poll: star wars movie?

Jeff and I are back home. Back to audit stuff for me, woo boy. It looks like I'm going to have to approach Xlibris for at least one document that the CCRA needs; we'll see what happens with that.

I've finally managed to get through the 1300 e-mails that were stagnating in my Eudora inbox. Deleted a lot of old ones, deleted a lot of spam, filtered about 150 of them into a "still needs to be answered" separate mailbox. According to my Eudora stats, I get about 45 e-mails a day, send about 15 e-mails a day. A far cry from the 300 e-mails/day that I received when I worked on Inkspot, but I'm still trying to figure out a way to keep up, especially when I'm out of e-mail contact several days in a row. Lately, most of my e-mail correspondence has been with accountants and my tax lawyer. :-\

Partly because of my Market Watch column, I'm starting to get more and more of the "do you know what's happened to editor xxxx or publisher xxxx" or "where do you advise that I send my manuscript for publication" message from strangers.

A lot of my incoming mail is spam. Spam is a constant thorn in my side which I've alternately ignored or raged about, as most of you already know. I'm going to try a new spam-filtering system option that Bryan Fullerton set up for Samurai customers. I had originally asked him to take off the old filter since it was filtering out important e-mail that I wanted to see, but this new one looks more forgiving. The main problem I find with spam is that it's intermingled with my regular mail, so sometimes I miss seeing personal e-mails (or worse, accidentally delete them along with the spam).

Today's Poll: Star Wars movie?

How many of you are planning to see Attack of the Clones on opening day? Or even this week? Jeff and I have mixed feelings about this. Phantom Menace was such a resounding disappointment that it's hard to work up any real excitement for another Star Wars movie. On the other hand...it's STAR WARS. :-) Answer in Blatherchat.

Looks like two more Spider-man sequels are coming out, according to Reuters. The next one is scheduled for release on May 7, 2004.

And here's another Reuters story about the Attack of the Clones bootlegs that are already circulating online.

Today's Blatherpic:

I took this photo yesterday morning at the cottage.

sauna shower

After an ambitious of 'bout of napping yesterday, I actually did some productive cottage work by stacking firewood, moving some birch logs from a pile behind our cabin to a pile closer to the boathouse, and stacking cedar logs against the outside of the boathouse:





I also washed my hair in the sauna by heating up some water in a big pot on the electric coals, mixing it with cold lake water in a portable shower bag. Those shower bags are wonderful on camping trips; I remember some of our campmates on the Nahanni canoe trip had a bigger version that could hold more water. The plastic is black, so on a good day you can just leave the filled bag out on a rock to heat up in the sun.

I used biodegradable Camp Suds from Mountain Co-op; just a small amount will produce a LOT of suds! The most awkward part is holding the bag above your head with one hand, washing with your other hand. Jeff and I usually take turns doing this, but he was busy at the time.

The effort is well worth it, however! Even on camping trips, I start feeling really grungy if I don't get to stick my head in water once a day. This was more of a challenge on the Nahanni trip because of the glacially-cold water, but some of us still did it (screaming lustily in the process, of course).





Jeff and JBR put in the water system later in the afternoon, however, so now we have running water. The only thing better than a sauna shower is the outdoor shower. Too bad we can't have that back in the city. :-)

Ginny arrived around dinnertime, with dinner. In celebration of Mother's Day weekend (and because Ginny had had a pretty stressful week at the restaurant), Jeff made some yummy salmon and cream cheese appetizers:





Jeff and I are heading back to the city this afternoon. Hey, I (finally) updated Waiting For Frodo yesterday. Click on the image below to get the full cartoon:

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Jeff patiently let me decorate his knee last night.
	Woodpile I stacked.
	JBR in his comfortable cottage gear.
	Jeff made these appetizers for his mom's arrival: smoked salmon, onions, cream cheese, capers, onions.
	My most recent Waiting For Frodo strip.

sun!

Another power outage yesterday afternoon, a couple hours after I posted my previous Blathering...this one affected all of Huntsville as well as the surrounding area. Apparently some people got temporarily stranded in the town since gas pumps weren't working.

But even more significantly, our local ISP wasn't working, which meant I couldn't get online!

I coped with this catastrophe by engaging in activities which didn't require online access like reading (print text, not electronic!), napping, and actually enjoying the outdoors. I made toast in the fireplace by sticking a piece of bread onto a barbecue skewer and holding it over the coals. It got slightly singed, but I swear it tasted better than regular toast.





Sunny and somewhat warmer today, plus the power's back on! The sunny part is, unbelieveably, more important than the electric power.

It's funny, really. I know that if I put myself in the right mindset (like on the Nahanni trip, or even on a regular canoe or hiking trip), I don't mind being cold and wet for extended periods of time. When you're in an environment where you're used to certain luxuries, however, your mind gets somewhat more truculent (yay, I finally get to use the word truculent in a Blathering!).

The combination of the power outage and lack of sun made it pretty much impossible to ever get completely warm. A novelty at first, but then it gradually gets somewhat wearing.

But there's sun today! Amazing how cheering a bit of sunlight can be. I'm sitting at the dining room table in the boathouse right now. Jeff's still sleeping and JBR's still up in his cabin, so I've got the whole place to myself. I was up at 6:30 this morning, lit a fire, started some hot water for tea and porridge, then (insert shuddering sigh of ecstasy here) picked up my e-mail.





