Sandwiches and pillow fights

I have a review of Jake's Sandwiches up at blogTO. Jake's is one of my favourite sandwich shops in Toronto; check out the review for a description.

I love eating sandwiches, but hate making them. Jeff enjoys doing both, so that works out well for me. :-)

SANDWICH SURVEY:

What are your favorite sandwiches? Any tips on making a good sandwich?

My favourites include:

Jeff's Egg Sandwiches

Parki's Red Pepper and Goat Cheese Sandwiches


I don't tend to be a sandwich snob as long as it's made with fresh ingredients. What I can't stand: the compressed, cardboard-like sandwich imitations you often find in coffee shops and corner grocery stores. Double ugh.

I'd have egg salad sandwiches more often if it wasn't so much hassle to make.

What about the rest of you?

LOVED reading your responses to my font/typeface geek survey. Holy toledo, I had no idea there were so many other typeface geeks out there! :-D I found the feedback so fascinating that I'm going to have to write up some of your responses in an upcoming Blathering.

Had a good practice with Allison and Jodi last night, starting with our usual rousing pillow fight. For more pics, please see Allison's Livejournal report. We have a house concert coming up in Rochester on Saturday, September 22nd, and are also looking forward to hanging out with our Rochester area friends.



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Chocolate, ice cream, sushi and cat faces

I forgot to mention that Will Write For Chocolate has been updated. If you missed the strip before this one, you should read it first else you'll be confused.



Above: one of the photos I took for my blogTO review of Greg's Ice Cream, which is now online. Jeff and I had one of our first official "dates" at Greg's, many years ago. :-)



I met Allison and Jodi in Richmond Hill for sushi and a practice. We've been going to Senbazaru for years and if the owner's there, he always greets us and knows what I usually order to start (hot sake and edamame :-).

After checking out Allison's new laptop, we fine-tuned our concert playlist and ran through a bunch of the songs for a house concert in Rochester on September 22. If you're interested in attending, please do contact John Hall to reserve a seat and for information (first-come, first-serve). It will be the last time that we'll be performing this year. Looks like FilKONtario will be the ONLY filk convention next year that all three of us will be attending. We'll likely be in open filk, but have no formal performance commitments.



Allison's and John's cat, Edward, willingly posed for me (I brought my new camera, of course) but I found it a challenge to take a good photo of a black cat -- the black really threw off the automatic exposure, so I had to do some manual tweaking.

I'm allergic to cats, but I still find them fascinating. What I find even more fascinating, however, are cat owners. At one point Edward was just lying on the floor, watching us. I asked Allison and John if they could tell his mood, and both of them (without hesitation) said that he wasn't totally relaxed, that he was somewhat wary.



So my question to you cat owners out there is this: can you honestly tell what your cats are feeling all the time? Or are you just making stuff up to freak out us non-cat people?!? :-D

Speaking of cats, I have to admit I missed Nova...Allison's other cat had to be put down recently; Nova was around for Urban Tapestry practices for many years. Beckett Gladney drew her on the cover of our Sushi and High Tea CD:


Art ©Beckett Gladney.



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Pegasus Award Nomination

The 2007 ballot for the Pegasus Awards has been announced, and I'm both tickled and honoured to have been nominated for the Best Writer/Composer category.



Those nominated in this category are supposed to choose a representative song; I've chosen "Homecoming" (my song based on Ray Bradbury's short story, "The Rocket Man") because of all the songs I've written, it's my personal favourite. You can hear a sample from a live recording by Urban Tapestry (from a 2002 California concert, included on our Sushi and High Tea CD) by clicking on "Listen to it" beside my name on the final ballot page. Sadly, we can't perform this anymore because I haven't been able to fingerpick properly since my tendinitis episode. :-( You can find the lyrics and chords to "Homecoming" here.



I feel especially honoured because of the others nominated in the category:

Dr. Mary Crowell (from Alabama): I raved about her new album "Courting My Muse" in Blatherings recently. Those who have attended GAfilk in recent years have been lucky enough to hear Mary perform with "Play It With Moxie," GAfilk's fabulous band. Lord of the Rings fans should check out Mary's MySpace page, where you can hear "Legolas" in its entirety. Mary also performs with Three Weird Sisters with Gwen Knighton, Brenda Sutton and Teresa Powell.

Bob Kanefsky (California): His parodies are brilliant, and Urban Tapestry was delighted when he parodied Jodi's song, "The Lady." :-) Do check out his Songworm site, where he not only has an impeccably organized database of his parodies, but also interesting essays.

Ben Newman (Massachusetts) is a prolific writer who has written over 130 songs about a wide range of topics. One of the great things about the whole Pegasus Award process is that it helps people find out about songs and filkers. When I followed the link from Ben's Pegasus bio page to his Web site, I was floored by the number of songs he has listed, many with MP3 samples.

