Comixtalk, NanoWrimo, and Head-smashed-in (trip report part 2)

Check out Comixtalk; I did the header graphic for this month's issue. In case you're not familiar with this zine, Comixtalk is a comics blog with tons of great webcomic news, articles, interviews and other comic-related info. For you writers out there, it's also a paying market.

Plus NaNoWriMo has started, which means my comics should start appearing today. They hadn't updated the comics area when I checked just now, but hopefully soon!



Enjoyed trick-or-treating with my nieces yesterday, though there seemed to fewer trick-or-treaters out than usual. What about the rest of you? Same as last year? Less? More? I'm curious. Anyway, I was highly amused by the toothbrush that ended up in the candy somehow, imprinted with the name and phone number of a local dentist. Brilliant marketing strategy. :-)

I also noticed that the Halloween candy I never did like as a kid is still in use:



But back to my Alberta visit...



After 20 degrees Celsius weather in Toronto, I went to Calgary and woke up to -5 deg. temperatures the first morning! Cathy had to scrape ice and snow off her car before we set off. I was glad I brought my winter gear.



Ever since reading Parki's trip report from his cross-Canada motorcycle adventure, I've wanted to see Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump near Fort Macleod, Alberta (mainly because of the name, I guiltily confess). Cathy read that Blathering and asked me if I wanted to go see it.

The buffalo jump was used for thousands of years by the aboriginal plains people to kill buffalo by driving them off the 10 metre high cliff. The somewhat gruesome name, however, comes from a legend that a young Blackfoot wanted to watch the buffalo jumping off the cliff from below but got accidentally crushed by them instead.

Anyway, we had a wonderful walk outdoors plus the museum was fascinating, with lots of interesting exhibits and info.



The scenery on our drives and walks was stunning. Toronto has no mountains, and I spent most of the trip ooo-ing and aaah-ing over the incredible landscape. Right now I'm using the photo at the top of this Blathering and the one below as my desktop pictures:



Because of the mountain landscapes, I opted to use my Canon 17-85 lens as my walkaround but switched to the Sigma 30/1.4 in the evenings. All the Alberta scenery shots in this Blathering were taken with the Canon lens. The candy shots and the photo of Cathy at the bottom were taken with my Sigma.

We even saw some elk by the side of the road:



More tomorrow.

Links O' The Day

The Super-est: Cartoon "war." I was SO love to participate in something like this.

Got a Spare Head Lying Around? Put it to Good Use! (The Great Detachable-Head Website Showdown!)



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Halloween Blather

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated.

I'll continue with my Alberta trip report later this week, but here are some Halloween-themed pics and cartoons:



Above: Our pumpkin was too small to carve, so I used a Sharpie to decorate it instead. I've been noticing some very cool pumpkin carvings in my Flickr friends' list. Here are just a few:

Cats In The Window and Tree of Life and Dragon (Beckett)

Peter's Hallowe'en effort -- Shub Pumpkinoth, the Thing with a Thousand Eyes. (Leslie)

Pumpkin scream (Thomas says his neighbour carved this)

Cool split-face and a pirate ship (Carrie)



If you have a pumpkin carving or craft to share, feel free to post the URL to your photo!

Link O' The Day

Fat squirrel trapped behind bars: A grey squirrel had to be rescued from a bird feeder as it had gorged on so many nuts it could not squeeze back out through the bars. HAHAHA! (Thanks to Martin GK for the link)





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10 Things I Love About My Friend Cathy

Back from Alberta. The Air Canada flight there and back was pretty painless. Both flights had entertainment centres built into the back of each seat, where you could choose from a range of movies, tv shows, documentaries, games and audio channels. I was delighted by Once, a 2006 Irish movie that apparently got rave reviews at Sundance. It had romance, songwriting, and Irish accents...three of my favourite movie elements. The male lead, Glen Hansard, looked vaguely familiar to me and when I got home I found out why: he played one of the guitarists in The Commitments.



It was wonderful to see my friend Cathy again. As I've mentioned before, outside of family, Cathy's known me longer than anyone. I'll be posting more about my trip in upcoming Blatherings, but for now I'd like to post:

10 Things I Love About My Friend Cathy

Her laughter. She finds joy in so many things, which is one of the many reasons I love traveling with her.

She's an adventurous eater, willing to try almost anything.

Her imaginary rabbit, Buster. Ok, so maybe he's a real rabbit (a hare, actually) who supposedly frequents her backyard. But I never saw him during my visit despite my eager searching, so I've decided that Cathy's made him up. Like Harvey, except Buster is cuter and lives in Calgary.

Her love of colour. I envy her red couch and armchair, a wonderful splash of vibrant colour in her living room. I want to transport the armchair (the couch wouldn't fit) into my home office.



She's brave. When her company offered her a position out in the Calgary office, she decided to take it even though she didn't know many people out there. Her attitude: "It'll be an adventure!"

Her dancing. She's taken all kinds of dancing lessons (I hoped to get a merengue lesson during my visit but we ran out of time) and has participated in public historic dancing exhibits at Old Fort York in Toronto.

When she did move to Calgary, she had fun exploring the culture (I think she always had a little bit of cowgirl in her soul whether she knew it or not). Cowboy boots and hats, country music, horseback riding, the Calgary Stampede...she's embraced it all.

Her love of all things Jane Austen. Not surprisingly, she's a member of the Jane Austen Society. On my last visit, she got me hooked on the A&E version of Pride & Prejudice.

She's a great cook. On my first evening, she made coq au vin. On her BIRTHDAY. Yes, I felt guilty but I still enjoyed dinner, which was delicious!



