jeff bohnhoff visit

My Dad's at my sister's, and is doing well. Sara and Annie are getting a kick out of taking care of their Grandpa. When Jeff and I dropped him off at my sister's yesterday, Annie immediately went into professional nursemode and got a kleenex box and a wastepaper basket, positioning them carefully near my Dad. The wastepaper basket was in case he had to throw up. :-) Ruth reports that he slept much of yesterday.

Jeff Bohnhoff is here! JeffB, Jeff and I had dinner at Babur, an Indian place on Queen Street. I knew my Jeff would like JeffB, but I didn't realize how much of a tech-head JeffB is; he and I usually only talked in a filk/music context. I was highly amused last night; it was clear to me that I could have walked away during part of last night's the conversation and the two Jeffs would barely notice. :-)

After dinner, JeffB did some guitarstuff, yay! He is one of the most amazing guitarists I know, and I could listen to him play for hours. My Jeff was doing phone tech support for his Mom; after he got off the phone, we watched the Toronto episode of the Simpsons (which our friend Ray had kindly taped for us). I find it funny that so much media hype was made of this episode even though Toronto was only mentioned in the last five minutes or so. But the Toronto- and Canadian- jokes were pretty funny. I crashed immediately afterwards (didn't get much sleep the previous night, after all); the Jeffs stayed up for a while longer talking.

JeffB and I are going up to Richmond Hill tonight to see Allison and Jodi. We haven't decided what we're going to do today...probably a mixture of some sightseeing, musicstuff and just generally hanging out. Maybe even collaborate on a song (we started talking about it last night; I'm excited about this!).

Guest Blather: Jeff Bohnhoff

Well, here I am at Jeff and Debbie's place in Toronto. They have the most incredible apartment downtown, within walking distance of anything you might want to do. Debbie and I have spoken in the past about their place, but I didn't realize how cool it was until I saw it for myself.

As always, Debbie has been a fantastic host ( a hilarious combination of attentiveness and total angst that she's somehow failing to be a good host). If I try to lift a finger to help, I have to battle with her to let me do it. It's quite fun actually :-).

Tonight we're going to an Urban Tapestry rehearsal. I'm really looking forward to it. Those of you who know Debbie in the filk music community know how wonderful they are. The rest of you would be doing yourselves a favor by getting their CD "Myths and Urban Legends". It has some very touchingly beautiful songs, and lots of really funny material. Debbie will be very embarassed that I said this, but too bad, she told me I could write whatever I want.

I've really enjoyed meeting her Jeff. In one sense I've felt like I know him from reading Blatherings, but in person it's been fun talking with him. I realize how similar we are in many ways. We both have ferociously multi-talented wives who are both writers and musicians. We both have jobs in the tech industry, but in school studied other subjects (he has a Masters in philosophy, I have a degree in anthropology). We like a lot of the same music, and seem to have the same sense of humor. I wish that we didn't live so far apart :-(.

I fly home early tomorrow (which is good, it's been a long business trip). I do wish I could spend a bit more time seeing Toronto. I think Maya and I will have to come back for a purely social visit soon.

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Today's Blatherpic:

JeffB playing my guitar. With any luck, some of his guitar playing skills will be left behind for me!

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hospital again

(Augh! Apologies for the too-wide formatting of my archived individual entries. I haven't been able to figure out what's causing that yet and haven't much time until the end of the week. If anyone sees the problem, please do let me know, thanks!)

Well, we're back to "wait and see" mode again with my Dad. As I mentioned in an earlier Blatherings today, we ended up in the emergency ward of the Peel Memorial Hospital again last night. This time, however, he ended up in the waiting room most of the time because the preliminary triage assessment didn't warrant immediate attention.

While I understand this, it was also tough watching my Dad feel so ill, barely able to walk on his own because of the nausea, and have to wait in an uncomfortable hospital waiting room for over six hours, holding a plastic bed pan in his lap in case he needed to throw up. My understanding is that he would have been seen sooner except that there were so many emergency admissions last night that they eventually had to see him in the "holding area" rather than give him a temporary cot in the regular emergency unit.

About 2 a.m., he was able to lie down across several chairs, with a coat cushioning his head. I watched over him and our stuff, trying to stay awake. Jeff stayed around until about 2, but then I forced him to go home and get some sleep because I didn't want to worry about him dozing off on the drive home.

