crows to burnaby

This year, with everything happening that's happening, Christmas has been somewhat less of a priority. Usually we've done a tree and decorated the place up a bit, but I just haven't really been interested. It just seemed better not to let it be one more stressing factor, and I can't get worked up about buying stuff for people right now. We'll spend some time with family and friends, but it's not going to be a big thing.

As a result I have this weird sort of detached feeling about Christmas this year, like it's something other people do. I'm not bothered or bitter about it or anything, it just doesn't feel relevant right now. I guess this is what it's like for people who've never celebrated Christmas; watching with a bemused calm as everyone around puts red and green and shiny silver stuff all over everything. I went out last week looking to buy new socks, and felt strangely and pleasantly calm as shoppers sweated over finding just the right heated car seat or slippers with tassels on them.

I keep trying to think about presents I could buy for the people I truly care about, but it baffles me. I feel like I only want to get things that they really need, and none of it is stuff you can buy. What do you get for the person who has no time for themselves? For the one who needs some certainty and stability? For the people who need to heal? The people waiting for a sign before they can make the change they need to make - where can I find that for them? If I can't fix these problems, how is giving them a nice poinsettia going to help? If I'm thinking of them, I should be letting them know anyway, regardless of it being December 25th or not.

I hope I haven't put a damper on your Christmas with this. It's just a strange, strange feeling; Christmas is usually a big production you can't help getting involved in, but this year I feel like I'm off backstage somewhere while everyone else performs.

Whatever it means to you at the moment, I hope you enjoy it and get from it whatever you need the most.

I've got a bit of nice news about ARCTIC: Music BC picked the song "You Coming Down", off the new album, to include on their 2008 Compilation CD, which they'll be bringing with them to MIDEM 2008 in Cannes. We're in good company on the CD, which includes British Columbia artists like TV Heart Attack, Immaculate Machine, and John Mann (of Spirit of the West).

There's just something nice about external validation once in a while.

You can get "You Coming Down" as a free download on ARCTIC's "listen" page. It's the solo version of the song, which sounds quite different from when we play it as a full band (if you'd like to compare, we'll play it at the Backstage Lounge on Dec 28th).

I just watched the last few minutes of TV that I'll probably be watching for a while, as we've cancelled cable starting tomorrow, and in a while I won't have a TV any more. I'm not a big fan of TV, really. I tried to savour this last viewing, to really enjoy it, but honestly there wasn't much I really could get into, aside from a decent Seinfeld episode; everything else was either sitcoms I dislike or yet another performance elimination-style reality show.

I was pretty sure I wasn't going to miss much, but then I went back for another look. One of the channels said a new Family Guy episode was up next, but I couldn't find it; instead I happened on a CBC story about scientists in the Arctic studying climate change and contaminants in the water, which was quite interesting, and something I make a point to stay aware of as one of the writers on ARCTIC's "News of the North" blog.

Still, it was information that I could've found online, and probably even in video format if I felt so inclined. Web video still seems like a hassle to me, at least compared to TV; I think it's the buffering, how you never quite know if it's going to play reliably. But it'll be there if I need it. And I will live TV-free.

The other item being unplugged is our dishwasher, which has just died. I happen to passionately despise doing dishes. I don't mind cleaning the countertops (much), I don't mind dusting (much), I don't even really mind vacuuming (I just mind moving things out of the way of the vacuum), but washing dishes aggravates me. Still, I made it through a respectable quantity of dirty dishes this evening without trauma. There's no way in hell I'm going looking for a new dishwasher while the Xmas shopping nightmare is in progress, but perhaps it'll be worth braving the Boxing Day terror for a decent discount. Oh the joy!

Well, I'm glad I posted about what's going on; it felt sort of burdensome to be keeping it quiet for the first while when we were working out more of the details, and I'm incredibly grateful for all the positive notes and thoughts I've gotten from people. I really, truly appreciate it: thank you.

I don't really know what to blog about now. Do I just pick up where I left off? Or tell you about what I'm feeling about the process of separating? Or some of the practical realities of it? That's a rhetorical question, by the way. I don't think anybody can answer it but me.

Here's one practical reality I should let you know about: I'll be reverting back to my old name of Kirsten Starcher. I went to Services Canada yesterday to change it on my SIN card, and it was funny how... easy it was. Birth certificate, current SIN card, and a few skill-testing questions about my family... and that's it. New card in the mail. Just like that. New identity (or old one? A variation on the theme, I guess).

Oh, and for those of you who have my home number (with 708 in it), that'll be cancelled, and I'll just be using my cell phone.

In the meantime, while I figure it all out, the show must go on. I'm playing at Wired Monk this coming Monday, Dec 17th along with a bunch of other fine local singer/songwriters types (I believe I'm the only one on bass, though). Show starts at 8:00 and cover is $5.

And if you're looking for something to do during that awkward lull between Christmas and New Year's, come see ARCTIC on Dec 28th at the Backstage Lounge, along with Slowpoke & The Smokes, The Price of Drugs These Days is Through The Roof, and Room Seven. Show starts at $10, cover is $10.

I have learned that it's important to be able to force yourself to focus on something else, not as a means of avoiding your problems, but as a mental break and a way of pulling yourself out of the bog. And it should be pretty obvious to anyone who knows me that music's going to be the most likely way for me to do this.

You may have noticed this blog has been a bit quiet lately, and when there's been activity, it's been ... well, shallow. There's a reason for this.

The short explanation is, Greg and I have decided to separate. It's a completely mutual and amicable decision; we intend to stay just as close friends with each other after our marriage as we were before our relationship began. But we have become different people over the past few years, gently drifting apart, and we see our lives pulling us in different directions. It's been a very difficult process coming to terms with this, but we know that this is something we both do want, and that over time, it'll be best for both of us.

If you were to ask when this all started, it'd be hard to say whether it's been weeks, months, or years. But it's been over the past few weeks that we've realized this is our path, and have begun to deal with the realities of it all, the paperwork, the logistics, and importantly, talking to our family and friends. (In this modern world, we had to take into account when to change our Facebook status. How odd.) It's been an ever-widening circle, and now I'm posting about it here, which I guess is the widest circle I have.

So I haven't posted much else here lately, because nothing else has really seemed particularly important. And I haven't really decided how much I want to talk about this process on my blog; obviously some things are private and some things are public and I need to find a balance. This is marking a major, major change in my life. Greg and I were together for fourteen years, married for seven. I've never really lived on my own; it's an experience I think will suit me, but it'll be a huge shift. Please bear with me while I make some significant adjustments.

Okay, okay, try this.

Go to this page.

Say out loud, "So you don't like Vancouver's Olympic mascots?"

Then mouse over the little waving guy.

On campus today I saw a handmade sign that read "TUITION FREE'S".

Please, please tell me they didn't mean that to read "freeze".

If so, there are greater problems with our educational system than we may have feared.

There's a town in Ontario called Moose Factory.

I certainly hope they use sustainable materials...

Someday we'll sit around and reminisce about the old days in which Facebook forced you to use "is" in status updates, but right now it looks like the revolution is upon us.

Hooray! Now people will stop inviting me to join that petition group.

Last Sunday I attended an open mic at a pub in Kits. The place was packed, it was pretty toasty in there, and after giving up on actually playing that night as the PA kept cutting out, I ended up leaving my favourite sweater on a chair. I realized what I'd done on Tuesday after much fruitless and increasingly anxious searching.

I called up and the bartender immediately knew what I was talking about.

"Oh yeah, I remember that. We were kind of hoping you'd forgotten it - we were starting to fight over it!"

She took a look around and couldn't find it. "I think the day bartender might've taken it home."

Apparently their lost & found policy is a little bit lax.

I really wanted the sweater back. I got it at a clothing swap a few months ago, and I can't believe anyone would part with it. It's awesome - it's warm but not too hot, it's just dressy or casual enough to go with everything stylewise, and it's a shade of grey that also goes with everything. Plus, it's a hoodie, and I am very fond of hoodies. It is the perfect winter sweater.

So I called again the next day and it still wasn't on the premises - but everybody I talked to assured me that they knew exactly the sweater I was talking about, and that it wasn't lost and could definitely be tracked down. I stopped in on Thursday and talked to the manager, who was working on it and assured me she'd give it a call. I finally got the call on Saturday that I could pick it up on Sunday night.

I stopped by to get it, and it had this note attached to it:

As I was leaving two of the waitresses spotted me and said "Oh good, you got it back!" and we discussed how wonderful the sweater was for a few minutes before I finally took it safely home.

They must have been coveting and arguing over it all week. I'm never letting it out of my sight again.

This Friday night, Nov 16, I'll playing a solo show at the Wired Monk. I'm on at 8:30, and will be followed by Rob Fillo & Ross Fairbairn. Cover is $5.

Then on Saturday the 17th, Marcus is playing a solo ARCTIC show at the Monk. Adam Gibbs is opening at 8:30, cover is $5 again.

Wired Monk is at 2610 W 4th Ave, at Trafalgar. And it's licensed, so whether it's coffee you want or alcohol, you're all set...

I realized this week that I barely noticed Daylight Savings Time this fall. I mean, I knew when it happened, but usually I spend the next few days grumbling about how it's getting dark so early and how I really don't CARE if it's light out at 7 am. This time it didn't really cross my mind until nearly two weeks later.

I guess that means I'm not getting out enough? Certainly that I need some more Vitamin D.

Om nom nom nom!

I really really enjoyed Saturday night's performance. Yeah, I know I say that sort of thing a lot, but it was true. When you're on stage and you stop thinking about the music and it just sort of happens around you, you know it's a good night. That's why I do it.

Look, I'm clearly enjoying myself:

Thanks to Shaun for the pic. You can also find some photos from Genevieve here - this one of me is so trippy, it looks like my hair is painted on. I seem to be doing something odd with the bass, so it was probably during No Trace or Launching Pad when I pretty much make it do ambient whirring and squeaking noises instead of playing it properly.

Windows '78 put on a fine show, of course, and then the Pink Floyd Animals tribute came on. Well. I was expecting to enjoy it as a sort of good-faith effort to recreate the album, but I was very, very, very impressed by how accurate it was and, more importantly, how well they captured the feel. I already knew they were all really good musicians, but they truly did themselves proud in that show. And the crowd was very appreciative, which was good to see.

I want every night to be a show night.

On a technical note, today I swapped out the SWR "Son of Bertha" 1x15 cab I was renting for a Mesa Boogie 1x15, mostly because it's smaller and has wheels, so it'll be better for the two smaller coffeehouse solo gigs I have coming up in the next month. And boy does it sound good! I don't usually think much of Mesa Boogie, but it wipes the floor with the SWR cab, much clearer. I kind of wish I'd had it for Saturday's gig... it really shows off the Morris nicely. Oh well, next time (or maybe I'll be on to a different cab already).

Just a reminder that ARCTIC is playing at the Backstage Lounge (1585 Johnston Street, on Granville Island) tomorrow night, November 3. We're followed by Windows '78 - who are awesome - and then they're followed by two Pink Floyd tributes. The first is a group of musicians from various bands (including Marcus) playing the entirety of Animals, and the second is Japanese Cowboy (a Ween tribute band) playing Echoes. I'm very excited about this show.

Doors are at 9, we're on at 10, cover is $10. See you then.

So we kind of meant to go to the Parade of Lost Souls on Saturday night, but our group headed over a bit late and didn't really know where it started or ended. We hovered in the Commercial Drive area near Grandview Park and saw the occasional elaborate dragon, but they seemed to be isolated incidents rather than the actual parade. But we had a great time, gawking at the costumes and being gawked at in return.

Greg in particular was a celebrity. He'd done a fine job as the main character, V, in V for Vendetta. We expected to see other Vs on the street, but didn't run into any, and so Greg was extremely popular, with lots of people stopping him and asking to take his picture. At one point he had a crowd formed around him, taking turns taking pictures with him, flashbulbs going off like paparazzi. It was dizzying. (He told us afterwards that he had had a cookie in his mouth the whole time, but because it was under the mask no one could tell - but he couldn't take a moment to remove the cookie or finish eating it.)

I decided to take advantage of my newly-recharged bright red hair, and went as a red fox. I made a tail and ears, which for me is pretty impressive as I'm not exactly famous for my crafting & sewing ability. I wouldn't look too closely at the seamwork, but, well, there you go. I don't have it on in this picture, but I also had a cardigan in the same colour, upon which I pinned on some white fake fur so that it looked more foxlike. It's a challenge to come up with a Halloween costume that keeps you warm outside but doesn't look all bloated and puffy, and I was pretty pleased with this one.

Hopefully the people dressed as bunnies and mice weren't too disturbed by my stalking and hunting them. But hey, it's instinct, what could I do?

• It's bad enough that most Vancouverites don't bother wearing bicycle helmets. But riding your bike without touching the handlebars, sitting back, with no helmet on and earbuds plugging your ears - that just seems like a flat-out death wish.
• When you email my freelance business site asking me if you can join my "company's team", it makes it fairly obvious that you haven't really read over my site and don't really know what you're applying to. So I'm probably not going to hire you. Even if I could have employees.
• Some part of my brain just tried to Google my purse to make it easier to find my lip balm.
• We can tell that dogs dream. What I want to know is, are their dreams as surreal to us as ours are to them? And do they forget them instantly upon awakening, or do they wonder where that giant neon cat disappeared to?

