snood

*WARNING*: If you have a tendency to get easily addicted to computer games, whatever you do, DON'T read the rest of this Blathering! I'm not kidding! Trust me!!

So Andy was right about Jeff liking the movie Cabaret despite it being a musical (he posted about this in Blatherchat a while back).

Last night, Jeff and I hung out at Andy's and Christine's. We had pizza from Amato's that was mouthwateringly good and then watched Cabaret. Great movie! Wow, Michael York looked so innocent and young back then. And wow, what a voice on Liza Minnelli. I'd heard recordings, of course, and numerous parodies.

Andy and Christine introduced Jeff to the joys of Snood. When Christine was going through cancer treatments, she asked friends to recommend anything that would help distract her from the bad stuff. A friend recommended Snood. "It's highly addictive," Christine told us.

Anyway, we watched Andy play a little bit. As you can tell from the high score list in the screen shot above, he's not quite as good as Christine. :-) It was great fun mocking his technique as we stood watching, and then (I will get you for this, Andy) he asked Jeff if he wanted to give it a try.

The pizza arrived. "I'll be right there," promised Jeff, his eyes fixed on the screen. After we got home, Jeff downloaded Snood (the Snood Web site has a free demo available for a number of platforms).

"I'm going to bed," I told him.

"I'll be right there," Jeff said, his eyes fixed on the screen. 45 minutes later...

But I can't complain; I've been there with games, and also when I start fiddling about with HTML stuff. The games are easier to control, since I just don't let myself play them during work hours. HTML-fiddling is trickier, since I can always justify the time as being work-related somehow.

Speaking of work, I sent out two queries this week, got one bite so far (I'm writing about my NaNoWriMo experience next month for a newspaper). After asking some questions on the NaNoWriMo forums, I found that doing prepwork before November IS allowed, so I've written out a basic outline of the novel I want to write. Not sure how much good this will do me, however, since in the past I've found that I always change the outline.

Hey, I just checked out the Snood Web site and found that there's a Palm version. Uh oh.

Links/News:

Congratulations to Helen (who writes as "antonlerchner" in Blatherchat sometimes) and Alec, who get married today!

Two years ago, I was sick after hanging out with kids with colds at the cottage.

Three years ago, Jeff and I were sick after hanging out with kids with colds at the cottage.

Hmmm. Jeff and I are leaving for the cottage in a couple hours. Maybe I'd better stock up on tissues and cold remedies before we leave, just to save time.

To you Canadians out there: Have a great Thanksgiving weekend!

queenwatching

(Warning: photo-heavy entry today)

So I did, indeed, see the Duke and the Queen yesterday.

I decided to take off work in the late afternoon to hang out with the other eager Royal-watchers in front of the Royal York Hotel, a few blocks away from our apartment. I got there half an hour before the Queen was supposed to arrive, had some interesting conversations with the people next to me. One woman had taken the day off work to Queen-watch.





In the picture above, I circled a little boy in a kilt who was obviously hoping to meet the Queen. More about him later.

The first sign of anything exciting is when the hotel staff roll out the red carpet:





...and polish one of the hand railings in front of the hotel:





The Duke of Edinburgh arrives without much fanfare. The crowd claps, but he doesn't react, just heads straight into the hotel. Must have been a hard day:





The hotel staff rolls up the red carpet, puts it away.

More waiting. The media shows up. A CTV guy starts wandering through the audence. "Anyone met the Queen before?" he yells. One woman at the back of the crowd puts up her hand. "Me!"

He makes his way to her with a microphone. He says something, and then I hear her reply, "OH! I thought you were asking who hasn't met the Queen before."

I'm standing on the stone wall of a planted area in the median. A Global TV camera guy asks if he can climb up beside me. I say sure. I ask him if I can take his picture. He says sure:





Hey! Just noticed you can see part of my reflection in his lens. :-)

We've been waiting about 40 minutes. The Queen is about 15 minutes past schedule. I chat briefly with a teenager standing on the wall on the other side from the Global TV camera guy. The teenager is trying to look cool but I can tell he's excited.

