Posts from — June 2008

What a day! Ran errands all morning, and then headed out to the north ‘Saug for Melanie’s birthday pool party. Even though the sun wasn’t out for most of the day, the weather was quite warm and humid, so we had fun anyways. We hung out by Mike & Christi’s pool all day, talking and enjoying some bevvies. Mike uncovered the hot tub a little while later, so as the temperature went down, we all just hung out in there. Very nice.

Then as the mosquitoes came out and had a feast on me, we retreated inside and played some Nintendo Wii. That, as always, was fun. We even managed to stay up till midnight, which was impressive for us old farts. I love driving around Toronto late at night, since there’s only “normal” traffic, which means it only took me the “correct” amount of time to get home (about 25 minutes). The late night traffic in Toronto is the equivalent to the heavy/rush hour traffic in most other cities (except maybe Chicago or New York City), which I must say always surprises me.

All in all it was a good day. And tomorrow we’re off to go see James McAvoy in Wanted, which I’m very excited about. Pretty decent holiday weekend! Of course I’ve got to go into the office on Monday, but that’s all right. It should be pretty quiet, and then it’s off on Canada Day too. Always good to have a day off in the middle of the week.

That’s why I haven’t updated the blog here in a bit…not much else is going on. Work, knitting, oh, and the Euro2008 cup. Tomorrow’s game is d-day for Italy. They-must-win-or-else.

That’s pretty much it for me these days. Peace-out, as the youngins say these days.

I arrived in Vancouver at noon on a Saturday, which meant we had plenty of time to hang out and do some fun stuff. The weather was even cooperating, so we had sun, blue skies, and 27 degrees! Just fabulous.

White Rock

We first drove to White Rock, which Patrick tells me is the furthest south you can drive on the mainland and still be in Canada. Here’s the map:

View Larger Map

It’s a really cute little vacation-type town. And the weather meant everybody and their dog was out, which was nice to see. Patrick & Adrienne told me that it was the first truly nice weekend, so everybody was out enjoying it. We went for a walk along the peer, along the water, and along Marine Dr.

Concert #1

Whenever I go Vancouver, I’m always wondering what live music shows Patrick’s going to “drag” me to. I’m kidding. He doesn’t need to drag me to see live music, I’m always up for it. First up was a Mel C concert (yes, that Mel C). Adrienne was going with a friend to see the show, and we thought we’d pop in as well. So we snagged some cheap scalped tickets and off we went! It wasn’t a bad show, Mel definitely has fun, and has the pipes to do a full show. The crowd was crazy though, with a throng of die hards right up front. I was getting annoyed with all the signs they held up and photos they were taking throughout the whole show. Apparently so was Mel, as at one point she asked everybody to put them all away, and I must say, I was impressed at the difference it made! I was really surprised at how ubiquitous all those digital things have become, that I’d forgotten what it was like to see a concert without them all.

This was a supremely short show, ending at about 9:45-ish, so we headed on over to the Media Club to check out a local band that Patrick used to play drums for, Featherz Edge. By this point I had been up for almost 18 hours, although I must say that I wasn’t all that tired. The show was pretty good too. The band’s music is a little more hard core than I would normally listen to, but they give a great show. I made a joke about how the guitarist, Mike, looked like he was about 12, and Patrick said he had just turned 19 a few months ago! Too funny. I was hoping Incura would have been playing, however I actually just missed them by one night; they played on Friday! But to my surprise, Kyle, Incura’s singer, was in attendance and hopped up on stage to perform a song with FE, so I got a bit of an Incura fix anyways.

Next stop for the night, and no, I’m not kidding, was Fritz, for some tasty poutine. By this point it was about 12:30am, and I had been up for almost 20 hours. I was surprisingly awake and spry for being up that long, but was at the point that if I sat for more than 30 minutes, I was going to be asleep in 1 minute. We got home by 1:30am, and it was lights out for my first day in BC.

Cultus Lake

Sunday we went off to Cultus Lake, which is a little resort area south of Chilliwack. It’s about an hour drive from Vancouver, through some really nice farm land. We were going to this really good putting green mini-putt place out there. We had an absolute blast!