Okay, this may just mean there's something really wrong with me.

But I know what I want to do at Christmas this year.

*hops excitedly from foot to foot*

Hey, I can't help it, I've been a fan of this since I was, what, twelve?

After my last show, I had a few comments from people who missed it wondering if I had a mailing list. Which I didn't, having just sent out a few haphazard messages to people who I thought were interested, but not wanting to spam people who might not be.

At any rate, I threw one together this evening and if you'd like to get announcements by email on when I'm next performing and what I'm up to musically, you can sign up over at Treehorse.ca.

• I had a great time playing at Wired Monk last night. It's a very warm and welcoming room, lots of people, bunch of great friends there, and I felt very much at home. Brought out a brand-new song that was well received - well, not like most people really know my old songs yet, but the new one was completely unheard. I should be playing there again sometime in November; will keep you posted.
• The new ARCTIC CD is now available on CD Baby and Apple iTunes, which makes it seem even more official and stuff. Although if you're lookin' to buy it cheap, the mp3 prices are still lower on Amie Street for now - and you can hear the whole song, not just a 30-second clip from some random spot in the middle. I do wish we could pick the best 30 seconds...
• I am so diggin' the new Radiohead album. It took few listens to really get a feel for it - it's fairly mellow and mature, not as earthshatteringly groundbreaking as OK Computer and Kid A, just damn fine music. Nigel Godrich's production is pretty obvious - I have to say I think he borrowed a few things from his work with Beck, but that was good too, so I'm not really complaining. It's all lovely and it's all getting stuck in my head all the time (except "Videotape"... I can't get into that one). Looking forward to getting MORE when the Discbox set comes out.

Yay!

Yesterday in the grocery store I found myself contemplating a bottle of blueberry juice on the shelf, and became suddenly aware that the song playing in the background was "Blueberry Hill".

I started paying more attention, and also heard Harry Connick Jr's "Recipe for Making Love" and "Linger" by The Cranberries.

Can it really be a coincidence that there's something food-oriented about all of these songs? How much more subliminal can we get?

I'm not quite sure how to explain Sting's "Desert Rose", unless it's supposed to make you think about dessert.

I've chosen between a variety of possibilities recently. Here are some of them.

• Telus vs. Rogers: My trusty little Samsung phone finally cracked and started to have issues. It held in long enough to get me through my contract with Telus. After much contemplation, I ended up signing for a 1-year contract with them again. Earlier on I was really leaning towards getting on Rogers so I could have an unlocked phone and be on the right network when the iPhone finally is supported up here. But once I did the research, I really didn't feel like paying $400+ for an unlocked and unsupported phone just so that I can make my own ringtones. It's the principle of the thing, yeah, but when it comes right down to it, there are more important things in life.

  And the iPhone - well, who knows when it's actually coming out. Recent rumours - which are being heartily mocked - had it first appearing in October at Holt Renfew for $799 - twice the selling price in the US. However unlikely this seems, it does serve to remind how painfully overpriced Canadian wireless is compared to the States. I guess I'd be waiting a while to see what the prices would be like and how the competition would handle the arrival of the iPhone, even if it were available within the next few months. But in a year, I can always bail from Telus if it's worth it.

• Firefox vs. Opera: Firefox has been pissing me off to no end, even worse than when I fumed about it a few months ago. Problems that recur on a daily, nay, hourly basis include but are not limited to:

  - The apostrophe key, typed into a field on the page, opens up Quick Search
  - Doing a "select all" in the address bar will only select all the text on the page, not the address
  - If I type an address into the address bar and hit enter, nothing happens
  - I can't use the Copy function on any text
  - A window gets "stuck" on my second monitor and can't be moved, then all other windows lock into place somewhere I don't want them
  - I can no longer page up or down using the tab or arrow keys
  - It stops reading stylesheets, then I can't QUIT the program and have to force quit

  These are ridiculously sloppy, amateurish user interface bugs that should NOT be making their way into a released product. It doesn't happen much on my work laptop, but a little searching shows that these problems happen for others as well. No, upgrading hasn't worked - every time a new upgrade is released I think "maybe this time!" but there's no improvement.

  So I finally remembered Opera and am giving it a try, and I am really, truly impressed. It's very well designed, very intuitive, and they seem to have thought of everything. The downsides are:

  - it's noticeably slower than Firefox
  - it has trouble with Yahoo Mail Beta, though it tries pretty hard
  - it crashed today when using Myspace and lost all its bookmarks, which displeased me greatly and now I'm a little nervous about that happening again.

  But it's such a relief to, you know, be able to actually browse that I think I'll stick with it for now.

• Toast vs. English muffin: The texture of the English muffin is far superior to that of this particular kind of bread. But what is with the flour coating on the muffin? It makes your mouth dry and pasty and unpleasant.

Turns out the Wired Monk is closed Monday for Thanksgiving. Whoops. So I've been moved to Monday, October 15th. I believe I'm on at 8:30 and will post if it's otherwise...

Today I made my first joke about how something was cheaper "because it's in AMERICAN dollars".

Now, with the current Canadian dollar worth $1.00248 US, it's not really a noticeable difference. But it's such a strange thing psychologically. For most of my life I've taken it for granted that the US dollar is worth more than the Canadian dollar. Living in Newfoundland, we were always hesitant to order much from the States, because if the nasty exchange rate didn't get you, the shipping and duty probably would. Living in the States, I'd feel like a big spender when I visited Canada. Saying "...and that's in US dollars" was a simple way of emphasizing how expensive something was. Even though we've all seen this coming for a long time, it's so ingrained to think of the American dollar as worth more than it's hard to fathom the opposite.

As a few people have pointed out, just because the dollar is equivalent doesn't mean that cross-border pricing has become fair. How long before they stop printing separate US and Canadian prices on book covers, for example? If you're adding a lot to your library, it's got to be cheaper to hit the Barnes & Noble across the border than to buy books in Canada (and save on gas by tanking up while you're over there, too).

I've seen a whole lot of references to how this is actually going to damage the Canadian economy since many Canadian companies depend on appearing cheaper to American markets, but I haven't read them too closely yet. I can't control it, and whatever happens will happen.

Now, I wish we could catch up with the British pound so that that Radiohead CD & vinyl set would be cheaper... *grumble*

Radiohead has a new album coming out in ten days.

I have already pre-ordered.

*waits by mailbox, heart racing*

Had a good show at Trees on Friday night. I nearly had a fit trying to find parking - I needed to be somewhere near the place so I could unload my amp and cabinet, but the block of Granville that houses Trees Organic Coffee House is currently a gaping pit where they're digging for the Canada Line. So forget parking anywhere in the area.

It all went well though. I traded spots with Jon Middleton, who did a lovely mellow acoustic set, and we all played to a pretty packed room. Felt good. The Gentle Infidels followed, and they were very good - you've always got to root for any group with a cello in it, plus their bassist Ferdy is an awesome musician and super nice guy.

I'm playing again on Monday, October 8 at Wired Monk in Kits (at Trafalgar). Not sure yet what time I'm on, but the music starts at 8:30, so either I'll be on then or one other person will be.

Shaun Applebaum was kind enough to come out and take some photos:

You may notice that my hair is bright red. This is not a camera effect, it really is that colour now. I'd been building up to this for a while, and a few weeks ago got it done. I've never dyed my hair so dramatically before (I've done various shades of natural red, and had one nasty henna incident in university). My hair has never seen bleach before, either. So it was a big bold move - but I love it love it love it. It just feels right, like this is the colour my hair needed to be but couldn't manage on its own.

I've been curious to see how people react. I've gotten many compliments about it, from both friends and complete strangers, which helps to confirm that this really is "me" and not some crazed delusion. I notice that people walking down the street look at me a few seconds longer than they ordinarily would. In contrast, sometimes I think it's harder to get attention from, say, a secretary or counter staff - like they're not quite sure what to make of me so they avoid eye contact. And a few people over 80 have just outright stared, which I find very amusing. Anyway, it's been very positive - some people have told me they're really inspired by it and it makes them want to change something, too.

Now, my wardrobe options are suddenly limited - I discovered that pale blue shirts clash horribly, for example. But I think I can deal with that.

I like to think of it as a changing of the seasons; as the trees change colour, so do I. But does that mean I have to go pink in the spring?

Next, Jeremy wants to know about wheatpaste.

From wikipedia:

Wheatpaste, or potato paste (also known as flour paste, rice paste or simply paste), is a liquid adhesive used since ancient times for various arts and crafts such as book binding, decoupage, collage, and papier-mâché. It is also made for the purpose of adhering paper posters to walls. Closely resembling wallpaper paste, it is made by mixing roughly equal portions of flour and water (some argue using more water or more flour), and heating it until it thickens.

In the past when postering for ARCTIC, I've just stuck up a handful of posters using tape. When you're postering on your own, tape is a serious nuisance, because you have to cut the tape, keep the poster steady with your elbow, wrap the tape around the post, cut another piece and tape the bottom, and then inevitably the tape sticks to itself on the roll and you have to pick at it with your fingernail to try to lift it off again and then it comes off in little slivers and you can't get it started and you want to rip it to shreds but you can't because it's stuck to itself. And then someone can come along and rip the poster down with their pinky finger.

So this time I decided to use wheatpaste. And it's fun! It's dead easy to make - I used 1 part flour to 4 parts water, and some sugar added in - and so much more pleasant to work with. You just paint the surface you're postering with the paste, slap the poster up, and paint over top of it. The paste dries and you've got a pretty stable poster that is much harder to take down.

...Which brings me to a new point. Postering in Vancouver is a competitive and ultimately somewhat futile venture, which is why we don't do a whole lot of it. The city is run by a sort of a poster mafia, and if you haven't hired the Poster Guy, your posters will be taken down post-haste. So my postering on Wednesday for a Saturday show was done with the full knowledge that I'd be lucky to have them last until Thursday. I put up a few more on Saturday morning, hoping they'd at least get some eyeballs for a few hours. None of the original posters in the area were still there.

The other question is what do you poster over? Because there's no such thing as a blank pole, unless you're following the city workers around who clear off the poles every week or so. (And apparently there's been some crackdowns on people postering on private property, mailboxes, lampposts, etc - there are occasionally fines.) My personal policy is this: if there's an expired poster, I paste over that. If there isn't, I go for the biggest, most corporate event that's furthest off into the future. If it's a show at the Commodore presented by Live Nation that is a month in the future, you can bet they have the budget to re-poster the entire city next week anyway. I won't poster over small local promoters & bills.

So my wheatpaste adventure was fun, but only because it was nice outside and I understood I was fighting a losing battle. A bit zen, I guess, when it comes down to it.

Jesse wants to hear about pirates, so here we go.

First of all, Wednesday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I hope you all participated.

Secondly, the other band that we played with in Duncan last week, Ursula, had a pirate song that was so catchy we were singing it in the van on the way back. They were a pretty interesting ensemble - three youngish people, armed with accordion, banjo, ukelele and washboard, truly living the modern hobo life and singing their tales. I hadn't been sure what to expect - accordion folk/punk? - but they were so warm and genuine and shy that it was a really wonderful performance. They sang some old folk songs about travelling and their own songs about riding bikes in the city and running away as far as you can get in one day, and it was funny and wonderful. They're playing at Hoko's (362 Powell) on September 27th if you're interested.

As for the Duncan Garage Showroom - what a lovely venue. I bet you never thought you had a reason to go to Duncan, BC, but you do now.

If you need this post translated into pirate speak, please use this service.

I keep thinking of things to blog about while I'm nowhere near a computer. Then I come home and I do other stuff instead. So I thought I should give you a list of my excuses for not having blogged as much lately:

1. I'm on vacation. Technically. I decided to take the past two weeks off to decompress after the CD launch and get ready for some of the shows. And I've been away the past two weekends, once to visit family and once for a quick ARCTIC tour to Vancouver Island. I've done some enforced relaxing, but mostly I've just been filling every minute with fiddly little tasks.
2. ARCTIC stuff. This upcoming show is the first one that we've put on ourselves, and so there's more to do than usual, like printing and putting up posters, arranging details with other bands and so on. It's been fun, but it does take a chunk of time.
3. Heroes. An evil friend of ours loaned us the first season of Heroes on DVD. I had no intention of watching, but sort of half-followed the plot of the first few episodes while listening from the other room. Eventually I got hooked. Hopelessly. And so I've been devouring the remaining episodes. Just finished them all, and not a moment too soon, because the new season starts on Monday. I hate that I'm hooked on another show, but damn it, it's really good.

Here are the things that I would have been blogging about if I'd been blogging much. Maybe I'll get to them soon.