I'm watching the little boy. He's getting restless:





A nicely dressed woman starts handing out flags for people to wave when the Queen arrives. I want one badly. Should I abandon my prime viewing post to get one? Better not. But what if she doesn't come over to our area of the crowd?

But she does, yay! The teenager says, "Hey, very cool!" when he gets his flag. Here's mine:





The waiting crowd is also restless but hyped. An older woman in front of me on the street is so excited she feels compelled to shake the hands of the policeman in front of her. He is highly amused:





Several guys with earpieces start strolling up and down the street, watching our faces. The hotel staff roll out the carpet again. The street is blocked off.

A murmur of excitement. The Queen's coming! Two motorcycles zoom past first, everyone cheers, followed by important-looking cars. One of the important-looking cars stops in front of the red carpet. A Canadian Mountie steps up and opens the door for the Queen, salutes her.

I had expected a more fragile-looking woman, one who needed help getting out of the car and across the carpet into the building. Instead, I'm surprised to see a remarkably cheerful and smartly dressed Queen step out of the car, turn to wave and smile at the crowd.

She starts heading into the building, but then someone must say something, because she turns and sees the little boy being escorted towards her by his father. The child is clutching a bouquet of flowers and wailing, tears pouring down his flushed cheeks. He's not a happy camper.

The Queen takes the flowers from him, and the boy is borne away in the arms of his father, doomed to listen to the story of how he cried for the Queen many times in years to come, I'm sure:





Later in the evening, the Queen and the Duke attend the Royal Gala Festival at Roy Thompson Hall, which is across the street from our apartment building, and are greeted by the Prime Minister of Canada.





Here's a photo I took from my office window about half an hour before the Queen arrived:





The organized bit of crowd to the left are the Bands of the 48th Highlanders of Canada and the Governor General's Horse Guards (no, I have no idea what Horse Guards are).

Curious, Jeff and I go down to check it out. The band is playing right in front of our building!





We see Prime Minister Chrétien arrive, then the Queen and the Duke. A bunch of tenants from our building are on the front steps, some with babies, some with camcorders, some with babies and camcorders. :-)

Then all the dignitaries go inside, and Jeff and I go back to our apartment for dinner and to check out the performance that's going on inside Roy Thompson Hall, broadcast live on CBC television. When it's over, we go downstairs again and watch her leave. She gets a huge cheer and applause from the crowd.

So I got to see the Queen three times today! Right in our neighbourhood, too.

And now I have to add another item to my "What I Will Miss About Our Neighbourhood When We Move" list: having the Queen and the Duke drop by for a visit.

Links/News:

One year ago I saw an intellectual property lawyer and packed for California.

Two years ago, I gave my Turkey Bowl report.

queenvisit

So the Queen's hangin' out in my neighbourhood today.

I hadn't realized that she and the Duke of Edinburgh were in Toronto until I saw barriers being set up along our street and Jeff told me she arrived yesterday. Here's a Toronto Star article about her. My goal for today is to see the Queen. Heck, it'll probably be the only chance I get to see her anywhere, let alone Toronto. I told Allison and Jodi that I was opting out of Urban Tapestry practice tonight (not that we have anything urgent to practise for, since our next gig isn't until next March at Ad Astra ... more often these days we go out for dinner and/or see a movie).

Apparently the Duke will be attending an awards ceremony at the Metro Convention Centre this morning. Both he and the Queen will attend some event at the CBC (whose building I can see from my office window) in the early evening, then attending a "gala performance" at Roy Thompson Hall, which is right across the street from where I live.

Why do I want to see her? Because I'm curious.

I know most of you are cynical about the Royal-types, and I don't blame you. I'm still not sure exactly what she does for Canada other than give us one more thing to argue about.

