ccra woes

It's my brother's birthday today. He would have been 36. Here's what I wrote about him a year ago.

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Yesterday was Marketing/Admin day. I did catch up on admin and finances, but otherwise it was a generally crappy day. I wasn't feeling that great to begin with. Woke up with a sore throat today. Both Annie and Sara have colds, so it's possible that I picked up the bug from them on the weekend.

I also am going through still more post-Inkspot hassles with the CCRA (Canada Customs and Revenue Agency). Apparently Xlibris is trying to shut down the Inkspot Company of Canada (the corporate entity they set up for Inkspot). I heartily approve of this, of course, because it means an end to the phonecalls and snailmail that keep coming to me instead of to them.

However, two people from different areas of the CCRA have been calling me about this, apparently directed to me by Xlibris. One is nice, one quite nasty (the latter seems to believe that I still have something to do with Inkspot despite my claims that I don't). I've re-hired Adam, the corporate tax lawyer who helped me sort out the earlier post-Inkspot mess to help me sort out this new one.

Even just minimal interaction with the CCRA, however, has stirred up bad memories I've been trying to forget since Xlibris shut down Inkspot. It's pretty clear that I still have many unresolved issues re: the demise of Inkspot; there's a lot of suppressed grief and anger I've been trying not to acknowledge. The sabbatical and my return to my own writing have helped a great deal, but the bad karma's still there, simmering just below the surface, like a pot of tainted soup bones about to boil over.

Though it will cost me more money, it helps a ton to be able to offload a lot of the hassles to Adam. Now Adam's the one who deals with the CCRA and Xlibris; he's my stress buffer. Adam's wonderful. I worship Adam. He told me I should worship Jeff instead, but I've told him that Jeff worships him too :-).

I've told close friends that if I ever talk about selling a company ever again, they have express permission to stomp on my head with rusty cleat boots.



Many thanks to Bill Sutton for sending us the Spirit of the Dorsai excerpt we needed in order to sing our song Amanda. Many thanks also to Janet Croft for finding her copy of the book as well. Allison, Jodi and I are grateful to you both as well as to Andrea and Amanda.

I've been having trouble with my e-mail lately (should be okay now, Bryan's tweaked things on the server); I only found out when Jeff Bohnhoff called to let me know that he hadn't able to get e-mail to me in a couple of days.

It also looks like some of my e-mails didn't reach Judith and Dave Hayman, who are in charge of filk programming at Ad Astra. Dave sent us a list of the songs he believes we're supposed to be performing at Ad Astra at various panels, but the playlists don't match the ones we sent him earlier. :-( Hopefully we'll get things straightened out by the weekend. Hopefully my cold will be gone by then, too!

Blatherpics

	Nailpainting session with Sara at Deerhurst, using a set of nail polish that Annie and Sara gave to me while I was living in Philly.
	Skating rink at Deerhurst Inn.

birthdays

Hey, it's Jeff's birthday today. Please do hassle him in e-mail about it.

The photo at the top of this Blathering is of Spike. Or rather, Jeff before he had a name (the message on the cake reads "Happy Birthday Spike"). His parents couldn't decide on a name at the hospital, so nicknamed him "Spike" for a while instead. Feel free to hassle him about that, too. :-)

Thanks to AmandaF and Andrea for finding Bloodchild and R is for Rocket for us! We've been still unable to locate a copy of Spirit of the Dorsai so have sadly had to drop Jodi's song "Amanda" from our playlist.

I LOVE MOVABLE TYPE. Sorry about that outburst, but it couldn't be helped. The more I use this software, the more I like it. I imported about nine months' worth of archives from Greymatter last night pretty easily (one small glitch which was easily fixed), simply by following the detailed instructions in Movable Type's user manual.

As I mentioned before, I decided against using cascading style sheets in my Blatherings since not all browsers use them. 'Twas a major disappointment for me; I had so been lusting after some of the control that CSS offered.

