the pod bay door

:: These things happened:

• Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head;
• Called Amelia about picking up music charts and CDs for upcoming April performances;
• Ate bowl of Cheerios with blueberries and strawberries and Bran Buds in skim milk with a dash of Splenda;
• Read the paper;
• Crawled back into bed for 15 minutes;
• Renewed That Dog CD, on loan from EPL;
• Showered, dressed, left house;
• Drove to AMA to buy five Platinum Plus movie passes, was immediately smitten with Tammy, the woman helping me, who was tall and beautiful and friendly and helpful and had deep brown eyes and a great smile;
• Drove to Amelia’s to pick up music;
• While leaving Amelia’s, was forced to stop in the middle of a street, waiting for the car in front of me to move; honking horn didn’t help; honking a second time resulted in her slowly moving so I could leave Amelia’s neighbourhood; note to self – there are still oblivious, moronic, shyte-for-brains people allowed to drive in this country, so watch out for them when you are on the road;
• Bought shoelaces at The Shoe Company, almost exciting as buying pants, but not quite;
• Had tazo chai latte at Indigo’s while reading Vanity Fair;
• Bought two copies of the SI Bathing Suit issue and a discount card before leaving Indigo’s;
• Drove home, and spent the afternoon working on project to clean and purge my kitchen; finished weeding and cleaning one bookshelf;
• Interrupted project a couple times to view short segments of stuff I had recorded years ago on video; this included a hilarious segment from Letterman’s last show on NBC with Tom Hanks, describing the time he tried to stuff Slappy White‘s golf clubs in the trunk of White’s car; the opening theme to Murder One, and the Larry Sanders episode with Gene Siskel, Warren Zevon and John Ritter;
• Drove to Sobey’s for groceries;
• Upon returning home, fired up the natural gas bbq and cooked a teriyaki-flavoured chicken breast; boiled a red potato and steamed some broccoli; smothered the broccoli and potatoes in no-fat sour cream, ate dinner with an Orange Crush on ice while watching Battlestar Galactica;
• Drove to Ceili’s, a pub and diner downtown, to join Debbie and Steve and friends in a get-together before they leave for a three-month trip to South America; enjoyed meeting some new people, including two of her amazing friends, Marni and Sherry – all four of us are from Windsor Park in St Boniface, part of Winnipeg, and we went to the same high school, albeir some 20 years apart; the incredible Lauren was there with Glen at another table, she saw me, came over and after a wonderful hug, we compared notes and visited for 20 minutes;
• Nachos arrived, but with jalapenos, which I asked not to be included, so a new batch was made, and Debbie and Marni and Sherry and Sona and I chowed down;
• Said my goodbyes, and drove home, and wrote this;

Life is sweet, it was a good day, and my friends are feckin’ amazing people.

:: You must watch this short video, with or without sound. I wonder, did they practice first? Then, check the time.

:: I have been waiting for almost two years for someone, anyone out there, to try the Skype program with me. This afternoon, my dear father downloaded and installed the program on his machine in Winnipeg, and we spoke to each other through the VoIP program, using headsets. VoIP=Voice Over Internet Protocol, used in IP Telephony. I was amazed at how clear the sound was, much better than my telephone. What are the rest of you waiting for?? All computer-to-computer calls are free to anywhere in the world! Put your headset on, start a call, and the damn thing even rings like a telephone!

I purchased €10.00 worth of time to use SkypeOut, which lets you call landlines or cell phones. Using Skype, I can call a landline or cell phone in the States for $0.032 per minute.

Thanks, Dad. Anyone else care to try?

:: I am around, just really busy and really tired from work and other stuff. I’ll be back soon. One thing I am working on is consolidating as many sites in my Bloglines account as possible, and that is taking some time to make happen.

:: A week ago we were living through -35C temperatures in Edmonton. Currently it is -2C, and there is a light rain falling, turning to ice as it hits the ground, making driving a hazardous affair. The east coast is getting hammered with another major winter blizzard. While the temperature never gets that hot in Edmonton in the summer, and while I do wish winter was a bit shorter here, overall it’s tough to complain about the weather in this part of the world. We don’t seem to get the extremes that other regions do. The 1987 tornado that ripped through the east half of Edmonton took 27 lives, but was considered a rarity, an disaster not expected to happen all that often.

I am continuing to rehearse with Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys. The band knows 10 songs, and is learning two covers. There is much more to learn. I am enjoying it, the challenge of learning original tunes, most of which are very unconventional, featuring mixed time signatures coupled with jamming intervals. A song’s framework is sidestepped for 30-60 seconds while the my guitar, the drums and the bass play, well, whatever. Each time a song with such a component is played, it will sound different as a result. There is much more work to do. It’s a new experience, playing in a three-piece rock band.

I played boggle on Sunday night with Marissa, Melissa, and Sarah. Melissa is a Boggle Queen, and Marissa and Sarah are no slouches. Needless to say, the girls cleaned my clock in every round. Saturday night Marissa and I saw End of the Century, the movie about the seminal 70s NYC punk band, The Ramones. The film is a real eye-opener, highly recommended.

It’s January, and I’m restless for any number of reasons. The year is barely two weeks old, and planning for activities in the summer and fall has already begun. I am also about to agree to do to something that could result in a three-year professional time commitment, to June 2008. More on that at a later date.

:: Over the Christmas break, I had planned to begin purging my house of excessive “stuff”: papers, curios, objects, junk, magazines, clothes, utinsels, tools, whatever. I made minor progress in one of the three rooms upstairs in my house, albeit the one requiring the most work, my office. What I learned is that such projects take a long, long time to complete. I’d be sorting through said stuff, and inevitably take too much time to examine every single item, wondering “Do I want to keep this, or is it ok to get rid of it? Wait, what if I want to read it again in 13 years?” And on it went. A 1980 issue of Rolling Stone was in my filing cabinet, kept this long because it had a review of Gaucho, and an accompanying article on Steely Dan. Did I need to keep it another 25 years? I reread the two pieces, and passed it on to a friend, advising him not to return it.

I shredded enough paper to fill three blue bags, and boxed some magazines and papers, which I moved to the basement. I know, that’s not purging (it’s shifting, I suppose) but the room is getting spacious again.

What is hardest to admit is that there is much, much more to be eliminated. My plan is to try to finish the first sweep of this room, and then get to the other two upstairs bedrooms, which will not require as much work. In those rooms, the material to be purged will be mostly clothing, which will be recycled to Goodwill.

There is always too much to do. I have music to rehearse for an acoustic concert in February, a new tune to work on for the rock band, and I haven’t been to the Y in six days. My favorite TV shows are back on the air, and 24 begins 24 straight episodes starting this Sunday. Ack.