But what a life she must have. I say that with pity, not envy. I mean, take a look at her official schedule for today. Every minute of her life, or at least her visit here, is precisely marked out for her. No "Hey, I think I'll duck out for a minute and go for a walk along the lakeshore and watch the birds" or "Y'know, I feel like seeing that new Lucy Liu movie tonight." I think I'd go nuts.

Speaking of royal scheduling, I'm baffled by the following bit, which is listed under 12:15 pm at Sheridan College:


In the Centre, The Queen is met by the Journalism New Media Program Coordinator, Ms. Sherine Mansour.

The Queen observes the linking of the Sheridan College Web site with the Canadian Heritage Royal Visit Website.

The Queen exits the control room, re-enters the Media Centre and observes students using the newly created link.


Gimme a break. They're making the Queen watch someone make an HTML change? And then someone CLICKING A LINK on a Web site?

No wonder she rarely comes to visit.

Poll (especially for the Brits):

What do you think of the Queen? Do you respect her? Envy her? Despise her? Pity her? Ignore her? No political tirades, please.

Links/news:

Did you know that the Queen has her own official Web page?

One year ago, I had an editorial rant.

Two years ago, Annie was nervous about Thanksgiving.

Five years ago, I posted a horrible-looking ascii turkey.

NaNoWriMo

So call me stark raving mad, but I've signed up for National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo), an annual challenge to write 50,000 words in November. Yes, I know I'm still working on another novel, but this will be even more incentive for me to finally finish revising my current novel before the end of October. There are no prizes, no promises of publication, authors keep all rights, no entry fees (though a $10 donation is encouraged), not even an obligation to post your entry unless you want to. The main incentive is just to see if you can do it or not.

Yes, I'm sure 50,000 words written in a month won't be particularly well-written, but then I figure I can revise and edit it to death after it's done. 50,000 is short for an adult novel, but a pretty good size for a young adult novel. I might also make my novel consist of a bunch of shorter sections, each of which I could turn into a chapter book for younger readers. I have too many ideas; it's a matter of choosing between them.

The creator of the NanoWriMo stresses that the winning strategy is "quantity, not quality". :-) 50,000 words in a month means I have to write an average of 1,666 words a day. For my fiction novel writing, I find I generally can write about 800-1200 words on a good day (I can write non-fiction more quickly). Heck, I usually write 600-800 words every day in my Blatherings. However, when I was under deadline pressure while co-writing the fantasy short story with Michelle, I found I could churn out 1500-2000 words a day. It made me realize how much more productive I can be under deadline pressure.

Can I write 50,000 words in a month? I'm looking forward to finding out.

Anyone else out there going to sign up for National Novel Writing Month, too?

---

Movable Type has a new release available, woohoo! I downloaded and installed it immediately, of course. One of the cool new features is the search function. I was using Picosearch, which is great but will only index up to 1500 pages for free. This is fine for most personal sites, I know. In fact, if you're at ALL interested in making your site searchable, you should take a look at Picosearch. It's really easy to implement (you don't have to be a techie). I told Moira Allen about it a while back and she put it on Writing World with no problems.

Over my five years of online journalling, however, I've accumulated nearly 1500 entries, and anticipated running into my indexing limit sometime next year; the cheapest pricing Picosearch option is US$250/year, so I was wondering what else I could use. Now that Movable Type has integrated a search function, I don't have to worry anymore.

The search function looks pretty flexible. I've only implemented the simplest version so far, and am experimenting with the different options, and also plan to modify the search results template.

By the way, I have to say that I'm super-pleased with Movable Type so far, and it keeps getting better. The most recent version of MT had 85 changes or additions, making it clear that the authors are constantly improving the software and listening to user suggestions. And it's free! (a $20 donation is encouraged)

I rarely have to rebuild my site (one of my initial complaints about MT), and when I do, it takes less than a minute. The MT authors encourage outside users to contribute comments and additions, so there are also plenty of plug-ins available. I decided to implement the word count plug-in when I upgraded, just out of idle curiosity to see how many words I write for my Blatherings.

