Thingo began operating shortly after birthday season last year, and therefore did not have an opportunity to send its birthday greetings to the celebrants it had just missed.

Best wishes to Nath on her birthday, from the entire thingo staff and all of its subsidiaries and affiliates. We all hope that you have a good day and wish you many more happy birthdays in the future. As a token of our esteem, please accept this coupon redeemable for a 10% discount on any online purchase of thingo merchandise.

Earlier this year, a band called Children of the Revolution had a big concert where in addition to simply putting on a great show, they simultaneously recorded video and audio a concert video, a movie, and two full-length CDs.

Their more recent show doubled as a CD release party where the two live CDs were finally made available. Pretty good stuff. The best part, however, is that I was able to make my contribution to the world of world music. That's me in the crowd photo, pretty much due north from the hole. And Nath's there on my left. You can tell it's me by the long, narrow forearm and the giant hand. I've enlarged the relevant section over on the right.

It's a dubious bit of fame I suppose, but I'll take it. I guess I should return the favour and put the Children of the Revolution on my CD when it comes out.

At the start of the year, I mentioned that I had gotten into the habit of occasionally purchasing a random magazine I had never heard of as a horizon-expanding exercise. At the time, this process had led me to the magazine Mercator's World and an interest in antique maps.

A few months later, I bought my first issue of Orion magazine. Then I went and bought the next two issues. Then I got a subscription. And now I'm president of the company. Just kidding.

Orion is a most excellent magazine. At the most basic level, it's a magazine about environmentalism and naturalism, about the dangers of globalization and industrial farming. Are you wincing yet? Yes, these are all loaded terms, buzzwords that get tossed around all too readily at anti-WTO demonstrations and outside Gap stores. We're all used to being bludgeoned by a heavy-handed environmentalist message, being yelled at about the global consequences of the bad decisions we make every day. And of course, this approach can't work. I know it -- I used to deal with smokers the same way. Then one day, I came to the shocking realization that smokers know what they're doing is bad for them. It's not that they just needed someone to tell them. These days, I'm a little more mellow on issues like this one, though I still feel like keying every SUV I see.

It's the approach of Orion that makes it so special. Instead of bludgeoning you, it puts a garland of daisies on your head. Their goal is to show you nature as it is, to describe the beauty of the world, and let you form your own conclusions. Ideally, you decide on your own that the earth should be protected without having to be told outright. This sort of approach fosters deeper and longer-lasting learning than lots of yelling and begging for money. Here's what they say at the start of every issue:

The aims of Orion:

To characterize conceptually and practically our responsibilities to the earth and all forms of life, and to explore the ethic of humane stewardship.

To advance the notion that effective stewardship comes from feelings of respect and admiration for the earth; we will protect, foster, and nurture what we have come to revere.

To help us deepen our personal connection with the natural world as a source of enrichment and inner renewal.

The magazine comes out quarterly. Which is a good thing, since it takes a while to read through an issue. Each issue is packed with essays, poems, paintings, and letters. The contents are by turns sad and hopeful, frustrated and serene. And there's absolutely no advertising. That's an impressive level of integrity.

If you know me, you probably know that I have a pretty loud voice. Part of this is hereditary, at least family-related if not actually genetic. In my family, it's Survival of the Loudest. I suspect there's an element of hearing-impairment involved too, though it's hard to determine whether this has caused the general loudness or has been caused by it. Whatever the case, I have a voice that is not only loud, but that is somehow tuned to travel intact across great distances. Chalk it up to the shape of my head, my sinuses, my lung capacity, who knows. The fact is that I was constantly getting in trouble in high school because I was physically incapable of saying something to the person next to me without the teacher hearing. Perhaps I should have passed notes instead.

Consider now the impact of my vocal power in the context of the acting course I'm taking. I used to be in plays, and I learned early on about the importance of projection, of making sure your voice reaches out and scours every corner of the performance space. Presumably I learned this vicariously as the director explained it to the other actors; I'm sure it was never necessary to explain it to me. Be it from nerves or just intuition, when I'm on stage I project even better than in conversation. Of course, this carries over into teaching. I've never needed a microphone, even when teaching in the largest rooms. At a conference earlier this year, I warned the sound guy not to mike me but he insisted, saying he would monitor the levels and turn them down appropriately. When I started to speak, I remember a sonic boom followed by a very quick, very dramatic adjustment of sound levels. I should have told him to start by underestimating. (As an aside, if you're hooked up with a wireless microphone system, remember to turn it off when you go to the bathroom. Fortunately, I don't think I was being monitored at the time.)

