Calvin's Weblog

Oddz 'n' Endz

Good morning, I happen to have a few extra minutes today, and I figured I'd write about a few things that we've done in the last week that haven't really made it into any blog entries yet...
Last week, our new armoire arrived - we had ordered in 6 weeks earlier, and now we finally got it. If anyone remembers my blog entries from March last year, you may recall that this year is strangely following suit... first there was my St. Patricks day entry, then my birthday entry, then an entry about how amazing the weather is, then an entry about our brand new sleigh bed being delivered... well, it took us a year to saev up for it, but we finally managed to get the armoire that matches the bed. It's nice... you can kinda see it at the back of the picture:

The other big thing that really deserved it's own entry was the weather on Monday! Whoah! 26.5 degrees in March! That was a hot frikken day - it's hard to believe that right now, even though it's clear blue skies, it's only 3 degrees...

I finshed my taxes last night - that ws an ordeal and a half... next year, I get professional help - this is just getting too crazy. What with all the medical expenses and stock trading last year, calculating the refund was insane! I spent between two and four hours a night on this stuff for about 7 or 8 days out of the last two weeks. Yes, it would have been worth it to pay an accountant.

We're getting in to the nitty gritty planning stages for our upcomming trip to Cancun - if all goes well, we'll be there in a month - but knowing the way my Whister plans came together, I've kinda got a sinking feeling about this one... aw, no matter - even if we fly to Mexico and have to sleep on the beach for a week, I'm sure I'll be happy...

I saw Gothica the other day - anybody else seen it? It's interesting - certainly has a good twist at the end, all though there's some pretty blantant forshadowing... well, in hindsight there was. The director really used some cheap gags that always piss me off when I see them though... they're the standard horror film gotcha's that are so cliche, so over-used, so lame that when you see the setup you just scream at the screen "no! don't do it! Please don't resort to that!!!" You know what I'm talking about.... victim goes down a dark staircase with only a flashlight - suddenly, there's a noise in the corner. She slowly peers behind the obstruction and... BAM! Oh no! out jumps a black cat-slash-owl-slash-rat-slash-innocuous-animal-de-jour. The only gag more cliche than that, I think, is the following... victim knows she's in a haunted house. She goes to the bathroom to clean the blood/vomit/sweat/whatever off her face. She looks in the mirror above the sink, everything is fine. She bends down to splash water on her face, and when she stands up and opens her eyes, what do you think she sees in the mirror, standing right behind her? Oh No! A big bad ghost! which of course, won't actually be there when she turns her head around, or blinks, or whatever... then there's always the 'oh no, you hear that? someone's coming... it must be the killer - this is so tense and scary! Phew, thank goodness, it was only the comic sidekick.' Gee, I never saw that coming. SO, despite the fact that the director felt compelled to scrape the bottom of the cheap-thrills barrell, this flick DID actually have some clever plot twists - it could be viewed as having stolen great ideas from all sorts of movies ranging from Se7en, Sixth Sense (I see dead people! You'll get it at the end...), Ghost, 8MM, Blair Witch 2, The Shining, & The Ring - which reminds me... Why the hell are dead children so scary this year??? Geez, as if Kingdom Hospital wasn't bad enough, it's like if you don't have a cute (yet scary) little dead girl that appears to move very rapidly and sporatically at 8 frames a second in your film, then you're doomed to box office failure... I call it the Marilyn Manson Effect.

So anyway, that's my oddz 'n' endz for this week - C-ya-L8R.

