My new cards, swoony technonerdboys, and dancing

One of the new letterpress cards in my card line at Blush Publishing. I just got word that my cards are now being sold in Australia in addition to having distributors/vendors in Japan, U.K., Canada and the U.S.

We're still looking for more people to sell the cards in North America, so if anyone out there knows someone in the retail business (not just in North America, but ANYWHERE) who might be interested in carrying my cards, PLEASE do let the people at Blush Publishing know.

Speaking of lovebirds, Walter is continuing to upload photos from the wedding weekend. In addition to getting some great photos of Erin and Rand, he also has a ton of photos from others at the wedding. Here's one I love of John (Allison's husband) and me, doing our first and last karaoke stint:



Photo by Walter.


Allison, me and Jodi at the reception:



Photo by Walter.

Urban Tapestry husbands while Allison, Jodi and I were out on the dance floor:



Photo by Walter.

I also like this photo Walter took of Allison and Jodi while they were all checking out some Buffalo area shops as well as doing a bit of sightseeing (I was in the bridal suite, taking pics of Erin getting ready for the wedding):



Photo by Walter.

Jeff makes me swoon

One of the (many) things I love about Jeff is that not only is he a geeky technonerdboy, but he also loves doing handyman stuff and isn't afraid to get his hands dirty.



After our friends helped us take down our old fence, Walter and Jeff put in new posts, and then Jeff built the fence above. He did this on one of the hottest days this summer so far(!). Our neighbour's son did most of the painting.

Coolest news of the week:

Esquire uses e-paper for its anniversary issue: I am SO going to buy this issue, whether or not I'm interested in the magazine. I've lusted after e-paper ever since reading Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.

My current favourite video

The best video I've seen in a long time. Made me a tad happy-weepy, it did. Thanks to Jeff for the pointer.


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.



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Sleep clinics and iPhones

Busy week. Not only did Jeff and I both get our iPhones, for example, but I also spent Tuesday night at a sleep clinic.

I haven't been sleeping that well for the past couple of years, and Jeff convinced me to try a sleep clinic. I was supposed to show up at 9 pm; ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem, but our new iPhones arrived by UPS just an hour before.




I think I freaked out the UPS guy somewhat by flinging the door open as he came up the walk. I had been looking out the front window way too often during the day because UPS had told us that the phones would be delivered by the end of the day.

Jeff set up my iPhone first (he's such a sweetie) so I'd have at least a little time to play around with it before my appointment at the Toronto Sleep Institute.



I meant to bring my point-and-shoot camera with me to the sleep clinic but forgot. Then I remembered that the iPhone had a camera! The picture above is of my bedroom at the sleep clinic, and was the very first photo I took with my new iPhone.

Some of you already have cameras in your phones so may question my excitement, but keep in mind that I've had the same phone for the past six years. it had a tiny screen and definitely no camera. The fact that I can take pictures with my phone makes me happy, and means that I probably won't feel compelled to always lug my point-and-shoot around with me everywhere I go anymore.



Above: some of the gear that got hooked up to my legs, arms, chest and head. I also had tubes up my nose and bands around my upper chest and lower abdomen to track my breathing patterns.

No, I didn't take any photos but you would have had nightmares, trust me.

It took Andrea (I think that was her name) nearly an hour to hook me up. Then she went back to the monitoring room and had me go through some tests to make sure that everything was connected properly: moving my eyes left and right, breathing just through my mouth, breathing just through my nose, moving my feet, etc.


An iPhone case with a wrist strap that I sewed
for myself, front view (flap closed).

When she was satisfied, Andrea came back into the room and turned off the light, telling me that if I needed anything at all, I just had to say it out loud and she'd hear me over the intercom system. Yes, that kind of creeped me out but I found it surprisingly easy to ignore the camera once I got into bed, with the lights out.

You'd think it would be hard to fall asleep with all that gear on, but I think I was asleep in about 10-15 minutes. These days I never have trouble falling asleep; I just keep waking up during the night (I estimate 20 times or more some nights) so that by the time morning rolls around, I wake up feeling more tired than refreshed.


Back view.


One of the times I woke up at the sleep clinic, I needed to use the restroom. Feeling somewhat stupid, I said into the darkness: "Um, hello? I need to use the washroom." Andrea answered over the intercom right away, and showed up a minute later. She efficiently did something to my Frankenstein gear so that I could wear it around my neck.

I risked a glance in the bathroom mirror while I was there: EEK!

When I got back to bed, Andrea undid my bizarre neck adornment and hooked me back into the main control.



