Temp: 26 degrees
Last day of August. One can only hope that September will be just as fine!
People keep saying "Summer's Over", but I'm quick to point out that we've officially still got 3 more weeks, and the forcast is for high twenties, low thirties for the next week, so that's pretty summery if you ask me!
One last road trip of summer coming up - I'm totally pysched about getting out to Trail to see Tim's new place, it's going to be a blast!
Temp: 21 degrees
Well, again it was supposed to rain today, but it didn't. It really cooled off, and there's quite a breeze, but all the clouds blew away very early and it ended up clear with puffy clouds - very pretty.
Today was kind of a busy day with both the semi-annual teeth cleaning at the dentist, and a physio appointment.
So a drive to West Van, then to work in Burnaby, then physio in Mallardville, then back to work in Burnaby before heading back home to Coquitlam.
Carole got a filling fixed today, and I got the dentist to agree to give me a free teeth whitening, since I was so dissapointed with the one I got back in March... so that means another trip to the dentist next week...
Temp: 21 degrees
Did I speak too soon? It's supposed to rain today...
Nope, it was overcast all day, but no rain. I was just vegging after work, playing online poker, when Carole says "Whoah, checkout what's in the back yard!" I look over, and it's a little kid! There's a 3 year old kid in our back yard! WTF? Carole opens the screen door, and the kid just runs in - doesn't say a word, but tries to open the basement door... I go out front and see a lady - I say "Anybody lose a kid?" She replies "yeah...", totally emotionless. I say "well, he's in our back yard", and I turn back toward the house, where Carole's bringing him towards the front door. The lady takes the kid by the hand and walks away - no scolding, no "you had me so worried!" and not even a "thank you" to us... very strange... very surreal.
Anyway, I went back to the poker, and within 20 minutes, won $72 - maybe that kid was a good luck omen??? For once, I actually quit while I was ahead... VERY ahead. I wonder how long I'll be able to hold on to it...
Temp: 27 degrees
Well, the nerve is back. I cut another hole in the ceilling, directly under the shower - yup, it's pretty wet here! A bunch of towels made short order of the wetness though. I also patched the first two holes, and if I do say so myself, did a damned fine job! I was pretty worried that the damage would be irreversable, but thankfully the patch is virtualy seamless, and I haven't even painted over it yet!
Okay, that was enough work for today - the rest of the evening we started planning our trip to Trail this weekend - what kinds of things we wanted to do, see, et al.
The weather is stil gorgeous, but it hasn't rained in sooooo long... I've even stoppeed watering the lawn, I mean, what's the use - it's all dead anyway...
Temp: 29 degrees
Today, my dad and Carole and I drove over to Carole's Dad's place and picked up an antique Oak table and desk/bench.
Her Dad is moving, and told us we could have these two pieces - they're super nice, we just had to pick 'em up!
We cleaned up after the BBQ, which wasn't very messy at all - a very tame gathering for once! Well, Wayne still managed to smash two chairs when falling off of them, but that's pretty much the norm.
I also finally got up the nerve to cut open roof and try to find the leak - I'll be damned if I didn't pick a spot that was perfectly covered by a joist ... couldn't see a thing. So I had to cut a 2nd hole, and bingo - found the water.
By using a flashlight and a mirror, we were finally able to locate where the water was coming from ... but that meant cutting yet a third 'square-foot' hole. I'll save that for another day ... I've lost my nerve...
Temp: 30 degrees
BBQ Day, and what a scorcher! Could the weather be better? Well, maybe a breeze would've made the afternoon more tollerable, but by time the BBQ was in full swing, the evening was IDEAL.
I made a double batch of my famous potato salad on Carole's behest, but boiling 16 large potatoes in a single pot proved to be a little more challenging than first blush would dictate. Of course, that was nothing compared to the quandry that arose when contemplating how to mix three more pounds of chopped veggies and sauce into those potatoes. Without divulging the gory details, suffice to say the solution involved an extra large (and very clean) flower pot, and a very large plastic bag.
The first guests arrived right at 4pm, the next at 4:45, and between 5 and 5:30, another half dozen showed up. After sending out a total of 76 invites, we were a little leery of the possibility that we may have over-estimated a tad when buying supplies ... by about 400%... of course, the 10 of us that were there at 5:30 were having a grande time, but I still did wonder where everyone else was.
I didn't have to wonder for long! Over the next 45 minutes, our backyard population doubled - at by 8PM we had a total of 32 guests! From 6 to 8 was a blur for me, as I scrambled to answer the door, cook the burgers and hotdogs, and mingle with friends I hadn't seen in years.
At one point there were EIGHT kids in the backyard playing, running, screaming, well, basically being kids. I'll bet that's the most kids that have ever been in this house in one day - it was a bit of a shock to the system, but something I suppose we'll have to get used to someday...
So many people brought side dishes (which I had indicated in the invitation were totally optional) that the kitchen counters were completely packed with food... thankfully too, since I was so busy cooking for everyone, that I never took a breather to have dinner myself - instead, just nibbling on all the side dishes throughout the night.
Then the unthinkable happened - the propane ran dry! I had to think fast ... be a terrible host, or be a terrible son... I know, I know, I'm going to hell, but I chose the latter. I asked my Dad, who I had invited to the BBQ to have a relaxing good time, to go to the gas station at the bottom of the mountain and fill my propane tank for me. I feel so ashamed, asking a guest to run an errand - especially my Dad, who I know would do anything for me, and because of that, I try desperately hard not to abuse the priveledge... but in a moment of weakness I faltered. Of course, he was happy to do it, and he saved the day - someone had just slapped 10 drumsticks onto the BBQ, and they all turned out wonderfully thanks to Pappy's Gas (LOL)! He's got his 60th birthday coming up in exactly 1 month - I am DEFINITELY going to have to do something spectacular for him this year... the BBQ rescue was above and beyond.
-by the way, please forgive all the typos - I'm typing on my laptop, and I hate this keyboard - The keys are so shallow, I have a hard time telling if they've depressed or not - especiall since it's dark now that Carole has turned off all the lights and left me in the living room to finidh this entry by the light of the monitor - I can't find the backspace key right now, so, you've been warned.
Well, people started heading out after 8, and I guess that by 10 or 11 it was just the musician crowd left. Mamsy and Pappy headed upstairs to bed, and the rest of us meandered between the deck conversation, and the basement, where video games were being played on the big screen.
It was a relatively tame and early night with everyone except for the ol' Typhus boys heading off shortly after midnight. The rest of us watched Ali G and old Typhus videos for another hour, then hit the hay.
Lots of great conversation was had today. Lots of old friends I haven't seen forever, and even some new friends. I think this was one of our best "Fairwell to summer" BBQ's yet... and summer's nowhere near done with us yet - it's suposed to be just as hot out tomorrow.
Temp: 28 degrees
Hot day today - hot sweaty day, especially since we spent it indoors, cleaning up and preparing food n' stuff for our BBQ tomorrow. The rest of the pork schnitzel was for dinner, then we went shopping - yikes! over $250 worth of BBQ food - I'm sure it'l be worth it! We also scrubbed and washed all the deck chairs and I gave the lawn a good watering.
Then I sat around playing poker and drinking a beer for the rest of the night while Carole made some guacamole and iced tea.
Not terribly exciting, I know, but hey - not every day can be as exciting as tomorrow's gonna be!
Temp: 27 degrees
Weather rebounding again - nice 'n' hot - come to think of it, while the days are getting shorter and shorter, these temperatures, while not 'extreme', have been really up there for some time now... and the nights are starting to get a little uncomfortable again.
For dinner I made breaded pork schnitzel on spaghetti with a home made plumb tomato and parmasean sauce. I was good, and there are lots of leftovers. I'm trying to get back into cooking more, but with these hot nights, it's hard to be standing in front of hot stove ... oh well!
