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It's around this time of year (ok, maybe long before this) that I start craving warmer weather. The snow's starting to melt around Toronto and I'm crossing my fingers that we've seen the last snowstorm.
GIVE ME SPRING ALREADY!!!! I've been browsing Beckett's Flickr pics and envying those in sunnier climes right now.
Meanwhile Jeff has launched the Canoe Lake Ice-Out Page for this year. I'm predicting Sun May 4th as the date when the ice goes out on the lake this year.
My friend Walter was looking at the photo I took of my new sewing machine, and he was curious about the "Huskystar" brand. Out of curiosity, he Googled it and discovered that the company is Husqvarna, which he says is best known for making items like:
Manly Tool Example 1:
Manly Tool Example 2:
NOT Manly Tool Example:
Also, he said that apparently Husqvarna has been making sewing machines since 1872, and that they originally started in 1689 as a weapons foundry, only getting into sewing machines when the rifle orders dried up.
From Walter: "So you can be proud to know that your precision sewing machine is made by a company with over 300 years of weapons/tools of destruction history."
Jeff's aunt and uncle were kind enough to let us use their ski cabin on the weekend, and I came across a number of old games ... some familiar, some not. We also brought along some games of our own.
So a quiz, for everyone out there. Which of the game pieces pictured in today's Blathering do you recognize? Which have you played? I'll identify the games later this week.
Jeff and I have finished watching the first season of Babylon Five; I'm definitely hooked. See my most recent episode reports in Babylon Five Virgin (Babylon Squared, The Quality of Mercy, Chrysalis). From my stats, it looks as if my B5 Virgin blog has an audience of about 1200 so far (based on number of unique users).
Game #2
Game #3
Game #4
Game #5
Game #6
Game #7
Game #8
Game #9
Game #10
Video O' The Day
Happy birthday to Ryan Couldrey today! Ryan is one-third of the creative team behind DearToronto.com, a new video podcast I mentioned recently.
Last day to vote Toronto onto the new Monopoly board! Last I heard, Toronto had slid to 21st place. :-( To build suspense, the Monopoly people have taken the leaderboard offline, so it's tough to tell whether Toronto's going to make it or not; it needs to be in the top 20.
If Urban Tapestry didn't have tons of FKO stuff to prep for already, I would have loved to write a "Vote Toronto" song. However, in addition to covering some new songs for our concert as well as reviving a few much older songs (it's our 15th anniversary as a group this year, after all!), we'll also be performing two brand-new songs in concert which...er...I haven't finished writing yet.
Allison and Jodi are VERY patient music partners. :-)
Anyway, if you haven't voted today, please do consider casting a vote for Toronto. You can find instructions here. You can still vote for your own city as well but please do vote for Toronto as well.
Just over 10 hours left to vote, according to the page right now, so I assume this means voting at 6 pm EST tonight.
I got a Facebook message from someone at CBC asking if I'd be willing to be interviewed for tonight's edition of CBC News at Six; I'm assuming she sent it to everyone on the Facebook group devoted to the effort -- though if everyone in that group decides to call her, she's going to be spending a LOT of time on the phone. I gave her my friend Craig's contact info in case she didn't have it already, since he's the one who told me about it in the first place, and has also motivated many other Torontonians.
From a marketing/PR move, I have to applaud Parker Brothers for their ingenuity. Monopoly is generally regarded as a family standard but I suspect many families already have it...this popularity contest to get one's own city onto the new board is free advertising for the game when it comes out.
There's a certain risk, of course; if a city doesn't make it onto the board then they'd probably be less inclined to buy a copy of the new game...but then again many people wouldn't even have considered it before this popularity contest anyway.
Had a great time at the house filk yesterday. Thanks so much to Sally for hosting this fun event! We also found out that the Bedlam Bards are going to be performing at FilKONtario. The Bards are a Celtic duo who sing (among other types of music) songs based on Firefly and Serenity.
Urban Tapestry recently learned a Bedlam Bards Song (a Firefly song brought to us by Allison), and I'm looking forward to hearing the Bards perform.
I've updated Babylon Five Virgin with two episode reports, for those interested. And thanks to our friend Scott Murray for lending us his boxed sets!
Some random photos...
Above: Jeff and I have been playing Trans Europa with my family lately; I first played at Reid's and Luisa's New Year's party with Walter and his family. Fun game, easy rules, short.