Whistler Getaway

Ah - good to be back... We just had an AWESOME weekend getaway in Whistler DESPITE the fact that pretty much everything that could go wrong did. Okay, I take that back - a lot more could have gone wrong, and I'm thankful it didn't. The absolutely uncanny thing about this comedy of errors is that we actually seem to have come out on top some how.
Let's start at the beginning: A few weeks ago it was announced that my company was hosting a family ski day at Whistler, which included a BBQ luncheon on the mountain. Great! I hadn't been skiing in two seasons, so this was my chance! I booked my reservations for lift tickets, the hotel, and the BBQ. All I had to do was wait a week, get my ski gear together and make my way to the village. Friday afternoon, right after work, we loaded up the car and headed north. By 7:00PM, despite the rainstorm that quickly turned to a thck snow flurry as we aproached the resort, we were there - at my hotel. The rest of the night's agenda consisted of checking in to our economy room, and then hitting the local clubs. Well, that 'would' have been the plan, if the hotel had heard of me, or had any record of my reservation on this 'apparently' sold out weekend. After much a-do, they finally found my paperwork... I was supposed to check in Monday they say. "Oh sorry, your booking isn't for two more days, and we're completely sold out. In fact, the whole mountain is. It's a very busy weekend."
"Really?", I say... "is there an event going on this weekend?"
"No, there's a big competition next week, nothing special going on this weekend though. It's just busy."
"Funny," I say... "Since this is the last weekend of your winter rates, and all prices drop on Monday for the spring season... it's funny people would book up this weekend and pay double."
"I guess they want to catch the last of the 'powder'" he says.
"Wow... it looks pretty wet out there now... you mean it gets worse after tomorrow?"
"You never know. So here's what I can do for you - we've got a hospitality suite available, but it's twice the price of your room. I'll give you $50 a night off, if you want to take it - it's more of a display suite, we book it for meetings, people don't stay there too often. You want to see it?"
"Sure".
He takes us out of the hotel, down the galleria mall, up an elevator, outside again, over a restaurant, down a hallway behind a shop, into a stairwell, and there, in this emergency exit stairwell is a door marked "Room 100". He opens the door, and it's HUGE. There's a foyer for the coats and ski equipment, a kitchen, a bar, a massive oak dining room table, a couple large chesterfields in the living room, wrapped around a big screen TV, and eleven foot high, wall to wall bay windows looking right down at the pool and hot tub a floor below. In the bedroom, a king size bed (of course) and another gargantuan TV. Better yet, not only did we have a private entrance to the pool, but right our our door (and through the stairwell) was the outside exit, directly across the square from the ski lifts.
"Sure... we'll take it." - it turned out to be over $400 for two nights, but I'd be lying if I said it was a steal. So - after loading in, it was off to the clubs! We walked around trying to find some live music, occasionally going in to the like of The Longhord or Buffalo Bills for a pint, but it seemed everywhere was playing lame dance crap. Maxx Fish and Garfinkles ( the two main live music venues) were both 'not' hosting live music, so we finally just said screw-it and went into Dub Linn Gate for a pint. The place was packed and there was an Irish band playin' so it was a great atmosphere. Well, I did get a shock ordering our two beers though. Knowing the crazy prices in Whistler, I pulled out $12, expecting the pints to be something crazy like 5.75 each, but when she said "fourteen eighty please" - I exclaimed "WHAT???" To which she replied with the biggest grin I've ever seen: "Welcome to Dub Linn Gate - the most expensive pint on the mountain. Dub Linn Gate is the home of the only seven-fourty pint in Whistler!" - she was beaming with absolute pride. I shit you not. We tapped our feet to a few Irish standards, finished our beers (or as I now refer to them 'capitalist-pride-pints') and B-lined straight for the liquor store for a $9 six pack.

The next day, we skied our butts off. We started at opening bell - 8:30AM, and weren't back until 3:30 - only 1/2 an hour before the lifts shut down. We only took one break, and that was for lunch. Let me tell ya about lunch... 'apparently' they had no record of my lunch confirmation, and therefore I was not permitted to attend... even though over 500 other employees seem to have had no problem, and even though I was able to produce my confirmation code, proof of employment with the company, AND proof that my lift tickets were reserved with the same discount code that my company provided to register for the lunch, they maintained 'sorry, too late - we have not record that you wanted to attend the lunch, and we've only ordered enough for our registered guests. There's nothing we can do." - so, while we didn't get a free lunch, Carole and I DID enjoy the best damn $28 mid-mountain BBQ burger and a cervesa that I have ever had. Bar none. It was TASTY. The biggest irony is that the free lunch invitation said to show up at the Glacier Lodge at noon. Since they had already told me at the ticket desk that I wasn't getting in, we didn't bother going all the way down the hill, and instead hit one of the mid-mountain eateries. Irony of all ironies, the one we hit was called "Glacier Creek" and it was PACKED with company employees - it turns out that the free luch was actually happening right there... the Glacier Lodge in the invitation must have been a misprint... if I had actually THOUGH that I was going to this free lunch, I would have made my way down the hill to Glacier Lodge, and I would have missed the whole thing... Crazy, eh?