Also had another physio appointment today, got stretched and pulled, electrocuted and manipulated, and believe it or not, the last week, my back hasn't been too bad ... but nobody wants to hear about my aching back, so I'll digress...
Temp: 24 degrees
A few people have told me now, that when attempting to post a comment to this blog, they get a "Sever 500" error ... well, needless to say, I tried to post a few comments myself, and everything worked fine - go figure.
BUT, if you DO get this error, the solution is simple:
Just right-click, and select reload or refresh - you might get a popup that says something like about this being an active page that needs to be reloaded, are you sure? Just click "yes" and this should post your comment.
Also, be aware that you need to login as a registered TypeKey user to post to my blog.
Why? Because, on the average, there are between 800 and 1200 SPAM messages every single day that are submitted to my blog. The password protection is the only way to keep the junk posts from flooding my blog.
There are 'robot' programs that scan the internet looking for blogs, chat groups, forums, etc, that they can post advertising links to, and my blog is not for advertising!!! especiall at the rate of ~1000 ads a day.
So, please, bear with the process - if you wanna post a legitimate comment, which I encourage, then you'll have to have a TypeKey login. I have no idea why those 500 errors pop up occasionally, but they're easily overcome by simply reloading the page (right-click, reload)
Temp: 22 degrees
Whoah, what happened to summer? Cold today... well, compared to the weekend anyway. But that's okay, because today is Toolsday! After work I quickly made some breaded pork cutlets and asperagus, then we drove down to GM Place for the TOOL concert!
the first band, Isis, started at 8PM. We were outside the venue, in line at 8PM, but for one convoluted reason or another, there was only one single entrance gate open, and it took over 45 minutes to get in to the stadium! We completely missed the first band. With well over 400 concerts/gigs/shows under my belt, I can safely say, this was the longest I ever had to wait to get in to see a band.
Well, at least we bumped in to our friends Collin and Kristy, so we got to catch up, and hear some road tales from Collin's recent tour with Splatter.
Fortunately when we finally got inside, there was no lineup at the beer garden, so I grabbed a couple wobbly-pops (at $7.25 each) and we made our way to the seats to await the start of TOOL. A few minutes later, a jovial, if not slightly intoxicated kid carefully ballancing two beers plops down beside me. "It sucks that you can only buy one beer per person per trip, eh?" He says.
"Yeah, " I replied, :but the guy at the end of the bar right behind us asked me "You sure you just want one?" (I had finished the first one, the bought a 2nd), "so it sounds like he'll sell you a few if you try..."
"Awesome, I'll be right back - you want another beer?" He quipped as he stood up again, carefully placing his two full beers under his seat.
"No, I'm fine, thanks."
A few minutes later, he returns with a single beer in his hand, plus two girls in tow, each holding another two beers. He took all five and added them to his little pile under the seat.
"That's a lot of beer, man.. you sure you've got enough?" I joked...
"I'm gonna try to make one more trip!" He enthusiastically replied as he turned on his heels and headed back down the stairs. "Why, you want one?"
"No, I'm still fine," I chuckled, "I've had plenty already."
"Well, I see you eyeing my stash" he says grinning, "if they're all still there when I get back, I'll share. Mind watching the beers for a minute?"
"Not at all...", I replied with a smile. After all, it was a pretty funny situation - this kid, maybe 19 or 20 years old is already slightly glossed, and yet he's got seven untouched pints of been crammed under his seat (which has cost him over $50 at GM Place prices) - and this still isn't enough for him? Carole and I got a bit of a chuckle out of it. He was cheery and talkative and super psyched about the show, sure I'd watch his beer for him - this would, after all, make a pretty funny blog entry. Of course, I didn't know the half of it then...
A few minutes later, he and his girlfriend return, each holding yet another pint of beer. "They'd only sell us one each this time, man that sucks!"
"You've still got 7 full ones down there", I say, pointing to his foamy stash, "you don't think that's enough?"
"six." He says, still smiling, as he hands me one. "Thanks for keeping an eye on them."
"Thank you!" I say, "You know it was pretty hard work, lots of people shuffling down the isle almost kicked 'em over."
"The hard work was probably keeping from drinking them while I was gone, am I right?" he joked. "Naw, just kidding, thanks man.
So, over the next few minutes I learned that he and his girlfriend and her friend were all over from Pender island for the concert, and that they were totally psyched, had a hotel room, and were in full-on party mode ... yada, yada, yada... typical youthful exuberance.
But then out of the blue, he hits me with "So, we're going to fuck during the concert, you don't mind, do you?"
Startled by this totally unexpected subject change, and still not sure if he's joking, I say "Funny you should mention that - just two weeks ago at the Rob Zombie concert, Rob stopped between songs to say "hey people, we've been getting a lot of calls from promoters lately telling us that cleanup crews are continually finding hundreds of used condoms after our shows ... now I've gotta ask, which one of our songs exactly, is causing this???" ... so, is this like a new "thing" that's happening at concerts these days?"
"Seriously," he says totally deadpan, "we've going to be fucking during the show. That's not going to bother you guys, is it?"
"Now strange thoughts start creeping through my head ... who is this "WE" he's talking about ... is he talking about me, or his girlfriend? The beer he gave me DID taste kinda funny, oh crap... did he drug me? I wipe the dew off my cup and hold it up to the light... is there any residue? Nope... but what was that taste... maybe I'm just weirding out... I take another sip, nope, now I'm convinced it's chemically tasting... or maybe that's just the taste of the plastic cup? What could he have put in... GBH? Extacy? Maybe he put it in a beer for him or his girlfriend and he gave me the wrong cup? No, the beers are all sealed with lids - if he did that it would have to be premeditated... okay, okay, I'm a big boy, whatever it is, I can ride it out. I keep looking at my beer in the light, and I suddenly realize I must look really strange to him, and I haven't answered his question yet... crap! crap! crap! How could i be so dumb as to accept a drink from a stranger? Okay, okay, okay, I'm TOTALLY being paranoid, there's no way this ljolly little kid did that to me, I've just got a way too out of control imagination... besides, if I start to feel strange even in the slightest way, I'm going to take this punk with me. He may be drunk, but he must know I've got 80 pounds on him, and would pulverize
him... I come to the conclusing that he probably IS intimidated by me, and is just being really nice because he wants to, as he so elloquently put it, "bust a nut to Tool" with his girlfriend and he doesn't want to surprize the "big guy" - so he's placating me with beer.
Finally I muster a reply: "We'll be looking that way" I say, pointing at the stage, "what I don't see don't bother me... just don't get any on me, eh?" I mean, what else could I say - the question was so surreal and my mind went into overdrive thinking of convoluted scenarios allready, this was just too strange... so what could I do. He laughed, gave me a high five, and tried to hand me another beer.
"No," I chuckled, "I've DEFINITELY had enough now!" Obviously three beers is never enough, but I needed a clear head to process what the hell was going on and to analyze whether I had indeed been drugged, though that particular worry was quickly diminishing. I was about 99% certain he was talking about his girlfriend now. LOL.
Finally the show started - the show on the stage, that is... though I must admit, I had one eye locked on my new buddy for the entire performance... if his pants drop, I'm shuffling over a few places in the other direction!
After the first song, "Sober", (how ironically titled, eh?) he pushes another beer my way, and I take it - aw, what the hell. Thankfully, this one tastes just fine, and when held up to the light, shows absolutely no signs of residue.
Oh, and by the way, I know the expense is killing everyone, NO, buddy did NOT "bust a nut to Tool". Apparently, much to his surprise, his girlfriend just wasn't comfortable with the proposition ... in fact, she looked down right unimpressed - possibly even "angered" by the suggestion. My goodness, now who would have imagined that???