Another game I've been enjoying: Werewolf. Each player draws a card to discover their role: Werewolf, Villager, or Seer (a special Villager). Each night, the Werewolf or Werewolves kill a Villager. Each day, the Villagers vote on the player they suspect is a Werewolf, and the voted player is out of the game. It's a great game to play by candlelight. :-)
Speaking of games, my friend Mabuta introduced me to a Japanese computer game that seems a LOT like Guitar Hero, except you use a stylus to tap different places on the computer screen in time with the music. Meanwhile, there are lots of entertaining animations going on in the top screen, but unfortunately I couldn't understand any of the kanji. :-)
Jeff Bohnhoff tagged me for the "7 Obscure/Surprising Facts" meme. I don't usually do memes, but JeffB rarely posts and I found his "7 Facts" so interesting that I felt compelled to answer. Instead of tagging people, I'll throw it open to anyone who wants to answer in their own blog or my comment section; if you post in your own blog, please do include a link so I can read it.
Seven Obscure or Possibly Surprising Facts About Me
I've been blogging since early 1997, so if I haven't blogged about something, then it was probably too personal to blog about and I'm not about to start now. However, I'll bet there are very, very few people who have read every single one of my Blatherings, so I thought it would be ok to reference some old ones here.
1. I used to have a Sea Monkey (tm) named Sigmund (May 30/97). I also had a hermit crab named Martha. Surprisingly, I found the Sea Monkey (tm) way more interesting. It took two weeks for me to notice that Martha was dead.
2. I have a Geeky School Photo gallery online. I'd forgotten completely about this page until someone just recently e-mailed me about it; he had found it through Google. I'll probably be deleting this page in the next few weeks, so you should check it soon if you're interested. You may even recognize a name or two.
3. One of my first computers was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III; it was a family computer. We briefly had a Model I until our Model III was ready. SOOO exciting! My brother and I used to spend hours typing in BASIC code from a computer games magazine; we'd take turns: one person would read, the other would type. After we typed in the whole program, we'd try running it. If it didn't run, it meant that one of us had mistyped at least one character. Debugging was a MAJOR pain -- we'd have to read through the entire thing again. We saved our programs on cassette tape. Yeah, I know, I'm OLD!
4. I've had the "magazine/newsletter editor" bug in me for as long as I can remember. I put together Family Weekly (cover sample at top of this page) for many years; I think I started when I was around 12 or so - my editorial staff consisted of Ruth (10 at the time) and Jim (8). My very first regular comic strip was called Boppy, about a weird little baby. I drew it for Family Weekly.
5. I wrote my first "novel" when I was nine years old. I can't remember if it was for a school assignment, or if I did it just for fun and submitted it to my teacher. I remember being SO proud of the fact that it had chapters. Here's the first page:
I'm not sure why my teacher praised my use of "instantly." Though I suppose she said "good word" and NOT "good use," didn't she? :-) I used to be a bit of a word freak. When I found a word I thought was really cool, I wanted to use it in my writing right away.
6. I used to play the piano for a youth group in a Baptist Church that learned contemporary Christian musicals and would then tour around to different churches to perform them.
7. I used to collect souvenir spoons as a kid. I still have the collection and really should throw them out (they're VERY tacky-looking and all rusted) but I can't bring myself to do it because they're associated with such wonderful family memories. I also used to collect autographs. Here are some of them:
From top to bottom: Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Bill Gaines (editor of MAD magazine), Robert Heinlein.
8. (bonus, heh) I graduated from the University of Toronto with two majors: one in Computer Science, the other in Psychology - and a minor in Climatology. Yes, I said Climatology. I got interested in the subject after working one summer at Environment Canada, creating weather summary reports for clients using JCL.
I honestly can't remember how many of the above I've mentioned in Blatherings before. Anyway, JeffB also tagged one of my music partners, Jodi, and she's (*gasp) actually been posting in her blog recently as a result, much to the shock of her friends.
Had a great Urban Tapestry practice with Allison and Jodi last night. I'm looking forward to attending a local housefilk tomorrow.
Video O' The Day
Thanks to my pal Ray Vankleef for pointing me to the following video, which was a great way to start the morning. In Instant Messenger, Comedian Nick Thune talks about childhood romance, but from a Internet geek perspective.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 12:00PM 
