Saturday, July 19, 2008

Summer Shenanigans

Oh, dang, I'm already not keeping this up like I thought I would. Still busy, still having a good time. We just got in from a staff barbecue at my coworker's fabulous new house in Tantallon. It was fun and there was lots of good food, but then a three-out-of-tune-acoustic-guitar jam broke out and it got pretty painful at the end. Lots of earnest and loud Red Hot Chili Peppers and U2. I very seriously considered whether it would be worth the price of a new guitar to grab one of them and smash it on the floor in front of everyone. If not for the fact that everyone I work with would have hated me after that, I totally would have gone for it.

I've been going to the Public Gardens for lunch a lot, trying to get some quiet nature and sanity to break up my hectic day. Sometimes I bring Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, which I highly recommend if you're in the mood for some life advice/wisdom that manages to be profound, uncompromising, and uplifting. I was in there one day, sitting by the duck pond, reading and very much enjoying a Tony Millionaire's Sock Monkey comic that my mom kindly sent me in the mail a propos of nothing, when who should wander by but my sister's old friend and fellow Blogger, Jen, visiting from England! I probably wouldn't have recognized her and was caught completely off guard, so I was not the world's greatest conversationalist. Nice to see her and her family, though.

Another face from the past I got to see recently was Ken Shorley>, playing a Jazz Festival show with Sanctuary, who are always great. Ken added some percussion to what is usually a very arhythmic and drone-y experience, making for a mind-blowing, semi-hallucinatory set of improvised psychedelic ambience. We got to chat with — gush over, really — him a little afterward and meet his wife Heidi. He was playing another show the next night with his band Talambra, but I ended up being too busy to go. However, there's a trip to Wolfville, where they live, planned soon, so maybe we'll get to see them again then.

As of tonight I'm officially on vacation for a week. On Wednesday we go to PEI to stay at Jenny and Tom's cottage for a few days, but before that there's an Al Tuck matinee show to play, a Deerhoof show to attend (I know! Deerhoof in Halifax! How the heck did THAT ever happen?), a website to design, a softball game to play, and a secret other out-of-town excursion for as yet undisclosable purposes.

And on that suspenseful note, I bid you... mmgoodnight!

- Andrew

1 comment:

St. Louis Family said...

That is some very fun & exciting stuff! I laughed out loud at the guitar-breaking scenario...I think I once dated one of those guys! How IS Jen?! How IS Ken?! Hey, didn't even notice the cute rhyme! Wish I ran into both of them too! Have a great excursion somewhere...Eri & I have an excursion planned too. It's one and a bit years late for Mom's 60th birthday (oh yeah, she's coming too) also to an undisclosed location. I promise to blog about it or about anything!
Dana