• Clothing swaps
• Wheatpaste
• Pirates

This Saturday, September 22 will be ARCTIC's first Vancouver show since the new CD came out. We're playing at Hoko's (362 Powell, in Chinatown), which is a sushi/karaoke restaurant turned indie music joint. I've been hearing quite a bit about it, and I'm really looking forward to playing there - it's just so exciting to see new venues emerge and I'm very glad to be a part of it. We'll be playing with Make the Lion and Orchid Highway, two local bands that have been solidly involved in the scene for quite a while. It's gonna be fun. Doors are at 8pm, cover is a mere $5.

Also, I've been so caught up in ARCTIC goodness that I almost forgot to promote myself. I'm playing a solo set at Trees Organic Coffee House (450 Granville St, near Hastings I think), on September 28, not this Friday but the one following. It'll be just me and my bass and my songs (well, maybe one cover). Sort of like what you hear on my myspace page (still haven't gotten to fix those mixes). Gentle Infidels and Jon Middleton will also be playing. Starts at 8:00, free admission.

for two ARCTIC shows, one that I'm not playing in and one that I am.

Here's a new photo of me to keep you company in the meantime:

If, on a mostly full bus, you have placed your backpack or bags on an empty seat beside you, OR if you are sitting in the aisle seat while the window seat is empty, I will make a point of asking for the seat you are blocking. I will do this even if there is another empty seat I could have taken instead, but not if the bus is largely empty.

However, if your jacket or bag happens to be covering the edge of the empty adjacent seat, I will probably choose another seat over that one, because I don't want to sit on your jacket or be squished against your groceries.

Portrait photography isn't my forte. I'm not generally that good or that comfortable taking pictures of people - if they're strangers, I always feel like I'm imposing, and if they're friends, I feel like I'm distracting them from whatever it was they were doing that made them interesting to photograph in the first place.

Oddly enough, my one photo that seems to be getting some attention lately is in fact a portrait.

While I was in Toronto at North by Northeast in June 2006, I saw this man sitting on the sidewalk on Queen Street. It was such a moment, but as usual I hesitated about taking a picture - he was asleep, and that seems like a vulnerable time to take someone's photo, and I couldn't give him change as a thank-you without waking them up. Marcus urged me to take the picture anyway, and so here it is.

Last year I got an email from Feeding Pets of the Homeless to use it on their website and newsletter, and I said sure. Then it was picked up by Paw Prints Magazine. Since then I've also had a request to use it in a deck of inspiration cards, a sociology textbook, and an online course. When it's a commercial publication, I've charged for it; otherwise I've let it be used for free. I haven't received my payments yet for the commercial items, but I intend to give a chunk of it to a local homelessness organization. Since I can't very well go to Toronto and find this guy and pay him, I should give it to someone who's trying to help people like him, at least.

The most interesting email I've received, however, has been from a woman who says this man is her son Noel Mathew Cowley who has been missing for almost two years. She's looking for any information about him, and wants to know if anyone has seen him since; she's posted her contact info in my Flickr comments so you can get in touch with her there.

It's amazing to think that one quickly snapped photo that I almost didn't take could reunite a man with his family. I'm hoping it happens. I can't seem to find anything else on Noel Cowley online, though, no missing persons reports or anything like that, so this is all I've got. But if you're in Toronto and you think you've seen this fellow with his dog, let her know, would you?

I've discovered a few times this summer that I am a delicious mosquito buffet, much more so than anyone else who might happen to be around me. In fact, I probably act as an insect repellent for everyone else, drawing the mosquitoes to me instead.

After the Kelowna trip where I came home with over a dozen bites while the five people around me got maybe two or three bites between them all, I had to look it up. Apparently I don't give off enough of a repellent odour, which I suppose is good news. But I need to work on not giving off as much carbon dioxide - of course, don't we all...

ARCTIC's new album, Today Brought Me Here, has just been announced. As anyone who's been reading this blog knows, Marcus Martin and I have been working on this album for quite some time, and it still hasn't sunk in that it's actually done and will soon be out there amongst people.

• How to hear it and how to get it: While the CDs are on their way, we've started taking pre-orders. Pre-ordered CDs will be signed and numbered, you can have mp3s of the album immediately, and orders of 3 or more CDs will include a free shirt. While pre-orders are going on, you can only listen to the tracks and pre-order the CDs if you're on the mailing list, which is a quick 'n' easy signup and as soon as you've confirmed you get a link to the page.
• Online liner notes: From the pre-order page you can also get to the online liner notes - along with tracks, there's lyrics and images and credits.
• Custom covers: You can also use our Cover Generator to create, arrange and print your own CD cover the way you like it, with the info you want. The possibilities are, well, not infinite, but pretty massive, and it's a ton of fun. Check out the image up top for some examples.
• Auction for the Arctic and ARCTIC: If having a signed and numbered CD just isn't special enough for you, we're auctioning off a master CD of the album. It's framed, along with a signed note and a NWT license plate from a truck Marcus drove while growing up in Yellowknife.

  Half of the proceeds will go to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to support their conservation efforts in the Arctic region. The remainder goes to offset our manufacturing and touring costs, so we do more of what we do.

  The auction starts on Sunday, September 9 at 8 PM PST and ends on Sunday, September 16 at 8 PM.

I can hardly believe that the CD is done. It's been quite a journey. Which is only appropriate since that's what this is all about: journeys and changes and where you find yourself, and how you got to where you are.

I hope you enjoy it.

Anybody out there remember an ice cream treat from the 80's called Buried Treasure? It was a sickly-looking orange sorbet in a blue wrapper on a plastic stick, and part of the plastic stick, under all the ice cream, was some kind of flattened character-shaped toy - an elephant, or a pirate, or something along those lines. I was, of course, particularily fond of the horses, and collected them whenever I could, breaking them off their sticks and lining them up together. I still have one.

Oddly enough, I can find next to nothing about this childhood delight online. On the "Foods of the Eighties" website someone suggests it was only an East Coast phenomenon. Did any of you lot grow up with these things? Who made them, anyway? And why did they stop? I kinda want to try one now. I guess frozen treats don't stash well over the decades, though.

As regular readers are aware, I'm not very fond of Telus. I've been waiting with bated breath for my cellular contract with them to expire, which it will do on September 25.

My plan all along has been to get an unlocked GSM phone and switch to Rogers, so that I can pick a better phone and load MY content onto it, not pay Telus $4 for the privilege of using one of their crappy ringtones or desktop images.

However, as the date draws near, I'm having some trepidations. While I despise Telus's policies, at least I know I've never really had any problems with their reception - which, ultimately, is the reason I have a phone. Telus is "the devil you know", and I don't know Rogers. Some digging has shown me more or less equal hatred for both companies - some people swear Rogers' customer service sucks, others will never use Telus again. Some people say Telus is much clearer, others prefer Rogers. I know if I were on Rogers I could use my phone in Europe, but really, how often am I there? It's more important that I can use it in Vancouver area and to a certain extent across Canada - which is where Telus apparently has the edge.

So I'm looking for more opinions: which is the lesser of two evils? Do I suck it up and stick with Telus because at least I know what I'm in for? Or is Rogers worth the risk?

Well, here's one of my happy l'il projects that's been keeping me busy recently: the redesign and relaunch of the ARCTIC website. I'm very happy with it. There's a lot of little hidden things tucked away that you can explore, and more joy & goodness that will all be revealed in time. Enjoy...

Look, I'm plugging a show, but it's not music...

My friend Pilar Alvarez is having a solo show at the Jem Gallery (225 E Broadway, near Our Town Cafe) starting this Friday. You've probably seen her work around town in one place or another - curvy, pink, showy pin-up pop art fun. She had a terrific wall mural at Asia on 10th before it was sold and turned into some sort of French restaurant.

Here's the flyer:

Take a peek!

Well, there goes another one. In the third blow to the Vancouver music scene this summer, the Lamplighter Pub will be shutting down at the end of the month. It's been sold to new owners, and no one really quite knows what they're planning to do with the place, but no one is exactly optimistic about it, either. The assumption is that it'll turn into yet another trendy little Gastown restaurant, and the hotel will become overpriced condos for yuppies who want to own a little bit of history. You know, the usual for Vancouver.

This is the fourth live venue in Vancouver to close this year. The Marine Club closed suddenly in January, and then this summer the Buffalo Club and the Picadilly Pub shut their doors. I never played at the Buffalo or the Pic, but we played at the Marine Club last year, and it was a fun spot. We did two shows at the Lamplighter in the fall, and I'd attended several more there. It may not have been the best venue in the city, but it had a lot going for it (and I gather the sound system was just upgraded). It was a much needed place, had a lot of character, and with the departure of the other three venues, it could've been poised as a dominant force in the local music picture.

Anyone feel like starting a new music venue? You'll only have to contend with exhorbitant real estate prices, chokingly restrictive city policies, an industry of uncertainty, and plenty of other surprises. But there's plenty of rewards too, like giving people a place to hear the music they need, and creating a legacy. People still talk with nostalgia about the Sugar Refinery and other favourite venues of days gone by. That's something the Lamplighter could've been, but they've stopped too soon.

Because some things just go so well together.

I spotted an ad in the Straight for an event at the Richmond Nature Park on Sunday: a Blueberry Sale and Llama Walk. Now, who could resist such a thing? Certainly not Greg and I, who are fond not only of blueberries, but of llamas, too. So we headed on down to Richmond in the afternoon to see what there was to see.

First up were the blueberries - we each had a delicious slice of blueberry pie. Mine was more traditional, with cooked berries, and Greg's was more like a huge stack of blueberries with a bit of custard and crust. Yum. There were no actual blueberries for sale there, but that's okay.

We were a little disappointed at first that all the llamas were booked and the only spot remaining was to walk a goat. But as it turned out, somebody forfeited their llama earlier in the day and we were able to trade spaces with an earlier walk.

And so we met Fireball.

None of the llamas were particularily glad to see us, I have to say. They sort of reluctantly let us pat them, shifted away occasionally if we got too cozy, and eyed us suspiciously. A few were more talkative than others, making funny goatlike grumbling noises like an old woman disapproving of something. Considering how many adults and kids alike were gawking and reaching for them, I can't blame them, and think they did admirably well. Fireball was the most tolerant, and seemed to have reached a certain peace with the situation.

The walk was lovely.

Fireball was no problem to lead, only once attempting to eat a tree (something I'm used to from horses, and was well prepared for) and doing a little dance of eagerness at the end of the walk.

All in all, it was a super afternoon.

The title about says it all... I'm trying to build up a small collection of reasonably random 35mm slides for use in a standard slide projector. So far I have a lengthy sequence about driving safety for seniors, and a few of digital art that I made a few years ago, and I should have some of tropical fish soon, but I need more. Pretty much anything goes.

Any of you have some slides gathering dust that you don't want? Please drop me a line - kirsten (at) crowstoburnaby (dot) com.

do you have to holler at the neighbouring apartment building at 7:45 on a Sunday morning to please don't practice your hand drumming so early.

She was most polite, called back "Sorry!" and stopped right away.

I was in a Mexican restaurant last week, I think it's called Cilantro & Jalapeno. It's on Broadway between Willow and Heather. And they have a whole lot of Mexican candy there. I can't resist foreign candy - other nationalities come up with things for dessert that just boggle my mind and tease my palate.

So I had to pick up some Salsaghetti.

If you can't read it, it says "hot WATERMELON candy straws and TAMARIND sauce". It's meant to look like spaghetti and sauce, and it has a chicken on the front, oddly enough. The ingredients go on for five lines of small text and include almost nothing natural, but "chili powder" is one of those things.

It's, um, kind of vile.

I kept trying to decide whether the flavour was actually interesting, or intriguing, but eventually concluded that it was completely inedible and not a pleasant experience at all, and threw it out. But not before talking Greg into trying a bit:

Yeah.

But it won't stop me from trying some other bizarre concoction the next time I find one. I like to keep my taste buds guessing.

• I've been listening to the mastered version of the next ARCTIC album. After mixing the tracks, it's like you've got this nice woodworking project almost completed, and then mastering is like applying a very nice varnish that brings out all the colour and warmth in the wood and makes it look finished. One minor tweak to make, I think, plus we need the right ISRC codes (they sent us codes for videos instead of audio. Thanks.)
• Going on a road trip to Kelowna this weekend for a few solid days of rehearsals. Whee!!

I learned a few new things on Saturday night, working at the door of a relatively new gallery and performance space.

First of all, I was a little worried about Chapel Arts' location, right near Oppenheimer Park, in the heart of Vancouver's biggest problem: the drug-addled poverty zone known as the Downtown Eastside. Visitors to Vancouver who happen to wander into the area are generally horrified at the crowds of homeless, wandering the alleys, shooting up or smoking things that aren't really conducive to a long and healthy life.

The odd thing is that the DES is pretty safe to be in. It's very unlikely that anyone is going to attempt to mess with you. Someone might ask you for change, or a junkie might say something nonsensical that puts you off guard, but for the most part people are pretty polite. And there seems to be a real sense of community there, a sort of bonding through the strife. (Don't leave anything in your car, though.)

Still, it's not a neighbourhood that I have spent much time in, and I was afraid that working at the door would mean dealing with some hard cases. And it wasn't so at all. It was far more inviting and pleasant a location than, say, the door at the Lamplighter, and really a lovely place to be.

