bookcrossing.com

Jeff and I are at the cottage right now (photo above was taken a few minutes ago). The air was chill enough to warrant a fire this morning, yay! I love it when it gets colder like this. The lake water is cold enough to turn the surface of my skin numb as soon as I jumped in last night, and this was after a lengthy bake in the sauna.

Real estate update: Jeff and I are continuing to check out places in Toronto. After wandering into a few open houses at random over the past couple of weeks, we've been discouraged, so finally decided to start talking to real estate agents. We've found one we really like: Kathy Gordon, Parki's agent. In addition to being really nice and good at what she does, she's also Internet-savvy.

Thanks to Chris Conway for mentioning Bookcrossing.com in Blatherchat earlier this week. What a wonderful idea for sharing books! The basic idea is that people take a book and "release it into the wild". The site provides you with a label or bookmark you can stick in the front of the book which has a unique Bookcrossing ID and a message that encourages the person who finds it to check the site. Bookcrossing logs any journal entries for the book, tracking the path of ownership as it passes from one person to another.

I immediately felt compelled to try it out of course. My Bookcrossing id is "inkygrrl", and I registered and released three books in my neighbourhood. We'll see what happens; I'll check on their progress from time to time, and probably release more over time. You can find out more information at the Bookcrossing.com site as well as this SeattlePI.com article. And you can see my "bookshelf" here.

I left one on a newspaper stand, one on a restaurant table, and one on bench. What's also great is that if I wanted to, I could also go hunting for recently-released books in my area. Reminds me somewhat of the whole Geocaching trend.

Anyway, I think this Bookcrossing.com is a wonderful idea, but I have to wonder how long they'll survive since their database is likely to grow exponentially over the next while (they're getting a huge amount of press). Hopefully they've found a sound financial model which will keep up <fingers crossed>.

Meanwhile, I'll keep releasing books into the wild...

poll: romance books/movies

Congratulations to Bryan and Elizabeth! Their baby's due next March.

I saw Possession with Allison and Jodi last night at Sheppard Centre. I liked it; I'm such a sucker for romance, especially romance in the face of adversity. Really liked Jennifer Ehle, who played Christabel LaMotte. Allison and Jodi said she was also very good in A&E's version of "Pride & Prejudice". I've really got to rent P&P someday; I've heard so many women say how much they liked it.

I think I was turned off Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice because of an attempt to make us read the book in Grade Six or Seven. We all hated it, so the teacher gave up. I've steered relatively clear of reading Austen since then, mostly because of the kneejerk negative reaction I experience whenever I consider or someone suggests reading one of her books. Must get over that. For those interested, by the way, there is a Pride and Prejudice reading project starting up in the Electric Penguin message boards.

My favourite Victorian romance novel is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Wow, do I ever love that book. I have a battered-looking copy that I picked up in a used bookstore years ago that is even more worn-looking now because of how many times I've read it since. I've seen various movie versions as well as a live musical, but haven't liked any nearly as much as the original book.

Some of my favourite romantic movies:

Romeo & Juliet: version with Olivia Hussey & Leonard Whiting

Casablanca

Singin' in the Rain: mostly because of the last major scene

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: heartbreaking

The Princess Bride

Braveheart: hey, Mel carried around that handkerchief forever!

Sleepless In Seattle

Ladyhawke

Pretty Woman: stop gagging, Andy!

Roman Holiday

The Truth About Cats And Dogs

Truly, Madly, Deeply: I liked Ghost, too, but enjoyed this much more

The Sound of Music

Somewhere In Time

Hm. I know I'm missing some; I'll think of more later.

Don't forget to check out Fillmore tomorrow, a new Disney cartoon for which Rand and Adam wrote the theme music! Jeff and I will be at the cottage, but Allison has kindly agreed to tape it for me (thanks, Allison!). According to the announcement on the Ookla message board, Fillmore debuts on Saturday, September 14 at 9:00 AM on ABC.

Poll: What are your favourite romance books/movies?

Answer in Blatherchat





Links/News:

There's going to be a webcam on the STS-112 space shuttle mission that launches on Oct. 2nd. (Spaceref.com)

Back to the Starship Enterprise, as the Franchise Goes Where It's Gone Before (New York Times) **Don't read this if you don't want any hint of plot spoilers for Nemesis, the new Star Trek movie.

Someone's got hold of the extended script for Fellowship of the Ring (remember the extra 30 minutes footage that will be included in the Special Edition DVD released in November?). Here's the review, which has ***MAJOR PLOT SPOILER WARNINGS***.

Thanks to the TheOneRing.net for mentioning my Hobbit/LOTR Revisited personal reading project.

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Today's Blatherpic:

	Ultrasound picture taken yesterday of Bryan's and Elizabeth's unborn child.
	Martin Short as Jiminy Glick, being interviewed in front of our building last night. I took this picture as I passed by on the way home. Lots of star-types in our area these days because of the Toronto Film Festival. Jeff said Denzel Washington was across the street earlier in the evening.

poll: upcoming movies?

A couple of nights ago, Jeff and I took our Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring DVD over to his dad's house to watch the movie and some of the special features. His dad has only seen the movie once, and wanted to be able to ask questions while we watched it. I've seen the movie over a dozen times now, so didn't mind. In fact, I found that his questions made me want to reread the books!

So that's what I'm doing. I'm reading The Hobbit first, since I haven't read that in about 25 years and can't remember much of it, and then I'm rereading the trilogy. As some of you may recall, I read LOTR for the first time last year. For those interested, I'm posting my reports online.

