but she's a girl

On Friday night, Lyanne and I went to see the musical, Wicked. Loved the show, and it was great to finally get a chance to hang out with Lyanne. We've been penpals ever since I met her when she was in one of our children's concert audiences; she was only twelve years old at the time. Now she's working on a Master's degree!



Above photo: a chocolatey gift from Lyanne. It's, er, mostly gone now.

*polite burp*



I recently discovered a new culinary delight ... marmite and crunchy peanut butter on nutty bread! The combo may sound strange, but I find that the peanut butter helps cut the bitterness of the marmite, and the resulting taste sensation is quite addictive. To me, anyway. Jeff is massively revolted by the idea.

I found out about this from BSAG. I thanked her as well as asking if she had a name for this particular taste sensation. Her reply was as follows:

"Yay! A convert! Actually, it's quite an achievement acquiring a taste for Marmite if you haven't grown up with it. I usually think that you need to be imprinted on it from a tender age (like ducklings on the mother duck) or it just seems revolting. I don't remember why I tried it the first time. I think I felt that peanut butter on its own is a little bit sweet, and I wanted some savoury, umami taste to tone the sweetness down. For the same reason, I've never understood why peanut butter and jelly (or jam, if you speak English English) is so popular, because they are two very sweet things. I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of it, indeed, a quick google found a posting on the official Marmite forum about the combination. I also don't have a name for it, and just prosaically call it 'peanut butter and Marmite'. I'd call it 'black and tan' if that wasn't already a name for a mixture of stout and porter, and a rather nasty British paramilitary unit that did some pretty horrible things in Ireland in the 1920s."

But She's A Girl is one of my favorite blogs these days. I love the author's writing style, she writes about interesting things, and I was especially intrigued by her About page; we seem to be quite similar in some ways. I found out about this blog from Jeff, who is also a fan of BSAG.

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taunting squirrels

I was upstairs a few minutes ago, making myself a snack of wonderfully smelly natto and rice in the kitchen, when I noticed a black squirrel balanced precariously on top of my Squirrelbuster bird feeder, vainly trying to gnaw through the metal hook at the top of the feeder.

(Pause)

BWAHAHA!!!

Yes, I know that I am tempting the wrath of the Squirrel Liberation Front again, but life isn't worth living without a little risk, is it?



Above: some books I've recently read. I especially enjoyed both Charmed Life by Diane Wynne Jones and Millicent Minn by Lisa Yee. I LOVED Lisa Yee's main character.

Will Write For Chocolate had been updated. Click the image below for a larger version.



The GAfilk programming schedule has been posted online. Our concert is at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday. The concom was kind enough to rearrange the schedule so that we didn't have to perform right after the banquet so that Jodi, who also sings with the GAfilk house band, gets a break from singing. I was delighted to see that our friends Graham and Becca Leathers are doing the Concom's Choice concert and that Mark Osier's doing a dance workshop again this year!

Speaking of Becca, here is a photo of her crocheted Christmas ornament for the exchange this year:



Like I said in an earlier Blathering, this seems like complicated magic to me.

Links O' The Day:

More proof that squirrels are starting to take over the world! (Thanks to Ray for the link)

Margaret Atwood's cartoons: I had no idea that this Canadian author was a closet cartoonist! (Thanks to Booklust for the link)



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Urban Tapestry recording session

Above: homemade Christmas ornament from Allison! It was part of the Christmas ornament exchange I participated in this year.

If you're having trouble sending to my Inkygirl.com e-mail address, please do re-send to my Gmail address and let me know you had problems. Thanks!

Allison, Jodi and I had a great Urban Tapestry practice yesterday afternoon at my place; we blitzed through a bunch of songs, recording them for a special Urban Tapestry "Live From Debbie's Living Room" CD (which will NOT be commercially released) to be donated to the Interfilk auction at GAfilk and a few other conventions. Funds from the GAfilk donation will be used to help bring n'Early Music Consort to FilKONtario. For more info about this filk community effort, please see this page.


Photo by Kirstin Tanger.

None of the sixteen (16!) songs below have ever appeared on our CDs before:

Come Down To GAfilk: I wrote this with help from Matt Leger, David Weingart, Bill Roper, Scott Snyder, April Leake, Larissa March, Melissa Glasser, Margaret Middleton, Annie Walker, Bill Sutton, Rob Wynne, Gary McGath, Ellen McMicking D.I., Gary Ehrlich, Alan Thiesen, Emily Raftery, Phil Parker, Andrea Dale, Erica Neely, Marilisa Valtazanou, Mary Bertke, Sherman Dorn, Michelle Dockrey, Mary Crowell, Allison Durno and Jodi Krangle.

Paper Boats: A beautiful song that Eva Van Daele-Hunt (of Summer and Fall, who are Interfilk guests at GAfilk) wrote. Eva says she was inspired to write this song after listening to our version (the original was by Ookla The Mok) of "Tiberius Rising," especially the line about paper boats.