The Chapel itself is a converted funeral home. From its owner, I learned a few things about the restrictive permit policies of Vancouver City Hall and the staggering amount of waiting, bureaucracy and hassle involved in creating a venue like this. It made me understand a bit better why so many Vancouver venues close, and makes me wonder how many potential arts projects can never get off the ground because of these obstacles.

Most of the two stories of Chapel Arts is an art gallery, with everything from paintings to screenprinted shirts to the owner's own artisan furniture. The room with the stage can fit about 150 people. The whole place has a really nice vibe to it, pleasant and artsy. One fellow I talked to theorized that the art on the wall has a calming effect on people, and inspires them to behave in a different way than they would at a typical concert venue.

I also learned that Dan Mangan is a quite talented showman, who pretty much owned the entire audience. I couldn't watch the whole show, since the Chapel's entrance is in a separate room from the stage area, but I watched for a few minutes and you could hear a pin drop in that room. And people came out seemingly entranced as they drifted out the door into the rainy Downtown Eastside.

You should watch the Algorithm March.

Then after you're done watching that - and not a moment before - watch this version.

Okay, I've been preoccupied with other interesting things happening, plus I was away for a few days. And between that and the evils of Facebook, I haven't been able to come up with anything I've felt like blogging about.

So what do you want me to blog about? Ask me and I'll do it!

With the ridiculous amount of construction downtown, and all the condo developers taking over nice little neighbourhoods, and all the music venues vanishing from the area, and longstanding independent places squeezed out of town, I've often shaken my head and worried about what's happening to Vancouver. It looks like all the character, all the charm is getting spread further and further afield. Small businesses can't afford the rents downtown, only big brand names and big spenders. It's sad.

I started thinking about other cities. And how you don't go to midtown Manhattan for its character, you go there to work, or to visit a business, or other fairly straightforward goals. Midtown doesn't do quirky. So maybe downtown Vancouver won't either.

The difference is that midtown Manhattan doesn't pretend to be a great place to live. Yet we're trying to encourage people to live in these Vancouver condos that wipe out character building after character building - a whole lot of concrete boxes surrounded by... nothing particularly interesting.

What's going to happen when everybody has moved in to their shiny new buildings with the catchy one-word names, and they realize that there's nothing to do downtown any more?

• ARCTIC's song "Some One Turning" has been picked up for use in a Lifetime TV movie, "Too Young to Marry", featuring Nina Dobrev (from Degrassi), Dillon Casey, and Polly Draper (from thirtysomething).
• New ARCTIC is close, very close. We're fretting about track order. I know, I know, this is nearly pointless in the days of playlists and shuffle, but some people DO still listen to CDs beginning to end.
• I really enjoyed Shapes and Sizes at the Railway Club last week. There's a lot going on there musically, a lot of energy, and you can really tell how carefully they listen to each other and work together. A certain Arcade Fire-ness to them. The female singer's may be one of those love-it-or-hate-it qualities - I was fascinated by her singing live, but less so in the studio tracks they have online. I was quite impressed
• Something occurred to me while practicing in this newfound summertime heat. If you're an aspiring stage musician, you will also be a perspiring one. If you get used to playing in air-conditioned, well-lit spaces, you'll be a mess the first time you have to play in a dark, humid club. Practice playing in less-than-optimal environments. Your hands will get sweaty and sticky in the summer heat, and if you're a guitar player it'll change how fast your hands move on the strings. You may not be able to see your fretboard in the dark, so don't get in the habit of staring at it; practice with your eyes closed or with the lights off so you're not dependent on little lines.
• Going to an outdoor music festival this summer? Wear sunscreen, kids!

There's a lot of things I should be doing in my spare time, mostly related to ARCTIC happenings, also including some random webwork, and, oh, maybe stepping away from the computer once in a while.

BUT I CAN'T. STOP. PLAYING. THIS. GAME.

Psst - the secret is to click to make the hamster glide. If you can hit the springboards and rockets, you'll do really well.

But don't even TRY it if you want to, you know, ever get anything done ever again.

Ever since Firefox 2 came out, I've had nothing but trouble with it on both the Macs that I use it on routinely. Sometimes it simply won't load a page; sometimes it ignores all input; sometimes it ignores anything selected from the menu, meaning that you have to force quit and restart it. I tried a G5-optimized version of it and had all the same issues. I did a little digging and found out I am clearly not the only one having problems. It's astonishingly bad, for the browser that used to be the beacon of sanity and reliability in an otherwise-problematic market.

I like this one comment in particular:

I love the updated FireFox. It has shortened my work day considerably. Since it won't download, save images, or stay in one place on my screen, I've been spending my days twiddling my thumbs on the PS3. Junk.

Is somebody sabotaging the Firefox browser?! How did it get this bad? I might have to ... look into alternatives. *gasp*

This Sunday is July 1, Canada Day. It also happens to be my grandmother's 92nd birthday. Usually every year we go out there and have lunch or dinner with her, and joke that "all Canada is celebrating her birth" and so on.

This year, though, will be her last birthday, since early in 2007 she was found to have cancer that just isn't all that treatable. At 92 it isn't a huge shock - something gets all of us sooner or later. But it must be strange to head towards your birthday knowing that it'll be your last. Most of us don't know in advance.

This year has been, well, bad for things like this. A close friend's mom has been in and out of hospitals since February and it's been a terrible roller coaster ride for their family. Another friend's grandmother just died suddenly. Another lost a brother-in-law. And yesterday Derek, a Vancouver blogger (and father of two young girls), whose blog I've been reading for ages, found out that his cancer treatments failed and he may have between two and five years to live.

I think the first few decades of my life were pretty charmed. Many people deal with huge, personal loss that I can't even imagine, much earlier in their lives. In these cases I'm not even the one talking to the doctors, on the front lines, facing the treatments, and yet the combined weight of all this is still daunting. My plans and hopes for this year have changed because of some of this, and that's still nothing compared to what the individuals involved are dealing with directly. It's nothing.

Is this just what happens when you get older? Is it just statistics? Is this just a wave of misfortune I'm watching, or is this how it goes from now on?

TILMA, or the British Columbia-Alberta Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement, comes up in news articles sometimes as something vaguely evil that the two provincial governments are doing somewhat underhandedly that could be really bad for people, but nobody's quite clear on how.

Here's the capsule summary for you: corporations' rights override governments' rights. And it's already been enacted - surprise! A quick quote from stoptilma.com:

"The TILMA Agreement, if implemented, will effectively strip governments, at all levels, from making public policy on behalf of its citizens if those policies are deemed to be restrictive to private business making a profit."

That's bad. You don't even have to have seen The Corporation to figure that out.

But you can stop it from affecting Vancouver quite as much if you act NOW, because there's a council meeting TOMORROW, Tuesday June 26th at 2:00pm. If you can't go, send a quick email to council - it'll take you two minutes and it'll be worth it, I swear. (I even got a nice response from a councillor, right after I posted this message.)

More details on the meeting and letter-writing campaign here. Go read more about TILMA here. And hurry. This is important.

On Wednesday afternoon I headed up to Blim to take their screenprinting workshop. This is something I've thought about doing for ages and ages and ages, and never gotten around to it.

I took the ARCTIC logo, which is ultimately what I'll be using my newfound skills on, so I figured I'd get right down to business. I was a little worried that the fine line on the top combined with the big thick blob on the bottom would be problematic, but there was nary a hitch.

How it works is basically this:

• You print your design on a transparency, in black. The black part corresponds to where the ink will go.
• Blim puts photoemulsion on both sides of a mesh screen and leave it to dry for twelve hours.
• You take your transparency and put it over the screen, then shine a really bright light on it for several minutes, then wash off the screen. Emulsion that wasn't exposed to the bright light washes away.
• Dry the screen, then set it over your shirt. Dollop a few tablespoons of your chosen ink into the screen, smoosh it through the mesh with a squeegee a few times, lift the screen up, and there it is!
• Dry the shirt and then after twelve hours, iron the inked part (covered by a sheet, don't iron it directly) on both sides for a few minutes, and you're done.

There's a few more subtleties than that, and we were working with water-based inks, which are a lot easier than oil-based inks, but the basic idea is pretty simple. The shirts I did came out so well that I was hyper with joy. I took an old green hoodie of mine and added a dark green ARCTIC logo to the lower-right corner, and it looks terrific. I can't wait to make more later this summer.

BTW, we're still looking for our own rehearsal space if anyone has any ideas...

As I've discussed before, there's no better way to drive your audience away in droves than to punish and scold them for attending. There's an entertaining story on Beyond Robson of a power-hungry usher at the Paramount-aka-Scotiabank-Theatre who's obviously determined that come hell or high water, nothing will disrupt the movie-going experience while he's on guard.

Somebody needs to learn a few things about basic human psychology and sociology, with a concentration in "cooperation", "criticism", and "resentment". And somebody needs to send that blog post along to the manager of the movie theatre so they can rein in their authoritarian employees before they drive all their customers away.

So I failed to attend either the Main Day Street Fair (shouldn't it be Main Street Fair Day?) and the Commercial Drive Car-Free Day. This was partly because the rain and chilliness dampened my eagerness to attend, and partly because ARCTIC rehearsals ended up running longer than I had predicted (which I didn't mind in the slightest, since it's what I want to be doing with my days).

I did go out Saturday night. You know what I wore? My winter coat. Halfway through June! There is another Commercial Drive day on July 22, and I'm hoping that by then I might actually be able to upgrade to a spring jacket.

Did any of you lot go? How was it?

"Because it felt so good when he stopped."

This joke kept running through my head while I was at my first Bikram yoga class yesterday. For those of you unfamiliar with the practice, it's sort of like yoga. Only in a room heated to about 105F.

When I first heard about this, I scoffed, since I like my yoga to be relaxing, and my yoga instructors to have gentle, melodic voices that lull you into a mindful state. Why ruin a great experience with deliberate misery and discomfort? I kept meeting more glazed-eye Cult of Bikram fanatics, who'd explain it in terms like "Oh, yeah, it's really hard, and it's awful once you're in there, but once you come out... I don't know... you just feel... great." I finally let Jen talk me into it yesterday. After all, she got me into the Cult of Facebook, and that's been working out great so far.

When you first walk into the room, the feeling is of annoyance. It's too hot, and it's slightly uncomfortable. You kind of want it to stop. Why can't they turn it down? Really. You lie on the floor for a while, settling in.

Then when the class starts, and you realize you have to stand up and move around and do strenuous things, it starts feeling especially unpleasant. The heat doesn't let up. All you really want to do is lie there, but there's this guy with a voice like an auctioneer, constantly talking, keeping you from dissolving into the heat, making you push a little more... This isn't yoga, you think.

And there's no getting around the sweat. You learn that parts of your body have sweat pores that you didn't expect. Your knees and elbows drip. You stand in a pose with your head towards the ground and the sweat drips upwards into your eyes. There is no escape.

It really has more in common with an aerobics class than a yoga class. Every instructor and every class use the same general script, and the poses are always the same, apparently. The first two-thirds of the class are spent in standing poses, which are the most difficult and dizzying, and then the sitting and lying poses afterwards feel more like just an inconvenience in comparison.

It reminded me a lot of a hike Greg and I took in Costa Rica that I lovingly refer to as our death march, because I was simply not prepared for the heat and thirst and distance. The hike had far better scenery than Bikram's (although some might prefer a room of sweaty people to the great outdoors, I guess) but Bikram's had the distinct advantage of an endless water supply and the option of quitting any time. I seriously considered taking a minute to step outside, but I only rested when I needed to, drank lots of water, and pushed on.

Still, I came out of both the hike and the Bikram's class feeling like I'd accomplished something. And I did feel really good afterwards, and I still feel very good this morning, sort of cleansed and refreshed. Will I do it again? Maaaaaaybe. I'm not joining the cult quite yet, but I won't completely rule out another visit next time I'm feeling masochistic.

ARCTIC is contemplating getting our own rehearsal space sometime this summer, but it's a bit of an endeavour. There are rehearsal spaces in Vancouver, and even more in the 'burbs, but many of them are hourly-rates only (which is what we've been doing up until now) or else they have monthly lockouts but there's a waiting list, or else they're only open from 6pm to midnight, or else you have to share it with some sketchy drooling thrash band.

So we're trying to get creative with what constitutes a rehearsal space. I'm wondering if any of you in town might have, or know someone with, a space that could work.

We are responsible, mature people who would be very respectful of the space. I know, I know, I'm ruining my crazy rock-star image here, but we don't drink or smoke anything at rehearsals, we clean up our tea mugs and donut crumbs when we're done, and we have never once bitten live chickens.

The one issue would be noise. We're not a heavy band by any stretch of the imagination, but we do have a drumkit and our guitars are amplified. So it would have to be a space in which noise isn't a major concern, during the day or night, weekdays or weekends. This could include things like warehouses or unused offices near mechanic or other semi-industrial shops, a detached garage with enough insulation that your neighbours can't hear us, a commercial building that's currently vacant, your summer cottage in Steveston... we're open to ideas.

