Dave Clement on CBC

Hey, my friend Dave was on CBC's "LivingWinnipeg" show! I'm not sure how long the clip will be up, but you can find the segment on Dave Clement's house concerts at the Living Winnipeg site right now. Dave's segment is first, after the intro.

I've ordered my MOO MiniCards; I can't wait until they arrive! Supposedly in about 10 days, according to the site. My friends Allison and Ray showed me samples they had, and I was impressed by the quality. I'm going to use mine as mini-bookmarks which double as business cards. I decided on 20 designs, 5 cards each. Here are a few of the images I used:













On the reverse side of each card, I have my Flickr user icon (from a photo by Beckett Gladney), my name, e-mail, P.O. Box address, and my Inkygirl site and URL.

Links O' The Day

What I Did Over Christmas Vacation: a scale replica of the battle of Helms Deep...in candy! (Thanks to Dave Clement for the link)

FlipClips: turn your digital video into a flip book.

The Scribbler: VERY cool. Draw a simple line drawing, hit "DONE DRAWING," and watch the magic. Sadly, you can't save your creations.





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Housefilk and engagements

Tom and Sue at Stonehenge, where Tom proposed!

Thanks to Jane and Phil for hosting a fun housefilk yesterday.



For those not familiar with the concept of a housefilk: it's basically a music party. Some housefilks are more about hanging out and chatting, with some casual music thrown in here and there. The housefilk at Jane's and Phil's was more structured: for most of the afternoon, the circle was strict "Song Sequitur," a system recently popular in some West Coast music circles.

You go around the circle, and each person can only sing a song if it connects with the previous song somehow, but you can't use the same type of connection as the previous person. I'm not a huge fan of bardic though I can see some of the advantages (see my explanation of the difference between "bardic" and "chaos" circles).



One advantage of bardic circles, for example, is that everyone gets a turn; it's easier for filkers who are more shy or less confident to break in. My only quibble with the Song Sequitur system is that the "must have a connection" aspect means you can't really pick a song until AFTER you've heard the person before you perform their song. Which usually means that (1) you're mighty distracted while that person is performing because you're trying to figure out what to play next OR (2) there's a long gap after the song while you try to figure out what to play next.



Happily, Jane was very easygoing about the connection rule, so some of us were picking the songs we WANTED to play and then finding SOME connection, no matter how tenuous ("oh! that song used a C chord! so does the song I'm going to play!"). :-)

Anyway, it was a fun experiment. Though I'm still more of a fan of casual / unstructured housefilks, I'm glad I went this time to see what the whole Song Sequitur thing was about. Especially since I found out that TOM JEFFERS AND SUE POSTERARO are engaged to be married!!!! He proposed to her at Stonehenge during their UK trip; we toasted the happy couple with champagne. For those that don't know, Tom recently moved to Toronto from Winnipeg to be with Sue, whom he met at filk conventions.



Another highlight of the day for me: seeing Karen Linsley sing "Road To Roswell" and "I Am Stardust" (with Judith accompanying). Both are gorgeous songs; you can hear a soundclip from "Road To Roswell" on Karen's CDBaby page (if you listen to the "Nobody Knows (That I'm Really An Alien)" soundclip on that page, by the way, you'll hear my flute. :-)

"I Am Stardust" has always been one of my favourite filk songs ever. Unfortunately I couldn't find a soundclip online of Karen & Lloyd performing the song, but you can hear a sample of my music group performing it in concert here (track 11). It was written by our friend Lloyd Landa, who died in 2000, and the music and lyrics are heartbreakingly beautiful:

I'm every mote of dust
in a ray of summer sun,
Every shining point of light
in the winter night above
I'm inside the very heart of you
Yet galaxies away
I am stardust, stardust
Looking for a home.



You can see more of the photos I took at the housefilk in my Flickr set. And thanks again, Jane and Phil!

Small indulgences

A toast to small indulgences! You know, those mini-treats (edible and otherwise) that may not look like much, but bring much pleasure. Just a few of my current personal small indulgences:

- A freshly sharpened HB pencil. I tend to use mechanical pencils because I'm too lazy, but I still get a real pleasure in just LOOKING at a cup of sharp pencils. Must be some weirdo writer thing, I'm sure.

- A single, perfect strawberry. If it's dipped in good quality dark chocolate, all the better.



- Fragrance of fresh herbs. I would far rather have a small vase of freshly picked basil sitting on the kitchen windowsill than daisies. Right now, my rosemary plant (brought in from the garden over winter) is my sole "fresh herb" indulgence, other than the times I occasionally splurge on store-bought fresh herbs for a special dish.

- Real maple syrup on a very small dish vanilla bean ice cream.

- MightyLeaf Tea: Tea that looks as good as it tastes. Sounds like a corny ad, but it's absolutely true. The tea bags cost more than regular tea, but they're SO GORGEOUS to look at. I save them for guests and for when I feel like a Small Indulgence.

- Eszet from Eva Wiest! She sent some for each of Jodi, Allison and me. She told us about this fascinating treat in Atlanta while we stayed at the Suttons: very thin slices of chocolate that you put on bread. I had some with breakfast this morning:



Oh my, I would be SO in trouble if Eszet was easily available in Toronto.

