Spastic kittens, UT practice and Dr. Horrible

Allison's and John's kitten Kara was in fine form last night at our Urban Tapestry practice. What is it about kittens? Kara is super-cute and she knows it.

Throughout the practice, Kara was jumping and leaping all over the place. One minute she'd be checking out my flute and trying to get into my bag. The next she'd be practically sitting on Jodi's shoulder, peering around to look at Jodi's face while Jodi was singing. A minute later she'd be dashing madly up one side of the couch, across the back behind Allison, then down the other side.



Kittens are spastic balls of energy, I swear. Allison showed us the remains of a planter that her kitten had knocked off a table:



I took the photos above with my iPhone during the practice. We were rehearsing some songs for our upcoming gig at the CIBC Run For The Cure (10:43 am - 11 am on Sun. Oct. 5th in Nathan Philips Square, main stage).

Anyway, the practice went well. Allison learned the new CIBC Run For The Cure song I sent her THE DAY BEFORE (she is a very very patient music partner) and we recorded it for Jodi to figure out some harmonies.


We're also learning My Eyes, a song from Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog (not for the Run for the Cure but just for fun :-). Allison and Jodi ran through their parts; it's a great song with intertwining lyrics / melodies. I love hearing them perform this song, and continue to feel incredibly lucky to be part of Urban Tapestry. Even after all these years, I'd be happy to just sit and listen to those two sing forever.

Another song I loved hearing them perform is "The Way I Am" by Ingrid Michaelson. Jodi sings lead, and Allison will add harmonies. I haven't decided if I'm going to be adding harmonies and/or flute on this song.

Chocolate cake and revamped websites

Busy week and weekend, punctuated by failing technology. Our air conditioning was broken for almost two weeks during an especially hot spell in Toronto. Our phone and DSL went dead for a day. Bell said it was a network problem, but I know the squirrels were behind it somehow.



Ruth and I revamped her website. I had created her site with static HTML years ago, but I moved it into Wordpress to make it easier for Ruth to maintain it herself.

I also started revamping Inkygirl. It's too cluttered right now, but I'll be gradually tweaking the template and graphics.



Building a website is a lot like baking a cake in some ways. You need to start with good ingredients. For my two website revamps I started with Chris Pearson's Thesis Wordpress theme. I've used Chris's templates before and have found them to be much more solid and well supported than other templates I've tried.

I had toyed with the idea of learning CSS and creating a site from scratch but I'm realizing that I simply don't have the time. Besides, tweaking is much more fun and I do learn some CSS this way.



The cake I baked was from a recipe in Green & Black's Chocolate Recipes Unwrapped. The book was a gift from some British friends; it's the sort of cookbook that's fun to read on its own, with sumptuous and mouthwatering photographs.



I used Green & Black chocolate bars in the recipe: dark chocolate and ginger for the buttercream filling, and dark chocolate for the drizzled icing on top. The recipe also called for an apricot-lemon sauce to be poured over both cake halves after they've cooled, before sandwiching them together with chocolate.



I also used a special gourmet vanilla that my friend Luisa brought me from Mexico. The stuff smelled heavenly, much richer and smoother than the regular vanilla I bought from the grocery store.



The cake was mainly for Ray and Jeff; Ray came over on the weekend to help Jeff with prep for renovations we're having done this week. Both enjoyed the cake, and I sent some leftovers home with Ray.



There's something comforting about baking. I don't do it often because I have little willpower when leftovers are sitting around the house, but I find it's a wonderful way to relax, to slow down and enjoy the sensuality of the process: the fragrance of melting chocolate, for instance, and the silky softness of flour mixing with cocoa and sugar and different-textured grains sliding against one another.

Plus baking still seems like magic to me. I feel like a little kid sometimes, peering in through the oven window and seeing (lo and behold) pans of liquid gunk rising and swelling into chocolaty curves, smooth and inviting.

Mmmm....

And don't even get me STARTED about buttercream icing.

Anyway, I hope you all had a good weekend. I'm looking forward to seeing Tulpan at the Toronto Film Festival with Craig tonight!




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A thank you letter, B5 and cookbooks

After my brother and his wife died in a car accident nearly 15 years ago, the University of Waterloo established the Jim and Diane Ohi Memorial Award, which is granted annually to "a graduate student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering who demonstrates the qualities of leadership and a high level of academic achievement." My family donated some of the money, but the bulk was raised by the staff and students of the university.