Here's our criteria:

• Needs to fit three people, a drumkit and a few amps. That could be anything between, say, a 10'x10' storeroom, and an airplane hangar.
• Ideally should be within Vancouver or not far from it. We'll maybe consider going further if other factors make it worthwhile, but we really don't want to have to travel to Surrey or New West if we can help it.
• Security is essential - we need to have a reasonable expectation that our gear will stay there between rehearsals.
• We'd rather not share the space with other bands unless we already know them personally. Sharing can lead to awkward moments of "Oh, I just borrowed a few of your pedals... uh, yeah, and one of them broke."
• Priced between free and $400/month at most. Cheaper works better, of course.

Time period could be just a month, or two, or ongoing if it works for everyone. We're pretty flexible.

If you have any leads or suggestions, please drop me a line at kirsten (at) projectarctic [dot] com to discuss. Thanks!

I just noticed that the last thing I posted was about switching servers, and that was five days ago. Which probably makes it look like it didn't work. It all went pretty smoothly, but my home computer is having some confusion with FTP that I need to sort out still.

I read an interesting post on CogDogBlog about the potential decline of the blogosphere now that we're all spending our time on Facebook or Twitter or what-have-you. And I realized this week that I've been doing it. Facebook has more of an instant-gratification feedback reward to it, and if I have a moment to spare I'm more likely to potter about over there than to sculpt a nice blog post.

I also was ridiculously tired for a few days this week, and just didn't feel like blogging.

And last week I had all sorts of great stuff to talk about, too. I went to an excellent talk by Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk. He's a great speaker, and it was an inspiring talk. Then I went to an even better talk by Derek Sivers, CEO of CD Baby, which was probably the most useful session I've attended in ages and ages. I took pages of notes and was delighted to find out that most of the talk is available online in advice form. Which'll save me the trouble of writing up a lengthy blog post about it.

So I don't have a lot to say today. But you should go watch this - simply the most amazing wildlife video I've ever seen.

I moved all my sites to a new server this past weekend. Everything appears okay and you shouldn't notice any difference, but if anything seems wonky please let me know. Yahoo Mail is still taking its time seeing the new servers, but I can get to my mail through other means.

If you're wondering why, I explained it recently in the comments of Darren's blog. Basically, I was paying too much for personal, attentive service when the personal, attentive service had ceased some time ago and then slowly disintegrated. I didn't want to wait for their servers to do the same thing.

We went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 last week. Towards the end I found myself getting terribly bored and losing interest, and I spent much of the last twenty minutes or so wondering why. There was a lot of action, a lot of characters, and a lot of drama - not necessarily a recipe for a good movie, but surely enough to keep me from wishing it was over, right?

I finally figured it out during one of the major dramatic battles. It's the same problem that Spiderman 3 had. It's the same syndrome that plagues reality TV: everything is presented as disproportionately important. The plots rely on the stakes being as high as possible. Everyone will die if the problem isn't solved. This is the battle for their very souls. Everything is epic and sweeping and massive and excruciatingly detailed.

But if something doesn't really have an epic quality, you can't force it. You can't fool us. There's a scene at the end of Pirates where the bad guy suddenly realizes that everything has gone wrong for him, and stands in shock as his boat dissolves around him. Dramatic music plays! Everything happens in slow motion! And I don't care, because the character wasn't that interesting, the outcome was inevitable, and I just want them to get it over with. The movie is three hours long, which is ridiculously self-indulgent. The same story could have been told in two hours at most. They could easily have blown up the bad guy in one shot - it would have been far more satisfying, and the movie would have been shorter.

I can't watch reality TV elimination shows any more, because even if I enjoy something about the theme, the tedium of artificial suspense so greatly irritates me that I break away from the show out of spite. I'm talking about when the host tells you they're going to eliminate one of the contestants "right after the break", and then after the break they drag out the elimination through half an hour and another six rounds of commercials, taking long dramatic pauses after each person's name, summarizing everything that's happened to them in the show so far and why they might or might not be booted out. It just isn't that important. I don't know these people, I'm not emotionally invested in them, I'll forget about them as soon as the TV is off, and I have no interest in watching them squirm.

I'm just oversaturated on grand, sweeping visions and manufactured intensity. I think the Lord of the Rings movies managed to do it well, but also set the unfortunate trend. Now everyone's trying to do it, and they just can't sustain that sense of grand importance all the time. Right now I feel like the only movie I really want to watch would be about two or three people in a bare room, together, talking and reacting, for an hour or two at most. No CGI, just subtle interpersonal dynamics. Got any suggestions?

I'm really getting into Facebook. I have to admit it. I think there are three main draws for me:

• Unlike myspace, where random strangers try to add you as friends just to bump up their own numbers, and you add people you only vaguely know just because it's a way of staying in touch, probably the majority of my Facebook friends are people I've actually interacted with at some point in my life.
• The status update feature (which, if you don't know, basically is just the person's name, followed by "is" and whatever they say about themselves, like "Kirsten Bole is on her way downtown" or "Kirsten Bole is craving sushi, but what else is new".) It gives you a real feeling of things happening, and it keeps your friends on your radar slightly more. You think about people you didn't think about that often, and you're more likely to stay in touch because you see what they're up to on a regular basis. From the status update alone now, I see the potential appeal of Twitter, and I'm actually finally tempted to start twittering myself. I think if I got started I'd really get hooked, so I'm going to postpone it as long as humanly possible. The last thing I need is yet another thing to tie me to a computer all day.
• The sheer novelty of seeing people you haven't thought of in decades. There's not many people from my high school on Facebook yet, and I've only added two of them as friends, but even just seeing the names of the others amuses me. And I befriended the two kids I used to babysit all the time when I was a teenager. They're 26 and 23 now. How did that happen?!

So Monday, around 5, I was idly waiting for some video to compress for work when it occurred to me that I might as well check Craigslist and see if anyone was getting rid of any Police tickets at the last minute.

An hour later I had two tickets in my hand, for less than face value, from a very nice Seattle couple who'd bought extras. And an hour after that I was at GM Place.

It looked like getting tickets wouldn't have been any trouble at all. There were scalpers, sure, and I don't trust scalpers, but there were also many "real" individuals who just seemed to have an extra ticket or two. Rumour had it that the scalpers had bought up the show but had been having trouble getting rid of all their tickets, so seats weren't that hard to come by. We ended up sitting next to a couple who'd paid hundreds of dollars from a scalper the day after the tickets went on sale.

Really good seats, too - right over gate 115, so we could lean back against a wall and put our feet up on the top of the gate. We were fairly far back, but the view of the stage and the screens was perfectly clear.

Fiction Plane opened the show. If you haven't learned this yet, Fiction Plane is Joe Sumner's band; Joe Sumner is Sting's son. The band consisted of Sumner singing and playing bass, along with a guitarist and a drummer. There's something familiar about that lineup.... hmmm. At any rate, they were very good, a solid basic rock band, but nothing that grabbed me. And I spent half the time wondering if the similarity between Sting's voice and his son's voice was nature or nurture - when Sumner goes for the high parts it's unmistakeable whose family he's in. It's going to be hard for them to get past that.

After Fiction Plane was probably the first real chance I felt to get psyched up. I hadn't even thought I was going until 5 in the evening, and even then I was vaguely afraid the tickets wouldn't work. So it took until I was actually in the venue for me to really start thinking about it. The Police were one of the first rock bands I ever took an interest in. My friend Tara had convinced me to listen to Sting's "Nothing Like the Sun", and once I realized that it was really good, I had to go back and find out what else he'd done, and there was The Police. I went on a few dates in grade 9 with a guy who was a big fan, and made a copy of his tapes. I wished wished wished that the Police might get back together, although even if they had still been touring then they never would have come to Newfoundland. I'd long since missed any chance to see them.

So when the word came out that they were rehearsing in Vancouver it was a weird feeling, because much as I wanted to see them, I didn't dare expect I would actually get to go, and I was afraid to get too excited about it for that reason. And yet, here I was, and there they were.

And they were awesome. I may have missed the young, firey 1980s Police when the songs were brand new and angry sparks flew between the band members, but instead at least I caught the seasoned professionals who've had an extra few decades to improve their skills and gain some maturity in the process. It was a great, great show.

The stage itself was fairly sparse, with a raised platform behind so the band members could occasionally bounce around and rev up the people with seats behind the stage. Behind the platform, lights mounted on adjustable posts could be left at floor level or raised high, giving the impression of Roman columns in an amphitheatre. Above the stage were three screens with close-ups of each members, and a nifty digital-looking light screen that helped set the mood. For "Walking In Your Footsteps", a stretchy screen emerged at the back of the stage and showed projections of a dinosaur skeleton.

The set was, of course, mostly hits and singles - "Message in a Bottle" and "Don't Stand So Close To Me" (the original version) and "Every Breath You Take" and "Invisible Sun" and so on - but I was pleased that they played a few things I didn't expect, like "The Bed's Too Big Without You" and "Voices Inside My Head", and there was an interesting segue partway through "Can't Stand Losing You" into some semi-instrumental track that I can't even remember the name of but I did recognize.

One of the things that I particularily liked about the show was that they weren't just rehashing the same versions of the same songs. They'd start out with a bit of a riff, and you kind of feel like you know the song but can't place it, and then they'd give you another hint by bringing the bassline in, or the original guitar part, and you figure it out. They played with the composition of the songs so that it was clearly the same song, but just not the same way you'd heard it all your life. They weren't just going through the motions; they'd obviously put thought and care into it. After all, they have to keep themselves interested as well as the crowd.

Sting's bass technique was pretty interesting to me; he plays with his thumb more often than not, whereas most bassists use their index and middle fingers to pluck. A bit of digging around bass forums taught me that this is not unheard of, but still a pretty unusual style, mostly by older players than Sting.

I was a Sting fan for a long time, and even as a non-drummer I've been in awe of Stewart Copeland's drumming, but I'd never fully appreciated Andy Summers before. On the albums - which is all I'd ever heard, the box set - he never really gets to let loose. But he got his share of solos last night, and he made it clear that there's just as much talent in his leg of the triangle.

They played two sets of encores - not surprising. By the end of it all I felt like the wistful teenager who'd just missed their heyday had finally been satisfied, like finding something from years ago that I'd thought was lost. I feel I was very, very lucky to have been there.

The Police play GM Place again on Wednesday night, and there are still tickets available, in case you're interested.

...that any of you have a couple of Police tickets for tonight's show and have just suddenly realized that you can't go, or your friends bailed, or something...

...no?

*sigh*

Oh well, worth a try.

UPDATE: Three cheers for craigslist!!!

More details later...

Sometimes I wonder what it must be like for Bjork, being pretty much the only thing that many of us associate with Iceland. She's the country's main export, which is a big responsibility.

She lived up to her duties on Wednesday night, at one of the first all-out rock concerts at Deer Lake Park in Burnaby. I was very pleased with the venue, which is hoping to host more and more large concerts. It's a lovely sloping space bordered by trees, and from what I could tell it was pretty well run - at least it had an acceptable number of porta-potties, which is an important consideration for outdoor concerts. Despite getting there well after the gates opened, we were eventually able to get a very respectable place to stand near the front without any trouble. The openers started right on time at 6:45, and Bjork played from about 8:15 to 9:45 or so.

The opener was Ghostigital, who helped to confirm my suspicions that Icelanders are delightfully insane (Greg suggested it might be a side effect of all the volcanoes). The beats were awesome, and the singer was at times brilliant and creative and at other times tiring. They relied heavily on delayed vocals, which got a little old after a while. I found myself dancing and irritated at the same time. I think I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure.

The stage setup for Bjork was dizzyingly colourful. The background was several large banners, with animals on them, that reminded me a bit of Harry Potter's Hogwarts. The brass section / choir was dressed in what appeared to be deflated multicoloured florescent pumpkins, with flags sticking up from their backs and coloured shapes on their faces. Bjork was resplendent in rainbow-brite pom-pom leggings and a vibrant headdress.

I think the headdress was holding her back, because for the first few songs she seemed slightly reserved, almost tired. She did some little Bjorky dances but it seemed like she was going through pre-programmed motions. She ditched the headdress, and then gradually, as the show progressed, the energy level increased. "Army of Me", a guaranteed crowd pleaser, was satisfyingly gritty. And the two closing songs for the main set, "Hyper-ballad" leading into "Alarm Call", were absolutely frenetic, and the little woodland sprite from another world pretty much tore the stage up with her energy.

I had only heard one of the new songs before, but a few of the other new ones quickly grew on me (especially after I bought the album today) and I expect a few of them will be staples for future shows.

I would have liked to head back to Deer Lake Park tonight for Arcade Fire, but I'm in Kamloops of all places, as my work team for UBC is receiving an award from BCcampus for our project. Can't complain. I drove here by myself today, which was a truly lovely winding drive along the Trans-Canada, and tomorrow I'll take the Coquihalla Highway back home, which has some gorgeous views. Nice little journey into the interior.

I was thinking recently about facial recognition and face memory. Mostly about how bad I am at remember faces. If I meet somebody once, for a brief period of time, it's pretty unlikely that I'll recognize them later out of context. Sometimes, if there's nothing that really jumps out about them like crazy blue hair or a swan dress, I'll even have trouble picking them out of a group an hour later. It's embarrassing, really.