Hey, J.K.!: All of us brainstormed on the lyrics for this musical plea to J.K. Rowling, then I wrote the music. Lots of fun to perform.

Sing With Me: I wrote this after OVFF a few months ago, with some help from Dave Clement. "Sing with me, let the circle take you home."

Livejournal Shanty: A song by Brooke Lunderville. We identify way too much with this. :-)

I'm Gonna Build A Rocket Ship: My first kids' song! Also the first song on which I sing lead all the way through. *gulp*


Photo by Paul Estin.

Paul Stanley Kwinn: Our tribute to one of our favourite people in filk. Heh.

Bilbo's Last Song: Allison found this on the BBC radio drama of "Lord of the Rings." We first worked this up for a Tolkien convention several years ago.

Another Round: We first covered this wonderful round by Juliane Hönisch at Filkcontinental last year.

Into The West: Our cover of the song from the Lord of the Rings movie.

All The Pretty Little Ponies: Our cover of the Kenny Loggins song.

Wo Ist Der Bahnhof?: I wrote this in honour of our Filkcontinental visit.


Photo by Kirstin Tanger.

Ode To Kathleen Sloan: A song I wrote for Kathleen Sloan in revenge for a certain Interfilk item she donated years ago.

Me And Babylon Five: My attempt to write a song about a television series I've never watched.

Good Riddance: Our cover of a Green Day song!

The Question: My Lord of the Rings song addressing a very important issue.

The CD also includes brief spoken introductions to each song talking about where the song came from, inspirations, etc. We'll also be including lyrics/chords for all our songs on the CD, hopefully some of the covers as well (once we get permission).

This was another opportunity for me to play around with my home recording studio gear, and it was a good learning experience. I'm gradually getting better; Allison & Jodi are very patient with me. :-) I'm finding it a challenge to be managing the recording equipment AND performing; I definitely need more practice. I also REALLY need one more microphone; we'll be buying one with UT funds after GAfilk, I think.

Anyway, the CD was fun to make ... we basically just sat around my living room and played through one song after another. See Allison's LJ report.

Less than one month to GAfilk, woohoo!

Below: quilted Christmas ornament from Margaret M.:

Link O' The Day (courtesy Ray)

Winterbells Christmas game




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Something called the Internet

Above: This year, the shrubby vine-like plant growing along the front of the house burst forth with these seed pods. Does anyone know what type of plant this is?

Most of my Christmas shopping is done, unbelieveably. I've been leaving it later and later in recent years, but this time I smartened up and did most of it online. I purposely left a few gifts to buy so I can enjoy the process of doing it in person, rather than try to do it in a panic at the last minute.

SURVEY: What kind of holiday shopper are you? Do you buy gifts way in advance, or even throughout the year? A few weeks before? Last-minute?

Our tree is up and decorated with homemade ornaments from friends and family as well as ornaments from our various travels. Christmas music is playing in the background (one of our friend Parki's custom CDs), lights are twinkling on our tree. Writingstuff is going well. I went to see a chick flick with my sister last night; I have the coolest sister in the world. Jeff and I had breakfast in the neighbourhood this morning, then browsed some of the local shops. Allison and Jodi are coming over tomorrow for an Urban Tapestry practice.

I feel very lucky to have the husband, family and friends that I do.



Above: Christmas ornament from Roberta. Yay for penguins!

Links O' The Day

CBC News report from the early 1990's about something called "Internet". Pretty hilarious, considering that the Web's a household word nowadays. (Thanks to Lyanne for the link)

The world's best ukelele player. The guy in this amazing video is Jake Shimabukuro. (Thanks to Jodi for the link)

Dilbert and squirrels. Ha, I KNEW squirrels were taking over the world! (Thanks to Gary McGath for the link)

Speaking of squirrels, here's a wonderful homemade squirrel ornament that Michelle Dockrey made for me:





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Craftiness and Hooking Tanya

I mentioned a while back that I was envious of friends with needlework skills. One of these is Beckett Gladney, and I just received a Christmas package from her that contains ample reason for my envy! Check out the ultra-cool writer's mitts she hand-knit for me (photo above)!!! I LOVE these! They'll be also handy in my office when it gets a bit chilly, AND for cool weather flute playing. :-)

She also sent me a homemade Christmas ornament for our tree:



Knitting and crocheting have always seemed like magic to me. You start out with a single piece of wool...and somehow some people manage to turn them into intricate things.

Anyway, Beckett's package also contained some of my favourite of her photos as well as Lindor chocolate balls (I lOOOOOOVE Lindor chocolate balls).

THANK YOU, BECKETT!

Speaking of impressive crafting skills, check out Judith's contribution to the Xmas Ornament Craft Exchange this year:



More ornaments from the exchange posted in future Blatherings.

Link O' The Day

I've been really enjoying Tanya Huff's reports on her trips out to Vancouver for the shooting of the tv series adaptation of her Blood books, but I especially enjoyed the most recent post (with photos!!) where Tanya gets to play a hooker on one episode. :-)



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