... and the beer was perfectly fine too. Just an over active imagination, though I really should take a lesson in this, because several people Carole knows have had drugs dropped in their drinks at bars - that kinda crap happens - and just because I'm a 6'4", 225lb dude doesn't mean it can't happen to me - as proposterous as that sounds.
Enough about buddy. This is TOOLSDAY, and Tool was seriously kicking some ass on stage. From the intense beginnings with "Sober" to the intense ending with "AEnema", and everything in between, Maynard was flawless, the band was TIGHT, and the visuals were mesmarizing. Tool is totally on top of their game - to think that barely 4,000 people trickled in to see Rob Zombie two weeks ago, and here, over 15,000 are squashed into Vancouver's largest stadium to see Tool - I love Tool, they're one of my top 3 all-time favorite bands, but I had no idea they were THAT popular.
Ah, and the sound... crystal clear - like digital quality, I don't even know how they got such clarity out of GM Place, I've never heard such audio quality before... there MUST be some secret new technology at work here, because it was far and away the best sounding concert I've ever been to. And loud. Even the GM Place gate attendants were saying that they've never worked a concert in their lives that was as loud as this one. Well, whatever Tool brought with them, holy smokes did it do the trick.
Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the party atmosphere in our section, maybe it was surreal little wacky buddy, or maybe it was simply awesome music, performed to perfection, by some of the most precise musicians in the genre - whatever it was, the end result was the best damned sounding live performance I've ever witnessed.
In all, Tool was on stage from 9:20 to 11:20 - a full two hours. We were back to the car by 11:35, and were home shortly before 12:30. I couldn't believe that I had been standing up for well over two hours, and my back was still feeling great - I think this physio is actually working! Despite the ringing in our ears, we were both asleep before our heads hit the pillow, dreams of sugar-tools dancing in our heads.
Temp: 29 degrees
Scorcher! The days may be getting shorter, but summer is long from over - it just keeps getting warmer and warmer!
I went for a nice walk at lunchtime, but it was pretty hot and I was getting a little sticky... I wanted to stay out, but had work to do ... siigh...
So after work, I did the watering and weeding, then just lay out in the sun for about 90 minutes.
When Carole got home from work, we went grocery shopping. We've been putting this off for a few weeks, so the cupboards were getting pretty bare. I'm the king of being able to throw together a full meal when Carole swears there's no food left in the house, but finally all the scraps were gone. Plus, we decided that we're going to have a family BBQ next Saturday, so we need to buy lots of suplies for that too. I did NOT expect the bill to exceed $250 though - yikes! I think that's quite possibly the most I've ever spent on groceries at one time...
We also resolved, a few days ago, to totally purge our filing cabinet of all junk, and institute a new sorting method, so on my way home from work today I swung by Costco and picked up a cross shredder for the office - you can't be too carefull when tossing out financial statements these days! I feel much safer knowing that my identity is a teeny bit harder to steal. Oh, and while I was at Costco, I noticed a really cool Scarface collector DVD set in genuine imitation aligator skin binding, with a genuine imitation "The world is yours" Tony Montana moneyclip inside, so I just HAD to pick it up ... that was my impuse buy for the month, but what can I say... it was Scarface!
Temp: 28 degrees
Today is another perfectl day in beautiful British Columbia. We're going back to the mainland this evening, so our activities centered around stuff to do in Nanaimo.
After the typical lazy morning routine, we packed up our stuff, and headed south. I've been to the Departure Bay ferry terminal countless times, but I don't think I've EVER actually spent any time in Nanaimo, so this was a new experience for me. We walked quite a way down the boardwalk in the scorching heat and attempted to find a geocache, but after about 10 minutes at the zero-coordinates, we ran out of time and had to leave without logging the find...
Why'd we have to leave? Cause we're catching the little ferry over to the famous floating Dinghy Dock Pub on Protection Island! It's only a ten minute ferry, but it was nice to be out on the water again. We're getting out on the water lots this year!
We spent several hours kicking back on the floating pub, chowing down on deep fried zuchini and mushrooms, bacon wrapped scallops, stuffed potato skins, chowder, and copious amounts of beer... oh, and for dessert, we had Sex in a Dinghy!
Afterwards, we went for a little walk through the Protection Island park, then took the little passenger ferry back to Nanaimo. Alas, all good things must come to an end, and we had to head to Departure Bay to catch the 'big' ferry back to the mainland.
A day in the sun and all those beers tuckered us out, and we ended up dozing off for most of the ferry ride, listening to our MP3 players as we snoozed. When we finally got home, it was almost 10PM, but was still 22 degrees. It must've been really warm on in the lower mainland today!
YAAW (Yet Another Awesome Weekend).
Temp: 27 degrees
First full day on island time. Got up lazily around 9AM, did a set of exercises as perscribed by my physiotherapist, then walked across the street to the oceanfront and walked way out to the water ... I've never seen the tide out this far here before, I must've hit the absolute low tide point, as a few hours later it was back up to where I expected it to be.
Carole saw me on the beach from out the window and she joined me on my way back up the shore. We spent about 1/2 an hour searching for white/translucent agates ... I'm not sure if I mentioned before but I bought a rock tumbler some months back so that we can make shiny smooth gemstones ... and besides, rockhounding is a relaxing, mindless way to spend a meandinging morning on the beach. You nkoe me, I need a purpose behind everything - just going for a "walk" isn't nearly as fun as "going for a walk while searching for translucent rocks to make shiny trinkets out of" - besides, kids love shiny rocks, and this is a really cheap way to get geocache trade items, lol.
After lunch, Carole's going for a haircut in Parksville, so I look up some geocaches between here and there. We managed to hit two in Qualicum, and while Carole was getting her Anniston-Coifs, Brian and I made off to the Parksville Beach where I located a third cache. There was a big fair going on there, with sandcastle competitions, and lot sof games and music and kites, and ice cream - Carole would have liked it... but I guess she'd rather be indoors getting a 110 minute hairdo... I've never even heard of a 110 minute cut before... you'd think this would include a dye, perm, wax, and cut pollish- but nope, just a cut... er, I mean a "style" - I guess girls don't get haricuts, they get "hairstyles".
Moving right along, we head back to Bower and end the day with an awesome salmon BBQ and a few beers.
Kudos Brian, on the fine BBQ job!
It was a great day, beautiful warm and dry weather, and a nice relaxing time. It must be the fresh air, 'cause we were zonked out and ready for bed by 10pm. I played some online poker on the laptop for half an hour (and lost $23) and we watched a bit of TV, but it was lights out by 11.
Temp: 26 degrees
After work today, I whipped home, got into my shorts and T-shirt, packed up the car, then left to go pick up Carole at work. After a hour fo hell (also known as Vancouver traffic) I made it there, and we headed to the Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal.
We're going to try something new this time ... instead of paying $50 each way to take the car across to Nanaimo, we're going to park in the long-term parking lot and walk on to the ferry... Walk-on rates are $11.75, and the parking for two and a half days is $34 - so if everything works out, I'll save about $60 to $70 ... plus gas.
Carole's mom and Brian picked us up on the other side, and drove us back to their place in Bowser, where we will be chillaxin' for the next two days.
Arrived at 9:30, just enough time for one beer...
Temp: 25 degrees
The radio said it would get to 27 today, but I didn't clock it that high... in fact, the highest I saw it was 24 today, but it DID keep rising into the afternoon, so who knows - maybe it hit 27 - to play it safe though, I'll say it was 25.
I did my watering and some of my exercises out in the sun, then played more online poker. The night was kinda of a writeoff actually... someone Carole knows may or not be the victim of a serious scam, so I spent most of the night researching the particulars of what we know of their involvement. There are so many ways to part a sucker from their money... I sure hope this person isn't in too deep, 'cause this particular scam has taken some people for hundreds of thousands - at least so the internet says...