So don't get offended if I don't remember your face - remind me where we met and I'll most likely immediately remember everything about meeting you. I took this test on face memory, and I got an 84%, which is just below average. So I guess I'm not that bad at it - just not as good as I'd like.

I have a theory that makes sense to me, but if there was any weight to it, it would have already been tested and widely accepted. I'm nearsighted, and didn't get glasses until I was seven. You'd think that during those first seven years of development, my brain wouldn't have put a lot of emphasis on recalling facial detail, since I couldn't really see any detail except up close.

But if this were the reason, then it would happen to pretty much everyone who's nearsighted, and there'd be a noticeable correlation between myopia and poor face memory. Even if it were just on an anecdotal level - "you know how bad people with glasses are about remembering your face!" or something like that. A little bit of digging, and I can't find anything about it one way or another, except for a brief comment that is more about face blindness (complete inability to recognize and remember faces - even one's own) than about poor face memory.

What do you think? Anyone else nearsighted with a bad brain for faces? Got any good tricks for face memory? Personally, I love going to events where people wear nametags. You should all wear nametags all the time.

Remember all that fuss about renaming Science World to Telusphere? Today while driving past Science World, I noticed that the flags along the street now read "Science World at Telus World of Science".

I guess this is why you don't allow committees to rename your organization...

Because here's a whole bunch of them heading out into the world right now, starting at one of our outdoor plants:

These are teeny-tiny hatchlings that, without the macro lens of a camera, look yellowy-brown and barely spiderlike. There was a nest of them huddling together for a few days, the whole mass less than half the size of my thumb, which seems to have dispersed now (or perhaps been eaten by a crow, not sure). Here they are in one of their livelier moments.

Maybe this means it actually really is spring for real now and the temperatures aren't going to keep randomly ducking into glove territory just when you think it's t-shirt season?

Since I posted about my trip to Tunisia and Italy, I've received a number of brief comments with information about travel in Italy. They're all from a fellow named Mark Wolk, and all promoting his travel company both in the URL and the message body.

If it were all obvious spambot or generic messages, I'd delete them immediately. But he is giving genuine comments specific to my posts, with actual bits of usable information.

Still, I don't want to be used as a vehicle for advertising for a company I don't know.

Whaddya think? Should I leave 'em or nuke 'em? Mark, feel free to comment on this one yourself...

How exciting! I sent my passport in on February 13 (of this year), and I just noticed that my credit card has been charged for a passport renewal. I believe I mailed it the week before they announced they were anticipating ten-week delays, so at previous volumes I would've had a fighting chance of getting it back before my trip to the States on March 19, and certainly my trip to Tunisia on April 9.

If I weren't a dual citizen, I couldn't have gone on those flights.

I'm not the only one affected by this. (Obviously, if I was, I wouldn't have had to wait for over twelve weeks...)

It'll probably be a bit before I travel anywhere quite as exotic as Tunisia again, but Darren Barefoot and his wife Julie Szabo have just moved to Malta and he is updating with observations from their new home. There's photos, too. Check it all out if you've still got a travel bug.

Given the circumstances, we did a good job at our NewMusicWest showcase on Thursday night. We've had better turnout in the past, but when you take into consideration that 1) the Canucks had just lost the series in second overtime 10 minutes before we were to go on, 2) the headlining act cancelled his performance, and 3) it was a Thursday night, it's impressive that we got as many people out as we did. Anyway, my new amp performed beautifully and the show itself went smoothly enough, but the crowd was noticeably mellower than they would've been after a Canucks win...

Oddly enough, we sold way more merch at this show than we did at our show in November, when the place was packed. Go figure. Must've been the sales team ;)

Friday and Saturday during the day, Marcus and I went to some of the NMW conference sessions. The first day was by Music Managers Forum and there were some excellent stories and insights from some experienced managers. Saturday there was a wide range of panels on topics like music publishing, music in film, digital sales and marketing, and so on. It would have been nice to have divided the sessions up according to skill level, novice through advanced. The novices in the audience often had to ask the panelists to backtrack and explain some of the fundamentals, which the experts in the audience already knew inside out.

Another thing I'd like to see - not just at NMW, but other sessions like this - is more diverse representation in different tiers of the industry. It always seems that the music supervisors and radio broadcasters and independent musicians tell the audience that they don't need a major label record deal, that the majors don't have their interests at heart, that they can't make the same compromises that independent labels can, that we can do it ourselves if we push hard enough. And yet when it comes to the A&R panel, or if demos are collected, who is represented there? Warner, EMI/Capitol, Sony/BMG... nothing but majors.

I think the most important thing that I got out of the conference was a renewed drive. This year while we've been finishing up the album I've been doing less promotion, pushing less, since all my focus is elsewhere. I needed a good jolt of energy to get back onto some of that, since when the album's done I'll need all the knowledge and ideas and savvy I can get to push it out there and get it heard. So it's good to just start really thinking about these things again, full on.

I went to a few IMU shows that were part of the festival. Friday night was Stride Elementary, Windows '78, Hinterland and the Yoko Casionos at the Media Club. The first three bands are all quite talented and share some of their members; it was a good bill, with all three complementing each other quite nicely, and a busy room. Unfortunately, before the Yokos came on, some dumbass tried to set his drink on the ledge of the sound booth - and completely fried the board. Eventually they got a replacement in, but I had to go by then since I had to get up early. A lot of stress for everyone involved, but I gather the band did go on around 2:00 and finished the night gallantly.

Saturday night I helped out at the door at the Lamplighter, where Dreams of Treason, Mass Undergoe, The Flairs and Lions in the Streets were lined up for some high-energy rock 'n' roll. All the bands were solid - more of a radio-friendly "rawk" than I listen to myself, but they were good at what they did. I was most impressed by the Lions though, who really turned my head with more of a old-skool southern rock / Stones-ish vibe than the others.

That was my weekend. Greg was at a conference, so my schedule consisted of: sleep, get up, walk the dog, go to NMW, come home around 7, nap, walk the dog, go to NMW, go home, sleep... repeat. Now, back to reality...

Alright, I held out a long time, but when something like five people all asked me if I was on Facebook within the past week, I finally caved and signed up.

Like Derek, I've been online long enough to see these social networks come and go. I remember signing up for sixdegrees, and I haven't seen THAT name mentioned since, oh, 2001 maybe? (The link just leads to a static page with a logo.) I skipped Friendster altogether, and halfheartedly threw something up on LinkedIn a while ago because I figured it couldn't hurt. (Of course I have to have a myspace account since I'm a musician, too.)

Like Darren, I don't want to do a lot of maintenance on my Facebook account: this blog is what you should be reading if you really want to know what I'm up to, and my Flickr account is what you should be looking at if you really want to see my photos, and if you need to know my calendar for some reason you should be hooked up to me on 30 Boxes.

Like Craig, I've got other things to do with my time.

But there it is, I'm signed up, and if you feel so inclined, you can find my face there among the masses now. It'll probably look exactly the same a year from now when we've all abandoned Facebook and moved on to the next big thing.

I'm feeling mostly better today, and finally can summon up the energy to do justice to something I've been wanting to blog about all week: my new amp.

Last week I received a most beautiful custom bass amp from Glen of Morris Amps. And it looks like this:

Isn't it beautiful? Check out the little spirals on the knobs...

Until now I've been practicing through a little Yorkville 50-watt solid state amp, so to be switching to a hand-built tube amp is absolute luxury. (For those of you non-musicians out there, tube amps are generally considered to have a more warm and natural sound; the sacrifice is usually price and durability, since tubes have to be replaced occasionally.)

I've been playing with the Morris amp at home for the past few days, but through guitar speakers, and relatively quietly because I don't want our neighbours to hate me. Today at rehearsal was the first day that I was able to play it through a proper bass cab, and really let it gallop. I ran it through an old Ampeg at the rehearsal space; tomorrow I'm planning on renting an SWR Goliath III, which is a 4x10 with a tweeter.

The amp plays up the lovely growl of my MusicMan Stingray in much the same way that a really good photographer knows how to bring out the best characteristics in a model. There's so much clarity in the tone, so much life. And I've got a ridiculous amount of control over the sound, too - with all the creative options Glen's put in, I can get a deep rich bassy "whoomfff" or a nasal twang with some minor twiddling of knobs (yes, yes, I've got bass, middle, and treble knobs... but also "presence" and "forward" and a "shift" switch. Hee!).

Oooh, ooh, and there's a little switch on the front that says "sub boost". And when you flip that switch it's like the bassiness just... widens. It's a gorgeous tone - big and rich and even though it's loud it doesn't bother your ears. It makes the floor vibrate soothingly below your feet. It makes people smile.

I wish I could play it for you through this blog - describing sound can be kind of frustrating, and an mp3 wouldn't do it justice. HOWEVER, if you're in or near Vancouver, you can hear this lovely new amp with your own ears in its debut performance next Thursday, May 3 at the Backstage Lounge (on Granville Island), when ARCTIC plays NewMusicWest. Come forth and marvel at it. You know you want to.

A big thank you to Glen Morris. You've done a marvellous job!

Irritatingly, there is still no instant cure for the common cold. So what I'd like to do in the meantime is have an off switch, or rather a "standby" switch installed, so that I don't actually have to deal with the being-sick part of having a cold and can simply be switched off for the duration and switched back on when healthy again. It'd be sort of like going to sleep, but without the ordeal of having to figure out how to fall asleep when your nose is all stuffy, and without that ugly feeling when you wake up, start to move around a little and remember you're still sick.

Today I've been alternating two-hour stretches of awakeness with two-hour naps. Tomorrow I'm supposed to be on a panel discussion about accessibility but if I feel like I do now, I'll barely be able to mumble my name, let alone hold an intelligent conversation about something...

When I was a kid, and getting colds fairly frequently, my parents used to joke that they should've bought stock in Kleenex because I could go through it so fast. I've always had a chronically stuffy nose, and like to have tissues on hand. And now I've got YET ANOTHER DAMN COLD and I really prefer Kleenex's super-soft tissues when my sinuses are exploding as now.

But my nose is going to have to settle for something less cushy now that I've learned that Kimberly-Clark, the makers of Kleenex and Scotties, only uses 100% virgin trees for the vast majority of their products.

Kimberly-Clark claims that their logging practices are environmentally responsible and that their customers do not seem to want recycled products. Only way they'll learn is if we tell them otherwise. So I'm sending them a note, and settling for something less cozy on my nose in the meantime.

A followup from Jen's earlier Litebook report:

Well I think this will be my last post about using the Litebook. Things have gotten really sunny here in Vancouver, and I am sitting here at the moment with a freshly almost-sunburned face from birding (I know, I know, I should remember to bring sunscreen). I wish I had tried out the Litebook more during the dark dreary season instead of the beginning of spring, because it makes it really difficult to do an objective experiment when almost everyone I know is feeling a bit more chipper due to the change in weather. I have not been using the unit as much now and am forgetting about it a fair bit which I have to directly attribute to the lovely sunlight that's been streaming in my giant south facing window in the last few weeks. When it was pitch dark in the mornings, remembering to use the Litebook was easy- I was dying for any light I could get in the mornings! But now, it is a bit tougher to convince myself that it's really necessary. I think I am getting more sun exposure than most people because I bike to work. So I often do get good 10 minute stretches where the sun is shining on my face, whereas car or bus commuters may not get quite
the same effect in their commute.

I would definitely recommend the Litebook during the winter months especially in places like Vancouver. In fact, I may try to acquire one for next year's winter. I felt it was definitely adding something to my life when it was really dark. You probably couldn't do much better than the Litebook either, at least based on what I have seen with other models. This one is lightweight, doesn't take up much space on the desk, and again, it is really useful having the rechargeable battery so that it can go wherever you are in the room since most people are fairly busy in the mornings trying to get off to work.

Thanks to Darren and the folks at the Litebook company for letting me try this one out!

Jen

Despite still having a bit of jet lag and possibly the beginnings of a cold, I made it to see Regina Spektor on Saturday and was very glad I did. I've mentioned her here before - she's a sort of eclectic singer/pianist with unusual vocal stylings and quirky thoughtful lyrics. She's not to everyone's tastes - I think I've played her for three people now who all made faces and turned right off when she does her little "breaks my ha-ha-ha-ha-heart" thing in the song "Fidelity" - but for some reason I don't mind it at all.

The greatest thing about the show was how Regina reacted to it. It's been sold out for weeks, and I get the impression she's not yet jaded by packed houses. She was obviously deeply moved by the crowd's reaction when she came out, and at several points during the show seemed to just stop and gawk in amazement as shouts of "We love you, Regina!" filled the air. It made her that much more endearing, and I heard more than one "Aw, she's so cute!" during the show.

She even named her new guitar after us. She told us the story of how her own guitar had been lost by the airline (one of my nightmares!), and while they're hoping it turns up, she had to go get a new guitar for this show. She felt guilty, though, because she misses her old guitar and doesn't feel like she can give the new one the loving home it deserves - she said it's like the "other" child, the one that isn't the favourite. So she hoped that maybe we could give it the love that she can't, yet - and with the thunderous cheers that followed, she decided to name it "Vanc".

