bisquick annie

Watched THE LOST WORLD (Jurassic Park II) last night. It was pretty much what I expected, but it made good media wallpaper while we did other tasks.

I've actually started my Christmas shopping; I'm so proud of myself.

Had dinner at my sister's place last night. Jeff and Sara and Annie and I made Bisquick biscuits after dinner. While Sara was busy cutting out star-shaped biscuits, Annie fascinated herself with a single piece of dough. I made sure to give her only a small piece, but she somehow managed to smear it all over her face, hands, top, pants, and MY clothes. "Sticky," she told me over and over again, in utter delight. Every so often she'd pause and look over me with a critical eye. "Beebee sticky," she'd observe accurately. I'm going to wear a plastic jumpsuit next time I visit.

Site of the day: Y2K Wakeup Call

filkhaven

Okay, I'm testing out another potential filk chat room at Talk City.
Thanks to those of you who checked out my Xoom Filk Chatroom!
I would appreciate it immensely if you could compare it with
my newly set up Filk Haven chatroom. Like the Xoom chatroom, you only need to choose a unique nickname, no password necessary.

Anyway, please try both out and let me know which you like best. Whichever gets the most votes will stay here as a permanent chat room.

Hey, I mentioned that I enjoyed a concert by Ratwurst, the warm-up band for the Rheostatics last Friday. Well, I sent them a brief email, and they wrote back offering me (and a guest) free tickets to their concert at Lee's Palace this Saturday. :-) They also said they knew what I looked like now since they checked out my webpage. Don't know if I should be pleased or scared. :-)

Talked to my 1.5-year-old niece Annie on the phone today. Or rather, Ruth called me up and said that Annie wanted to talk to me. Then I found out that Annie wanted me to sing Jingle Bells, her current fave song. So I sang it, but very nearly didn't get through it...I was trying VERY hard not to laugh because I could hear her "singing" along with me. She can't really talk yet, so it was more of a monotonic humming with the occasional familiar syllable thrown in. Also, her voice kept fading in and out...later I found out this was because she was bouncing up and down, dancing to the song. When I had finished, I asked her how she liked the song. "Again," she said. So of course I sang it again. And again. And again. It's amazing what I'll do when one of my nieces asks me for something. I only pray that none of them ever find out how puttylike I am in their hands.

bbedit fiend

My copy of BBEdit 5.0 (from BareBones Software arrived today. Many improvements from the old version...better HTML tool interface, useful new features. I've been heavily into technonerdgirlmode all afternoon. :-) I use BBEdit for all my website maintenance and also for putting together Inklings, so the upgraded version is a major boon for me.

Jeff's been away in New York for a few days on a business, back tonight.

Inkspot is having a free online book proposals workshop tonight on MOOKti, by the way, if anyone's interested. Feel free to drop by around 9 pm EST.

Today's topic: WEIRD SNACKS. What's your favourite weird snack? Mine include: smoked mussels on crackers, anchovies on celery sticks, canned sardines on toast. I usually only have these when Jeff's not around because they gross him out too much.

xoom vs filkhaven

Okay, sentiment seems to lean towards Talk City rather than the Xoom chat room, so I'm keeping FILK HAVEN and trashing the other room. Maybe we could set up some regular chat hours or online parties so we can all login at the same time? Might be a bit awkward to hook up with the UK folks, tho, we'll have to figure something out.

Might even be fun to have a "virtual con" some weekend. :-)

internet world trade show

Went to the Internet World Trade Show in the Toronto Metro Convention Centre this morning to receive Mecklermedia's 1998 Impact Site Award (category: "changing how people work"). The award was much nicer than the usual simple graphic file, too :-), made from Tiffany crystal; I'll post a picture tomorrow. They took a bunch of photos of the award winners at a press thingy before the awards ceremony; if I notice any up on the Mecklermedia site, I'll post the URL here. You can see a description of the awards and other award winners at http://www.internetnews.com/iwcanadalive/awards/awards.html.