still more marmite

Jeff came home last night and I could barely recognize him, he was so grizzled and unwashed. All right, I'm lying. He looked exactly the same, except his hair was longer. He says he is going to get a "#2 cut" soon, whatever that means. I think has something to do with the level the barber guy (or whatever the person who cuts guys' hair is called) sets his razor to.

Many congrats to Graham Leathers, whose band recently completed recording their CD! I asked him for a "press blurb" thingy, and he obliged quite kindly. "The Porch Climbers are lively and energetic Folk band out of Winnipeg with a unique sound all their own. Although the instrumentation betrays the heavy Celtic roots, the influences of Blues, Bluegrass and Cajun make for a mixed sound that is distinctly Canadian Prairie. The new CD 'Sqeeze me, Beat me, Love me' will be coming out in Mid may, and the official release will be accompanied by a smokin' party at the West End Cultural Centre, Thursday, June 29. For more info, you can visit our website (www.crosswinds.net/~porchclimbers) or drop some email to Graham Leathers." Except when I went to check the website, Gray, there's no ordering info yet! HOW MUCH DO I SEND AND WHERE DO I SEND IT?

Still More On Marmite

An enlightening comment from Zander Nyrond on the subject (or rather, a clever tangent into another topic):

"Marmite is a strange beastie. There's nothing about the taste that I actually dislike, but I never ever have the slightest desire to eat it. It resembles strawberries in that respect (though in almost no other). Butter is quite another matter. I have experimented (I was young and foolish) and I can tell you that nothing, but nothing, will taste right on bread unless the intermediary substrate is properly constructed of Butter. As for the hardness problem, well, good heavens, you didn't think it was supposed to be *easy* did you?? There is, of course, a solution. Simply bung your butter, in its dish, into the microwave (if you have one) at .4 power for thirty seconds, and your troubles will be over. Unless your butter dish is not microwave proof...it was, wasn't it? Some of the cutesier kitchen shops in Britain sell butter dishes whose lid is a hemispherical container with a hole at the top into which you can pour boiling water. Besides softening the butter a treat, its shape provides hours of harmless fun for a certain type of male mind. Yours for the four basic food groups (cholesterol, sugar, fat and salt), Zander"

And now a Songwriting Process Poll

When you write a song, do you tend to sit down and give yourself and assignment? Do you wait for the muse to hit, or do you start with an idea? And if the latter, is it a musical idea or a lyric idea? Or both?

And do you ever basically write a song in one sitting, or is it a gradual process?

I tend to give myself "assignments". I very rarely (okay, NEVER) sit down and have a whole song flow out of me without having a particular song topic in mind to begin with. And even if I DO have a particular song topic in mind, it very rarely is completed in one sitting (unless it's a very short and silly song). Sometimes I get all the lyrics at one sitting. Like "Sex and Chocolate", and then I passed them to Jodi. She and I had never worked on a song before, so I was a bit nervous about how it would go. I even gave her some direction..."I sort of imagined it as a kind of waltz" (I kid you not). I am incredibly grateful that she ignored this feeble advice and struck out in her own musical direction....I LOVE the melody she came up with, and the fact that it is a capella (that's something I never would have thought of, either). The only 'serious' song I've written at one sitting is Homecoming.

Anyway, I'd love to hear any thoughts on your songwriting process. Please post in Blatherchat.

Today's BlatherPhoto is courtesy of Beckett Gladney (she scanned her Sock Monkey) :-)

marmite

Jeff comes home from the cottage today. Time to do a mad rush around the apartment, closing cupboard doors and drawers all the way, putting away my guitar (I've been practising barre chords again), cleaning the marmite off the kitchen counter.

Speaking of marmite. Dear Teddy convinced me to try the marmite again, but this time spread Very Thinly on a freshly-baked slice of bread slathered with butter. I'm too lazy to get out my breadmaker (I can picture you bread-making purists toppling over in shock as I type), so had to content myself with a slice of frozen Dempster's 100% whole wheat. Too impatient to wait for it to thaw from the freezer, so I toasted an icy slice instead. No butter (we're a margarine family here, mainly because I'm too impatient to wait for butter to soften after taking it from the fridge, and there's nothing worse than trying to spread cold butter on a slice of bread...you either get unappetizing chunks of the stuff scattered over the surface, or you end up with the bread falling to pieces in your hands. Wow, this is certainly a long parenthetical statement) so I used margarine instead.

I can report now that I definitely Do Not Like Marmite.

AN ODE TO MARMITE by Deborah Marion Kazumi Ridpath Ohi I Dedicated lovingly to Teddy, who introduced me to the stuff Oh sludgy brown foul-smelling paste, It's been three hours yet I taste your gustatorial poison still, it lingers on my tongue and kills my tastebuds (likely brain cells, too!) Oh Marmite, I do not like you. The End. Copyright © 2000 Debbie Ridpath Ohi.

Andrea pointed out another ode to marmite online (thanks Andrea!).

