japan olympics

My dad's been in Japan for the past three weeks and every day, he sends me a journal-type letter about what he's doing, where he's staying. He also sends me a picture or two (he has a digital camera with him). I've posted the latest for your interest, a picture of the Olympic flame going through the town of Ueda early this morning. I'm usually not that into watching sports events, but that all changes when it comes to the Olympics. I'm very keen on women's gymnastics (Summer Olympics) and figure skating (Winter Olympics), and have been bugging my dad to bring me home some kind of Olympics souvenir. We'll see if he remembers!

school crushes

During my visit out to my dad's this past weekend, I decided to take a walk around the neighbourhood on Saturday. Without really thinking about it, I found myself heading towards my old school, using the same route I had walked from first to eighth grade. It was a perfect October day, and I passed quite a few neighbours out raking the leaves or setting up elaborate Hallowe'en displays (the most delightfully gruesome was one in which the two children living in the house had set up pseudo-graves for themselves using a pile of leaves and cardboard tombstone markers..."R.I.P. ROY, KILLED BY A RABID GOAT" etc.).

I recognized a few houses in which friends used to live, or boys I had crushes on. :-) A side note on childhood crushes: what was your biggest childhood crush? Mine was Norm Brown in Grade 8. I strongly suspect all the girls in that class had crushes on Norm Brown. He was darned cute (and he knew it, too), and didn't know I existed. Years later, I found out that Allison's husband, John, used to hang out with Norm! I sometimes find myself wondering what happened to that boy, where he is now. Out of curiosity, I even did a search on the Web, but came up with at least two dozen Norm Browns. I thought I had narrowed my search down to the right Norm, but realized I was on the wrong track when that particular Norm ended up being a black jazz pianist in New Orleans. Ah well, perhaps it's for the best...part of me would rather remember Norm Brown as he was, untainted by reality.

Hm, my sidenote on crushes has turned into a full blather.

Sorry for the lack of blatherings, by the way; things have been a bit crazy on this end lately. :-) I am back in blathermode now, though, so look out.

Sadly, it looks like I won't be attending Confusion in January. In fact, it looks as though the next convention that Allison, Jodi & I will be attending won't be until FILKONTARIO next March!

not wilbur

Today's Site is courtesy my pal Andrew: HissyFit.

Sara has apparently starting to connect the food on her table with the fuzzy cute animals she sees at farms and zoos. Ruth reports that Sara likes her "Charlotte's Web" video a lot these days. Recently she was given a ham sandwich at lunch and looked at the piece of ham suspiciously, asking if it was from a pig. Ruth carefully answered that yes, ham is from a pig. Sara declared she didn't want to eat it. Ruth said that the ham wasn't from a pet pig, that it wasn't Wilbur. That seemed to satisfy Sara, and she went on to eat her ham sandwich.

How do you parents handle these mini-crises so calmly? I'm sure I'd have panicked, as I would have when Sara started asking questions about mortality and reproduction.

I forgot to mention that Rand gave me a new food toy (I bet it surprises you all that I love food toys): a small plastic obnoxiously pink M&M guy wearing white sneakers. You put a tube dispenser of mini-M&Ms upside-down on his head. Then when you shake one of his hands, a mini M&M slides out on the outstretched palm of his other hand. :-) Needless to say, I've eaten way too many M&Ms recently.

To Andrea & Tom: Unbelieveably, I still have 2 Godiva truffles left. I've been rationing them. :-) Anyway, I noticed today that the box actually contains a tiny sheet with nutritional information. (pause) HAHAHAHAHA. I found this hilarious. Who on EARTH would be buying Godiva truffles with any concern for nutritional information? "Oooo I need more calcium in my diet, so I'd better visit Godiva's..." In any case, I tried very hard to ignore the fact that two Godiva truffles contain 220 calories, 14g of fat, 10 mg of cholesterol, 15 mg sodium, 3 g of protein, and 23 g carbohydrate.

Officemusic: THE FIBS, Pisces In Crises. Produced by Watchmen Records, fun album.

p.s. I have to be honest and confess that the effort of typing out that truffle nutritional information made me hungry enough to eat another truffle. Only one left. Any bets as to how long that'll last?

hairless jeff

Jeff got all his hair cut off! Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. But check out his new look. I'm trying to get him to grow his goatee back.

Sara and Annie are starting play together, much to the delight of my sister. Sara's very much the older sister (I should know). Recently Sara asked Ruth for help tying scarves for a game of pretend.

"That's nice," Ruth said, tying the long scarf around Sara's neck so that it could be a cape. "What's Annie going to be?"

"A servant," Sara replied cheerfully.

Going to see Pleasantville with Jeff, Helen Waters, and Brian Parkinson tonight.

Officemusic: Adrian Belew.

favourite seasons

JOKE OF THE DAY: What's brown and sticky?

Fun movie last night, though I thought the plot people dropped the ball a bit near the end. We had dinner at the Okonomi House afterwards. Helen was disappointed that there weren't more squid dishes on the menu.

Annie brought up the topic of FAVOURITE SEASONS in blatherchat. I have to confess that my favourite season is autumn. :-) I love having to bundle up (rather than die of the heat, and face it, there's only so many layers you can peel off). I like blustery, windy, cold (but not so cold your nose freezes off) weather. I love autumn colours.

After autumn, I like the beginning of winter the best. Only the first week or so (first snowfall); after that it becomes dead boring and I spend the rest of the winter waiting for the warm weather to come again. And Canadian winters are looooong.

To you locals (or even non-locals :))...Allison's having a housefilk at her place. From Allison:

Come one, come all to a local Toronto filk at Allison Durno's house in
Thornhill from 2-10 pm on November 21, 1998. Music! Food! Laughter! Fun! If
you're interested, contact Allison at durno@interlog.com. Hope to see you
there!

Answer to Joke of the Day: A stick.

No practice tonight; Allison's sick. :(

X-Files season premiere this Sunday!!!!