Well, we're steering clear of the situation - but it helps to be informed, so as depressing as it was, I did my research.
Tomorrow after work, we leave for the Island, where we'll be spending the weekend with Carole's mom, and Brian - TOTALLY looking forward to kicking back and relaxing, maybe doing a little geocaching ... if you're reading this Lynne, have some cold beer ready!
Temp: 25 degrees
I guess I haven't actually mentioned this yet, but I've been going to physiotherapy for a couple weeks now, and today was my third appointment. It's something I've been putting off, and bearing with, for about a decade now - but it finally got to the point where I absolutely HAD to do something about it.
So, where to begin... actually, I'm not even sure now how it began... I've always had back problems, that's the joy of being a tall guy... you bump your head on stuff a lot, and you have back problems. Generally my back would only get sore after a lot of activity, and most of the time it was fine, but at some time in the last 10 years, a 'knot' or bulge of some sort formed on the left side of my lower back, which I though was a slipped disc or out of place vertebrae since it was pretty painful at times. But, while I probably said 100 times that I really needed to find a chiropractor, I never did. Sometimes it was fine, sometime it was bad, sometime I'd even have to stoop to taking back pills (and I HATE taking pills!)- but I was alway too busy to get anything done about it.
So, last summer, during the infamous four month "event" at my workplace, where I was in the office 80 hours a week for four months, my back got REALLY bad. At first I thought it was because I had gained so much weight after my gallbladder surgery (I packed on 35 pounds within a year), but now I had full blown sciatica - my left leg started going all pins-and-needles after sitting for long periods of time, then it would just fall asleep, or feel like it was on fire for no reason, and then after a while, it was just permanently pins-and-needles.
I KNEW I had to do something about it, but when you're working 80 hours a week in an 'essential service' job, it's pretty hard to get to a doctor ... especially when leaving work early means having to cross an angry picket line...
I actually DID get into my doctor though, and even got to an X-Ray clinic that was open on Saturdays, but the Xrays showed that there was nothing wrong with my spine ... of course, it could still be a nerve, muscular, cartiledge, or disc problem - that wouldn't show up on X-rays ... so my Doctor gave me a referal to physio. This was in September - nearly a year ago, and I distictly remember telling my Dr. that my leg had been asleep for six months at that point. Unfortunately, I never made it to the physio clinic.
Well, a month ago, it was getting so bad that I wasn't sleeping more than an hour at a time, because i'd always wake up with my leg on fire and have to shift my position to get it to calm down. I knew I'd better get it taken care of soon, but by this point was starting to worry that surgery might be the only option. But then I started waking up with my left leg in atrophy every morning, and I'd have to shake it back alive so that I could hobble to the shower... THAT started to scare me - crap, I've gotta get this taken care of - I don't want to lose the use of my leg! What I figured was just a pinched nerve that I could "deal with" was getting more serious. So, I wnt back to the doctor and got another referral - or, as it turns out, my original referral was still good.
Two weeks ago I had my first appointment, and the therapist ran a gamut of tests. He was NOT impressed that I had gone so long without treatment, and went to great effort to explain that there is now so much compounded damage that whatever the initial cause was is inconsequential now - the most damage is because my body has been compensating for it for so long. The big knot of muscle in my back is actually result of such a bad compression that my left leg is now pulled up a full inch shorter than my right leg, and that imballance has caused a shift through my whole spinal column, pinching nerves, skewing vertebrae, and pushing discs out of place.
Okay, so it's already been a long story so I'll cut it short. Basically, through manipulation, traction, electric muscle stimulation, and exercises, he's already been able to get my left leg down to within a centimeter of the length of the right leg, and when I leave a physio appointment, I can instantly feel that my stance is more centered and my walking is more fluid - but when I wake up in the morning, it's usually back to square one again, so I'm now doing a series of core strengthening exercises to try to train the muscles surrounding my spine back to their proper shape and form.
Of course, none of this helps the original problem - something's still "out" in my back, and it's still sore as hell. That's still got to be identified and fixed.
I'll explain more next week after my next appointment...
Oh, by the way, tonight was YIMO (Yet Another Meal Out) this evening. I was supposed to go grocery shopping and make dinner, but I figured sice we're going away for the weekend, why bother have fresh food in the house - I'll shop on Monday, and we'll go out for dinner again tonight. So it was Stuffed Baby Yorkies at St. James Well - one of my all-time favorite local pubs.
Temp: 24 degrees
Another nice sunny day, but the bite seems to be back in the air again. I hate to say it, but it's kinda nice not getting sweaty everytime you go outside, yet still being able to catch some good sun - it's a nice compromise.
I had a doctor's appointment this afternoon, so I got out of work early, and after getting home, had an extra hour to veg-out. I harvested some sage, chives, and strawberries from the back yard and played a bit of online poker.
Speaking of sage, I'll tell ya, there just aren't enough recipes that use sage to warrent the amount of sage I've got growing in the back yard - and that's not a bad thing... sage smells great, but I don't think it improves the taste of food too often - yet I find myself putting it in spagetti sauce, and on broiled chicken, and in soups, just to get rid of it! Yeah, this stuff grows way too fast - does anybody want a few punds of sage? If only dill and parsley would grow to be this bountiful.
Anyway, I digress. In the evening I went down to Future Shop to get some CD labeling suplies (yeah, looks like I'll be doing that project after all - but I'm trying to talk Carole into helping...), and while I was there noticed that the new Godsmack and Rob Zombie albums were both on for $9.99 - wow, that's pretty cheap for two new releases... so I bought 'em both.
I was also going to drop off a couple of CDs I had burned for my buddy Ron, but that got cenceled - so while I was in the area, I decided to drive through a neighbourhood that I'm not familiar with, just to check it out. It's called Citadel Heights and it's 'above' Mary Hill, and to the north of it. I had no idea how huge this area is, and I also had no idea there were so many big and nice properties up there... from the highway, Mary Hill looks like a zoo of townhomes stacked on top of each other, but behind that, there are some seriously gorgeous view properties with huge houses and decent sized yards... so I went home to google the listings, and sure enough the prices are the same as of on Westwood Plateau where we live, so no real benefit to moving there. It was still nice to discover a new place though.
The rest of the night, I spent ripping my two new CDs and getting the songs into iTunes and my MP3 player - which now, incidentally, has 3359 songs from 298 albums loaded on it... and still 10GB of free space!
Temp: 28 degrees
Gettin' hot again! Just when you start to think summer's winding to a close, she comes back with a nice day like today - no more cool chill in the air today! A nice way to start the work week too.
I spent my afternoon out in the back yard and really didn't feel like cooking (again...) so I took Carole out to Tony Romas, yeah I know, we haven't exactly been frequenting classy joints of late, but I wanted to go somewhere I could wear shorts...
I had a big Ribs Sampler plate (Tony Romas IS the place for ribs, after all) and Carole had some shrimp skewers. Four different kinds of ribs ... yum... I had such a hankerin' for ribs too. Carole just doesn't "get" the whole ribs thing, she doesn't know why someone would prefer to suck meat off a bone when they could just have a nice juicy steak and keep their fingers clean. I guess it's a "guy thing"... how do you explain the joy of a big rack of ribs to a girl? No idea...
Temp: 26 degrees
Now today is a nice day - not too hot, but beautiful all the same.
I woke up early, and instead of waking Carole, I went outside and weeded the plant beds in the front of the house for about an hour. Then I went in and made a quick breakfast of omlette and hashbrowns.
I said to Carole, "what do you say we take the dingy out to Sasamat Lake, just for an hour or two - let's be there by noon to beat some of the weekend afternoon crowd?"
