Been a Long Time, Been a Long Time

Been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time! Has anybody heard this guy's recent album of duets with newgrass starlet, Alison Krauss? I imagine it would sound like, "Rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin'! Aieeeeeee keep on rollin'! Oh my Jesus! Rollin' in mah sweet bay-EE-ay-EE-ay-EE! Ay-EE-ay-EE-aaaaaay-by's.... ... .... AAAAAAHHHRRRRRMMMS!" But from all accounts it's actually quite good.

Anyways, what's mostly been up with me is that I had a birthday last weekend. It was my fortieth, so kind of weird, but mostly really fun. The big surprise was that my parents flew in from Toronto on Thursday night and were already in the restaurant where Ali and I were going when we got there. Poor Alison was unsure how I'd take it, as I normally am against surprise parties, but this was not a party, just a surprise, and a really nice one, at that. We had a great dinner with them, then they came bowling with us and a bunch of friends the next night, and on Saturday we accompanied them to the Farmers' Market and wandered around downtown. I don't generally get to spend much time alone with my folks, and especially not on my own turf, so it was really sweet of them to do that. About the best birthday present I could get.






Cliff came out and bowled left-handed, on account of his broken collarbone. Didn't seem to prevent his team from kicking the other team's pants.




As usual, Ali's not in any of the bowling pictures 'cause she took them all.

So, other than that weekend of shenanigans there hasn't been a whole lot worth telling about. A rather disgusting amount of my time has been devoted to getting my computer working with the fancy new iPod Alison gave me. I had to get a new operating system (thanks, Apple) but the latest one won't work on my dinosaur of a three-year-old Mac, and then I didn't have a DVD drive,... Ugh, you really don't want to know, I'm tellin' ya. Plus, there've been shows and work and chores keeping us plenty busy, so I don't even have any great new music or movies to recommend to you. I did get an anthology of the year's best comics from Krista for my b-day and discovered plenty of mind-blowing stuff in there. It was curated by Chris Ware, creator of the Acme Novelty Library, so pretty much everything in there was fantastic. It got me all excited about comics again, and I've decided to try doing a comic story. When I was a kid I thought I'd end up drawing cartoons as a career. Right now I'm a graphic designer, which is not far off, when you think about it. It's all about a fascination with the communicative possibilities of words and pictures. Now if only I could actually draw...

And, oh yeah, speaking of comics, I received my first issue of The Shambhala Sun, Halifax's own internationally acclaimed Buddhist magazine, in the mail on my birthday, and whose illustration should grace the table of contents but Mark Alan Stamaty's? It's a very large piece that spans two pages in a fascinating article on the "new atheists" (Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens, et al.) and how those interested in more contemplative, less dogmatic religious experiences might respond to their science-is-all-we-need attitudes. Just the kind of stuff I've been wanting to read, and as a bonus I learn that Stamaty's alive and well and still producing high quality work (though I thought the illustration could have used a few tiny little guys with fish coming out of their pipes).

As for Alison, she's been busy getting ready for her friend Alicia's wedding. It's next weekend and Ali's the maid/matron of honour. She's working like a maniac on this toast she'll have to make, and in fact I have to print out what she's got so far so we can go over it together and squeeze the maximum entertainment value out of it.

But let me just say before I excuse myself (Coming, Ali!) that we might get a second-hand piano. Very exciting. I'll tell ya more next time. Gotta run now!

- Andrew

P.S. Oh, now I'm really in trouble, but I forgot to ask whether anyone had heard that the real reason Celine Dion cancelled her show in Halifax was that her husband read some negative press about it in the Daily News and the two of them became very upset. They've decided that Halifax is not a "hip" (read "cornball") enough place for them, and the city has actually been taking some blows from entertainment media rushing to La Voix Abominable's defense. It's really just too funny. I can't understand how she could have gone this long without realizing that there are many, many people out there who think she stinks. No one could possibly be that sheltered, could they?