the dance

Today is Bryan Fullerton's birthday! Bryan is the guy who hosts all our Web sites, including the Electric Penguin message boards. Jeff and I are going to his birthday bash later today.

My dad's staying with us; yesterday afternoon he and I went to see Lord of the Rings again (his choice). It was my fifth time, his second.

Having my father stay with us reminds me of my childhood and the family dynamics back home. We've always had a close family, but we were never physically demonstrative; hugs and kisses were rare events. It took me years to get used to the affectionate hug greetings so common at sf and filk conventions. I gave Dad a hug yesterday before going to bed, and he was all awkward about it. :-)

Our family bond, however, was and still is super-close. Ruth and I don't tend to do the stereotypical openly gushy-sister thing, for instance, but we've always been fiercely protective of each other. We may have bickered and had the usual sisterly squabbles over silly things, but if anyone did anything to hurt one of us...look out for the other! :-)

Family communication back in my childhood was very Japanese. Very little open conflict, but lots of layers of complicated subtle meanings and implications that could only be interpreted with years of experience growing up with us. Conflicts were resolved in an elaborate dance of half-hints and silences laden with meaning. And if we wanted something, we rarely asked for it directly; we had to gently guide the other person (through the same sort of subtle communication methods) into realizing that we wanted it.

Jeff and I had a lot of blow-outs in the beginning of our relationship because he refused to communicate with me this way.

Example:

JEFF: "What's wrong?"

ME (mad at him): "Nothing."

JEFF: "There's something wrong, I can tell."

ME: "No, everything's fine, really."

JEFF: "You're mad at me. What set you off?"

ME: "Nothing set me off!"

etc. etc.

After a long (agonizing) while, I learned the value of being more direct, of hashing things out in the open early on instead of letting things drag on, building up resentment, and to ask for things directly (even if it means risking the humiliation of rejection). I still have problems with this, but I'm getting better. It's complicated things between Jeff and me, though, because he still can't help but try to interpret what I say and do according to what I was like back in the early days (e.g. if I say nothing's wrong, then he thinks it means I'm hiding something).

Anyway, it was interesting to be reminded by my experience in Philly that the corporate world is much more Japanese this way, with its own set of unwritten rules of communication. Blunt honesty is usually not regarded as a good thing, and those who want to succeed in the corporate environment have to learn how to play the game like everyone else, be a team player even if you don't always agree with what the team's doing, not cause waves.

I'm not very good at this, though I suspect would have been better ten years ago. On the whole, this is probably a good thing.

I still have too much of my childhood ingrained in me to completely forget the elaborate dance. In fact, I'm doing it right now. This whole Blathering basically boils down to me saying that though my Dad still drives me nuts sometimes, I love him like crazy.

:-)

Today's Blatherpic:

Allison in the hallway at Ad Astra. This is one the expressions she puts on when I take a photo of her when she doesn't want me to take a photo of her. I think it's pretty cute, don't you?

$1600 plane tickets

Yay, I've finished moving over all my old archives, which means that everything is searchable and in Movable Type format. I added the search function on the lefthand navigation sidebar more for my own use rather than other people's, though you're all free to use it as well. :-) I love having all my archives in one place. Sometimes it's fun (and often enlightening) for me to see what I was doing a year ago.

As I moved over archived entries, I sometimes did a quick scan of the contents out of curiosity to see what was going on. Very weird to be reading over the entries from early 1999, when I got "major life event" phonecalls from both Writer's Digest and Barnes and Noble in the same week...but didn't want to say anything about it in public yet.

Ditto for my visit to New York shortly after, when I saw the offices of BarnesandNoble.com and had a breakfast meeting with Steve Riggio, who was recently promoted to CEO of Barnes and Noble. Riggio wore brown corduroy pants, I remember. He arrived late, left early. I remember being in a relative state of terror during the entire meeting, though Jeff told me later that I didn't show it (maybe he was just trying to reassure me :-)). I didn't eat anything, of course.

My brief mention of a business meeting in Seattle in May the following year referred to one I attended at the offices of Amazon.com. I remember being horrified by the price of my first class plane ticket (which someone else booked and paid for), about US$1600. I saw some of the legendary door-desks, which was pretty cool. I also remember the beginning of the meeting, where everyone (as if at a signal) took out their business cards and set them in a neat pile on the table in front of them. I was the only one with no business cards, having opted not to bring my cheapo perforated-edge homemade cards (plus I didn't have a lot of warning about the Seattle trip). There were a lot of things like the ritualistic displaying of business cards at the beginning of the meeting, unspoken rules of the corporate world with which I was completely unfamiliar. The whole Seattle visit was somewhat of a blur to me, mainly because a favourite aunt had died on the day I left; I found out while waiting in the airport after checking in :-(.