"Sounds like a plan! Of course, we'll need to go buy a high-capacity air pump though, it'll take forever to blow-up using our little foot pump..."
So we went to Canadian Tire and bought a nice big pump, and since it was now noon, and there was a Quiznos next door, we swung in for a quick lunch. Now it's "off to the lake!"
I figure there were about 800 people at White Pines this afternoon, but after we got the boat into the water and paddled out to the middle of the lake, the sounds of the crowds faded away, and it was pretty much like we had the lake to ourselves - well, save for 3 or 4 other couples out in dingys, which we'd occasionally drift past. It was definitely a beautiful and peacful day, gently rocking and slowly drifting around the lake.
Well, it was a little bit of work... when we very first pushed off the shore, I pushed too hard with the oars (stupid!!!) and snapped one in half, so all of my paddling was with one oar. It wasn't a crisis, we made do, but it certainly would have been less work with two oars, lol. There was a bit of a breeze that would slowly push us toward shore, so every 20 minutes or so, I'd have to spend 5 or 6 minutes paddling back to the middle of the lake again. I didn't feel it then, but I'd be pretty sore the next morning.
Anyway, after about two hours of sun exposure on the water, I figured we should call it quits for the day. Sure, we could have stayed out there all day, but short and sweet turned out to be perfect. You know what they say about too much of a good thing!
We bought a couple of Ice Creams from the beach vendor ($7 for two cones, lol, but it's part of the experience!) and made our way back to the car. Once we could see ourselves in the mirrors, oh yeah, we got plenty of sun. Perfect timing, leaving when we did.
We spent the evening playing Scenei-it!, which we haven't done in quite a long time. I won both games, which made Carole pretty upset, but I think she's over it now.
Temp: 24 degrees
Not bad weather today, but I was on a mission and had no time to spend in the sun.
I dug out an old Typhus performance at Studebakers pub, back in 1996 and this was going to be my first attempt at digitizing an old Hi-* tape and making a DVD out of it.
After wrangling all the required cables, getting all the input settings correct, and fudging the mono audio source, I was ready to begin. Okay, not exactly... a few more tweaks of capture rate, video quality, etc, and NOW I was ready... okay, so I'm almost two hours into the project now, so I press record and let the tape play...
...
...
55 minutes later, I've captured the video and it's in my computer ready to become a DVD!
Now all I've got to do is chop it into chapters, create a menu, figure out what all the song names were, create titles, text overlays, create a disc image, then burn a DVD ...
...
...
Three more hours pass, and I think I've got a final product I'm happy with - time to burn!
Thirty minutes later, the DVD pops out, with an unrecoverable write error. Dang, I'll have to start the burn over. I grab one of my highest quality DVDs, after all if this is going to be a master, I want it to last... maybe the problem was with the crappy generic DVD I had used before. Thirty more minutes later, and the DVD pops out with a successful burn. hooray! Let's try it out ... what the... it's only coming out of the left speaker - I thought I fixed the mono problem... that's strange - plus, there's a white line through the middle of every song - I swear that wasn't there when I was mastering... oh well, it has now been about seven hours and I need to stretch.
The good news is, it DID kinda work - I now have a DVD version of the olf Hi-8 tape that has nice menus and chapters so you can jump right to the song you want. And the quality's pretty darned good too, even with the mono audio and thin white line ... maybe this is good enough?
If you know me, you know I'm a perfectionist - but you know what it'll take to re-do this? I'll have to buy a ne cable to split the mono signal into two paths, and I'll have to re-capture, re-master, and re-burn the whole thing - that means ANOTHER full day of work ... I'm not looking forward to that.
I think I'll try a different video next week, and if it turns out great, maybe, just maybe I'll go back and re-do this one some day. Until then, I've still got plenty of work ahead of me.
Oh, and then Carole reminds me that I'll need to make nifty cases and sleeves for all these DVDs if I wanna give 'em out ... AHHHHHH!!!! I'll be busy doing this project until Christmas!
Well, at least it's not Need For Speed...
Temp: 20 degrees
Friday night, and no plans...
We've decided to take a break this weekend from all the hectic plans we've had throughout the summer so far, so nothing on the slate at all this weekend except relaxin... well, and some overdue laundry...
When Carole came home from work, I said "I didn't feel like cooking tonight, but I've got a hankerin' for baked lasagna, wanna go to Boston Pizza?" "Sure," she said, "anything's fine with me, I just wanna eat."
So we headed down the hill to Boston Pizza, but as we were aproaching the turnoff, I said "Hey, what about Chinese? In six years here, we've never made it into the Coquitlam Hons Wun Tun House 'cause there's always a lineup ... wanna swing by there and see if we can get in? If not, there's still B.P..."
"Great idea honey!" was the reply, so we swung by Hons and sure enough we got in - though it WAS pretty packed...
We ordered beef and broccolli, chicken chow mein, sweet and sour pork, wun tun soup, and a couple of drinks. Grande total was $41 for two people, and there was so much food, it didn't even all fit on the table. We stuffed ourselves full and took the rest (three boxes) home. Litterally, there was enough left for three more meals each. We imagined the cooks mumbling something like "crazy white folk, always ordering all that food" but even with those huge heaps in front of us, we still spent less than half of what we would have at any other restaurant, and now I don't have to cook for at least two more days, too!
This is gonna make a good Saturday morning breakfast!
Actually it made a great midnight snack for the both of us, each loading up a heaping plate - and barely even putting a dent in the leftovers.
Temp: 20 degrees
Another day, another dollar. Back to work today for a very short two day work week.
Weather started to clear up, no more rain but not so hot... spent the evening going through old video tapes. I'm totally gonna try to make some old band DVDs...
Also tried something new with the shower... plumber's putty... we'll see how that works out...
Temp: 22 degrees
Another day booked off, and another day I wake up to rain - at least it was dry by noon and the sun came out, so I was able to wash and wax my car.
in the evening, my old Typhus buddies Chris and Dan came over for a few beers and to chew the fat. I saw Chris at a Gwar concert about 6 years ago, but other than that we haven't really hung out since 1997... wow, practically a decade, yet it was like no time had passed - other than we've both cut off our long hair and gained a few pounds, it was just like old times. We went down to the studio and I put on some old Typhus DAT masters, and we reminisced.
I've got a lot of fond memories of that band - I had my first stag experience in that band, my first live gig, my first recorded album, my first time getting flashed boobies while on stage, and that band never had a problem finding a gig or getting paid ... ah, those were the days, lol.
I tried desperately to find my big box of video tapes from all the old Typhus shows, but just couldn't locate them - of course, ten minutes after Chris and Dan left, Carole located the box. We didn't get to watch and laugh at how young we looked, but we'll do that soon enough, I'm sure. This has given me a renewed inspiration though - Carole found the box of tapes burried under a pile of crap in the computer room. Why was this particular box of tapes in the computer room? Because I had resolved, once upon a time, to load all the old archive footage into the computer and burn DVDs of it, for archival purposes ... hmmm, but I guess I never got around to it. So, my renewed inspiration is to actually DO that - soon! Dump those damned VHS tapes down to DVD! It's in writing now, so I have to do it. You heard it here first! The cool thing about having digital copies of the old performaces, other that to halt the inevitable deterioration of the VHS tape quality, is that once the videos are digitized, I can easily upload them to MySpace. So look for 'em there, soon!
Temp: 19 degrees
Wouldn't you know it, the day after a 100F degree scorcher, and I'm thinking "hoowee, I finally picked a good day to book off - it's going to be awesome" - and you know what? I wake up to pouring rain. Yup, I booked today and tomorrow off close to two months ago, and here I am stuck indoors as it pours rain outside, all day.
Of course, we DO need the rain... my lawn in loving it - but that still doesn't change the irony...