What really impressed me is how precise her voice is, and how all the little trills and hops that she does on her albums carry over to a live show. Sometimes artists don't or can't do the same vocals live that they did on the album. Not Regina - it was all there, and it's all real.

If you missed her this time, don't worry... She looked pretty happy to be here. I think she'll be back.

This morning I turned my camera on to take a picture of my bags of spice before starting to divvy them up, and the lens won't come out. It just displays an error and beeps, then shuts off. I couldn't find any tips online that helped.

There are two days left on the warranty.

And I know it worked yesterday because I used it on the plane from Milan, and even last night showed Greg some videos on it when I got home.

I took it in to the store where I bought it, and they'll send it off for repairs. I won't have it for four weeks, which makes me twitch a bit, but still, talk about timing - the day after I arrived home.

How weird is that?

• The weather was just fantastic. It was warmer in Milan than in Hammamet, I suppose because Hammamet is right on the water and Milan is inland. The temperature in Milan was just about perfect for wandering around in a short-sleeved shirt, and still reasonably warm into the evening. I couldn't have asked for better, though I have to say if it's that warm in April, I'm not sure I'd want to be there in August.
• One thing I like about Milan, which is common to many European cities, is how within the buildings there's often a beautifully landscaped courtyard and driveway. So the facades along the street may be very similar to each other, but if you keep an eye out as you pass by the driveways you can see some lovely spaces with decorative gates and grills and fountains.
• I was surprised by how much graffiti there is in Milan. It seems to be everywhere, in every part of town - I didn't see anything I would have considered a bad neighbourhood - and it doesn't matter what type of building it is, someone will tag it.
• The orange juice in Italy is practically red, and SO good. Also, the two meals I've had on Alitalia have both been delicious (smoked salmon salad!!!) Air Canada, who won't even cough up a free handful of peanuts any more, could learn a thing or two from them.
• I don't drink much coffee, but figured if I'm in Italy I should give it a whirl. I ordered an Americano at a restaurant called "White Bear" (it sounded like a good ARCTIC experience) and it arrived with water, rather than milk, and sugar. That's not how they're served in Canada, is it? New experience for me.
• I saw horsemeat on the menu in one restaurant - "cavallo" is one word of Italian I DO know - and felt nauseous. I wanted to take my business elsewhere, but knew that it would probably be at other restaurants too, and I had no way of explaining in Italian why I'd be leaving. I ordered vegetarian.
• The parking was highly entertaining, and seemed to be pretty much a free-for-all, with cars up on sidewalks, at diagonals along corners (blocking wheelchair curb-cuts, I might add), and in the case of little Smartcars, perpendicular to the curb rather than parallel.

I slept pretty well in my sparse little room. There was a fair bit of noise from the courtyard area, but I've long since learned to bring industrial-strength earplugs along when travelling, and it didn't really bother me. Breakfast was, well, some of that cake.

I'd pretty much gotten the hang of the Metro after my initial confusion. Umberto the hotel owner had explained the different pricings - 1 Euro for 75 minutes, 3 Euros for 24 hours, 5 Euros for 2 days - and after that, navigating was easy enough. The one complication was that at the station nearest the hotel, Porta Vittoria, the Metro line hadn't been built yet, and I still had to switch to & from a commuter train to get to the nearest Metro exchange, Porta Venezia. And I couldn't figure out how to buy only Metro tickets at Porta Vittoria - I could only get the machines to offer commuter train tickets. Frustrating. I finally found an employee and was relieved to learn that I wasn't completely stupid - you really couldn't buy them there, so he told me just to hop on the train and buy the tickets at Porta Venezia.

I started the day at Castle Sforzesco, with a brief pitstop along the way for some absolutely mindblowing gelato. I got one scoop of pistachio and one scoop of white chocolate. The white chocolate was excellent, but the pistachio was unbelievable - it was like chilled pistachio butter, it was that smooth and flavourful. If I could bring a gallon of it home, I would.

I looked at a bit of the history of the castle, but not knowing anything about Italian kings and not having a head for history, the information didn't stick. It was quite old and solid, not the least bit ornate, and of course the inner courtyard was being renovated. Also, there was an exhibit being set up for the huge furniture design fair, with all sorts of funky chairs and displays. (The city is being taken over by the fair. When I was searching for hotels I noticed that when I could find a room somewhere on April 18th, the price doubled. I decided I didn't need to be in Milan that long.)

Behind the castle is a large and lovely park, with paths that criss-cross back and forth and clusters of trees and a little pond with various birds hanging out. I wandered aimlessly around here for a while, enjoying the sunshine, noticing large & small statues here and there. I sat on the lawn with a view of the castle and the Arco di Pace - Milan's answer to the Arc de Triomph, naturally - and cleared my brain and did a little writing. I had no timepiece at all - no watch, no cell phone - and nowhere to be. I'm so used to having to be aware of the time. "I have 3 hours to do XYZ. I should get to bed by ABC o'clock." So it was a real mental shift to let go and not care. It was a great feeling and one that I don't often have.

When I felt that I was done sitting on the lawn, I headed in the direction of Da Vinci's Last Supper. Umberto told me that you have to book tickets to see it, sometimes months in advance, but occasionally you can get in. He himself is deeply religious, and I didn't have the heart to tell him that my favourite association with the Last Supper is that Katamari Damacy mashup graphic I made. Still, I thought since I was in the neighbourhood I might as well see if I could visit it. Artwork can be very different in person. When I was a teenager, I went to Paris with my parents, and I remember being amazed by the Mona Lisa and how there seemed to be so much motion and life in the painting. I thought I'd buy a postcard to remember, and then I realized that I had seen that painting a million times already in my life and yet never really "got it" until I saw it in person. There's just a quality that can't be captured in reprints.

But the instructions on the door at the Cenacolo Vinciano said bookings were necessary and couldn't be made at the ticket office, so I didn't pursue the matter. I was more interested in a Picasso illustration exhibit that was across the way, but tickets were 6.5 Euros (about 12 dollars) and there was only one room of artwork. I've seen Picasso illustrations before and didn't want to pay that much for one roomful of more.

Umberto had circled another street on the map up by Garibaldi Station. I couldn't remember why, so I took the Metro there and wandered down Corso Como. It was a pretty little street with some shopping and whatnot, but even if I'd wanted anything, most shops were closed for lunch, a custom unheard of in North America.

The last circled area on the map was in the southwest of the city, near Metro stop Porta Genova. I had asked Umberto where one might find locally-made, creative eclectic things, hoping to find the Milanese equivalent of Vancouver's Main Street or Commercial Drive. A little wandering in the area turned up clues: some anti-war posters, a yoga shop, some funky little restaurants, a disproportionate number of Irish pubs. I actually found a guitar & bass shop but it was closed for inventory - agony! The whole area had an air of familiarity about it, and being along a canal called Naviglio Grande, it was especially pretty. I decided to spend the rest of my day here and spend the next few hours just walking, up and down each side of the canal, back and forth along side streets, just looking at whatever there was to look at.

I decided to try out a few olives in a little market, but because I was buying so few the guy let me have them for free - how nice! They were a richer shade of green than I'd ever seen, and hardly salty at all. Different kind of olive, or different point in the olive-preserving process? I don't know much about olives. Guess I should learn something.

I finally made myself stop somewhere for dinner when I realized I was avoiding the awkwardness of ordering food and revealing myself to be a non-Italian-speaking tourist. I found a place (inexplicably named "Woodstock 3") with a reasonably priced Italian menu, and ordered spaghetti with saffron and onion; since I have piles of saffron I might as well get an idea of what I can do with it.

That was about it for the night. I packed up and got ready for my morning flights.

It would have been nice to really dig further into Milan, participate in something, like I did in LA when I went to open mic nights. But without any of the language, I felt like I could only skim the surface. Getting around and getting things done isn't difficult - most people I dealt with knew a few words of English and between that and lots of gesticulation I was mostly able to make myself understood. But not with any subtlety, and without being able to read Italian I couldn't find out what local events might interest me.

So it wasn't the richest time spent touring Italy, but it was very rich me-time. It was a genuine vacation, a real feeling of being transported away from the familiar and facing oneself without the usual problems, comforts and associations. I think it was something I really needed, and I certainly enjoyed it.

Apart from a few odds & ends that I'll post as I think of them, I guess that's about it for this travel-blog segment. I've been loving writing this all up; it gives my memories a concreteness, supplements my bazillion photos, and helps me keep in touch with all of you all at once. If you've got an interesting place you need blogged, feel free to send me there and I'll blog it.

See you back in Vancouver.

The trip to Italy got off to a decidedly shaky start. Since my flight was at 6:00 am, the conference organizers had kindly arranged for a complimentary ride to the Tunis-Carthage airport - about an hour away - and I was to be picked up at 3:30 am.

At 4:00, the driver still hadn't turned up. The guy at the front desk had fallen asleep in a chair. I woke him up and he grudgingly called me a taxi and said it would be there in fifteen minutes. I waited in limbo. The hotel's cat came by to keep me company and distract me from worrying. There was pretty much nothing else I could do - either I would make the flight or I wouldn't. Fortunately the driver showed up, there were no delays on the way, and I made it to check-in with fifteen minutes to spare. I was pretty annoyed, though - I had to use half my cash on hand to pay for the taxi, for what was supposed to be a free trip.

After landing in Milan I took the Aeroport 2000 bus to Centrale Stazion, which is only 5 euros and very comfortable. I ended up at the back of the bus next to a bunch of German guys who will be driving people around during the huge international interior design festival that starts on Wednesday. One of them spotted my Air Canada tag on my bag - turns out he and his wife will be visiting Vancouver for a month this summer, to go hiking and kayaking and so on, as part of a long round-the-world trip they'll be doing. We chatted for a while, and I gave him a card and offered to help them find the best sushi while they're in town.

Having only gotten about four hours sleep, I was pretty wiped by the time we got to the station. And this was the first time I ran into difficulties with not knowing Italian. I'd decided to take the Metro to the Hotel Diablo, but couldn't work my brain around the ticketing system. There were two pre-teen girls hanging out near the ticket machine, and one offered to help me. I knew she'd want a tip, but I was feeling confused and willing to pay for a little help. She punched the buttons and showed me my ticket would be 4 Euros, so I put a 5 in the machine and let her have the change as a tip. Later I realized that my ticket actually only cost 1 Euro, and the clever little brat had cancelled the transaction, reset it to the correct ticket, and then pocketed the difference. I fumed about it for a while, but I suppose it could have been worse.

After an uneventful train ride and an unnecessarily long walk in which I walked past the correct street and then past the hotel, I made it to my room. It's quite small, spare, and clean; a bed, a TV, a shower and sink. No frills. Hotel Diablo is owned by a fellow named Umberto and his brother, and they're both lovely people, very friendly and helpful, just what I needed to start feeling comfortable about the city. We chatted for a while as my room was cleaned, and Umberto set me up with a map and circled some spots I should see.

I decided to nap for twenty minutes before going out. I don't know if my alarm went off and I didn't hear it, or if it just didn't work, but I woke up groggily over an hour later. It was past 1:00 pm, but I think I was a better person for it.

I headed towards the Duomo, which is a spectacular cathedral. I suppose I should find out and tell you all the details about it (when was it built? Is it gothic or neo-gothic?) I looked at it from a different perspective, I suppose, which is how I felt about it. I'm not a religious person, but I do enjoy the insides of cathedrals, and the inside of the Duomo is towering and magnificent. It's dark, pleasantly cool, and respectfully quiet. The outside is extremely detailed and fine and looks like lacework.

I spent some time walking around Piazza del Duormo and Galleria v. Emmanuel, which is a sort of covered pedestrian area. I contemplated going to the art museum, but I wasn't ready yet to be trapped indoors when I still hadn't seen much of Milan. I headed northeast, stopped for some gelato, and passed through the part of town that includes all the ridiculously expensive stores like Armani and Chanel and all that stuff I don't want and couldn't afford if I did. It was kind of funny, though, to see the real D&G store after several days surrounded by cheap D&G knock-off t-shirts being sold on street corners in Tunisia...

There was a nice park that brought back memories of visiting Europe with my parents as a kid. In the park is the Natural History Museum, in a beautiful building, which I decided maybe I did want to peek at. When I walked up the steps, though, the guard came over and said something to me and another lady who'd just come in. She turned around as though he'd said we couldn't visit, so I left too. I might try again tomorrow, though, as admission is free from 4:30-5:30. We'll see if I'm in the neighbourhood.

I spent most of the rest of the afternoon shopping. There were a few odds and ends I wanted to get - some presents, and I wanted to have an item of clothing (or two) from Milan, something I couldn't get at home. I found a lovely lightweight dress that's not like anything else I have. I also bought some perfume, something I haven't done in years, but I found one that really appealed to me. Milan is definitely a city of scents - baked goods, peoples' perfumes on the street, some wonderful wisteria hanging from a gate. It felt right to celebrate that.

