Our one year anniversary yesterday was fun. We had originally contemplated sending rude e-mail messages to senior management at the CBC to let them know the extent to which the lockout shrunk our celebrations but ultimately decided against it. Instead, we went for a walk along the ravine, browsed through the stands at the magazine store, and went looking for some nice meat for dinner at the ritzy grocery store in the neighborhood. We had also contemplated stopping at Wendy's for our anniversary dinner but deemed it too folksy-vice-presidentail-candidatesque. We picked up some pork chops and Ptichka made Candy Pork, roast potatoes, tomato and basil salad, and sauteed swiss chard. We cracked open a bottle of wine that we'd been cellaring.

And there were gifts. Ptichka bought me some much-needed basic water colours (cadmium red, cadmium yellow, and Hooker's green), a tube of grey pearl acrylic with mica flakes, a gold pen, and these paper flowers from the JPP that I have been coveting for the past eight months. I've used the acrylics already and when I'm at home long enough, I'll scan the deco page and post it. I will be hoarding the paper flowers for a very long time. It was all very good.

To the left is one of my first ATCs ever. I believe that Miss Fish was the recipient. It's a bunch of cut paper. I remember what a pain in the arse it was getting the hair to look like hair. I dug this up because even though the exchange that gave rise to this card was conducted on PostcardX!, it eventually lead me to Nervousness because I wanted regular swaps with some accountability for the participants. Nervousness as I knew and loved it is in internet-limbo at the moment. It's waiting patiently for its return. In the meantime, I've joined tonnes of Yahoo! groups and now, well, now, I've been asked to serve on the steering committee for a new mail-art website meant as a complement to and not a replacement for Nervousness. I'm terribly excited about it. I respect the people with whom I'll be working. I'm also praying that it does indeed go live in January. There can never be enough groups out there facilitating collaborative projects and art.