So anyway, we skied until we could ski no more, and then we called it quits. Unfortunately, Carole's knees called it quits rather abruptly, and we just happened to be about 5 minutes down from the very top of Blackcomb when that happened. We had another vertical mile to go, and the bottom quarter mile of that (which we avoided all day) was the grossest slush you'd ever try to ski through - NOT the knee wrenching stuff you wanna be plowing through at the end of the day! It was rough going, and my legs were giving out before we got down, but we finally made it... cervesa time!
You know, that reminds me - I forgot to tell my breakfast story. Before going skiing, we went to Tex Corleones for breakfast. We got seated okay, but we didn't see a waitress the whole time we were there. Okay, sure, we say them, but they refused to acknowledge us. Since it was a buffet style, we assumed it was just 'help yourself'. We helped our self to the buffet, we had to get our own orange juice, toast, coffee, well, everything... until after about 35 minutes when I got up to get some more orange juice, when a waitress storms over and says "may I help you with something?"
I replied "No, no sense in starting now, I'm just getting myself some more orange juice, and I'm here now, so I can manage."
"But drinks are NOT included in the buffet!"
"Oh - really? Why are they sitting here at the end of the buffet then? Never mind - I'm fine. I don't need any juice." ( I didn't tell her it would have been my third)
So I guess the waitresses must have figured out that they had all been ignoring us, because one of them came up to our table with a bill, and while I was expecting them to start yelling at us about how they were going to charge us for all the drinks we had been stealing, she instead said - "I gave you a 10% discount" - and then walked away. So, two buffets came to $29.86 and I can tell you, I was PISSED that I didn't have exact change... I wanted to make a statement, but I didn't want to wait around another 1/2 hour so I left a twenty and a ten, and was forced to leave her a fourteen cent tip, and I can tell you that gnawed on me all day... she DID NOT deserve it!
I will not be eating there again - it's just principle.

So, where was I... yeah, the day of skiing was done, and I had the remnants of a six-pack in the fridge. We had a couple drinks, and decided on three or four places to check out for dinner. We walked to every one of them and checked out the menus.... I swear, if any of them had an entre for under $28, we probably would have eaten there. Again, it's not a money thing, it's principle. If you've never been to Whistler, you may not know that the prices are one step past rediculous - they're just stupid. If you go to a "Bread Garden" quality deli, would you expect to pay $21 for thawed and nuked lasagna portion? Naw, me either. We had hoped to have a nice dinner. but instead ended up at Citta. Yeah, it's a bar. But as far as bar food goes, it was good. Expensive as all F**K, but, this is Whister - at least it was good. We started with edamame, and it was awesome. I had a corn chipotle chicken and Carole had a goat cheese lasagna. We each had two drinks, and the grande total was $80 something plus tip. YES, I said this was a bar. Ah, vive la Whistler.

The next morning, I awoke to find that my legs didn't work, and my face was sunburt to all hell... YES! I put sunblock on before skiing!!! I swear! But now I've got goggle-face. We stretched our legs out by walking the village again, had breakfast at a coffee shop (the only deals in Whistler!), checked out, then made out way home. It was a BEAUTIFUL day - 12 degrees in Whistler, 17 degrees in Vancouver when we got home. The sky was clear blue all day, and the sun was shining the whole way. We got back before 2PM, and I spend an hour relaxing in the back yard. All told, the weekend that I budgeted at $300 cost a few pennies shy of $600, and despite all the crazy prices, setbacks, cancellations, errors, and screwups, we had a DAMN good time. Still good to be home though!

An Awesome Birthday weekend

This past weekend was a pretty cool one. Saturday evening, Carole and I went to the Vogue Theatre to see STOMP and we were back at the Vogue last night to see Henry Rollins Spoken Word. In between, we had some absolutely amazing weather - Sunday was 17 degrees, and yesterday it was 19! I spent some quality time lounging in the backyard, soaking up the sun, doing a little gardening, and cleaning up the patio in preperation for the BBQ season. Yesterday afternoon Carole and I celebrated my 33rd by lounging at Anduccis sippin' martinis and chowin' down on a magnificent birthday lunch.
It was a pretty nice, relaxed, great weather long weekend, and an awesome way to celebrate the first third of my life while looking forward to the next two thirds!