Quite enjoy The Hobbit so far. :-) For those of you who have never been able to get into the heavier Lord of the Rings, you might enjoy this book.

I am so looking forward to The Two Towers. In fact, after a depressing dearth of good films during the summer, looks like the winter's much more exciting. Allison told me that filmmakers tend to like debuting their movies in December to increase their chances for Oscar nominations. But heck, wouldn't a good summer film be more memorable than one of many good films clustered together in a single month? I don't get it.





But this brings me to the next poll:

What upcoming movies are you most looking forward to seeing?

Answer in Blatherchat

News/Links:

Heather Munn is organizing a gathering of filkers with online journals at OVFF. "OVFF Online Journal Birds of a Feather" will take place on the Saturday of the convention, 7:30-8:30 pm ("at least").

A British tv station will air a 2 minute, 17 second trailer for the next Harry Potter movie, "marking the first time the full-length clip with scenes from the movie has been shown to audiences", according to
CNN.

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Today's Blatherpics:

I scanned these pictures as part of my ongoing Family Photo Archiving Project. Click on any of the photos above to see the larger image.

	Me on the beach during a family holiday, before I got braces. :-)
	Ruth, Jim and me. I'm pointing something out to Jim. Grandma's to the far left, partly cut out of the photo.
	My family in Toronto. This photo might have been taken in front of our house on O'Connor Street. Though I don't remember that big house in the background, hm. I'll have to go check this sometime.

sept. 11

(edited 4:56 pm)

Jeff and I were in Tokyo at our friend Alison G.'s apartment Words and music ©1998 Jeff Bohnhoff
(reprinted here with permission)

On a dirty street corner beneath a steel sky;
old Enid plays his blues
as the crowds just rush on by.
Just a crazy old man
-- dented sax and tangled hair --
wailing out his benedictions.

Crumbling old brick building,
Mary drinks her tea.
A well-worn Bible and a blanket on her knees.
She hears the gunfire from the alley down below,
while sirens sing of Armageddon.
Manhattan sleeps tonight
under a blanket of new-fallen snow.
Quiet as the light where towers pierce
the fog softly glows.
I can feel the ghosts haunting the streets far below.

A full moon rises, pulling people like the tide.
The snow keeps falling on an ocean deep and wide.
Each fragile crystal melts into the sea
in a moment of transition.
A frozen blanket, bathed in silver light;
the streets lie muted in the alchemy of night.
And when the spring comes,
who knows what will have grown
in the cracks between the stones.

Old Enid dreams, in the warmth of vented steam
of better days to come
Mary's fears seem to ring in her ears
as she stares out the window
at a million frozen, falling stars.

massage

Every few months, I treat myself to a massage at the Sutherland-Chan clinic. I have a weakness for professional massages. If I was a zillionaire, I'd have them every day. Though perhaps then they wouldn't be such a treat, who knows.

There's something enormously relaxing and liberating about having a total stranger run their hands over your body. You feel pretty vulnerable, lying there naked except for a carefully-arranged towel, but there's also freedom in that vulnerability.

I've tried different massages in different places, and I've found that not all massages are as good. On one of my Toronto-Philadelphia commutes, my flight home was cancelled; I was stuck in an airport hotel overnight. Tired and frustrated and depressed, I decided to treat myself to a massage in the hotel spa.

I was massively disappointed. The masseuse was a girl who seemed to have never gone to massage school (or whereever good masseurs and masseuses go for their education); she could have been someone I dragged off the street. She was tentative, poking and prodding me as if I was a wad of yeasty dough sitting on a kitchen counter that still hadn't risen enough.

The Sutherland-Chan people seem to know what they're doing; I've never had a bad massage in their hands. Yesterday was no exception. Yesterday was also my most painful massage...at my request. Usually when the masseur asks me what kind of pressure I want, I reply with "medium". This time, I asked for a firmer pressure because I was pretty stiff and sore around my shoulders and neck, probably as a result of the long drive we had on the weekend combined with not carrying a heavy knapsack properly afterwards.

So Stephen complied, telling me that if it ever got TOO painful, to let him know. He kneaded and pulled while I lay on the treatment table in blissful agony. One part of the treatment involved him pinching various nerves in my neck.

"This is going to hurt," he warned me. "Tell me when the pain goes away, and then I'll move to the next spot."

And wow, it sure did hurt. My first impulse was to lie and say, "Ok! It's fine now!" right away, but I restrained myself. I even dozed off once.

Anyway, by the time I came out of the treatment room, I was wobbly and lightheaded and virtually pain-free.





Sent out another query yesterday. The article query that was accepted last week is due this Friday. I wrote over 1,000 words for my novel. I'm pretty happy with how things are going with my writing in general.

Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon were across the street from our apartment building yesterday, for the premiere of "Moonlight Mile" at the Toronto Film Festival. I was at the gym on the treadmill (too hot/humid outside to run) when I saw him on tv being interviewed by the media on about thirty feet away from our front door.

Parki came over last night, and we watched three episodes of The Sopranos from Scott's DVDs. Scott watched all the Season Three episodes over three evenings already. I have a craving for Italian food now.

Links/News:

Harald Koch has a blog! (Harald writes as "chk" in Blatherchat).

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Today's Blatherpics:

	From our condo window, we get to see some pretty spectacular sunsets. Not as spectacular as the ones at the cottage, granted, but breathtaking in their own way. The light from one of them recently transformed our living room into something almost magical.
	Sign on the elevator to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.