stuff going on in my life between now and then (friends visiting for a week and a half, trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake with my mom-in-law and Jeff, Conchord and California visit, trips to the cottage), but as long as I do some writing every day, I should be fine.

I'm settling on a ritual when I go out to write. Find a coffee shop with a table and chair near a power outlet, order one (1) black coffee, get out my headphones and listen to some Kim Robertson harp music on my computer, start writing. Sometimes I don't even touch the coffee, but keep the cup nearby to prove that I did buy something so have a right to be there. :-) The harp music is to block out whatever music is playing on the loudspeakers; I use my special headphones that I usually take on long flights, able to block out low frequency noise. It works wonderfully...it means that whatever the environment I write in, I can tune out the conversations and music going on around me. I like chairs with padded seats and no arms; that way I can kick off my sandals and work cross-legged (my favourite writing position).


What do I do with the rest of my work time? Do my daily Market Watch column, monthly columns for Writing World and Muse's Muse, online research work for Moira Allen, some magazine market query work. My main focus right now, however, is on my novel for young people. I really, really want to get that finished and off to my agent as promised.

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Today's Blatherpics:

Jeff shares office space with Bryan Fullerton and a web design company called One Trick Pony (Scott P., Ray, and Tony). Yesterday was Scott's last day with the company, so we all took him out for lunch.

	Bryan, Tony, Ray, Scott P., Jeff, in front of Ho Tsu on Queen Street.
	Ray. I asked him to put his shades on for the picture.
	Scott Petrie.

poll: ginzu knives?

The envelope that arrived in the mail yesterday from Publishers' Clearinghouse was plastered with official-looking stickers and stamped warnings and scribbled signatures, all giving every indication that I was A BIG WINNER or VERY NEARLY A BIG WINNER.

My natural inclination, of course, was to throw it out. But there was a tiny, niggling part of me that whined, "But what if...what if it's GENUINE?" The rational part of my brain raged back, "You fool, that's the whole point of this marketing approach! They're counting on gullible losers like you to be intrigued enough to open the envelope!"





It didn't help that a friend of ours recently nearly DID throw out a envelope that looked like junk mail, decided at the last minute to open it, discovered a cheque for thousands of dollars inside because of a class action suit filed against an old doctor of his that he never knew had been filed.

"See? SEE?" my inner voice whined. "You really -could- be a winner! What's the harm in opening an envelope? C'mon, go ahead, you know you want to."





So, not surprisingly, I did end up opening the envelope, just as the marketing company knew I would. Jeff always told me that I'm a marketing person's dream.

And holy cow, just look at all the paper that had been stuffed inside that #10 envelope:





Not surprisingly, I went through a Homer Simpson "d-oh!" as I opened the envelope. It didn't matter that 99% of me knew that it was just more junk mail. It didn't matter that I hadn't invested much time (well, other than carefully spreading out all the flyers and taking a photo of them for my Blatherings :-)) and effort beyond opening an envelope.

I cursed the part of me that couldn't resist the lure of that "AUTHORIZED" pseudo-stamp, no matter how cheesy and obviously pre-printed it was. I felt like the little kid at school who repeatedly falls for the same stupid practical joke, never learning, stubbornly clinging to the feeble hope that maybe...just MAYBE...that this time the battered-looking shoebox given to him by Little Sadistic Sammy during lunch hour really will contain a magical wish-granting ring instead of a library photocopy of Sammy's butt.

But maybe I should resign myself to the fact that Jeff is right about me being a marketing person's dream; it's part of my nature. I fill out survey cards on restaurant tables, buy products based on free samples I've received, send in coupons, lust over the George Foreman Grill on late-night infomercials, cry during over-the-top emotionally manipulative cellphone and milk commercials.

Poll: Do you own a Ginzu knife? Or other tv/infomercial advertised product?

Do you fill out survey cards? Have you ever opened junk mail? Do you send in coupons? Have you ever checked "YES" to indicate that you DO want to receive news or product information when registering online for anything? Has a commercial ever brought tears to your eyes? Have you ever purposely watched an infomercial all the way through? Or the home shopping channel for more than five minutes?

alien jellyfish

Hey, check out Allison's very first Web site. Focus: nature trails.

Going into the recording studio this afternoon so Allison can lay down some harmonies and I can add flute to Chris Conway's "Alien Jellyfish" CD track. Jodi's been spending a lot of time researching studios around Toronto (thanks, Jodi!).





Since I'm taking time off work today to do recording, I spent most of yesterday afternoon working on some Writing-World.com online work that's due at the end of today. Jeff and I went to my sister's place in the late afternoon for Sunday dinner with my family. Annie and I played soccer in the backyard while Jeff and Sara played frisbee. After Annie accidentally ran over my feet several times in her cleat soccer shoes, I found myself wishing I had worn runners instead of sandals.





Hoping to fit in a run and a few hours of novel writing this morning before I leave to meet Allison and Jodi in Richmond Hill, so a shorter Blathering today.

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More photos from Reid's and Luisa's watergun party on the weekend.

Today's Blatherpics:

	ScottM and me in a watergun battle (Scott's winning, obviously). Photo by Reid.
	Charlotte Koch (daughter of Micki and Harald).
	Iain Bradbury.
	Megan Kesner (daughter of Gail and Jeff).

watergun party

Great fun at Luisa's and Reid's watergun party yesterday. Some of you may recall my Blathering from last year's party, partly because Andrea immortalized the photo of me in a t-shirt for Interfilk and by Parki's Anti-Blathering parody featuring a photo of me from the party.

Upon arriving first at the party, Jeff and I discovered that Luisa had coordinated the creation of special t-shirts for her family in honour of the typo in my Relay For Life Blathering where I meant to write that Reid, Luisa, Michael and Ronnie were my first non-filk friends to see Urban Tapestry perform. Except I accidentally left out the word "filk" (thanks to Chris Conway for pointing this out!).

Anyway, I love their t-shirts. (See photo at the top of this page) The lowercase letters on each t-shirt comprise each person's posl-id. Ronnie's is "r2e2" because "rae" would have been the same as his father's posl-id.

Near the end of the party, Christine Miller asked me how she could be one of my non-friends, too. :-D

Some more photos...

Harald Koch (writes as "chk" in Blatherchat):





Peter Cook with son Jonathan:





Jeff in watergun battle mode:





Michelle and ScottM. Michelle is somewhat blurred because she is in the midst of trying to hit Scott in the chest. Scott had given her a big hug earlier in the evening while he was wearing wet clothes (and hers were dry):





Tom West (Michelle's husband):





Joanne and Rita:





Weaponry abandoned on the battlefield during dinner:





Dinner was an impressive spread; we all stuffed ourselves silly. Luisa manned the barbecue and cooked up a feast of chicken breasts, hamburgers, hot dogs, sausages, chicken souvlaki and also provided plates of fruit, vegetables, homemade offerings. People contributed drinks, food and desserts in addition to what Luisa had prepared until the buffet table was groaning beneath all the food. Dessert included a selection of banana cake, lemon mousse cake, two types of icecream cake, ice cream sandwiches, poppy seed cake with icing, and an assortment of candy, chips and cookies. There were Krispy Kreme and Tom Horton doughnuts out earlier in the day, but the KKs were gone before I could see what kind had been brought.

I'm getting hungry just typing all this.

I've posted the photos I took here but am only leaving these pics up for a couple of days so that attendees can scoop the photographs they want. I'll be posting some of these in upcoming Blatherings.

Many, many thanks to Reid, Luisa, Ronnie and Michael for hosting such a wonderful party. They're some of the best non-friends I've ever had.

;-)