By the time my Dad was examined by a doctor at around 3 a.m., he and I were both bone-weary. The doctor (who also looked pretty tired) said that my dad was better off going home for a few hours and coming back for a specialist appointment than being checked into the hospital. We took a cab back to Dad's house, and we both crashed almost immediately. I slept in Jim's old room.

Jeff came to pick us up at the hospital after Dad's appointment the next day, drove Dad to his house to pack, then we dropped him off at my sister's, where he'll be staying for a few days. The current plan is for Dad to come here on Friday. We didn't learn anything new at the specialist appointment this morning, but several tests did get moved up in schedule, including a liver ultrasound scan.

Things are stable enough that I called Jeff Bohnhoff and told him to feel free to come over, though I might be pretty braindead tonight. We're getting together with Allison and Jodi tomorrow.

Really looking forward to seeing Jeff! Hopefully I can get him to do a Guest Blathering tomorrow.

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Today's Blatherpic is a photo I took during the birthday party we had for Annie on Sunday night, before we got the call from my Dad. This is Barbie's companion, Ken. Boy, has Ken ever changed since my Ken days. Note the trendy haircut, the Backstreet Boy look.

olympic hockey win

First of all, happy birthday to my niece Annie, who turns five today! Jeff and I are going to my sister's tonight for the party. We bought her a Chrissy bath set and play set.

If you watched any Olympics coverage last night, you probably know that Canada won the gold medal in the men's hockey game late yesterday afternoon.

Jeff watched the last half hour of the game. I confess I only watched the last five minutes or so, when Jeff called me into the living room. As soon as it was clear that the Canadians had won, we heard the celebration start outside our window...there are several sports bars in our area, including the Wayne Gretsky restaurant, Nicholas Nicholby's, and the Peel Pub. There were Canadian flags a-wavin' on the streets within a few seconds of the final score being announced.

Here's what the crowd looked like within a few minutes:





I wanted to get some Blatherpics (hey, it was all happening within view of our apartment window...how could I resist?), so went down to check things out. The noise was unbelievable...everyone screaming and laughing and hugging each other, waving Canadian flags, honking horns. Can't blame everyone for getting so excited, really; it's been 50 years since the Canadians have won the gold in men's hockey. So what if I only watched the last five minutes. I was happy, too. :-)

There was a fire engine in the middle of the street; the firemen inside were grinning and obviously honking the horn in celebration rather than frustration (unlike the cars lined up behind them), so I suspect they purposely drove along King Street to join, at least temporarily, in the festivities. Ecstatic fans had climbed up on top of the fire engine's roof and were waving flags around, dancing. I think the fireguys realized that things were getting out of hand, though, and sent someone up on the roof to get everyone off.

Undeterred, fans climbed on top of cars and a TTC streetcar (Toronto Transit) that was trapped in the crowd. There were sparks sizzling each time the wire from the streetcar hit the overhead wire as a few overly-happy fans jumped up and down on the roof of the vehicle. I'm amazed none of them electrocuted themselves before the police got them down.

According to news reports last night, most of the celebration took place at Yonge and Dundas (a few blocks from our place). We could hear the yelling and cars honking for hours after the game actually ended.

I watched the Olympics Closing Ceremonies last night. So what was with that weird Wayne Gretzky announcement with no appearance from The Great One himself? Also, am I the one who thought the Donny and Marie comedy dinosaurs were a stupid idea?





If you missed it in yesterday's Blathering, don't forget to answer the poll question about e-mail habits!

Links/Updates:

I've added a link to my Market Watch column in my lefthand navigation bar and changed the format of my master archive list so that all the Blathering topic headers are listed beneath each month name. Thanks to Shel of The Girlie Matters for letting me base my format on her archive page.

Blogging's on the rise...in a sagging dot-com world, will bloggers help redefine public perception of the Internet?

A futuristic shiny white pod called the ULTra (Urban Light Transport) is being tested as a potential "smart taxi". Bladerunner gets closer all the time...

Peter Jackson is promising fresh characters and plot twists for the second Lord of the Rings movie and says that the second instalment feels very different from the first. Interesting to see the competition heat up in speculation about which will dominate the Oscars, LOTR or A Beautiful Mind. Speaking of the Oscars, don't forget to place your Oscar votes in Blatherchat!