I'm highly intrigued by the TrackBack development, which encourages linking and interaction between different blogs. I might implement that option as well.

So little time, so much to experiment with!

Speaking of experimentation, I've started to add things to my CafePress store. I don't expect to ever get rich off this (I get about a dollar for every t-shirt purchased), but it's fun to be able to put some of my cartoons on t-shirts and other stuff. Some Waiting For Frodo fans recently wrote and asked if I could put one of their favourite strips on a t-shirt, so I obliged.

Links/News:

One year ago, I took nature pics at the cottage during Thanksgiving weekend.

Four years ago, Allison and Jodi took me to be tortured.

Five years ago, I saw The Full Monty.

Do you sneer at children's books? Perhaps these Fairy Tales For The Erudite are for you (or your genius children).

Blatherphoto:

I took this picture of a reflective mirror (I'm in the bottom left corner) while waiting for Jeff, who was in the changeroom, in the Men's Clothing department in the Bay a few days ago.

poll: poetry

For the longest time, the impression I had of poetry came from one tortuous day in high school when our English class spent an entire day (maybe it was more than one day) studying The Red Wheelbarrow, an 8-line poem by William Carlos Williams. We were forced to laboriously dissect, analyze, masticate and regurgitate each line in so many different contexts that by the end of the project I hated red wheelbarrows and modern poetry with equal amounts of passion.

The only reason I never gave up on poetry completely was I Am A Sensation, a school textbook poetry collection that I actually liked. One poem I especially enjoyed was about a little boy whose teachers didn't like his imaginative use of colour in his drawings (I can't recall the name of the poem...do any of you remember this?).

It's only been within the past few years that I've started reading poetry again. This is due in large part to my friend Rand (who has edited several poetry collections and is a poet himself). Our initial e-mail conversation on the topic went something like this:

ME: I hate poetry.

RAND: You might like some poetry out there.

ME: No way. Poetry's dumb and pretentious.

RAND: Well, what about this poem? (includes text of short poem)

ME: Hm. I actually like that.

RAND: How about this one?

ME (suspiciously): I like that one, too. Are you sure this is poetry?

etc.

I still don't like a lot of poetry, especially the type that is obviously meant never to be understood. I'm sure Real Poets would consider me unsophisticated in my tastes. But from time to time I come across a poem which captures an image or emotion or experience perfectly, at least for me. Some poems make me cry. I sent one related to parenthood to Ruth, and it made her weepy, too. It was called For My Daughter In Reply To A Question, and you can find it on this page about the poet David Ignatow (halfway down the page). If you like it, be sure to check out some of Ignatow's other poems from the links at the bottom of the page.

Even though I know I'll never be a poet, poetry is helping me become a better writer. I've become much more conscious of the sound of words, as well as the value of taking the time to pare down to the essentials rather than ramble on for a hundred extra words that say exactly the same thing just because I can.

But I still don't like red wheelbarrows.

Poll: Do you ever read poetry?

Do you enjoy poetry? Do you have any favourite poets? Do you own any poetry books? Do you prefer modern or traditional poetry? Do you write poetry? (and if so, do you show it to anyone?) Do you own a Fridge Magnet poetry set? If so, what is on your fridge RIGHT NOW? To you songwriters out there: are you conscious of the poetry in your lyrics?

Links/News:

Here's a Toronto Star story about Sunday's Run For The Cure. Apparently 26,000 runners participated in the Toronto event, and raised $2.5 million dollars for breast cancer research.

One year ago, our cottage was invaded by ladybugs.

Three years ago, Luisa and I went looking for Patrick Stewart.

Five years ago, I conspired against Allison and Jodi. With help from several of you out there, I might add. :-)