More on my dot-com adventures at a future date. My Dad just arrived, so I'd better finish this up...








News/Updates

Jeff and I saw L.A. Confidential last night and both loved it (with some reservations about the ending).

Fox is going to air the new 2 1/2 minute trailer for Episode II: Attack of the Clones on March 10th between 8:30-10 pm EST. Source: USA Today. Hopefully it will be better than the last trailer, and show more of Ewan McGregor.

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Sara and Annie playing Barbies with their cousins Taavo and Markus. It was pretty funny contrasting how the boys' Barbie play differs from Sara's and Annie's. More on this in an upcoming Blathering (I started writing about it here but it got way too long :-)).
	Sara practising blowing bubbles in front of the mirror.
	More of Sara practising blowing bubbles in front of the mirror.
	Success!

jeffb leaves

I've added a search capability to Blatherings, if you haven't noticed already. Feel free to test it out! You can find the search input field in the left-hand navigation column; it will search in all years except for 1999. I've moved over all my archives to Movable Type except for 1999; hope to finish that by the end of this weekend.

JeffB left early this morning to head back to California. We had fun hanging out yesterday. Activities included:

- Lounging about at the apartment in the morning and doing some musicstuff. JeffB and I are going to collaborate on a song, which will be fun.

- Visiting Steve's Music on Queen Street. Snooped around the recording equipment area, and I picked Jeff's brain about home recording equipment. The people at Steve's seemed to like Jeff a lot, and were impressed that he worked at eMagic (hey, I forgot to mention that JeffB gave me a very cool eMagic laptop case!). I picked up some new guitar strings (D'Addario Phosphor Bronze X-Light).

- Dropped by several shops along Queen Street including Acme Surplus. Acme is an amazing store with bins full of objects that lean towards electronics but also include (at least yesterday; the contents tend to change over time) things like mini disco balls on chains with clips, glass tubing, surgical masks, keyboards, sheets of coloured plastic, empty padded jewellry cases, night lights, condom holders, harmony balls, glass petri dishes.





- Browsed Pages and Chapters bookstores.

- Had lunch at Milestones. Both of us had my favourite meal there, Maple Cider Salmon Salad. I should probably order something else eventually at that restaurant, but I love their salmon salad so much that it seems pointless to try anything else.

- Walked to Yonge Street and checked out HMV. JeffB bought a CD for Jeff and me: Emmylou Harris's "Wrecking Ball". Thank you, Jeff!! :-)

- Snow! Lots of Toronto snow fell yesterday, will enhanced JeffB's Canadian experience, I'm sure.

- Hanging out with Jodi and Allison in Richmond Hill. We went to the Pickle Barrel then back to Allison's place. Lots of musicstuff and talking...we all had a ton of fun :-). We played all our new stuff for JeffB that he hadn't heard before, and he played a bunch of gorgeous instrumental stuff. Allison also played us a Great Big Sea song she thought we could learn for FilKONtario...she's asked me to learn some pennywhistle for it, which will be a ton of fun.





- After UT practice, JeffB and I headed back home. I was dead tired so ended up falling asleep on the couch while JeffB and Jeff did musicstuff (my Jeff actually played on the guitar! first time in a LOOONG time) and talked. Eventually I staggered off to bed.

Jeff and I really enjoyed JeffB's visit, and we're hoping that Maya can make the trek out here sometime so the four of us can hang out (or maybe we'll be able to make it out there someday).

My dad seems to be doing ok (largely due to the expert care of Sara and Annie, I'm sure :-)). He's coming to stay with us for a couple of days starting tomorrow.

I have an cartoon illustration plus a 1000-wd article to write and submit today, so I'd better stop Blathering and get to work. :-)

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Jeff Bohnhoff playing Gwyneth Paltrow.
	Jeff and Jeff talking.
	Jeff at our Urban Tapestry practice at Allison's place last night.

jeff bohnhoff visit

My Dad's at my sister's, and is doing well. Sara and Annie are getting a kick out of taking care of their Grandpa. When Jeff and I dropped him off at my sister's yesterday, Annie immediately went into professional nursemode and got a kleenex box and a wastepaper basket, positioning them carefully near my Dad. The wastepaper basket was in case he had to throw up. :-) Ruth reports that he slept much of yesterday.