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Fans on a car on King Street, jubilant after the Team Canada Olympic win.
	View of the crowd from our apartment window.
	Fans celebrate on a fire engine. The firemen seemed pretty tolerant (they may even have purposely driven along King Street to help with the celebration).
	Eventually the firemen had to get the crowd off the vehicle, however. This shot was of a fireman having problems dissuading one particularly enthusiastic fan.

POLL: e-mail habits

Worked a lot on my novel yesterday, yay! Felt good.

Scott came over last night with some DVDs. We got Swiss Chalet take-out (I also got coconut cream pie because writing yesterday's Blathering made me crave some) and watching "The Insider", which Jeff and I hadn't seen before. Really great movie! Loved Al Pacino and Russell Crowe.

He also loaned us Blade, One Night At McCool's, L.A. Confidential, and Magnolia.

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In general, I spend far less time in e-mail than I did in my Inkspot days, both personal and business. I've been gradually moving over my older Blatherings archives into Movable Type format, and it's been enlightening for me to read through some of the older entries. I was horrified, for example, to see a casual mention that I had received over 1000 e-mails one day, and that I came home from a canoe trip to find nearly 5000 e-mails waiting. I'm sure that helped contribute to my general stress puppy nature back then.

I am aware that my recent experience in the corporate world soured me on e-mail in general. I remember months of dreading opening my e-mail rather than anticipating it because inevitably there would be something nasty waiting. Like many others around me at work, I began using e-mail as a defense and pre-emptive strike rather than just for simple communication; I kept copies of everything to prove what had been said and what hadn't and became an expert in the psychology of cc:ing and bcc:ing. As a result of all this, however, e-mail became a negative rather than a positive experience.

As time passes and I get fewer Xlibris/corporate-related e-mails, I don't dread my e-mail as much anymore. But I still don't spend nearly as much time e-mailing as I used to, even for personal stuff. I've had to drop a number of personal correspondences as a result (and cut down on the rest), which is a sad thing. On the other hand, I spend more time working on my own writing (both nonfiction and fiction) than I ever did before, and also see more of my friends face-to-face than I did before, which is a good thing.

I make a conscious effort to stay offline in the evenings....as a result, I'm spending more time with Jeff, reading, my songwriting. According to my current Eudora statistics, I now receive an average of 31 e-mails/day (including mailing lists and spam), send an average of 13/day, spending less than an hour on e-mail a day.

I still enjoy the idea of e-mail, especially since it enables me to keep in contact with people I normally only see a few times a year. But the whole corporate experience as well as the emotional hardships I've gone through in the past couple years have helped me better appreciate the value of offline communication and interactions as well.

I'd be interested in hearing stats from any other Eudora Pro users out there. In fact, why not turn this into a poll...

Today's Poll:
What are your e-mail habits?

How many times do you check e-mail a day? Do you tend to get more work-related e-mail, more personal e-mail, or about even? Have your e-mail habits changed over the years? Are most your of your personal friendships kept up through e-mail? Do you tend to like or dislike e-mail in general? Please answer in Blatherchat.

Today's Blatherpic

- Jeff buying a snazzy new mouse in a computer store for computer gaming.

wendy & lindsay

Our friends Lindsay and Wendy invited Parki, Jeff and me for dinner and a movie last night. We met Lindsay and Wendy through Parki and have Sunday brunch with them every so often. Jeff got to know them better while I was living in Philly. I recently added their names to my Cast of Characters list. By the way, I'd be grateful if anyone could tell me why that capital "S" is being displayed just below the intro on that page...I haven't been able to track it down in HTML and it's driving me nuts. (Later note: Thanks to Jim Poltrone for solving this mystery! I had an extra "s" between two of the table rows)





Dinner was Indian in theme, based on recipes from one of the Naked Chef cookbooks. It was unbelievably yummy! I'm serious...much better than the fare you usually get in restaurants. It makes my mouth water just to look at the photos I took last night again. Are any of you out there familiar with the Naked Chef? I've heard of him, but that's about it. I browsed through some of the Naked Chef cookbooks that Wendy and Lindsay had on their shelf, but there didn't seem to be any shots of the chef actually being naked (er...not that I was hoping to find a naked chef shot, of course...I really do like reading through cookbooks! honest! I'd better shut up now).

