Jury duty in Toronto - Day 3

More details soon.

Jury duty in Toronto - Day 1

Yes, I'm still alive.

Things have been busy. I quit Blathering for a while because I was getting stressed out trying to get everything done and suddenly thought,"Wait a sec. No one's paying me to do Blatherings. Or Inkygirl. Or Will Write For Chocolate. I'm doing them because I ENJOY doing them...so why am I killing myself trying to keep them updated if I'm not looking forward to working on them??"

So I opted out of blogging for a while. And you know what? Nothing exploded. No lynch mobs came after me. A good lesson for me.



Meanwhile, however, I was called to jury duty this week. I'm typing this from a carrel in the courthouse on University Avenue in downtown Toronto. Many thanks to my brother-in-law Kaarel for advising me to come early -- there are only a few carrels with power outlets; most people have to sit in the rows of closely packed chairs.



We're in this room every day this week from about 9:30 am through until 4:30 pm (we've been told that some days it might end earlier, some days later). We get an hour for lunch around 1 pm, but have to leave our juror summons form with the clerks anytime we leave, and get our attendance taken again when we return.

Other than lunch break, we're not supposed to leave the room with the exception of the occasional 5-10 minutes. There are about 150-200 people in the room, and we've been assigned to one of four groups. It's nearly 3 pm, and only one group has called to court so far. Once your group has been called, there's another wait while the lawyers go through the jury selection process.



Whether or not we're chosen, we have to come back each day this week -- possibly longer if we're chosen for a trial that lasts past Friday. I've been told that because I've booked a plane flight this Friday, I can get excused from that day, but I can't petition until the day before.

It's nearly 3 pm, and only the first group has been called; I'm in the fourth. Because I have a carrel with a power outlet, plus Internet access (which I have to pay for), it's not as bad as I feared. My main challenge is the utter lack of physical activity. I'm used to being able to walk around when I want to, but not only is there not enough room to do so (there are people waiting on chairs from wall to wall), I'm also worried about leaving my computer too long or (if I take my stuff) losing my carrel/power outlet.



I'm also finding it hard to focus on serious work because of all the people on cellphones and in conversation around me. I know, I know -- I've been so spoiled by my home office life! Anyway, I don't want to wear headphones in case I miss my group or name being called, or another announcement.

I'd be curious to hear from any of you who have been on jury duty, and how you found the experience; feel free to point me to a blog post URL.

Today's Blatherphotos, by the way, were taken when my friends Dave Clement, Sue & Tom, and Walter K. came over to visit. Dave is in town working on a new Dandelion Wine recording with Tom; it was so great seeing him again!



Picture above: Going to Hugh's Room for the Gordon Lightfoot Tribute concert with Dave, Tom, Sue, Allison, Jane, Phil, and Dave's friend Rick.

I'm WAY behind in posting pics, so I'll be catching up this week!

Hunkering down

Yes, I'm still alive. I had two (yes, two) colds during the holiday season and am just now starting to emerge from the black hole of pestilence. I'm cutting down on blogging and cartooning for a little while until I catch up with work and life, plus I want to focus on finishing current writing projects.

I'm disappointed about missing GAfilk this weekend, but I am looking forward to attending the SCBWI Winter Conference in New York in a few weeks as well as meeting with my agent at Curtis Brown.

Blush Publishing recently told me that my Blush cards are being distributed in France! This means they're now available in Japan, Australia, France, the UK, U.S. and Canada. I also just finished another four new designs, so those will be added to the card line as well.

Life is good -- just very busy. :-)

New Year parties, friends, and Virtual Evil Squirrels

My friend Iain and me. Photo by Walter.

Jeff and I brought in the new Year with some of our friends at a party hosted by Reid and Luisa. Played boardgames and Guitar Hero, caught up with friends, ate way too much. Many thanks to R & L!



'Twas great to get together with friends at our place and elsewhere. I got together with my friend Cathy, who has moved from Calgary back to Toronto - yay! And she'll be living just a few blocks away -- double yay!!!

Allison, Jodi and I had our annual Urban Tapestry gathering as well as continuing to do prep for FilKONtario. Gifts I received included a yummy-smelling Vanilla Spice toiletries set from Jodi and some gorgeous hand-made chainmaille from Allison You can see the earrings she gave me in top right of this photo.

Also explored Second Life some more. I decided to sign up for a Premium Account so that I could get live chat help as well as be able to buy a wee plot of land to call my own. You can see a picture of my house below, taken while I was chatting with Dwen Dooley (filker Dan K. in real life):



My most recent exciting SL discovery: it's a new way to display, read and buy books. I recently visited Robin Sojourner's Library in SL, for example, where he/she allows visitors to browse nicely formatted e-books for free, and buy them if users want to take the books away from the library.



I have to find out how Robin formatted the e-books in the library -- they look so real, and users can flip through the books and read the text as well as go to the table of contents. I now have two new books (one about Alpha Channels, and the other about Textures) sitting on a coffee table in my virtual house. :-)

My most horrifying recent SL discovery...there are SQUIRRELS!!



Meanwhile, I find it interesting that NONE of my local friends use Second Life. Like me, several tried it briefly but then gave up. I'm beginning to suspect that a lot of one's SL opinion has to do with the first few visits -- it's a shame that the first experience a typical user has in SL is the Help Island, where everyone is confused and you get accosted by avatars who want to bite you or sell you something or make crude remarks. No wonder so many first-time users get turned off for good.



It also doesn't help that media coverage tends to focus on the party aspect, and the fact that avatars can have virtual sex in non-PG areas. Plus it's true that a lot of SL focuses on shopping. BUT believe it or not, it's entirely possible to spend all your SL time in areas that are focused on topics other than shopping or sex, and still only have explored a fraction of SL's potential.

I've been checking out Dusan Writer's Metaverse blog, whose author is interested "in the metaverse and identity, education, visualization, and collaboration." Most of his posts focus on education and business, but from time to time there will be a more personal post like
Come Inside, I'd Like To Show You Something.

Also found the following video interesting, which was included in a recent Washington Post article about Second Life: