New Beginnings

So, here I am again. It's been a while.

To recap: I'm back in Vancouver; the Toronto experiment didn't work out as planned. Work is work, as it has been. Life is life. I've been writing again. I also got a Martin acoustic guitar and have been playing again. The last two are very exciting and I'm interested to see where they lead.

I'll see how this goes - if there's enough to keep up a blog. I've added a Twitter feed on the right side. Why? Because I like to be only five years out of date with technology. I'll see how Twitter goes too. There are certainly some interesting things that can be done with it.

Spring his here, the camelias are blooming on the patio, dark beer will soon give way to light, red wine will soon give way to white. Cheers.

It keeps getting worse

Well, it's about 5:00 am and, except for a few possible minutes of dozing, I haven't been to sleep yet. I got home from work around 5:30 pm to see a small puddle on the floor and a wet patch on the ceiling. It turns out someone on two floors above was doing renovations and decided to empty the washing machine onto the floor, so it's affecting at least three units.

A little bit of water I can deal with, but a while after I got home a chunk of ceiling fell down. Then a while later it started dripping. That was followed by increased dripping, more ceiling falling down and a second leak in the laundry room. At this time the drip shows no signs of slowing. Ebow and I are both overtired and cranky. I wish it would stop.

As of someone gently rapping

The last couple of weeks have busier at home than usual. The upcoming election has resulted in a number of political types coming to the door. Several times it's been volunteers for the local Liberal candidate, but one day it was my NDP candidate herself. I was wearing one of my nerdy t-shirts - it's got a Venn diagram with two circles; one says "Music I like", the other says "Music you like" and the area where they intersect is labelled "Music I used to like". The NDP candidate read it back to me, laughed uncertainly and clearly didn't understand it at all.

This week I was invited to a party in a neighbouring apartment on Saturday. All the neighbours were going to be invited. There would be food and a muscial portion to the night. Some people were going to play guitar and sing and anyone was welcome to sing as well if they liked. While not necessarily my thing, I thought it might not be a bad way to meet some of the people in the building. Then it was mentioned that there would be a "media presentation" that was based on, but not directly related to beliefs of the Baha'i faith. I spent time at Nuit Blanche instead. 

I'm going to stop answering my door.

Art all day, and all of the night

I spent some time at Nuit Blanche last night. It's an all-night art exhibition throughout Toronto. It started just before 7 pm and went until sunrise. I didn't stay out till morning, but I spent about five hours roaming the streets with thousands of other people - all of it within easy walking distance of my apartment, and that was only one of the three zones where it was taking place.

There was a wide variety of pieces. Some were video (a subtitled movie of driving through Toronto was shown on the wall of the power station I can see from my window), some were sculpture, some were performance. There was music and dance. A number of them were participatory - the Zombies in Condoland piece was in the park outside my building where people could dress like zombies and stagger around, another allowed people to draw pictures on a piece of paper and attach them to wireframes, and another encouraged people to send a postcard to someone they didn't know from a different area of the city.

One piece had two opposing screens and video of what appeared to be boiling milk would play while a voice spoke. Then it would go still and silent and the other would do the same. Possibly more interesting that the piece is that it was in the old Maple Leaf Gardens which is no longer used. So I got to stand at centre ice under the scoreboard where the Leafs played for 60 some years.

Are you ready for love?

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds played at the Koolhaus last night. The opening band was Black Mountain from Vancouver. They put on a great show. I'd heard and liked them already, and this just confirmed it. Solid half rock / half psychedelic with a little bit of Black Sabbath thrown in.

Nick Cave wasn't quite what I expected, I'll have to admit. He put on an awesome show, though. High energy all the way through. Considering his albums, I was surprised he didn't play keyboards more - only one song - and I didn't even know he played guitar. It was loud and rockin' the whole night. What was great was that he played a good mix of new and old. He even played a few requests from signs in the audience.

On a side note: I have to record two bits of awesome dialog. I overheard the two broke (as they said repeatedly) college girls standing in line behind me.

Girl One: These boots weren't made for standing around; they were made for lying down.

Girl Two: There's nothing quite like shaking hands with someone you've fucked to make it transaction.

I'm not even going to ask how they paid for the tickets.

Pumpkin time

I found a pumpkin ale at the LCBO from McAuslan, our favourite Quebec brewery. It's good, but not quite as good as the pumpkin ale you can get at Steamworks in Vancouver - that's like drinking a pumpkin pie. Mmmmmmmmmm... pumpkin pie...

It's just a little pin prick

I had an appointment at the travel clinic today. It's six months until my leave starts, and the vaccine for Hepatitis A and B is a six month deal. One now, one in a month, and another at the six month mark. It's worth talking to a doctor who specializes in travel medicine. I had no idea that some countries will require proof of yellow fever vaccination within a year of the last outbreak. And Iguazu Falls in northern Argentina had an outbreak this year. If we get down there we'd have to see it and Peru won't allow you in without proof of vaccination. It's also good to learn that Buenos Aires has good doctors.

If you can guess the secret word...

I went to Word on the Street yesterday. It's a publishing and book festival held in a number of cities across the country. I've been to the ones in Calgary and Vancouver, but this has been the largest. It was inspiring to see the number publishers and magazines there are to be published in. It was also a little depressing to see all the unknown authors - some of them at the stalls, some waiting at the booth to sign their books - and no one around. The stalls for retail places were the most popular. People swarming around on the chance of getting a deal on a book. But looking at the small press books and realizing how much competition there is making me rethink some things.

Never that simple

Fuck me. It turns out she's still selling this place after all. But she's going to make it a condition of sale that I'm here until April and she'll pay the rent. It can not go on like this. It just can't.