sleepover & poll: movies

NaNoWriMo update: 17,204 words written, 32,796 to go. Thanks to Michelle Southern for turning my cartoons into NaNo-grams!

So Sara and Annie slept over on the weekend for the first time! They were very excited, almost as excited as Jeff and me. Jeff asked them what they'd like to order in for dinner; they chose pizza. We watched Monsters Inc., and then Jeff made his homemade milkshakes for dessert. Jeff's milkshakes are especially decadent because he custom-makes each person's milkshake, adding a chocolate bar of choice to the mix, yum.

The time went by pretty quickly. After milkshakes and some games was bathtime, flossing, toothbrushing, and bedtime stories. I always love hugging and kissing the girls. Freshly bathed and clad in their pajamas, they are irresistable. I restrained myself, though, because I never want to end up as one of the aunts you read about in kid stories that always pinches children's cheeks and is someone to run away from.

Sara and Jeff slept on the pull-out couch in the living room, and Annie and I slept in the bedroom. Annie gradually shifting her sleeping position during the night until she was lying perpendicular to me, her head lying on my stomach. She seemed to sleep pretty soundly throughout the night, though she did speak once, very loudly and clearly: "I -am- here!" in the middle of the night. As usual when I sleep with one of my nieces, I kept waking up at every twitch and sound, just in case they needed me. How do you mothers do it? I suppose you get used to it after a while.





Yesterday morning, Jeff and I took the girls to the Lord of the Rings exhibit in the building that used to be the McLaughlin Planetarium. We thought the exhibit was okay, but not nearly as good as the one last year. Part of it, I'm sure, was the fact that we were shuffling along pretty much the whole way with people in front and behind us because it was so crowded. But we didn't find the exhibits nearly as interesting, though the brief shuffle through Fangorn at the beginning was kind of cool, as was the fact that there were Two Towers scenes shown on the screens everywhere that I had never seen before.

Poll: harry potter or lord of the rings? or...?

Which are you looking forward to more: the new Harry Potter movie, or the new Lord of the Rings? Do you plan to see either on opening day? Or another movie? Or are you basically turned off movies in general? I'm also curious about Chicago and Nemesis, though I don't get excited about new Star Trek movies anymore (Wrath of Khan was the best, then things went downhill).

Answer here





Links/News:

Three years ago, I interviewed Maya Bohnhoff for Inkspot. Sadly, that interview was lost when Xlibris shut down the site.

Four years ago, Fimo helped keep me sane.

Five years ago, I was learning important German phrases.

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Annie prepares her dolls for bedtime. The one at the far left is Flatmouse, which was Jeff's doll when he was a child.
	Line-up to get into the Lord of the Rings exhibit yesterday.
	Annie, Sara and Jeff at Museum subway station.

sleepover

NaNoWriMo update: Wrote almost 3,000 words yesterday (a record for me!) and am up to 15,110 words, 34,890 to go.

Sara and Annie slept over last night. Lord of the Rings exhibit visit today!

More details tomorrow.

Links/News:

Two years ago, some parents denounced Harry Potter as being Satanist.

Four years ago, I made a Secret Confession.

Five years ago, I was checking out Mookti, a virtual learning environment at OISE, where Scott Snyder was a wizard.

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Today's Blatherpic:

Cartoon I recently posted in my NaNoWriMo journal.

royal winter fair

Thanks to Chris Baty for posting one of my NaNoWriMo cartoons on the main page of the NaNoWriMo site yesterday. If you want to see my other cartoons, feel free to check out my NaNoWriMo Livejournal. 12,344 words written so far, 37,656 to go. I ended up writing 1,000 words on the couch at Vartan's place while Jeff and the others were doing their Friday night gaming.

Had fun at the Royal Winter Fair yesterday morning with Ruth, Sara and Annie and hey, it had more than cows! We were only there a few hours but managed to see a horse show, dog show, pigs, sheep, goats, geese, turkeys, chickens, ducks, roosters and Martha Stewart.

I didn't notice Martha Stewart right away, who was filming a segment for her show in the poultry room, but did notice some press with very big cameras as well as policemen standing around. Wow, I remember thinking. There must be some REALLY important prizewinning rooster around here somewhere. Then I turned and saw Martha about thirty feet away, surrounded by cameras and microphones. Here's a story in the Globe & Mail about her visit.

Sara and Annie are sleeping over at our place tonight, the first time that both of them have slept over. Woohoo, slumber party! Tomorrow morning we're going to the Lord of the Rings exhibit. We're all very hyped. I think it's kind of cool that Annie and Sara are just as excited about this as Jeff and I are.





Links/News:

My e-mail to Dave Clement is bouncing! :-( Does anyone know if he recently changed providers? Thanks for any help. I've been using his pangea.ca address.