My friend Reid, however, has sent me links to some interesting online articles about how CSS works with different browsers, different workarounds, and how it might not be necessary for me to abandon the idea of using it completely (yay!). I've only started reading the articles (I'm on Fear of Style Sheets), but so far it sounds as if tables should still be used for setting margins and layout (else it result in the wonky formatting I noticed when looking at Movable Type's basic template through different browers), but that CSS can still be used to set leading and font. If a browser can't use CSS, it'll just "see" the user's regular font, no biggie.

Hm...now I can't help thinking: would my life would have been any different if I had married a Spike instead of a Jeff? Would I own a pair of 6-inch red spike heels and wear them to the mall? Would we have matching tattoos? Would I wear black lipstick and haunt the Goth shops on Queen St.?

Although I'm sure I could have fallen in love with a Spike instead of a Jeff, I'm glad his parents decided on the latter.

Happy Birthday, Jeff. :-)

Dickson or Butler?

I had a brief panic attack when I was unable to rebuild my files in Movable Type...everything just kept hanging, and I couldn't even save edits to existing files.

Kudos to my brilliant technonerdboy husband for discovering the problem...I had accidentally pasted a footer reference into my footer file, so MT was going into paroxysms. Serves me right for trying to do template edits when I'm too tired.

Urgent book request: Allison, Jodi and I are participating in some panels at Ad Astra this weekend, and one is about songs based on literary references. Participants perform songs, but also have to read a brief excerpt from the literary source. We plan on doing Homecoming (a song I wrote that is based on Ray Bradbury's short story, "The Rocket Man", from his R Is For Rocket collection), "Amanda" (Jodi's song based on Spirit of the Dorsai by Gordon Dickson) and Bloodchild, a Joey Shoji song based on Octavia Butler's book of the same title.

Does anyone out there have either of these books? I have them, but they are buried in book boxes somewhere right now. If you have any of them, I'd appreciate an e-mail letting me know...I'd be begging you to e-mail me a paragraph or two. Many thanks in advance! (and crossed fingers, too). (Update 9:38 am: Andrea just e-mailed to say she has Bradbury's book, yay! Still hoping for the Gord Dickson or Octavia Butler book.... Update Feb.7: Amanda F. and Bill Sutton have the other books, yay!!)

Today's photo is of two robot toys that came with Sara's and Annie's Happy Meals when we stopped by MacDonald's on the way to Deerhurst this past weekend.

As you may have noticed, I have officially switched over to Movable Type (which just won a Bloggie for Best Weblog Software, by the way) and sent in my $20 donation. I love Movable Type. I'll be posting a more detailed report on Movable Type with comparisons to my experiences with Livejournal and Greymatter after I've played around with it a bit more.

I made calzones for dinner last night; they actually turned out pretty well. I know I keep expressing surprise when my dinners are edible...this is much more due to the fact that it seems like such a long time since I've done regular cooking than to false modesty. Cooking still seems somewhat magical to me.

snowbound

A very cold and blustery snowy day in Toronto this morning. I can hear the wind rattling the windows as I type; it looks like a blizzard outside. I love being inside on days like this, a cup of steaming lemon tea by my side, with nothing planned for the rest of the day except my writing.

A hearty welcome to Kye George Latto, who entered the world at 1:21 PM on Friday, weighing 8 lb, 2 oz....and many congratulations to his parents, Alison and Jeff. Yay, someone else to carry stuff on canoe portages! ;-)

Jeff and I woke up with a lot of sore muscles this morning, the result of a highly active weekend with our nieces. I've posted Parts One and Two of our Deerhurst weekend report, for those interested.



After my sister and her family left Deerhurst yesterday morning, Jeff and I headed over to Canoe Lake to snoop around. The long driveway and parking lot of the Portage Store was thickly layered with snow, but Jeff's SUV didn't have any problems.