Happy Saint Patricks Day!

Happy 'Green Beer' day everyone - I myself plan to imbibe in a few pints of the green stuff me self... all by me self... you see, since Carole lost her job, she figured it would be as good a time as any to take a few days to go to the Island and visit her mammy. So, I get to drink beer by myself tonight - um, like that's never happened before...LOL.
So anyway, that's me plan and I'm stickin' to it.

...sure glad the 'bad luck' week is over!

I think looking back, last week is going to be known as the 'bad luck week of 2004' in my household. It was just one stupid thing after another. I'm sure glad the week is over, so that we can start getting on with our lives...
You know what? Screw that - a lot of good things happend last week too - I mean, on Thursday, 1,000 people in my company got laid off (most everyone I know lost their job) but hey, I still have my job! That was good luck! Of course, the very next day, Carole's department laid off over half their staff, and she was one of them. Effectively immediately, we're a one-income household for the first time ever. On the flip side, Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day. I lay out in the 17 degree sun, tanning on March 13th. THAT felt good. The gig that my band played on Thursday night felt good too, even if the promoter took off with all the money from the door. Yeah, that sucked - but it's not like we've never played a show for free before... getting ripped off is lame, but we had one of the best performances ever that night, and it felt awesome.
It also looks like the guy we were supposed to be renting this new rehearsal space business from has also bailed on us. We have a signed lease, but he's not returning our calls... possession date was supposed to be today, but if he won't give us keys, I guess we don't get it... bad luck for sure, but hey... we haven't been able to get the rent cheque to him in two weeks either, so at least we didn't lose anything! Coime to think of it, that bit of bad luck was actually pretty opportune. What with Carole losing her job, there's NO WAY I could afford to start a business right now. Having to leave our old rehearsal space was certainly bad luck, it would be nice if we knew where we were going to practise this week, but, well, maybe this'll get us off our asses and motivate us to book more shows.
A big storm was scheduled to hit us on the weekend but it never showed up - that was good luck! I got some gardening and other outside work done, and had the band over for drinks Saturday night.
Last night we had a really nice dinner and drinks with family. It was a really nice way to end the week. It would be nice if it wasn't a gloomy day today, but I think it's supposed to clear up. Now that I think of it, it was a pretty good weekend all in all. You know, maybe last week wasn't ALL bad after all.
Let's all keep our fingers crossed that my entry nexy week is called "This week was the good luck week of the year!"

March 8th, 18.5 degrees - Vancouver is the envy of Canada

Yesterday was an absolutely beautiful day - reaching 18.5 degrees in the Tri-Cities. (that's like 66 yankee degrees) I came home from work and put my shorts on for the first time in half a year, then head out to the back yard to rake the leaves and pull the weeds. To my surprise, my herb garden (left since last year) is in full bloom. Sage, Thyme, Basil, parsley and even 8 inch chives are already up. It's technically still winter... this is so amazing!

I've been cooped up editing music for the last two weeks - four songs and 42 hours later, I finally got to see what outside looks like. I think it was worth it though, 'cause last night I burnt a CD of my first mixes and played 'em at rehearsal for the rest of the band. Ron and Wayne both said these were the best recordings they've ever been a on - so that made me pretty damn happy. Of course, we practiced like mad to get these songs tight, so no amount of mastering would have fixed crappy performances - I was just lucky that we laid down such great bed tracks. I'll tell you though, I couldn't have finished this mixing a minute sooner... talk about ear fatigue! Imagine hearing the same 4 songs over and over again for 42 hours out of the last two weeks - yikes. Oh joy for me, I think after we've got a few gigs out of our systems, we're going straight back to record another 3 or 4 songs... we've got 12 or 13 that we want to do ultimately, but I think if we want to be selling CDs any time soon, it'll have to be a 6 or 7 song album.