- Dufflet Little All Canadian Maple Walnut Butter Cookies! I recently discovered these while shopping for dinner ingredients on Valentine's Day:



Holy cow, these are sooo good. Rich enough, too, that I can limit myself to one (okay, maybe two) of these mouth-watering mini-cookies with a cup of tea for an afternoon treat. I'm not so good with chocolate bars -- Crystal and Eva gave me some wonderful chocolate at GAfilk that included a couple of chocolate bars (very thin layer of biscuit, jam, and chocolate) that I liked WAY too much and had utterly no willpower whatsoever when it came to eating one or two small pieces at a time. And none of the mini Ritter Sport bars that Franklin gave me lasted very long (especially the one with Pop Rocks! how cool is THAT?).



Speaking of Eva and Crystal, a while back I talked about writing The Chocolate Song specifically for Urban Tapestry and Summer and Fall to perform at GAfilk. Eva and Crystal were kind enough to not only learn vocal parts but also (with Eva's husband, Rafael) come up with beautiful instrumentals for the song. Here is Crystal's clarinet part, for example:



And for those who missed it, here is the sheet music for Eva's and Crystal's vocal parts plus the transcription of Eva's metallophone part.

Links O' The Day

The Book: funny video. (thanks to Ruth for the link)

ONE: A Space Odyssey: 2001 The Space Odyssey in 1 minute and 22 seconds, with Lego! (thanks to Jeff for the link)

MOO MiniCards: these cute MiniCards look very cool, and I am SOOOO tempted; I just wish they were cheaper...these would be a medium indulgence rather than a small indulgence. :-) 100 cards for $19.99 (shipped from the UK). You can upload the images you want printed from Flickr. The MiniCards are 28mm x 70mm, and printed with full colour on both sides on heavy paper with a satin finish. *drool* (Thanks to Ray for the link)


My friend Ray.




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I have the best neighbours

Happy birthday to my friends Beckett and Lissa today!

No one can complain about winter in Toronto being too warm this year. :-) Looking at the snow-covered garden reminds me of when Jeff and I were househunting a couple of years ago. We fell in love with this house right away but the garden was buried under snow at the time, so we only had a slightly blurry photo of what it would look like. That first spring was like Christmas day over and over again as the snow gradually melted away and we got to see what else came with the house.



It's been nearly two years since we got possession of the house. I still think of it as a new house sometimes, mainly because we still haven't finished unpacking. :-D I remember the first day we officially had the house...Jeff and I arrived that morning to find an alarming scene: yellow construction tape all around the house, and an Order To Comply sign up on our front door!

Click for larger image:


As we read the sign, we gradually clued into the fact that this was a practical joke by our friend Walter (who is an engineer, as some of you know by now). Hmmm. This combined with the GAfilk conspiracy fuels the fire that is a Need To Get Back At Walter somehow. Probably not at FKO, because he'll be expecting it. It may be hours, days, years...I want my dear friend to be looking over his shoulder, wondering if I'm there. You wait, Walter. I'm coming for you when you LEAST EXPECT IT.

(bwa ha ha!)

Ahem.

Back to the house...

Both Jeff and I fall in love with the house and the neighbourhood more and more as time goes on. We have the GREATEST neighbours; Jeff and I were talking about this last night, in fact, how lucky we are. I've heard so many Neighbour From Hell stories from other people. Now we're worried about what happens when anyone moves away...what happens if we get a Bad Neighbour?!? Then again, I'm sure our neighbours went through the same worries when Jeff and I moved in, especially with all the kids (13 of them!) in our circle.

Anyway, we've decided that no one's allowed to move away. Ever.

:-)



So I'm in a dilemma about the Harry Potter book. Should I pre-order and hope it arrives on time, or stand in line on launch night? I had a bad experience pre-ordering a Harry Potter before, though I did end up getting it for free because of the "on time" guarantee. This time I've noticed that they're not making a guarantee.

The advantage of pre-ordering is that it's cheaper and comes to my door. The advantage of standing in line is because it'll be fun to be waiting with other avid Harry Potter fans and be able to rush home and read it right away if I want to. Which I won't, of course...being a morning person, I'll just crash as soon as I get home.

Links O' The Day

I'm a Southpark character!: My friend Reid turned some of his friends and family into Southpark characters. My favourites are Jeff (I couldn't stop giggling because it's SO Jeff) and my friend Andy (this is soooo Andy!). And Reid looks uncannily like himself.

Jedi Squirrels from Miss Snark.





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Valentine's Day

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated; click the above image for a bigger version. Accompanying column topic: "Useful software for writers: survey results (part 1)"

My children's book illustrator/writer sister Ruth gave several workshops at Allison's school yesterday; do check out Allison's report on the event. I have yet to see Ruth do a workshop myself, so I'm jealous!

So today is Valentine's Day. According to this somewhat disorganized Wikipedia entry, the day was named after two men, both Christian martyrs named Valentine. According to that entry, there's been a recent trend to also refer to Feb. 14th as Singles Awareness Day. Check out the somewhat scary picture on that last page ("Couples Go Die!").

Today's XKCD Valentine's comic SO summarizes my feelings on Valentine's Day this year.





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