This year, the recipient of the award wrote to my father, who forwarded it to Ruth and me; he says he is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the UoW, and will be an assistant professor at the University of Toronto Institute of Technology this fall. An excerpt from his letter: "It is indeed a great honor to receive this prestigious award. Also, I want to take this chance to thank you for your generosity, and wish that someday I can pay a visit to you and know more about Jim and Diane Ohi."

This was the first time we had ever heard from an award winner; we never expect it, so were surprised and deeply touched that this Ph.D. student had taken the time to write a thank you letter.

Follow-up from yesterday's Blathering

Allison has pointed out that this year is the 100th anniversary of the original publication of Anne Of Green Gables. You can see her memorabilia collage in Flickr (move your mouse over any item to see her note about it).

I've updated Babylon Five Virgin with episode reports for "Eyes" and "Legacies."


Photo by Allison

Thanks to those who answered my cookbook survey. Here are some of your suggestions:

Cook's Illustrated magazine, How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food by Nigella Lawson,The Joy Of CookingHow to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking by Nigella Lawson, Mrs Beeton's Household Management by Mrs. Beeton, Boston School of Cooking cookbook by Fannie Farmer, Small-Batch Baking by Debby Maugans Nakos, Fix-it And Forget-it Lightly - Healthy, Low-fat Recipes For Your Slow Cooker , How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, Settlement Cookbook, Larousse Gastronomique, Anthimus's De Observatione Ciborum (On the Observance of Foods), The Clueless Vegetarian by Elaine Raab, three Monastery Cookbooks by Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette: Twelve months of Monastery Soups, From a Monastery Kitchen, and Simplicity from a Monastery Kitchen, Green & Black's Chocolate Recipes, Essential cookbook series, Delicious magazine, Cook's Illustrated magazine (Delicious U.S.), Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker , The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, Boston School of Cooking cookbook by Fanny Farmer, Fear of Frying by James Barber.

Video O' The Day: Star Wars vs Saul Bass

Thanks to my friend Ray for pointed me to this video. From the description of the video: "If Star Wars was filmed two decades earlier and Saul Bass did the opening title sequence, it might look like this... This was a school project. The song is Machine by the Buddy Rich Band off the album Big Swing Face (1967)."





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Kit Kats, painting and Scrivener

Remembering a Blathering I posted a while back, my friend Merav mailed these to me after she came across them in a Japanese food store. I was VERY excited when I opened the package. Kit Kat is one of my favourite chocolate bars, and I've been wistful that relatively few of the other 149 or so flavours seem to be available in Toronto.

But back to my happypackage...so far I've tried the Banana mini Kit Kats and they are FANTASTIC. Thank you, Merav!

Speaking of Kit Kats, nelladarren created the highly amusing image below after reading my post about Kit Kats and squirrels. :-)




And here's a lovely cartoon created by hsifyppah a while ago:




Ironic, really, considering my current situation.

Yesterday I discovered that the Dirty/Clean acrylics sign I had created for our washing machine was a dismal failure. Though the wire went nicely over the handle, I discovered it fell off every time I opened the dishwasher.



Here's the other side of the sign:



I posted in Livejournal, asking if anyone wanted it for free, and I was delighted when Debbi Michiko Florence posted. Debbie's a children's book author who is currently working on a book about China. She also posted about oshogatsu celebrations with many drool-worthy photos in her LJ recently.

Anyway, after useful advice from Melissa and help from Jeff, I created some more:

The acrylics and ink drawings were fun to do, but the taping part was far too finicky and time-intensive for me to want to do this very often. I'm keeping the one on the left, donating the one of the right to the Interfilk auction at GAfilk, and will probably put the middle two in my Etsy shop next week.


I posted about Scrivener in Inkygirl yesterday, for those interested. I've been using Scrivener for a while, for outlining my fiction and nonfiction projects, and now for my daily admin and To Do lists. Scrivener was written by Keith Blount, techno-writer-guy who lives in London, and he's the only "employee" of Literature & Latte.

From his About page: "Literature & Latte is one guy with lofty writerly ambitions, who has written a piece of software designed to aid in the process of writing (I know that makes me a geek, but that's something I have to live with)."

Unlike many bigger companies, Keith is constantly working to improve his product, listens to user feedback, and is involved with his online community of users. I hope he makes a bundle off Scrivener; he certainly deserves it.

Just a few days left until GAfilk! I've decided not to take my laptop. I'm at a stage in my graphic novel script that I can just as easily work on it offline ... yes, with (*gasp) paper and (*gasp) pen! The lack of a delete key is a frightening hurdle, to be sure, but I will endure the hardship for my art...



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