Normally bustling with action in the peak summer months, the area was eerily quiet, the snow muffling all sounds. We wandered out on the frozen lake and tested the ice for potential trips later this winter...there's a layer of slush beneath the snow, but a couple weeks more of cold weather should freeze everything up.

While Jeff checked out the cottage with his binoculars, I lay on my back in the middle of the frozen bay. With all the layers I was wearing, I wasn't cold (though I'm sure I would be if I lay there long enough). It was wonderful, just lying there as the snow fell thickly all around me, watching the clouds scudding quickly across the skies, listening to the wind hissing across the ice and in the trees.

Coming back to the city after even a short time at the lake is always such a jolt. Can't wait to get back out there again.



Jeff and I were highly amused by Reid's Damn, It's Good To Be A Man! entry from last Friday. I strongly suspect that the author is a woman. :-) My favourites:

- Chocolate is just another snack.

- You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.

- Everything on your face stays its original color.

- You don't have to clean the apartment if the maid is coming.

- You can quietly watch a game with a buddy for hours without thinking: "He must be mad at me."

- The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.

- Your pals never try to trap you with: "So, notice anything different?"

- One mood, ALL the damn time.

:-)



Blatherpics

	Me at Canoe Lake yesterday morning.
	Gas pump at Canoe Lake, near the Portage Store.
	Jeff checking out the lake.
	This photo gives you an idea of what our driving conditions were like for much of the way home from Algonquin yesterday.

deerhurst (part 2)

I didn't break anything at the ski hill after all. That's probably due in no small part to the fact that I never rented skis. I figured I'd have more fun watching Sara's and Ruth's first time on skis than spend time on skis myself (not to mention $70 on the equipment rental and tow lift tickets, yikes).

I loved watching Jeff teach Sara how to ski for the first time. Jeff used to be a ski instructor. It's one of the things I confess turned me off about him (I was so shallow, I admit it!) way back then...I figured a ski instructor with a sports car had to be a self-absorbed jock. Ok, so I admit I was wrong. :-)

Four-year-old Annie gave it a shot but decided she didn't want to ski after 30 seconds with a pair on. She might change her mind in a year or two, though.



Lots of swimming, tobogganning (with both inner tubes and regular toboggans), skating, snowball fights, and indoor badminton this past weekend. We booked a room similar to the one we had last year (when Ruth fell through the ice on the way across the lake to our cottage, remember?), with two bedrooms, a pull-out couch, a full kitchen, TV with VCR, CD player.

We celebrated Jeff's birthday on the weekend (his real birthday is on Wednesday). Sara made her special "casserole", we decorated our own mini-pizzas, with chocolate cake for dessert.

After dinner, Jeff, Sara and I went night tobogganning. I hadn't been tobogganning in years and was somewhat nervous about doing it at night...but Sara was so enthusiastic that I couldn't say no. When we got to the top of the hill, no one else was there. The inner tubes had all been locked away, but we had brought a plastic toboggan that Jeff and I had bought from Canadian Tire several years ago for lugging stuff across the lake on winter cottage trips.



I peered down the steep hill, trying to make out the bottom in the darkness. Yikes. We were going down THAT?

"Don't be scared, Auntie Debbie!" Sara said. "It'll be SO relaxing, you'll see!" Then she snickered.

Jeff offered to go with me; I sat in front, both our legs sticking out in front. Sara pushed us, with Jeff helping a bit with his arms.

We teetered for a moment at the top. Yes, I was terrified!

And then we were off, speeding down the hill in the night. I screamed all the way down. :-) When we finally stopped, I could hear Sara's delighted laughter from behind as she ran down the hill to catch up with us.

I still remember and savour that delicious sensation of fear and then delight...the hissing of snow and wind, Jeff's arms wrapped tightly around me, hurtling through the darkness.



Blatherpics

	Sara and Annie clowning around for the camera.
	Jeff teaching Sara how to ski for the first time.
	Sara on skis. Jeff has just taught her how to snowplow.
	Jeff giving Ruth and Sara a push-off down the toboggan/tubing hill.