Jeff Bohnhoff is here! JeffB, Jeff and I had dinner at Babur, an Indian place on Queen Street. I knew my Jeff would like JeffB, but I didn't realize how much of a tech-head JeffB is; he and I usually only talked in a filk/music context. I was highly amused last night; it was clear to me that I could have walked away during part of last night's the conversation and the two Jeffs would barely notice. :-)

After dinner, JeffB did some guitarstuff, yay! He is one of the most amazing guitarists I know, and I could listen to him play for hours. My Jeff was doing phone tech support for his Mom; after he got off the phone, we watched the Toronto episode of the Simpsons (which our friend Ray had kindly taped for us). I find it funny that so much media hype was made of this episode even though Toronto was only mentioned in the last five minutes or so. But the Toronto- and Canadian- jokes were pretty funny. I crashed immediately afterwards (didn't get much sleep the previous night, after all); the Jeffs stayed up for a while longer talking.

JeffB and I are going up to Richmond Hill tonight to see Allison and Jodi. We haven't decided what we're going to do today...probably a mixture of some sightseeing, musicstuff and just generally hanging out. Maybe even collaborate on a song (we started talking about it last night; I'm excited about this!).

Guest Blather: Jeff Bohnhoff

Well, here I am at Jeff and Debbie's place in Toronto. They have the most incredible apartment downtown, within walking distance of anything you might want to do. Debbie and I have spoken in the past about their place, but I didn't realize how cool it was until I saw it for myself.

As always, Debbie has been a fantastic host ( a hilarious combination of attentiveness and total angst that she's somehow failing to be a good host). If I try to lift a finger to help, I have to battle with her to let me do it. It's quite fun actually :-).

Tonight we're going to an Urban Tapestry rehearsal. I'm really looking forward to it. Those of you who know Debbie in the filk music community know how wonderful they are. The rest of you would be doing yourselves a favor by getting their CD "Myths and Urban Legends". It has some very touchingly beautiful songs, and lots of really funny material. Debbie will be very embarassed that I said this, but too bad, she told me I could write whatever I want.

I've really enjoyed meeting her Jeff. In one sense I've felt like I know him from reading Blatherings, but in person it's been fun talking with him. I realize how similar we are in many ways. We both have ferociously multi-talented wives who are both writers and musicians. We both have jobs in the tech industry, but in school studied other subjects (he has a Masters in philosophy, I have a degree in anthropology). We like a lot of the same music, and seem to have the same sense of humor. I wish that we didn't live so far apart :-(.

I fly home early tomorrow (which is good, it's been a long business trip). I do wish I could spend a bit more time seeing Toronto. I think Maya and I will have to come back for a purely social visit soon.

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Today's Blatherpic:

JeffB playing my guitar. With any luck, some of his guitar playing skills will be left behind for me!

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hospital again

(Augh! Apologies for the too-wide formatting of my archived individual entries. I haven't been able to figure out what's causing that yet and haven't much time until the end of the week. If anyone sees the problem, please do let me know, thanks!)

Well, we're back to "wait and see" mode again with my Dad. As I mentioned in an earlier Blatherings today, we ended up in the emergency ward of the Peel Memorial Hospital again last night. This time, however, he ended up in the waiting room most of the time because the preliminary triage assessment didn't warrant immediate attention.

While I understand this, it was also tough watching my Dad feel so ill, barely able to walk on his own because of the nausea, and have to wait in an uncomfortable hospital waiting room for over six hours, holding a plastic bed pan in his lap in case he needed to throw up. My understanding is that he would have been seen sooner except that there were so many emergency admissions last night that they eventually had to see him in the "holding area" rather than give him a temporary cot in the regular emergency unit.

About 2 a.m., he was able to lie down across several chairs, with a coat cushioning his head. I watched over him and our stuff, trying to stay awake. Jeff stayed around until about 2, but then I forced him to go home and get some sleep because I didn't want to worry about him dozing off on the drive home.

By the time my Dad was examined by a doctor at around 3 a.m., he and I were both bone-weary. The doctor (who also looked pretty tired) said that my dad was better off going home for a few hours and coming back for a specialist appointment than being checked into the hospital. We took a cab back to Dad's house, and we both crashed almost immediately. I slept in Jim's old room.

Jeff came to pick us up at the hospital after Dad's appointment the next day, drove Dad to his house to pack, then we dropped him off at my sister's, where he'll be staying for a few days. The current plan is for Dad to come here on Friday. We didn't learn anything new at the specialist appointment this morning, but several tests did get moved up in schedule, including a liver ultrasound scan.

Things are stable enough that I called Jeff Bohnhoff and told him to feel free to come over, though I might be pretty braindead tonight. We're getting together with Allison and Jodi tomorrow.

Really looking forward to seeing Jeff! Hopefully I can get him to do a Guest Blathering tomorrow.

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Today's Blatherpic is a photo I took during the birthday party we had for Annie on Sunday night, before we got the call from my Dad. This is Barbie's companion, Ken. Boy, has Ken ever changed since my Ken days. Note the trendy haircut, the Backstreet Boy look.