So today's a pretty boring day. I'm just puttering around the house doing miscellaneous chores, and fumbling with the shower once again. I fill the basin up, past the lip, with water (from buckets), let it stand half an hour, and there's absolutely no leaking. I jump in and slosh around, jumping here and there to see if it's got to do with weight being on the floor, but still no leaks. I let all the water drain, and no leaks. I fill the think up again by running the shower for 10 minutes and repeat the whole process, but still no leaks. I just don't get it - I know, I keep saying I'm going to call a plumber, but I talked to a plumber on the weekend and he said I do these tests first... well, I guess I've saved myself a big hole in the kitchen ceiling, cause that's the alternative - cut a big hole in the ceiling to get at the plumbing from the bottom. Okay fine, so it's not the basin that's leaking - ehat the heck is it then???
I also made the mistake of playing poker today and lost $70 of my hard earned winnings in a single day - that'll learn me... well, I've still above the amount I bought in for by $5, so I'm still in the black. I can earn it back.. I'm sure of it.
Temp: 38 degrees (100F!!!)
After a nice long sleep, I lazily got up shortly before 10 and made bacon and eggs for breakfast. Lots more hydrating, then packed up the tent, deflated the boat, and packed up all the leftover food. We've gotta learn not to bring lunch and snack foods - what with all the free hotdogs and pop and chips and snacks constantly floating around, I think this is the 3rd year in a row that we packed way too much food.
Well, it's reluctantly time to leave, so we said our goodbyes and were on the road at 12:30. It was already 28 at Green Lake, so considering hot hot it got as we drove south, I'll bet it hit at least 30 at the Lake. By time we stoppen in Cache Creek for lunch, it was 37!!! It held between 35 and 38 all the way to Hope, and was still 28 when we finally got home at 7:30PM.
Why'd it take us an extra 2 hours to get home? Amazingly, it was NOT because of long weekend traffic. We stopped for lunch in Cache Creek and Dinner in Hope, and while in Hope, decided to do the nostalgia tour of all the places I remember from my childhood ... the Fraser banks, the Golf Course, Thackers Mountain, Silver Creek, Bristol Island and the airport area, and a bunch more. That took about an hour.
Thanks to my GPS, which I kept on for the entire drive home, I was able to escape a massive traffic problem at Bridal Falls - apparently there was bad accident at #3 road - that's just about to Abbotsford! That means that this gridlock that's barely moving at 10km/h is backed up for nearly 30km??? No way I'm gonna spend the next 3 hours in this, so I veered off at the Agassiz/Rosedale turnoff and headed for the Lougheed. I would have taken the lougheed back in the first place, but because of our detour to Silver Creek, it was much quicker to just jump onto the #1, but I half expected to be turning back to the Lougheed at Rosedale anyway. What I didn't expect is that I'd hit gridlock again at the other side of the bridge! "That's okay", I exclaimed, "I know a shortcut right on the othe side of the bridge that will bypass Agassiz"... BUT, the road was closed!!! WTF? We flipped the radio to the traffic channel, and sure enough there was an accident on the other side of Agassiz and traffic was at a stand still. Yikes! We're still at least 8 KM from that accident, this could mean another one or two hour delay! Thank to Lord for GPS though - it found me a nice path zig-zagging around the big standstill, and popped me out just ahead of the accident. was now ahead of an hour's worth of long-weekend traffic and had the road practically to ourselves!
I filled up with gas in Hatzic, where it was only $1.09 a litre (sheesh, ONLY $1.09... how bad does that sound...), and got back on the road. What's this? not even a killometer down the road, and traffic's backed up again! Maybe it's just slow going through Mission city center, or maybe it's another accident - well, I'm not waiting to find out, so I zip up onto 7th and headed west without any anoying traffic. "Hey Carole, the GPS says we're heading straight towards Silverdale... didn't you say there were properties for sale in Silverdale? Let's check'em out!" So we took another detour through Silverdale, and drove over the Ruskin Dam and back down through Whonnock to the Lougheed. From there is was a nice easy drive home - no traffic congestion at all.
We unpacked, I watered all the thirsty plants, chatted with my Dad for half an hour about their trip to Trail this weekend where they helped my brother move (He starts a new job as an electrician's apprentice in Trail tomorrow), then we watched Rock Star Supernova, and had a nice sleep in our comfy bed.
Temp: 28 degrees
Okay, so 28 was the high at Green Lake, so I suspect it's much warmer back home - but who cares, this is a GORGEOUS day here!
We were up around 9AM, which isn't much of a sleep-in considering the late night, but the anual Green Lake Horseshoe tourney is today, and my start time is at 10AM ... Carole's team play at 10:30, and I need to "hydrate" and make some breakfast. Yeah, I probably should have been drinking more water along with all that beer yesterday, but a bottle of water, two juice boxes, some fresh fruit later, and I easily shook off the groggies. For breakfast I made French Toast with fruit salad - Yum! a good start to a great day.
Well, Carole and I were both knocked out of the horseshoe tourney in our first rounds, but it was still a great day - it's a blast to watch, everyone is such a character.
At about noon, when all of the fourteen teams had finished their first round games, Carole and I slipped out to do some geocahing. I had marked down six chache locations around the lake, and it turned out to be an awesome way to find all of the provincial parks and public access beaches in the area. We had no idea how many Provincial parks, campsites, picnic sites, public beaches, and free boat launch sites there were on this lake! For the first time, we got around to the north side of the lake, and I dare say it's even nicer than the south side... this is seriously a place that we'd consider buying recreational property... if only the area weren't so popular! It's not crazy like the
Shuswap, and there are literally dozens of properties for sale, but lakefront ANYWHERE is a hot commodity, and prices here are pretty steep...
We also zipped out to the 70 Mile House general store to pick up some marshmallows and more beer. Just as we arrived back at the campsite, around 2pm, the final horeshoe championship game ended - perfect timing!
It was definitely warmer today, at least 28, possibly more as the afternoon progressed, but I didn't check after about 2PM. We grabbed some camp smokies for lunch, slicked up with sun tan lotion, and hit the beach. We also got out on the boat for a bit, which is always a blast.
Later, I decided to pump up the dingy we had bought at a garage sale 3 years ago, but had never used... Carole and I grabbed a couple of drinks, hopped in, and went for a nice 30 or 40 minute paddle around the area. It was an awesome idea, and when we finally got back the the beach everyone remarked at how peaceful and romantic it looked, just to two of us lazily toodling around out in the lake sipping our drinks and chillaxing on the cool green lake in the hot summer sun. Ah, lazy days and crazy nights - this is the life...
For dinner I made steak and superfries with salad, while others whipped up butter chicken curry, cedar plank salmon with dill creamcheese sauce and asperagus tips, and other equally impressive creations. Oh, didn't I mention? This camping trip is also a traditional unofficial "show off your culinary skills" competition ... not to be outdone, every year the meals are more and more exotic. It's pretty funny actually - we're sleeping in tents, subsisting during the day on beer and hotdogs, but come dinner time, everyone eats like a king.
After dusk, the same late night campfire hillarity ensued, though this time Carole actually got into it and sang half of the Rush and Led Zeppelin repetiore as Colin played guitar. She got so many compliments about her perfect pitch and uncanny ability to reproduce every inflection and nuance in a song, both that night and the next morning, that she may, just maybe, actually think about singing in front of people again sometime... a thought that has traditionally repulsed her, and sent oggies up her spine. After a couple of erupting rounds of applause when she flawlessly reproduced two guitar solos (using her voice) in order to keep the songs flowing between vocal parts, I think she got sufficient ego boosts to get her over the imobilizing shyness that would generally keep her from doing something so wild as singing along with 20 other drunken campers!