I woke up on my own around 6 am, at which point I got completely unhooked. Andrea said I could use the shower to remove all the electrode goop that was in my hair on my skin, but I said I'd wait until I got home. After filling out a post-sleep questionnaire, I left; the results will be sent to my doctor, who will let me know what's up.

I'll be posting more about my new iPhone in upcoming Blatherings, I'm sure. Let me just say right now that I love LOVE my iPhone! One of many reasons: I've missed having an e-book reader since I had to give up my Palm Pilot ages ago when it quit hot-syncing with my (then) new computer. My old phone's screen was way too tiny for anything except the shortest of text messages.

Since my iPhone arrived, I downloaded a bunch of free e-books as well as buying some at Fictionwise. I'm trying out several different e-reading software programs for the iPhone and plan to write up a comparison for Inkygirl.



So much more to say about the iPhone, but this Blatherpost is long enough so I'll save other comments for later. But THANK YOU to Jeff for buying me an iPhone; what a wonderful and amazing gift, and I'm going to get a ton of use out of it.

I have a Contour Hardskin Case but was paranoid about dropping the phone (or having someone grab it out of my hand; yes, I'm paranoid!) so I sewed an outer case with a wrist strap out of some material I bought at FilKONtario last year; see photos above.

I can still use the phone as well apps on the iPhone with case still on, wearing the wrist strap. To use the camera, though, I'd have to pull down the back a bit, or take the iPhone out of its case.

I'm working on improving the design, and will likely add a pocket in front where I can tuck the screen cloth. Maybe add a tiny camera hole in the back; if the fabric has a pattern on it like the above, a hole wouldn't be as noticeable. Heh -- easier to take stealth pics that way, I'll bet.

Video O' The Day

Thanks to Jeff and Ray for the link:

Font Conference - for font nerds everywhere. ADORED this video.




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Kittens, Kaleidoscope Spaghetti and recipes from friends

I've always been fascinated by cats. Their psychology seems more complex than a dog's, with an odd sort of love-disdain relationship with humans. My friends Allison and John acquired a kitten recently; Jodi and I went to visit them (and the kitten) last week.



Kara was a ball of energy, jumping from one activity to another for a while: nibbling on toes, leaping on furniture, eating, batting at hanging string, eating, chewing on the heads of hapless cat toys, eating ... and then abruptly falling asleep on the couch beside Allison.



Yesterday, my sister and her family came over to celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday. In honour of the event, I made several desserts I've been wanting to try, including a chocolate cake recipe from The Green & Black chocolate cookbook given to me by some of my British friends Mich, Marilisa and Simon:



Photo by Allison

and a plate of Melted Moments cookies from a recipe given to me by Rand's mom:



The photo above is from the wedding. I forgot to take photos of my cookies and besides, mine didn't turn out nearly as nice-looking (but tasted the same, which is what counts, right??). I made extra for Parki and Kim, who are coming over tonight.

Speaking of the wedding, don't forget to check out Walter's Flickr page, where he continues to upload some great photos from the wedding.



Photo by Walter.<

Over-Achiever O' The Month

My friend Chris Conway, who is releasing six CDs this month (!).

Video O' The Day

Thanks to Jeff for pointing me to this "Making Spaghetti" video:






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Dr. Horrible Sing-Along Blog plus a last wedding post

I'm falling behind in so many things right now, so I likely won't Blather again after today until I've had a chance to catch up.



Before I make my last wedding post, I have to thank Kim Phelan for pointing me to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which was written by Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy, Firefly and other great shows) and Maurissa Tancharoen. The three act series was produced on a shoestring budget (financed out of his own pocket) over six days during the writers' strike. Whedon says he wanted to show that there are other creative outlets apart from traditional television.

The first two acts are now online, and the third will be posted this weekend. Each act is about 18 minutes along. The site got so much traffic on its opening day that the servers crashed; the site was apparently getting 200,000 hits per hour.

Each act is available from iTunes for $2 and a "season pass" for all three episodes costs $4. After the download period, the videos will be taken offline and the series will be released as a DVD.

I -love- this series so far. A ton of entertainment and great songs packed into a very short time. I love the characters. The writing is brilliant. Jeff and I plan to buy the DVD, which is supposed to be packed with extras. We want to do whatever we can support this project; hopefully Joss Whedon will create more like it.

Anyway, do check out Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

But back to my last wedding report post...



As I mentioned earlier on, my photo shoot with Erin and Rand just after the ceremony was cut short because of rain and a grumpy security guard. I managed to take quite a few photos in those 12 minutes, however. You can see some of these in my Flickr set, tagged with '12 min.'