This was all brought to mind yesterday in class. I was up in front of the class doing a spoken exercise. During my performance, I heard faint sounds from outside the room of someone trying to turn the locked doorknob, but ignored them. When I was done, the instructor opened the door to tell that person to go away, then closed it and said to me, "I can't understand how he didn't hear you in here". The class started laughing and commenting on my voice. One student said, "I thought I was at a rave". Now that's about as strong an affirmation of loudness as I can imagine. Pretty scary, though.

I've been bugging Nath recently by proclaiming what a beautiful day it is outside, no matter what the weather is like. Well, I can't go on pretending anymore (not that I was pretending in the first place; I guess what I mean is that I won't start pretending now). It's a positively ugly day here in the northwest. It's dreary and cold, and what looks to be a frigid rain is falling lightly but relentlessly. Last winter was uncharacteristically mild and pleasant; it looks as if we're already getting started on what will be a more brutal winter this year. Hold on to your tuques, ladies and gentlemen.

It's days like these when I'm particularly grateful for my working arrangements. Barring specific reasons to be on campus, I do all my work at home or in local cafés. When I look outside and see crappy weather, I stay home. I turn the heat up, have some tea, and commune with the napping cats. I get a nice crackling fire going. Or I would, if I had a fireplace.

That being said, I may yet brave the elements today. I've got a hankering for some hot chocolate. While I could make that here, I feel instinctively that the trip to the local café might enhance the experience, that the darkness and dripping rain will make the drink that much more warm and inviting. Ordinarily, one might hope to reward oneself with hot chocolate when one finally gets home after trudging through foul weather. But I am home, and so I must go out of my way to include the trudging part. So be it.

I've mostly recovered from a weekend of gastronomic excess. Friday night we were going to see a play, and so we grabbed a quick (but substantial) Mexican dinner beforehand. Saturday we went out again, and I had a large Italian dinner, including a bit of Nath's main course and a dessert. Sunday we woke up early, and after having a quick bowl of cereal and a glass of juice we headed down to the pier to grab a ferry to Victoria. I had another mini breakfast on the ferry. Shortly after arriving in Victoria, we headed over to the Empress Hotel for brunch. By the end of the brunch, my metabolic processes were decidedly strained, and I felt like Mister Creosote being offered just one tiny wafer-thin mint. Kaboom!

Fortunately my structural integrity field held better than Mister Creosote's and I survived to tell the tale. The additional weight I was carrying didn't sink the ferry on the return trip. In fact, the return ferry ride was quite nice. The ferry was just about full, and there was no way Nath and I were going to be able to sit together. Then I spied some random people going through a door marked "crew only". I asked an attendant if there were more seats in there, and after hesitating a moment she said, "yes". It turns out that there was a small room with six comfy seats where crew members can relax. Tara, the charming attendant, let us sit up there. Nath and I rode in style together with three very nice fellow travelers.

We got back to Seattle in time to enjoy dinner. A light dinner. And to watch a bit more of the classic movie Cleopatra, from which I'm sure we could learn a thing or two about decadence.

I don't think I've mentioned it yet on thingo, but I've been taking an intro acting course this quarter. It's the introductory undergraduate course offered by the drama department. Apparently, this is nothing to sneeze at -- the university's drama department is one of the top five in the United States, and on the way up.

So far, the class is a blast, if something of a time sink. Brian was right: the workload is negative, in that the relaxation and centering that comes from attending class helps make the rest of one's work more manageable, or at least tolerable.

Most of class time is spent in studio work with a small group, run by one of the theatre graduate students. Our TA is lots of fun, with a refreshingly dirty vocabulary for an academic setting. He certainly has standards of decorum that vary from what I find comfortable when giving a lecture. His advice is usually on the mark and leads to general improvement in our abilities, though I'm a little skeptical of his occasional advice of, "okay, do it again, and act better."

I received an indirect compliment from him yesterday. As part of a bunch of random announcements, he mentioned that an undergrad directing student was looking for two men to perform in a ten-minute play. He then singled me out in the group, suggesting that I should audition. This is extremely flattering (or maybe the director is simply looking for a tall male with strange hair), but sadly I recoil at the thought of committing any additional time this quarter to drama. In the language of the course, my action is to enrich my artistic sensibilities through acting, and my obstacles are the work I really ought to be doing and my general inability to get it done on time. The obstacles that impede the accomplishment of my action cause vascillation. I believe the auditions are tomorrow, so all this dramatic tension will be resolved soon enough. Will I go for it? Only time will tell! (Note: in drama parlance, this is the nail-biting cliffhanger.)