Adrienne led for most of the 18 holes, but as per Patrick’s “prediction”, she lost it on the 15th hole, a par 4 I believe. I may have come in third, but I had THE two shots of the day: a medium-long put on the 5th hole (I nearly pulled a George Costanza and left on that high note, but figured since we’d only been on the course for 20 minutes, that I might want to stick around); and then another long put on 15. Just tremendous puts that saved par for me….on those holes, that is. I had a 6 and even a 7 on one, which is about par for the course for me (*rim shot*)

From there we went on to:

Concert #2

We had headed over to Patrick’s parents’ place for a BBQ dinner in Port Moody, and Patrick told me on the way there that we were going to go see Wide Mouth Mason afterwards. Now, I will say that I wished he had told me before we left the house that morning, since I was still wearing my golfing outfit! I didn’t need to get all glammed up or anything, but just a quick change into a new shirt would have been nice. Patrick’s such a guy and didn’t think of it; Adrienne knows her husband quite well and brought one along already.

I was actually a tad peeved because the tickets said “Doors at 8″, and the band didn’t come on till 10:30! Patrick was excited because Pat Steward, who is a very well-known drummer, and has worked with Bryan Adams for many years, was sitting in for their regular drummer. Here’s a photo of him in action:

And some more photos of the show:

Oh wait! And the funniest part of the whole evening was this: Patrick’s mom Lucie is a big Bo Bice fan (yes, that dude from American Idol), and apparently she always compares every singer she knows to him. It’s become a bit of a joke around Patrick & Adrienne’s house, so we were going to try and get her to say it at some point in the evening….when she did it all by herself! It was so hilarious because it was so spontaneous, but as soon as I hear the “well, you know Patrick he’s no Bo Bice.” the three of us fell silent for a moment, and then burst out laughing! We laughed for the rest of the trip in fact, it was that funny. Here’s a pic of mom & son:

And this faithful readers is the end of Day 2 of my trip. Stay tuned for more posts and photos!

Yes, you heard right! I just spent the last hour going through all my photos from my trip to Vancouver, and sorted and labelled them all. Now it’s a matter of posting them up on the blog here. I’ll start that tomorrow as all this sorting and labelling has got me tired. (It’s either that or all the Nintendo Wii Melanie and I played tonight! I definitely have to get me one of those! You shoulda seen her kicking butt in the boxing match! She looked like she was “kungfu fighting”, complete with the cheesy music from that song!)

Ah yes, with the end of the shortened television season, I have begun to delve into my cache of tv shows on DVDs. Some of these are part of my collection, while others I have borrowed from friends. Right now I’m watching 24. I started watching the show midway thru season 3, so I needed to catch up. I watched Season 1 a few weeks ago, and just finished off Season 2 tonight. And I must say, I am totally obsessed! Everyone should have a Jack Bauer to call upon whenever life gets rough for them. If you’re looking for some fun and games with Jack, cruise on over to the Random Jack Bauer Fact Generator. It’s absolutely high-larious. Keep refreshing the page to see silly facts about Jack. They’re guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Seeing how this last season got good again, I’m also going to catch up on Lost this summer. I stopped watching midway through Season 2 because the show got, well, boring. The writers would parse out information so bloody slowly and subtly that I tended to watch the show while reading a novel, so I figured I should just stop watching altogether. But then JJ and company decided to make the show interesting again, but at that point I was a bit ‘lost’ on the plot, so I didn’t watch at all. So a friend is lending me seasons 2 and 3, so that I can catch up and be ready in time for season 5 this fall. Of course I’ll have to wait till season 4 comes out on DVD as well so I can be fully caught up, but that’s all right….that’s what PVRs are for.

I’ve also become a big fan of How I Met Your Mother, and the wonderfully zany Neil Patrick Harris. The show is hilarious, but Harris’ Barney is legend - wait for it - ary. If you haven’t caught the show at all, you absolutely must do so. Again, the show’s on season 3, or maybe even 4, so I’ve got some catching up to do. If no one I know has the first few seasons, I’ll be hitting up the library first to see what they’ve got, and then if they don’t have it, I’ll start scouring the video stores.

So there you have it folks, when I’m not at work, when I’m not knitting, when I’m not out jogging or playing tennis, I’ll be home watching lots of tv. Let me know if you want to join me, you’re more than welcome.