I finally asked Lindsay and Wendy, who told me that the Naked Chef name came from the fact that Jamie Oliver liked simplicity in his recipes, and that he preferred to work with fresh ingredients. Ah ok. I can't help but think that the name is also a brilliant marketing tool...it certainly immediately helps set the guy apart from the reams of other television chef personalities out there.



Lots of chopping in dinner preparations. From my (very) limited experience with Indian cooking, this seems to be standard. The results are usually well worth it, but it's time-consuming. I volunteered to help and was given the task of chopping tomatoes for the chicken curry dish. I also chopped curry leaves. I had never seen fresh curry leaves before! Lindsay and Wendy also prepared a special rice dish and a yogurt sauce.

Meanwhile, their 8-month-old cat was zooming all over the place, making sure we were kept entertained as we waited for dinner. Do cats teethe like babies do? Dexter certainly seemed to be, or at least he was pretty anxious to chew on anything he could possibly get his fangs into (plants, wine bottles, fingers, feet). He also grew very fond of Parki during the evening.

It was highly amusing watching Parki's love-hate relationship with the cat; I had never suspected Parki was secretly a cat person at heart (a fact I'm sure he would vehemently deny, even now). Dexter singled him out for feline love early on, rubbing against him, jumping up in his lap, begging for attention. Parki obliged. When Dexter grew too enthusiastic and started gnawing on on his hand, however, Parki kicked the cat off his lap, declared that Dexter had outworn his welcome and would get no more attention.

A few minutes later, Dexter went into "LOVE ME PLEEEEASE" cat-mode again. It was fun to watch Parki's resolve crumble so easily, haha! I think I'll leave an orphaned kitten in a basket on his doorstep and see what happens.





Lindsay made lemon meringue pie for dessert. I'm not generally a huge pie fan, but have always had a weakness for lemon meringue pie. And coconut cream. And homemade apple, if the crust is homemade. Lindsay's pie was delicious, and I helped myself to a second piece just before we left.

I envy people that can make good pie crust. I did try once, a long time ago, but it was a miserable failure. I clearly remember serving my first homemade pie to my sister-in-law, one of the first times I had met her. I warned her the crust might be tough. "Oh no, I'm sure it's fine," said Larkin, trying valiantly to cut a piece with her fork without making it obvious that she had to make an effort. Then her fork bent. "Well...maybe it's a -little- tough..."

She couldn't keep up the straight face, though, and then we both started laughing. Larkin and I got along fine after that. :-)

But I digress.





Dinner, as I mentioned earlier, was splendiferous.

We watched "The French Connection" after dessert, but by then it was pretty late. Well, maybe it wasn't THAT late, but I'm saying it was pretty late as an excuse for the fact that I dozed off about ten minutes into the movie. Jeff tried taking a picture of me with my camera (I'm sure my mouth was hanging open or I was drooling), but fortunately the whirring sound of the camera focussing woke me up.

Many thanks to Wendy and Lindsay for a wonderful dinner and fun evening!

I'm excited about today. After uploading this Blathering, I am going to spend the entire day working on my novel (which I have been sadly neglecting lately). I'm in antisocial/mole mode today...not answering the phone, not doing errands, not seeing friends. Jeff will be doing work at his office.

Hope you all have a good weekend, everyone!

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Wendy cooks.
	Dexter lounging in what is obviously one of his favourite positions.
	The curry dish (I'll have to ask Wendy and Lindsay for the actual recipe title, which I'm sure is much more impressive-sounding than "the curry dish"). VERY yummy. Notice the expertly-chopped tomatoes.
	While Wendy adds the finishing touches to the curry, Lindsay works on dessert...homemade lemon meringue pie, yum.
	Reaping the rewards. From left to right: Jeff, Lindsay, Parki, Wendy.
	Fridge poetry by Parki: incubate these moments / crush a diamond with your skin / drive through the white moon / ask for time for love & bitter recalling / as yet my next delirious whisper is pleasing
	Fridge poetry by Jeff: I must club my gorgeous puppy / into a bloody mist. We were pretty amused by the contrast between this and Parki's poem. :-)