(Today's blatherphoto: another picture taken by Jeff on our digital camera, up near our cottage in Algonquin Park.)

Blather follow-up:
My friend Andy just wrote: "If you keep your butter in a covered butter dish instead of the fridge, it will stay soft and tasty, and you won't need to taste that grey rendered fat dyed with industrial level chemicals. (the margarine, not the marmite)."

revenue canada typo

I hate taxes.

I also hate bookkeeping, which is why I am so abysmal at it. I hired an accountant this year to help me. He is a very cool accountant. He wears a ponytail and is a talented guitarist. He is also very patient with my boxes of crumpled receipts.

I lined up at Revenue Canada to get as many of my tax returns as I could (assessment summaries, really) and discovered that someone had made a typo while entering my gross business income five years ago. The typo added a decimal place, resulting in an extra $80,000 being added to my income. The final total wasn't affected, but I was still pretty appalled that this sort of thing could happen.

I called Revenue Canada. The woman on the other end was highly skeptical until she called up my records on her computer, and then she was silent for several long seconds. She then told me I had to line up at the Revenue Canada offices to report the error. I told her that no, I had just finished lining up at the Revenue Canada office and didn't want to do so again and besides, it was their error and not mine. Several more seconds of silence, and then she told me to send a letter to Revenue Canada explaining the problem.

"Does this sort of thing happen a lot at Revenue Canada?" I asked. "Typos like this, I mean."

"Oh no, not very often," she replied reassuringly.

Hm.

socks

Interesting how sock-talk has become all the rage over in blatherchat. :-) At Didgeri-Douze, I admired Teddy's wild socks (his entire attire, of course, but mainly his socks). Then we had a intense e-mail sock conversation in which I exhibited a great deal of Sock Envy (Allison must have as well, since she got a package of socks recently from Teddy, too!). About the same time, we also had a Marmite Conversation (mostly me wondering what it was).

So I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when a package arrived yesterday from Teddy full of socks and marmite. :-) I *love* these socks, and plan to proudly wear them to conventions. I modelled the toe socks for Jeff (see today's blatherphoto); he just laughed and said, "They are so...YOU."

THANK YOU, TEDDY! :-)

Marmite

Auuuggh! What tastebud travesty is this!! It looks like it should taste like chocolate...what a cruel shock to find that it actually tastes like the salt sludge that you scrape off your boot in the winter (not that I've actually tasted any myself, of course...). Do people actually LIKE this stuff????

The fact that the marmite came in little containers that looked like the cream containers one finds in restaurants for coffee is also frightening, since it seems to indicate a certain frequency of use by many people.

Puzzlebox Live Online!

Paul Kwinn reports:

"Puzzlebox will be playing on a live on-line webcast. It's a regular show, broadcast over the web from a guy's livingroom in Langley, Washington (on Whidbey Island, in Puget Sound). The show is on Monday, April 24th, starting at 7:00 PM Pacific Time (so 10:00 PM for you East Coasters), and running about 45 minutes to an hour. The name of the show is "Testing, Testing" and the URL is:

http://www.electricedge.com/testingtesting/.

They've got archived copies of all their previous shows on the site, so you can check out the format, if you like. And you'll need RealAudio, so if you don't have that plug-in already, you might want to get it installed before the show (the Testing, Testing URL has a link to download it). Apparently, they read e-mails on the air during the show, so you can say "Hi" or request a song if you like."

living off michelinas

My work schedule has become rather erratic as of late (and sleep schedule).

I tend to work at home in the mornings now, getting up before my alarm clock goes off and staggering to my computer before doing anything else to check my email (is that sad or what?). Then, of course, I get sucked into doing some work for a couple of hours until hunger pains force me to leave the computer, have breakfast, take a shower, get dressed. Do some more work at home, errands (this morning was bank stuff), then office. I'm trying to get back into a regular habit of going to the gym (yes, I've been slacking off lately) before going to the office.

I've been living on Michelinas lately (small frozen dinners, heated up in our office microwave), and usually eat meals in front of the computer. Last night, Jeff and I worked until about 10:30 pm (no dinner). I was pretty crabby and exhausted by the time we got home. Cheered up some once I got something to eat (soup, leftovers), then fell asleep on the couch (Jeff got me to bed). I am definitely not a night person!

PEGASUS NOMINATIONS

Lori Coulson has told me to let people know that the Pegasus nomination deadline is May 1st (not Apr. 15). You can find a nomination ballot here. Please do support the Pegasus Awards by sending in a nomination if you haven't already...the more nominations they receive, the more representative is the final voting ballot. -Please- spread the word about this, thanks.

SOCK MONKEYS

I've been fascinated by the topic of sock monkeys which has cropped up in Blatherchat lately. Here are some interesting/horrifying resources on the topic I've found online:

Nate's Sock Monkey Hub

The Evil Sock Monkey Conspiracy

The Sock Monkey Page

Worship the Sock Monkey (weird)