Talis Kimberley (UK): I'm a big Talis Kimberley fan and LOVE her songs and songwriting. X Libris (a sultry song about books) won a Pegasus for Best Torch Song last year. Her song "Any Kind Of Light" (aka "Lights") is one of the most romantic songs I've ever heard. My very favourite Talis song (one of my favourite songs ever, really) is "Death Danced At My Party", which almost always makes me cry. You can read the lyrics to both in her online songbook. You can hear some more samples on the CD Baby page for her Archetype Cafe CD.



If you're not familiar with filk, I encourage you to visit the 2007 Pegasus Final Ballot page to hear a sampling of filk music in all the different categories. If you're a filker, I especially encourage you to listen to the MP3s of filkers you're not familiar with; I always find that this is a great way to discover new music.

A final note: I know I have some loyal readers out there who may want to vote for me solely because they like Blatherings or Inkygirl or another of my current or past projects. PLEASE DON'T. I appreciate the support, but please only vote if you're a member of the filk community.

By the way, I was highly amused to see that both "Home" (by Rand & Adam) and "Go Home" (by Mich & Marilisa) were nominated for the "Best Song Of Home" category...this must be the first time that both a song AND its parody were nominated for the same category. :-D

Many thanks to the Pegasus Awards Committee for all their hard work in making the Awards possible.





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14 years of Urban Tapestry

Met Allison and Jodi in Newmarket for an Urban Tapestry practice yesterday, going over some repertoire in prep for a Rochester house concert next month. Of course I had to take along my new camera. :-)



We don't tend to get together for practices anymore unless we have an upcoming performance, mainly because of geography; we all live about 1-1.5 hours away from each other (an hour on the Toronto and North York transit, that is).



Karma points to anyone out there who can guess what Urban Tapestry song this flute part was written for:



Hint: we recorded it on our first album in 1994.

Geez. Sometimes I still have trouble believing that Urban Tapestry has been together for FOURTEEN YEARS (since 1993). Next year will be our 15th anniversary as a group! My disbelief isn't because we've stayed together for so long but rather that it doesn't really seem like that long.

Seems like only yesterday that we were timidly approaching Dave Clement ('cuz he's sooooooo intimidating, you know) about whether we could have a concert at Conadian in Winnipeg.



While I was at the cottage, I found some early song lyric notes for "Duct Tape Man" in a pile of old papers:



I ended up dedicating it to the sound engineer of our second album, Dave Goulden, after he used duct tape on my mouth when I wouldn't keep quiet during a recording session. :-D

I recently got back in contact with Dave through Facebook. You can find his blog at Davidgoulden.net.

Facebook also got me in contact with Shane McEwan again, someone I met while doing my Waiting For Frodo comic strip:



Here's a letter I got from Rebecca at Weta Digital (who did the special effects for the Lord of the Rings movies) back then:

"Your strip caused much hilarity in the office today (I sit next to Shane, who mailed you a while ago). I thought that you might like a photo of Shane with the rest of the crew. :-) Sorry about the image quality. I was in a hurry and couldn't be bothered cleaning the scanner. :-) Cheers -rebecca -ps- Shane is the one at the right hand side of the photo in the yellow shirt. I'm the girl in the black t-shirt at the front. Otherwise, on top of the renderwall there's Tomek (at the front) and Ben (at the back). Paul is standing next to me and Nik is sitting behind him. James is looking very cool in his sunglasses and orange shirt, and Cam is standing on a box behind him. Our team is bigger these days, but this is the most recent photo. :-)"

Every time I saw the movies in the theatre, I always clapped when Shane's name came up during the credits at the end. :-)

I eventually put Shane in the comic strip:



You can now find Shane at OzPod and Virtual Doughnutland.




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Courting My Muse

The drugs worked; I actually slept through the night without a coughing fit, for the first time in almost a week and a half. Yay for drugs!



I am feeling a tad overwhelmed by all the work and e-mail I need to catch up on, however, so am going to be opting out of regular Blatherings for the next couple of weeks.

Something that is helping to keep me sane, though: yay, my copy of Mary Crowell's new CD, Courting My Muse recently arrived!

This is a fantastic CD. Truly. I've always loved Mary's sultry voice and performance style (ah, the way she caresses those keys!). The songs on this album are polished and professional yet retain their emotional core -- something that doesn't always happen when performers take their music into the recording studio.

The CD also showcases a nice range of Mary's songs, from the heartbreakingly beautiful ("Two Hours Away") and soulful to playful ("Magnus Retail") and smoky-sultry. Lord of the Rings fans will LOVE "Legolas." :-)

The instrumentals on the entire CD are excellent, and wonderfully arranged. It's clear that a lot of work went into this project: every song, every instrumental, every NOTE contributes to the whole. There is no filler on this album.



I love all the tracks on this CD but if pressed for a favourite, I'd have to pick "Get Down Mama." Wow...amazing arrangement. My favourite melody: "Two Hours Away." But I reserve the right to change my mind multiple times since I anticipate listening to this CD way too much in the next while. :-)

You can hear samples from all the songs on CD Baby. You can find out more about Mary Crowell and her upcoming gigs at her Web site (including lyrics)







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