As we hurried from one photo shoot location to another, I was tickled by the reaction of passersby. I do the same thing myself when I see a bride in her wedding finery on the street. Erin was especially radiant because she was beaming pretty much the whole time.

Smiling back, strangers called out their congratulations as we passed; it was truly a fairy tale moment.



Jeff and I left shortly before 10 (I was dead tired) and walked back to the hotel with Allison, John, Jodi and James. I didn't expect to see Rand and Erin again until the post-wedding breakfast but I was wrong.

At about 3 a.m., we were shocked out of sleep by a blaring alarm. A voice on the public loudspeaker announced that there was an emergency, and everyone needed to proceed to the nearest stairwell and...then the announcement was cut off. We waited, but there was no follow-up announcement.

Jeff called security, and we were told that we needed to come downstairs. We both figured it was a false alarm but decided to go down anyway to be safe.



We ran into Erin and Rand plus some others from the wedding. Above: Dan, Jeff and Rand. The blurriness is because my camera lens from fogging up because of the humidity. We found out later from Walter (who had stayed in the hotel with Allison, John, Jodi and James, and watched the action from his hotel window) that Luis and Alisa had gone outside as well, but we never ran into them.

Despite the rude interruption to their wedding night, Erin and Rand took the unexpected event in stride. Rand was sleepily cracking jokes, and Erin went to get a parking pass from the front desk. Some wedding couples would have been throwing a fit, but Erin and Rand just hugged each other and were being...well...newlywedCUTE. :-)

It turns out one of the guests from another wedding was smoking in the elevator.



The next morning, we dropped by the Bridal Suite for freshly baked bagels and other goodies, coffee and juice. The cookies in the above were baked by Rand's mom; they were amazing and she's promised to send me the recipe.



Above: One of Rand's nephews cuddles in his lap. During the weekend, I loved seeing Rand with his nephews, and how affectionate they are. In fact, I enjoyed seeing both Erin and Rand with their families, the affection and love a joy to witness.


Erin and her dad.

Eden captures the feeling perfectly in her blog entry, "I thought the ceremony was very moving. What I noticed most was the feeling in the room. I have never been in a place so filled with love. Just pouring out from everyone toward Rand & Erin and filling the space with so much positive energy that it was nearly overwhelming."



Walter is continuing to upload wedding photos; he's up to the rehearsal dinner on Friday night.



Photo by Walter

Below: chatting with Erin and Vicki.



Photo by Walter

Here's a photo of what I gave Erin and Rand for a wedding present:



I filled the book with photos, stories and poetry for the newlyweds, self-published as a hardcover book through Blurb.com. I was pretty happy with the quality, and will be using Blurb for other projects...possibly a Waiting For Frodo comic compilation, for instance. The service offers different sizes of book as well as paperback as well as hardcover.



You can find more of my wedding photos in my Flickr set, plus Walter, Allison, Jennifer, and Dave also have uploaded photos from the event.

Below: Cora and Star Trek Red Shirt Ninja Doll recover after a wild night of partying in Buffalo.



To those who have encouraged me in my photography. I was especially touched by Vixy's comment:

Debbie Debbie DEBBIE. You are an AMAZING photographer!

I am absolutely serious when I say that the running-from-the-rain photo is the best wedding photo I've ever seen.

You have such an eye for Moments. Like the shot of Erin in the car, or of Erin's dad in the hallway... you have an eye for photos that clearly have a story embedded in them, and that tell that story at a glance. Or photos that make the viewer feel like we're looking in on a special scene, an intimate moment. Your photos make us feel close to the subject, like we're there, not just looking at posed models. That's what your photos have, really-- intimacy.

You also have an eye for *selecting* the photos; Jeff Bohnhoff recently said to me something to the effect that good photography usually involves taking 99 bad photos and one good one, and picking out the good one. :) However one says it, you have a gift for that too. You pick out the ones that show everyone to their best advantage.

...and I gush. But seriously. Don't ever say that your photos aren't good enough!

Many thanks to Vixy and others who have encouraged me in my photography. I still feel like a complete amateur, fumbling over settings and composition, but I'm gradually getting better.

I'll get more practice when I take my camera to photograph Allison's and John's new kitten tonight. :-)

Have a great weekend, everyone!





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Wedding (part 3): Friends and family

Wedding report continued...



Above: Erin waits in the women's restroom for the ceremony to begin.



The ceremony itself was simple and beautiful. I didn't have the greatest view of it from my place behind the scenes, but Allison posted some photos in her blog entry on the event. Erin and Rand each wrote their own wedding vows. There were also several readings, and Erin's father sang.