It was a blast, it really was - but all good things must come to an end, and we've gotta head home tomorrow, so shortly after midnight we packed it in. It was a much warmer day, followed by a much warmer night - and the sleep was quite warm and comfortable.
Temp: 26 degrees
Traffic was fine - we really lucked out, even though we dindn't get out as early as we had planned. In fact, we weren't on the road until 8:30. We took the Lougheed highway all the way to Hope, figuring that the #1 would probably be much busier, and we ended up making the journey is under 5 hours of driving time, arriving at exactly 1PM, after stops for breakfast in Mission, and lunch in Cache Creek.
It's a little bit cooler at the Green Lake campsite (26 degrees) than it is at Cache Creek and Ashcroft (The consistently hottest spots in Canada), just and hour or so to the south, but this is the southern end of the Caribou region, and we're at about 1.1Km above sea level, not to mention it's just about the 52nd parallel. Not to worry though, this is perfect camping weather - though the camp chatter claims it dipped down to 10 degrees last night, leaving some of the tenters a bit chilly...
When we arrived, most of the regulars were already there, with the rest showing up over the next few hours. As I've mentioned in previous years, this trip is planned every year by our friends Ron and Pam, and for one week, the Green Lake Scouts Camp is occupied by a rotating group of Ron's friends and family. We pay $10 per couple/per night, and that includes use of the cookhouse, shower, toiletries, free hotdogs, pop, condiments, rides on Ron's boat, and an invaluable amount of rest, relaxation, and good conversation and company amongst a truely awesome group of people. It's no wonder that of all the travelling we do to unique new places, this is the one spot we genuinely look forward to returning to year after year - even if only for two nights.
After setting up our tent and staking out a claim in the fridge for our perishables, the rest of the afternoon consisted of a steady flow of beer, lounging in the sun, and catching up with people we hadn't sen in a year. For dinner I made BBQ ribs, baked potatoes, and salad. After dusk, the campfire ritual began. The accoustic guitar comes out, and the singalongs begin. I got to play a half a dozen songs, but the real star was Colin, the bass player in Ron's cover band - he knew every song ever written ... seriously... people would call out songs, and he'd play them. From about sunset (9PM-ish until well past 2:30AM, about 20 of us sat around the fire drinking beer and singing top 40, classic rock, and oldies hits - getting louder and more "festive" with each passing hour (and beer). Man, what a great time... let me tell ya, we were in the company of some seriously professional drinkers too... just picture the garbage bags full of empties in the morning if 20 people each consumed 2 beer per hour for eight hours... and that's conservative!
We hit the hay at 2:30, and while it WAS getting pretty chilly (maybe 14 degrees?) Carole and I managed to huddle together and keep pretty warm all night.
Temp: 28 degrees
DAMN THE SHOWER! Yesterday was fine, and then today it's gushing out of the kitchen ceiling like a waterfall! WTF??? I guess it's time for a plumber. I give up.
The weather today is absolutely beautiful - more sun, and the perfect temperature. Not so long ago, I would have said this wasn't hot enough, but I guess in my old age I'm starting to realize that everything's better in moderation... sure, I still love it when it's 35 outside, but I like being able to get out of the heat from time to time too, and when it's that hot, it makes the nights very uncomfortable. When it's 28 though, (82F) it's still hot enough that you can lay out in the sun and get a nice tan and get that awesome warming feeling, but you're not sweating your butt off, and it's still cool enough indoors that sleeping, or just cooling down, isn't impossible.
So today after work, I just pulled up a lawn chair, and fell asleep in the sun for an hour. Ah, what a refreshing feeling. After refreshing my solar cells though, it was time to start packing - yup, tomorrow morning is the start of the BC Day long weekend, and we're headed to Green Lake!.
The rest of the night consisted of shopping, digging camping supplies out of their basement hiding spots, packing, and an early sleep, as we're planning to be on the road early, to beat some of the long weekend traffic - hopefully the bulk of it leaves tonight...
Temp: 27 degrees
YAND (Yet Another Nice Day). No leak from the shower, so I'm pretty happy about that. Got home from work and watered all the plants, then tossed a reclining deck chair out on the lawn, kicked back in the sun for an hour. It was a nice nap. Very relaxing. I woke up at 5, worried that I might have been burned to a crisp, but upon close inspection, it doesn't even look like I got any sun at all - very strange.
I BBQ'd a couple burgers for dinner, then it was off to the Pacific Colusseum to see Anthrax and Rob Zombie.
I guess I've seen White Zombie twice and Rob Zombie twice before, and there has always been an awesome stage show, so I was a little taken back by the fact that this time it was a totally stripped down show, no crazy costumes or theatrics or set - just the music.
As for Anthrax, seriously, I've lost track of how many times I've seen them - it's somewhere between 7 and 10 ... I'll have to plow through all my ticket stubs to be sure... but the crazy thing is, I've never once been to a concert where Anthrax is the headlining act - they've always just happened to be the supporting act every time I go to see a heavy band. Two possible exceptions might be the MTV Headbanger's Ball in 1988 with Exodus, Anthrax, and Helloween all being co-headliners, and then there was 1991's Clash of the Titans Tour, featuring Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax where each band traded off being the headliners on different legs of the tour. Incidentally, that show was opened by a then unknown Seattle band called "Alice in Chains", which I had actually seen a year earlier, opening for Van Halen... but I digress, back to last night's show.
I'm pretty proud of Anthrax actually. They're still going, and they're going hard. I've been listening to them since 1985, and while they've gone through upswings and downtimes in their carreer, they're still out there touring those hits and grinding out a living where many would have just packed it in. But not these guys, they rock just as hard today, as they did the first time I saw them, 19 years ago on the "Among The Living" tour. Sheesh has it really been that long? Considering that this is their 3rd performance in Vancouver in the last 10 months, I suspect their endless touring is pretty much their livelyhood now - not a bad way to make a living.
Their sound was pretty muddy last night, but there could have been many factors contributing to that. This was the 2nd last date for them on this tour, and the road does to wear down he musicians and the crew, (though there was no shortage of energy on stage during their performance), but oddly, the venue was far more than half empty - I've never seen a concert so empty ... in fact, al lthe nosebleed sections were actually tarped off - not only have I never seen the entire top half of the stadium closed, but half of the red seats were empty too - who the hell was the promoter for this show??? Rob Zombie is huge - there's no way one of his gigs should be this empty - but for some reason it was, and a half empty venue sounds a lot more washed out than a full stadium.
So, on to the Zombie. I'm not going to use the word 'disapointed' because after all, I love the music, I totally respect Rob Zombie for so many reasons, and I certainly did not leave the show feeling let down at all. But, having said that, even the best of 'em occasionally has a bad show. That's what makes the 'good' shows feel so good! Again, I think the bad was road weary. This was the end of this leg of the tour, then a 2 week break before continuing in the US.
For the first three songs, I felt a little bad for Rob - his voice sounded shot, and he was really trying to make up for it by being extra energetic, but a lot of his banter sounded mechanical and rehearsed at first, like he was just reciting his lines at couldn't wait for the show to end - at least, that's the feeling I got... even the band, while they were all playing the right notes at the right times, seemed disjointed - like the passion wasn't really there. I've been there, I know how that feels, and it's frustrating because you really want to give the fans a good show even though you got stiffed by a promoter that couldn't even half-fill a venue, or you've got the flu, or your dog just died, or whatever reasons are clogging up your brain - but thankfully, Rob seemed to push through it. By the 2nd half of the show, while his voice was still pretty raunched out, the camaraderie with the band seemed to be back, they gelled more, and the engergy was way more intense. you could tell rob felt bad that the show started a bit sour, and he was making an extra effort to make up for it.