Anyway, enough about the band... remember that sleigh bed that Carole and I bought almost exactly a year ago? Well, we ordered the matching armoire about 6 weeks ago, so that means it should be delivered like any minute now - we're pretty excited about that. Hmm - since I've actually got a few minutes here, why not catch up, eh? A few days ago we saw '50 First Dates' - it was a pretty good movie. I like Adam Sandler though, and I think he and Drew have good chemistry, so, for a comedy it was pretty clever.
The weekend before, we saw "The Passion of Christ". I had planned to write a review of it in my blog and had even thought of some really catchy titles and clever stuff to say, but after walking out of the theatre, I really didn't think I had much to add... I mean, there has been so much hype and controversy that pretty much every angle has been put in print and every opinion has already been voiced - so why add to that. I can say though, that I think EVERYONE should see this movie once. It's not really the kind of DVD you'd want to buy and watch every Sunday morning after church. Don't get me wrong though, it's an amazing and powerful movie. It's impecable in it's detail and historical acuracy. No matter what your religion, or even if you don't believe anything at all, nobody can deny that this guy suffered a lot for what he believed in... humanity. Oh, and as for the claims of anti-semetism? Every scene was pretty much exactly as it was written in the Bible, so, unless the New Testament is anti-semetic, I don't think that argument has a leg to stand on.

Anyway, enough of that. Other than the armoire, we've actually got lots to look forward to right now. I've got my 33rd brithday coming up in two weeks, and we're seing Henry Rollins that night. We'll be skiing in Whistler the weekend after that, and then it's only a month wait until we're in Cancun! The band has a gig at The Pic on Thursday, and we've got two other gigs in the works. Speaking of work, it's still as crazy as ever - totally swamped, but hey... that's why I make the big bux, right? Well, I'd better start earnin' my pay today... talk to everyone soon.

2004: Shaping up to be the 'wrong place/wrong time' year

So...
I'm not sure even how to put this... where to begin...
Everybody knows that my band Scarecrow Balcony has been rehearsing above a Harley Davidson repair shop for the last 6 or 7 months, right? It was a great deal - total lockout from 5PM to 1AM every night, to make as much noise as we want. Unfortunately, Ewen, the guy that owned 'Hawg Traders' and has been renting us the space (a really nice guy!) let us know last months that he has to close up shop, so as of March 15th we need to find a new place to rehearse. A bummer, but we've found a new place, so it's all kewl.

Anyway, any of this ringing any little bells in anyone's head yet? Anyone that perhaps watched the national news last night? Here... let me give you a hint:
Today's Vancouver Sun: B.C. Hells Angels indicted in $20-million U.S. pot case

Any more bells ringing yet? Well, MY PHONE rang last night at about 6:15 (while I was cooking a superb poached salmon with steamed vegetables) - it was Ron, our drummer saying "Scarecrow Balcony is famous! I was just watching the news, and they had a crew at some big grow-op, and there was a Scarecrow Balcony sticker on the door! And then I realized, whoa! That's our rehearsal space!!! And then they showed the affidavit, and Ewen's name was the first on the list"
Check out the picture in Today's Vancouver Province: U.S. grand jury indicts two B.C. men for allegedly smuggling pot - see the rightmost door? Three stickers - one's ours. Those windows on the 2nd floor are to our rehearsal pad.

So anyway - last night was a strange night at rehearsal... all the pieces started falling into place - like the hidden camera I found once. That was really strange, since Ewen doesn't have a surveilance syste. Or the fact that his trailers kept getting 'stolen' (um, confiscated?) from the parking lot - even though we've never had problems with our cars. It's just way too surreal.
But, as Carole pointed out, this really hasn't been a bad year for us being in the wrong place at the wrong time because in reality, absolutely nothing bad has happened to us - we've just been really close to a lot of bad things happening.

For more info about this massive case, check out some of these links:
CBC News: Indictment alleges drug ring smuggled Canadian pot to southern Indiana
Wave3 News: Floyd County Drug Bust Extends Into Canada
Biker News: Cocaine worth $1.5 million seized by police
MLive News: Dozens indicted in alleged drug ring
WISHTV News: Federal Indictments Show Drug Ring Activity in New Albany
IndyStar News: Alleged S. Indiana drug ring targeted