Last night, JBR, Jeff and I went over to Bob Clappison's cottage to check out the night sky on a telescope kindly loaned to us by Karen Yule. We saw Jupiter's stripes and three of its moons, a blindingly bright Venus, orangey-red Mars. We weren't able to identify any other planets, sadly. The Clappison cottage looked cozy with electric lights powered by their emergency generator.

Hey, Jeff just woke up. Wow, and it's not even 9 am!

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Me in the boathouse.
	Jeff on the telescope last night.
	My breakfast this morning. Quaker's Instant Oatmeal, Peaches and Cream.

cottage

[Condolences to the family of Bruce Pelz, who passed away yesterday. :-( Please see Dave's posting in Blatherchat or this Web page for more information]

So I'm typing this in the corner of the boathouse at the cottage, clad in fleece tights, t-shirt, two fleece sweaters, thick socks, hiking boots, huddled as close to the electric heater in the corner as I can get. Jeff is sitting across from me at the dining room table, also on his laptop.

We are both online at the same time, thanks to the AirPort hub that Jeff set up. No more tangled phone wires! I can be sitting on the deck and surfing the Web at the same time! Not that I'd want to right now...it's pretty blustery out there.

So blustery last night, in fact, that a power line was knocked down somewhere. The power went out in the middle of our dinner (barbecued steaks with blue cheese, and salad), and didn't come on until about 4:30 this morning. It was my turn to clean up, so I warmed up some cleaning water on the woodstove and rinsed everything off, stacked it, washed it more thoroughly this morning when I had access to real hot water.





It's snowing outside. What the heck happened to spring? This morning we even had a brief bout of hail. Jeff and I both seem to have caught some bug. I plan to do a lot of productive napping this weekend to try to get rid of it.

Despite the AirPort, I still have only regular telephone dial-up access from the cottage, so please don't send me big files while I'm here, thanks.

Heard from my tax lawyer. The CCRA wants some more docs, so looks like I'll have to do more digging through paperwork next week.

I've renewed waitingforfrodo.com and debbieohi.com. I brought my Wacom artpad to the cottage, and hope to do some updates to both cartoons while I'm here.

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Jeff wearing his headlamp as he calls Ontario Hydro.
	Cora experiencing her first power outage.
	Jeff using my laptop to test the limits of the AirPort range.

crafty

The picture above is of a badge holder worn by Kathleen Sloan at FilKONtario a while back (you can click on the photo for a larger version). She made it herself; I'm amazed at this woman's beadwork. I always try bidding on Kathleen's beaded stuff at Interfilk auctions, but the price always shoots way above my price range.

I admire those (like Kathleen, Allison, and Michelle Bottorff who made the beaded UT figures I mentioned earlier) who have the skill and patience to do crafts like this.

The last piece of needlework I did was the blanket I started crocheting for Sara when I heard that Ruth was pregnant for the first time. I guess I must have been so overwhelmed by astonishment that I was going to be an aunt that my enthusiasm overcame all rational thought.

By the time I realized what I had gotten myself into (i.e. about five stitches into the project), it was too late to back out...Ruth was all excited about the blanket. It seemed to take me ages to crochet that thing; I took it everywhere with me, even when we went winter cottaging with Ruth and Kaarel.

It was kind of fun working on it at first. Part of me could see the appeal of a longterm project like that; you were never at a loss about what to do with your hands, you could multitask while watching television, it was kind of cool to see the final product slowly emerge over time. But wow, emphasis on the "slowly"!

My blanket ended more the size of an over-sized handkerchief than a real child's blanket, but Ruth was thrilled with it, just the same. I even found a "Made with love from your aunt" label to sew into the corner. It's not the greatest piece of crochetwork and some of the stitches are bunched and crooked, but it was definitely a work of love. :-)

I had originally planned to sew one for all my other nieces and nephews, but that pipe dream went out the window pretty fast (i.e. halfway through Sara's blanket).

So now I'm just waiting for the day when Sara and Annie are digging through old boxes and come across the blanket, and Ruth explains that their Auntie Debbie crocheted a blanket for Sara and not Annie. Maybe the ensuing guilt will spur me to pick up my crochet needles again. Or maybe by the time my nephew/nieces start having kids, the memories of my first blanket experience will have faded enough that I'll start thinking, "Hey, that wasn't so bad. Maybe it's time to try crocheting again..."

Or maybe I'll just buy them some nice obnoxious percussion toys instead. :-)





Saw "Fiddler on the Roof" last night for the first time (thanks to Luisa for lending me the video!). I can't believe I didn't see this movie before! It was wonderful!! Really enjoyed the music, the romance, the characters. Somewhat darker than I expected; some of the scenes deals with anti-Semitism because of the setting of a Jewish village in Czarist Russia...but that just made me enjoy the film more.

I was surprised to Michael Glaser in the movie; I kept expecting Hutch to appear. Topol and Rosalind Harris were great.

Jeff would have hated this movie. :-)

I keep forgetting to post the URL to my new column on Writing-World.com, "Press Kit: The Author's Guide To Self-Promotion". Do check it out if you have a chance.

Going to the cottage today, yay! I'll be going up with JBR.

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Today's Blatherpics:

Today's pics are from FilKONtario a while back.

	The gorgeous beaded badge holder that Kathleen made. Click on the picture at the top of the page to see a larger version.
	Jodi and Allison.
	Eric and Dave comfort me as I wait in the lobby of the FKO hotel, unable to find Allison and Jodi on the last day of the convention so I could say good-bye to them. Photo by Ju.