Our brunch yesterday went super-well. We had about 15 people over, which was far too many for our supposedly mellow evening. But it was great -- we got to catch up with a lot of folks I've been missing over the holidays and haven't gotten to see.
I hadn't seen Lucinda Catchlove much for a few months, and Heather Kelley and Damian DiFede made an appearance, too. We got to see John Usher, who's off to do weird things to people's ears at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Niko came with friend Johanie, who made some great black-bean brownies; DJ Ghostbeard was still feeling ill from NYE; and Meg showed off her deep purple hockey bruises.
It was also nice to have some new friends come, too. I've been wanting to hang out with MC Turgeon, one of the most experienced bloggers in Quebec, founder of meïdia and Étoiles-du-Web, since we met last year at South by Southwest. She and her partner Chris came over with a nice bottle of wine and got to know everyone there. Actually, she knew a lot of the people already -- she and Anne-Marie had met at Mutek, for example. When Patti came in, she said, "Oh, yeah, I know M-C. We do a lot of panels together." Ah, the panel circuit.
Altogether a really good time. Probably the only downside is that our oven was really dirty, and while I was making quiches and roasted potatoes I smoked up the entire house. But it cleared pretty quickly, and with the nice weather we're having, I could even have the kitchen door open to clear the smoke. Unheard of!
tags: bruncher mcturgeon montreal cooking
Making a point
Speaking of unseasonably warm weather, the Green Party of Canada held a picnic and ice cream social on Mount Royal last Saturday, which would have a couple of feet of snow on it in a regular year. The subject of discussion? Climate change, of course. I dunno -- clever move, but do they have to rub it in?
tags: green party picnic climate change
Shameless plugs
My friend Allegra has started a great new blog, Sucking-stones. She's got a really good voice and it's now in circulation as one of the blogs I read each morning.
Also, my friend Anne-Marie Bergeron has her first travel TV show on 33mag tomorrow. She's got a four-part series on her trip to Iceland which they're going to show. It's in French, but her husband Jeff only cusses in English, so that's probably what you'll hear when they're climbing glaciers and lava floes.
Did that get everyone? I hope so. You know what they say: You can plug your friends, and you can plug your ears, but you can't plug your friends' ears. Or something.
tags: allegra sucking-stones annemarie jeff 33mag
Chix
I was just reading Angela Beesley's end-of-year blog post and realized that I'd missed the establishment of WikiChix. It's a new organization for female wiki participants, in the great tradition *Chix tradition of Linux Chix or Debian Women.
All the more galling is that two other blogs I regularly read also covered the new group. Joseph Reagle made a note about gendered spaces and the role they play in any movement (like Open Content and wikis). Biella blogged about his bloggage and put some social-science twist that was a little hard for me to follow.
In any event, good luck to WikiChix. I find clubs extremely fun and useful and by nature exclusionary, and nothing to get worked up about. Of course, as one of the two founding members of the Maldekstrulaj Vegeteranaj Esperantistaj Linuxamantoj (Left-handed Vegetarian Esperantist Linux-users Club), I'd probably be pretty hypocritical calling anyone else exclusionary.
tags: wikichix wiki angela beesley joseph reagle biella coleman clubs