Any time a singer reverts to what I call "The Ozzy Copout", I do feel let down... it's kinda like the last resort way to cheat yourway through a song that you're not capable of singing yourself - for whatever reason, be it "throat lock", exaustion, or otherwise - when a singer cuts short all the sustained notes, or just doesn't sing them at all, or mubles something like "let me hear ya scream" everytime the chorus comes around, or just holds the mic over the audience during the tricky refrains instead of trying to pull off the notes themselves, you know they're trying to avoid singing at all costs - and Zombie was doing the Ozzy Copout in spades last night. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing - at least he didn't cancel the show, and at least he doesn't use a backing track to fill in his vocal weak spots - getting up on stage and being REAL, with your bagged out voice from 35 shows in 40 days, that's commendable. And still having the energy to rile up the crowd too, well, good on ya.
STILL, there was a distict feeling that Rob wasn't just 'bagged' for the first half of the show, but that he REALLY just didn't want to play any of HIS songs anymore. Don't get me wrong, I love heavy cover songs more than most people I know, but doing Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love, Enter Sandman, Paranoid, Sweet Dreams, and a host of other "cover" snippets at the expense of Zombie classics like Black Sunshine or Demonoid Phenomenon did leave a few fans scratching their heads...
All said, the show really did end on a good note though. Rob made it pretty clear after the end of the 1st encore that this is where they usually end the show and that he wanted to give us a little extra, pulling out songs he "hadn't played in 5 years, so hopefully they can remember them" - though it was a little contrived, since the video screen display for Devil's Rejects was perfectly synched to the song, and all the samples for SuperBeast seemed to be all cueued up and ready to go. Still, it was good to see Rob Zombie again. Was it one of his better shows? No. But they can't all be good shows. And he DID put the extra effort into trying to make up for it.
Temp: 23 degrees
Well, I think I've fixed the leak. Let's hope that's over with ... only time will tell though.
I'm starting to really like this Absolute Poker site, I'll tell ya... I came home from work, fixed up the shower for hopefully the last time, did a few chores, then kicked back for an hour to play online poker. I turned $10 into $39, took a 20 minute break, then went back and turned another $10 into $41. Total profit for two hours of "play" equals sixty bucks.
Of course, after BBQing some dinner and watching RockStar SuperNova with Carole, I hopped back on the laptop for another hour, and within 3 hands, I got a ROYAL FRIKKEN FLUSH which totally threw me off... some of the other players at the table were trying to convince me that if you email your hand# and the date to the support staff, that I'll win a free T-Shirt - so I was trying to scour their website for proof of this promotion while still attempting to play my next hand, and I accidentally called someone's all-in without even looking at my cards... well of course, it was a hand I should have folded, and just like that, I lost $14. Undeterred, I rebought in for another $20, but made the mistake of concentrating more on the email I was typing up to support to ask if I had actually won a free shirt, and before I knew it, I had been calling big bets with crappy hands for about 5 minutes, never won any hands, and had drained another $20 in no time flat. Crap! That Royal Flush was totally screwing me up... the smart thing to do here would be to quit until my brain has relaxed... but no, I wasn't feeling too smart, and bought back in for another $10. I played a bit better and got the $10 up to about $24, but then I received a reply from the AP Support department that said "Unfortunately the Royal Flush promotion ended two weeks ago and we can not honor your request" - dang... at least the dumping of $34 in 10 minutes would have been kinda worth it if I had a shirt to show for it that said "I got a Royal Flush at AbsolutePoker.com" - but no dice. So now I make the biggest, most amateur mistake yet... I'm smarter than this too, so I have no idea why I did it... I actually thought to myself, "I'm going to have to change up my play - play more hands and be more agressive... buy more pots and get my stack back up another $34 at least, so that I can say I ended the day at +60, where I was before stopping for dinner" - SHEESH! I'm embarrased to even type that, let alone admit that I actually did it. Surprise, surprise... I bled off the cash I had left, and ended the day only $10 ahead. I guess that's still nothing to be ashamed of, since I suppose 90% of all players end every day deeper in the hole. And, I HAVE still turned my original $50 buy-in into $149 in less than two weeks - it's just a shame that two hours ago I was up to $199.49. Remind me again why this game is so fun? LOL, seriously though, it really is fun.
On another note, we're half way through summer ... deep sigh.
Since the beginning of summer, I've spent $424.60 on fuel for my car. Crap! these gas prices suck. I haven't even done any trips! By contrast, I've spent $377.42 on beer. What kind of a world do we live in, where a person has to spend more on gasoline than on beer?
Temp: 23 degrees
Ahhh!!!! The leak is 20 times worse this morning! It's streaming down through the kitchen and into my studio in the basement! WTF??? How could it possibly be, that when I'm certain I've fixed the problem it gets exponentially worse? Well, a quick google solved that one ... apparently whether you use a gasket, plumber's putty, or caulk, you should always leave a gap at the bottom of the ring so that any water trapped inside can escape. By caulking all the way around, I was forcing the wall to fill up with water - but HOW is the water getting in there in the first place??? This is getting scary frustrating, and it's starting to discolour the walls and paint downstairs - I've gotta figure this out!!!
Sure enough, when I get home after work I rip out the caulk at the bottom of the face place and water leaks out. Well, now I know for certain that's where the leak is ... so I take off all the fixtures and the face place, and oddly it looks dry inside the wall. Huh??? I run the shower for half and hour while watching dilligently with a flashlight for drips - but there's nothing! I shake the pipes and tug and push and pull, I try different temperatures of water, but no leaks. ARGH! I've got to figure this out! This is killing me!
I needed a break from the plumbing fiasco, so I kicked back for an hour and played some online poker, making anothe $20, and bringing my total to $129, from my initial $50 investment. Not too bad. Of course, my job pays more, but it's not nearly as fun. :-)
When Carole got home I BBQ'd some chicken breasts in an herb vinigarette marinade, and then after dinner we headed out to Wayne's rehearsal space for a jam night with Comeau and Keith. I kept thinking that I hadn't played guitar or bass in 6 months, but when I added it up on the way down o the jam, I realized that October to August is ten months - yikes! Has it really been that long since I decided to take the hiatus from music? Now I was nervous... the calluses on my fingertips were all gone, and just picking up the guitar for half an hour at my BBQ party had left them all burning - would I be able to pull off any songs tonight? Would I even be able to remember any songs?
After watching the Vitamin Voodoo revival, I got thrown on to guitar, where it was admittedly a pretty slow start ... I couldn't think of anything to jam - I felt like one of those wannabe kids in the guitar shops that can't wait to get hit mits on the guitar, but when it's finally his turn he can't play a lick... actually, come to think of it, I guess I WAS that guy tonight... fortunately, I was able to redeem a bit of esteem by pulling off Metallica's 'Am I evil', and later on in the evening when it was my turn on the more comfortable (and less brain power requisite) bass guitar, we pulled off a kickass version of L7's Shit List (just like the old days!) with Wayne on guitar and Comeau on drums. After that, we actually got about half way through Black Sabbath's "Junior's Eyes" - which was actually one of the harder songs I've ever learned, but I guess after all that frustrating learning, something must've stuck, 'cause I seemed to remember it pretty damned well ... though about 3 minutes into it, my fingers felt like raw meat, and stopped cooperating. I'd had a few coke and cherry vodkas by then though, so I was feeling a lot less critical of myself, and just enjoying playing again. Note to self : start playing again! I've already made a commitment to myself to start recording my "Ephemeral Demise" solo project in September, so maybe I should get up to par on my guitar and bass playing again, eh? Geez, that's only a month away! I guess I should start writing some material too...
Everyone wanted us to stay and party, since we only see Comeau one day every 2 years, but it was 11 and we had to git. It was a good night though, and it took my mind off that damned leak for a few hours.