Two years ago, I decided to move home from Philadelphia in early January rather than in March. Rereading this entry was an interesting experience for me because there is SO much "between the lines" stuff I purposely kept out of my journal. I was very, very unhappy at work. I would have resigned months before if it hadn't been for the fact that Xlibris had Inkspot, and I couldn't bear to leave Inkspot's community and staff unprotected. Later on, I had no choice.

Speaking of corporate bureaucracy, I can't believe how poorly Famous Players Theatres is handling school trips recently. As some of you already know, my music partner Allison is a schoolteacher. A very cool schoolteacher, in fact, who works very hard to come up with interesting activities and crafts and school trips to enhance her students' education. Most recently, she planned a class trip to see the new Harry Potter movie on opening day, same as she did last year (now how cool is that?). After confirming plans with Allison, turns out Famous Players is changing its mind, and Allison may have to tell her excited class that the trip is off as well as cancelling all the arrangements she's made. This really ticks me off, and I'm not even a parent or student! See Allison's Livejournal for details.





Today's Blatherpics:

These were taken at the Royal Winter Fair yesterday morning.

	Baby pig, even more adorable in life than it appears in this photo. Immediately after I took this picture, it stomped pretty enthusiastically on its sibling's head.
	Annie communes with the baby pigs.
	Ruth, Sara and me in front of some giant pumpkins (yes, those are real pumpkins!). My 5-year-old niece Annie took this photo.

10,259

NaNoWriMo Report: Wrote 2,055 words yesterday. I'm up to 10,259 words, 39,741 words left. Hung out with Allison and Jodi last night. Jodi's moving into her new house in a couple of weeks!

Going to the Royal Winter Fair with Ruth, Sara and Annie today; I've never been before. My impression is that there are going to be a lot of cows.





Links/News:

I've updated Waiting For Frodo and Hobbit/LOTR Revisited.

One year ago, Graham Leathers was on CBC radio.

Two years ago, I named my harp, though I didn't know it yet at the time:


Harper friends keep asking me if my harp has told me its name yet. I have to confess that the only name it has told me so far is "Gwyneth Paltrow". I refuse to call my harp Gwyneth Paltrow, so am still waiting for another name.


It never did tell me another name, so "Gwyneth Paltrow" stuck.

Three years ago, Jeff and I got together with our Nahanni trip friends.

Four years ago, we went to Toys'R'Us for Jeff.

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Today's Blatherpics:

Thanks to Daniel Glasser for letting me use these photos. You can find more of his pictures from OVFF here.

	Kathleen Sloan (as one of the Interfilk wenches during the auction) tries to convince me to place a higher bid for some chocolate.
	Dave Weingart in performance.

nanowrimo update

I wrote over 2,500 words yesterday. Total so far: 8,204 words, 41,796 to go. See my silly cartoons in my NaNoWriMo Livejournal.





I had been worried that by being too deadline-oriented, I'd be writing too much crap. Much to my surprise, I'm pretty happy with what I've done so far. Sure, it'll need to be heavily edited since I'm not doing any editing as I write, but thus far I think I could turn this into something I won't be ashamed to send to my agent.

It's only been about a week into NaNoWriMo, but I can't help but constantly analyze why I'm able to write faster and still enjoy the process. For me, the keys seem to be:

- community support

- public deadline

- NaNoWriMo Report Card (written by Erik Benson) in which you enter your wordcount each day and all kinds of stats and graphs are automatically generated (how many words left, writing rate, percentage done, pie charts, etc.)





So of course I'm already wondering, How can I apply this to future fiction projects? I think I'm going to customize the spreadsheet a bit more for my own projects, and also look for a good online writing group. I tried a few, but they were either too big, too mean, too nice, too small, too specific, or involved critiquing. I don't want critiquing (not that there's anything wrong with critiquing; it's just not what I want in an online writing support group).

I want a supportive writing group who is deadline-oriented and not too chatty. Many of the mailing lists or online groups I investigated tended to be more social chats, where conversations were as likely to be about how someone's cat threw up a furball the previous night than writing. I'm not against social mailing lists; I just get way too much e-mail already and don't want to have to go searching for the posts that interest me.

If any of you know of a group that fits the bill and are open to new members, please do let me know, thanks. :-)





Links/News:

One year ago, the topic was "online chats".

Five years ago, I had just hired a marketing/PR company for Inkspot. I soon found out that they didn't really understand what Inkspot or online communities were really all about, so decided to drop them.

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Today's Blatherpics:

Thanks to Rand for these photos.

	Me helping out on "Saxophone in Spring" during Andrea's and Graham's concert at OVFF.
	The bottom three photos are of the three members of The Fibs, who attended OVFF this year. This fellow is Tom Fenton.
	Jim Iarocci.
	Carl Thiel.