Rand's brother, Dan, was the officiant at the ceremony. Now I know how some people must feel when they meet Ruth; not only do Dan and Rand share some physical resemblance, but also many mannerisms.



I had the opportunity to chat with quite a few of both Rand's and Erin's relatives. Above: Erin's aunt, Erin's mother, and Rand's mother. Finally getting to meet Rand's mom was one of my weekend highlights. She came up to me at the rehearsal and introduced herself, then gave me a huge hug. "I've wanted to meet you for a very long time," she said with a big smile.



In addition to the joyous formal celebration of a couple's union, weddings also bring together groups of people who may not regularly cross paths. Erin's often talked about her college friends in her blog, and I looked forward to meeting some of them.

Like Jen of AllThingsJennifer.com, for example, who hosted a virtual wedding shower for Erin and Rand. Great to finally meet her in person; I loved her enthusiasm and wicked sense of humour, plus it was clear she cares about Erin a great deal.

Here's Erin with Jen at the rehearsal:



Jen seemed to know most of Erin's friends and family at the rehearsal dinner but said she didn't really know Rand's friends. So I dragged her over to meet Allison and Jodi and the others; in return, she introduced me to some of Erin's college pals. :-)



And yay, I finally got to meet Eden (above, on left)! Wish we had had more time to chat, argh.

And speaking of argh, I forgot to ask Rand to introduce me to his friend Celia so never did meet her even though she was at the wedding.



Also great to find people I hadn't seen in a long while, like Dave Lennon, Dave Wheeler, John McClester (sp?), Blogshy, Randy, Wolfram and Rai-Ann. Especially great to see my friends Alisa and Luis again! I met Alisa ages ago before she became part of Puzzlebox, and I met Luis when he was the drummer for Ookla The Mok. Luis has mellowed since those years; for a contrast in physical appearance, here's a photo I took of him when he was recording a drum part for our first CD at Allison's place. You can see him at the far right in the photo below, which I took at breakfast this past weekend:



At the wedding rehearsal, I had a chance to chat with Adam and Thomas again:



I'm glad I had the chance to talk with both of them earlier (at the wedding rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner) because both were pretty busy during the wedding reception, though I did manage to snag a dance with Thomas.

Thomas was the DJ/emcee during the reception:



While Adam did caricatures of guests throughout the evening (his wedding present to the newly married couple):



I introduced Jeff to Rand's friend, John Kalisz, and Jeff coveted John's iPhone. I'm excited that John is going to be moving to Toronto for a short-term assignment, and am secretly hoping that turns into longer term.



All three Urban Tapestry husbands attended the wedding, by the way:



From left to right: John (Allison's husband), James (Jodi's husband) and Jeff (my husband) at the rehearsal dinner party. We sang happy birthday to James on Saturday morning and gave him a Chapters/Indigo gift certificate at breakfast. I offered to (loudly) sing him happy birthday again at the wedding reception, but he said that my birthday present to him could be to NOT do that.

:-D



Speaking of loud singing...

Neither Allison's husband nor I had ever attended a karaoke before, but we decided to end our karaoke virginity at the wedding reception. During a dinner we shared at FilKONtario, when Rand and Erin mentioned they were planning to do karaoke at their reception, Walter suggested that John should do karaoke.

I mocked John, saying he was too chicken to try it. He said he'd do it if I would, but that -I- was too chicken. To make a long story short, we ended up deciding to do a song together in a mutual dare...our one and (since neither of us plan to ever do it again) -only- karaoke performance. We decided on Sonny and Cher's "I Got You, Babe."

David Wheeler got a photo of me singing my part. :-) Jodi also participated in the karaoke, doing a smokin' version of "Fever."

Other personal highlights from the reception:



Seeing the expression on Dave Huth's face when he found out that his name had been randomly drawn to be a witness on the marriage certificate. Dave and Rand are longtime friends. Dave is one of the sweetest and most positive people I've ever met, and also one of the most creative. Do check out DaveHuth.com to get a glimpse of just some of his amazing projects.



Hearing Greg Klyma and Tom Bianchi perform a song that Greg had written in honour of the occasion. They passed out slips of paper with the chorus on it so we could all sing along: "Call it luck / call it love / call it anything good you can think of / call it quick / don't let it get away / call it Rand and Erin's Wedding Day." The lyrics were funny, sweet, and ultimately deeply moving.



The table settings were beautiful as well as unique; each table had a card with the name of a famous couple from the media (television, movies, comics). Jeff and I were at the Zoë and Wash table with Allison, John, Jodi, James, Samantha, Greg and Tom. Erin and Rand sat at their own table with a Homer and Marge table card.



Must go work, so will continue in my next post.





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