Her love of travel. She's been to so many places and always seems to be planning another trip. She's going on an African safari with another friend next year. She's also not afraid of traveling alone. Which brings me to the next thing I love about her...

She's independent. She has no problems seeing things or doing things by herself.

She's a good friend. Not only a great listener but also confides, and we've taken turns supporting each other. Balanced friendships are a rare animal, in my experience, because it takes an enormous amount of trust for both people to confide equally, and I value Cathy's friendship all that more as a result.

There are so many more things I love about Cathy, but I have to unpack and catch up with work. :-) More about my Alberta trip later this week.





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Looking for voice-over talent?

I've always been in awe of my multi-talented friend and music partner, Jodi Krangle. So many people complain about their work but don't do anything about it. Unhappy in her old job when I first met her many years ago, Jodi has worked very hard to learn the skills she needed to get to where she is today.

In addition to being the creator and maintainer of the fabulous songwriting resource, The Muse's Muse and being an expert at Internet promotion, Jodi is also a wonderful singer and songwriter with a bunch of Pegasus Awards and Award nominations including a Best Song award for The Lady.

Anyway, Jodi is now doing voice-over work. If you (or anyone you know) are looking for voice talent for commercials, story readings/author promotion, documentaries, podcasts, training videos, station ids, telephone answering systems, cartoons, jingles, etc., you should check out her voice-over info and demo page.

After talking to Jodi about her voice-over work, I've grown a lot more conscious of the voice talents I hear in commercials and other venues. I'm especially picky about voices when I'm listening to an audiobook; the wrong type of voice can really interfere with my enjoyment of the story. I also find that if a voice is TOO recognizable, it can also interfere. As much as I adore Patrick Stewart's voice, whenever I hear him narrating a documentary I can't help but immediately think, "Hey! What's Captain Picard doing here?"

So I'm curious about the rest of you: how conscious are YOU of voice-over talent? And who are your favourite voices?

Anyway, visit Jodi's new voice-over talent page to hear her demos, and please do spread the word to anyone you think might be hiring voice talent.

I'm heading off to Calgary to visit my friend Cathy this week, so will be mostly offline until next Monday. Outside of family, Cathy's known me longer than any of my other friends. She moved out to Calgary a while back, and I've missed her a great deal. I've been out to visit her once before (see photo below); this time, we're planning to do more hiking in the mountains.

Have a great week, everyone!

Links O' The Day

Flaming squirrel ignites car in Bayonne: thanks to Joey Shoji for the link.

Top Lakeland restaurant serves up Peking duck-style squirrel pancakes: thanks to Dave Weingart for the link. His subject header read "Soylent Green is Squirrel!" :-D






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Filkcontinental, friends and chocolate

Tom, Sue, Allison, John and Jodi came over for dinner yesterday. Tom and Sue were recently at Filkcontinental in Germany, where Tom and Dave were Guests of Honour, and Heather Dale was Special Guest.

It was wonderful to catch up as well as hear about the convention; it sounds as if they had a fantastic time. We also got to watch some video that Tom and Sue had shot during the trip, including Playing Rapunzel's concert at the convention:



*swoon*

Oh wait, where was I? Ah yes, back to Filkcontinental...

We also got to see excerpts of Dandelion Wine's concert (there wasn't time to see the whole thing); I wish I had been there in person! And it was SO cool to hear the audience singing along on "The Lady." If you're not familiar with this song, you can hear an excerpt on Urban Tapestry's MySpace page; Dave and Tom both play instrumentals on this recorded track, along with fellow Winnipegger Kylea Fulton on whistle.

I also got to hear Dave and Tom perform a new song in their concert that was mostly in German. As I listened, trying to see how much I could understand, I suddenly HEARD MY NAME in the song(!). Tom told me that Dave wrote it, but it's clear to me that both of them are to blame (yes, I will have my revenge). I'm not fluent in German, but I suspect it was inspired by this song. In "Wo Ist Der Bahnhof," I wrote everything in English except the chorus (which means "Where is the train station?"). In Dave's song, everything was in German except for the chorus. Hm...and someone must have helped them translate it, too, which means I have someone else upon whom to wreak vengeance...

(insert maniacal cackling here)



We also enjoyed listening to Franklin Gunkelmann's new CD "Seven of Mine." Love the cover, and Franklin looks great as a Borg.



Speaking of our sweet German pal, he sent us chocolate! Here's mine (he heard that I'm supposed to watch my blood sugar levels, so he sent sugar-free):



Tom and Sue came bearing other gifts as well, like this Criminal Squirrel mug:



which goes nicely with my squirrel mug from Heather Borean:




Heh. I guess I don't do a great job at hiding my squirrel resentment, do I? :-D

They also brought a yummy Dave Clement gift from his last visit:



And a wonderful drawing by Kamen (her friend Shae helped, I believe) of Urban Tapestry as Elfquest characters. I had seen the image on Allison's LJ; it's very cool to finally see the original:



In the photo, you can also see one of my new office additions: a long metallic cord with tiny magnets. It's a great way to display photos and pictures! It's hanging up beside my magnetic wall.

Kamen also sent some scrumptious-sounding Earl Grey Dolfin Dark Chocolate:



*Sabber* (German = "drool")

We also enjoyed seeing some video footage from when Franklin took Tom and Sue to the Rittersport Factory (drool) and Anke took them sightseeing. Watching the Filkcontinental footage made me all nostalgic. And all that more grateful for the opportunity that we had in going to that convention. The only downside: not being able to see our German (and British) friends nearly as often as we'd like. (*schnief*)

I do so want to go back someday.





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