Through the course of the day I've noticed several things:

• Milan is a dog-friendly city. There are lots of happy dogs on walks in every park. Nice to see after Tunisia, which had only a few stray cats here and there.
• There are emergency buttons in the hotel rooms, inconveniently located next to the lightswitch, and I discovered that the pull-string in a restaurant washroom was not for flushing the toilet, but was also an emergency call switch. I think I amused the waiters quite a bit with that.
• I accidentally bought about $10 worth of cake, but there's enough of it that I won't have to worry about breakfast tomorrow. Or maybe Wednesday either.
• There are some extremely beautiful people here, men and women. And snappy dressers.

Not entirely sure what my plans will be for Tuesday - I'm thinking of going to Castolio Storzesco, which is a castle with an enormous park behind it, and just hanging out there for the day, trying to write a bit and taking it easy. (And getting some gelato is a high priority.) I've got my bearings, and I'm refreshed & ready to explore!

But I'm standing up at a temporary internet terminal at the front desk of the hotel, and my feet are killing me, so the full details will have to wait. I plan to write some things up on my laptop tonight and put them on a USB key and post them when I can. Italy isn't big on wi-fi or internet cafes yet. I doubt I'll get any more photos online before I get home.

Capsule summary: very nearly didn't make the flight from Tunis, bumpy start finding my way around the city, making a fool of myself with my lack of Italian, but I'm getting the hang of it and am now really enjoying being in a European city again. Yay!

UPDATE: I can get to Flickr now, but have no time to add photos to the blog at the moment. Take a look at the photoset here.

Natasha's flight left early in the morning - she had to get up at 3 to catch a 6:00 flight. I get to do the exact same routine tomorrow morning, lucky me.

So today with no conference and no travelling companion, I was completely on my own. Now that I've settled in here a bit, I was ready for some downtime, some alone time to catch up on my thoughts and just "be". I decided I'd let the day unfold.

I did have the option of taking a tour with the other ICTA attendees, but unfortunately they were going to most of the same locations as Natasha and I had been on Wednesday. They would have been good company, but I didn't see the point in visiting the same sites again.

I goofed around in the morning, uploaded some photos, then went for a walk on the beach in the hopes of being approached by someone with a horse or camel to ride. Sure enough, there were two men with horses trotting around, and I wasn't even halfway to the water before one of them came by. I tried to negotiate the price ahead of time, but he kept waving and saying "no problem, no problem" - typical. I warned him I had very little money on me, and he shrugged, so I hopped aboard the horse.

The horse was a short, slightly stocky bay, probably a cross between an Arabian and some kind of sturdy local pony. He was more or less indifferent to my existence, but trotted contentedly along the beach and grudgingly offered up a canter or two. As I've mentioned on this blog before, I love horses, but I haven't ridden in ages - it's a bit expensive for a part-time worker, part-time musician, and most stables near Vancouver are still a bit of a drive. I rode up and down the beach a few times, cantering along the Mediterranean with the wind in my face, grinning like an idiot probably, for about fifteen minutes until the guy decided it was time to stop. Then we quibbled over the price; I had deliberately only brought a little money with me, and he said that's fine, I could go back to the hotel and get more; I dug around in my purse and "found" a little more, and he immediately agreed so I must've gotten the worse end of the deal. However, I still had a nice adrenaline rush going from the ride and was just happy to have been on a horse again for the first time in a few years, so I didn't let it bother me.

I have to say, I'll be glad to get back to someplace where the prices are once again non-negotiable. I don't really enjoy haggling - it takes what should be a pleasant interaction with a local and turns it into a tense and occasionally theatrical debate.

I took "le petit train" to Hammamet for the afternoon, since I hadn't really gotten to see much of it on Saturday. This is a slower, cheaper way of getting between Hammamet and Yasmine Hammamet - it's an open-air tourist train that makes it easier to lean out and take pictures and gawk at things. When we got to Hammamet, I wasn't ten steps from the train when I ran into the ICTA tour group, who were just gathering for lunch after visiting the medina. (One of the sellers had jovially expressed interest in buying Dana from the head of the conference, and estimated her worth at 50,000 to 100,000 camels. She thinks her husband will be pleased to know this, but is not sure where to put that many camels.)

I joined them at a restaurant with a great view of the water, and sat with Dana, Barbara, and the two main conference organizers, one of whom is the president of the University of Tunis. Italy, Egypt and Romania were also represented at the tables. We had a seafood feast, with two massive shrimp, some pieces of squid and octopus, and a large chunk of fish. My fish and the shrimp both still had their heads, and the fish had teeth. Fortunately, it didn't bite me back, everything was absolutely delicious, and I was the first non-local at our table to finish my lunch.

After a long, leisurely lunch on Tunisian time, I didn't have time to take the tourist bus back to the hotel in time for my appointment I'd made at the spa. I had decided to book for "hammam, gommage, et envelopement corporal", which is basically a steam bath, body scrub, and algae/mud body treatment, and at 30 dinars (about $27) was surprisingly cheap.

The hammams in Tunis are old and traditional; men can go at certain hours and women at other times. I knew this wouldn't be quite the same, being in a modern hotel, but figured it was something I couldn't do back home. The steam bath is a lot like a steam room in North America, but not quite as hot. I was alone, and sat uncertainly for a minute or two before relaxing and gradually becoming completely caught up in the experience, letting my eyes defocus in the thick fog and letting my mind drift. It was by far the most relaxed I've been in, well, weeks anyway. I felt like part of the fog, like my body was an afterthought.

I had joked with Dana about how I wouldn't have to worry about whether I'd get a spa treatment from a male or female - with Muslim taboos surrounding physical contact, it seemed like a non-issue. So I was a bit surprised that a young man led me to the spa, even more surprised when he turned out to be the one selected to give me the body scrub, and when he asked me to turn over onto my back, I was more surprised still. I wasn't sure whether this was common procedure or whether he was playing on the naivete of a tourist, so I expressed my discomfort with the situation and he went and found one of the women who works at the hammam; she did the rest of my treatments. Neither of them batted an eye about it, and when I briefly discussed it with them afterwards they waved it off and said it's fine, it's my choice. I'm a bit baffled how in a country where women cover their bodies in public, it's considered acceptable for a man to scrub an unknown woman's front. But there you have it.

The gommage is a very, very rough scrub done with special gloves and a fair bit of pressure. It leaves your skin warm and tingling and delightfully smooth. You shower off, then get slathered with a lovely-smelling muddy goop. She left me to ponder reality some more in the hammam while the mud dried, and then I showered off again and was on my way.

I'm so glad I went to the hammam. I felt so refreshed and relaxed afterwards. I just sat on the balcony, wrote some thoughts down, listened to music and zoned out. It was like a much-needed reboot, a bit of a rest from my own mind.

Now for about the past two hours I've been writing up this blog. I figured I should catch up before I go to Milan tomorrow, since I don't know what my internet situation will be like. Much as I'd like to see more of Tunisia, such as the southern deserts and Matmata, I'm ready to move on from Yasmine Hammamet. Italy seems like a good choice, though I expect being there for only two days will be a bit of a tease. I'll keep you all posted whenever I can.

Saturday I slept in.

Dana hadn't left the hotel since arriving for the conference, and she was anxious to get out and explore, so along with Natasha we took a cab over to Hammamet for a little while at lunch. We poked our nose into the medina, and actually managed to find a lovely artisan shop where a man and his family made enameled and painted copper dishes. Again, it was a relief to find something other than the usual tourist fare; I picked up a few small things here. We didn't want to spend any more time shopping, though, and walked along the seawall next to the medina for quite a distance. I think Hammamet is more beautiful and scenic than Yasmine Hammamet. They've done a nicer job of landscaping the area along the water, and the hills behind the water somehow frame the view better.

We had some pizza at a small cafe, and then had to high-tail it back to the conference. Dana had a meeting to attend, and Natasha had been asked to substitute for the chair of one of the sessions. I had no obligations, which was nice and a bit embarrassing at the same time; I mean, I was there for a conference, but really very few of the Saturday sessions felt related to my work. I went into the outdoor pool, which was bitterly cold, but being a tough ol' Canadian I went in anyway. It was the kind of cold that hurts like hell for a minute and then feels great when your body is too numb to feel pain... good stuff. The indoor pool is bathtub-warm, but I wanted to be outside.

I went to the closing ceremony, which featured "The Honorable Secretary of State to the Minister of Communication Technologies, in charge of Information Technology, Internet and Free Software". She talked, the organizers talked, I listened to the translation, that was that.

Before dinner, once everyone was free again, we went with Dana to the Yasmine Hammamet medina. Having now seen a few real markets, I was almost shocked at how fake and touristy Yasmine Hammamet really is. On the first day, I knew it had a bit of an artifical, Las Vegas feel to it, but didn't really appreciate the difference. I didn't enjoy it at all this time - dealing with greedy sellers and performers made me feel scuzzy and used - and I decided that I would have to go somewhere real the next day just so that Yasmine Hammamet wouldn't be my last impression of Tunisia.

The usual buffet dinner was made better by a crowd of attendees who all now knew each other a bit better after the gala. Natasha, Dana and I sat with Sadi, Sebastian and Samuel, Barbara from Austria, a professor from Germany, and a few others who I didn't know. We stayed and talked for a long time, and then Natasha and I called it an early night.

Having trouble getting to Flickr so photos will be added in later.

After we returned from Nabeul, we had a bit of time to rest up and catch up on email and so on before the gala dinner. Since the "Sweet Voices Of Our Grandmothers" incident in Hawaii in which the entertainers were 60 to 80-year-old hula dancers wearing spangly red-white-and-blue and gyrating to "God Bless the USA", I've become skeptical of "gala dinner" claims. But I really had a terrific time at this one. It started with a performance outside, a man on an Arabian horse (both in full costume) galloping in circles and doing all sorts of acrobatics and stunt riding. There was a younger girl as well, and they appeared to mime some type of fight sequence on the back of the horse; I don't know what the storyline was, perhaps some famous attempt to abduct a princess or some such thing? Anyway, it was good.

Natasha and I found a really good group of people at dinner. Dana, who had chaired our session earlier in the day, is the lone American at the entire conference. It makes her a bit of a celebrity, and she says everyone asks her what she thinks of George Bush. She hedges around the answer, as it's not clear what people want to hear. I would've thought the region would be pretty anti-American, but apparently that's not necessarily so - the perception of the United States as a rich, powerful land where anything is possible hasn't changed, even if the politics have gotten dicey. It's also very, very difficult for Tunisians to get visas to travel, so the idea of ever visiting the States is a far-off dream for many. On Wednesday, we asked our driver where in the world he would go if he could ever get a visa - he said Italy. Which is only a hop, skip and a jump across the Mediterranean, so very close - but not for him. It made me think about how casually I chose to spend two days in Milan on the way home. Appreciate your Canadian and American passports if you've got 'em, people.

Also at the table were Samuel and Sebastian from France, who had presented just before our session. Sebastian is blind, and Samuel has been his constant companion throughout this trip. We weren't able to talk much at the dinner on this occasion, as they were across the table and the music was too loud to talk easily, but their English is excellent and we've had some great conversations since.

Another of our companions was Ahmed, an enthusiastic Algerian. He turned out to be the life of the party, choosing a good Tunisian wine for us, the first to get people up and dancing later in the evening, a lot of fun.

Dinner was mostly fish in both soup and solid forms, as well as one lamb dish and some little appetizers. Sorbet appeared between two main courses, and the dessert was an absolutely heavenly date ice cream. After everything, there was a small glass of mint tea, which is a lovely way to end a meal.

The entertainment for the evening alternated between a lone man on two keyboards, and a group of traditional dancers. The musician played mostly Arabian music and the occasional surprise Western song (such as "I Did It My Way" and "Imagine"). It was better than it sounded - well, okay, the Western songs did make Dana and I giggle - but he had pretty good synthesizers and a decent knack for handling multiple instruments on the keyboards. Once in a while he'd start an apparently popular song and the Tunisian men would all starting snapping their fingers or waving their arms.

There were three dancers initially, accompanied by two drummers and one man playing an instrument that sounded a lot like a bagpipe. I don't know the name of it, but I later learned it is made from a whole goat skin, so I'm sure if I google "inflated goat" I could track it down sooner or later.

The first dance was pretty straightforward dancing in traditional costumes that covered the body. In the second dance the women all balanced large jugs on their heads. One of the dancers was a clear standout - she was more enthusiastic, and she seemed to be enjoying herself more than the other two, who looked older and a bit more jaded. So when she came out in an Egyptian belly-dancing outfit and began to dance, heads turned.

She was amazing - fluid and sensual. Belly-dancing is very strenuous, and while by the end of it she had worked up a sweat, she made it look almost effortless. We were absolutely enraptured, and men and women alike were still talking about her the next day. One shy, quiet attendee I hadn't met before even asked me if I'd taken any pictures (he said his mother loves belly-dancing and it would make her happy). I did, and I've put a few of them on Flickr, but really they're not that good. I have a video that's pretty good, so I might put it up on YouTube, but the connection has been sort of spotty so I'll wait until I get home. My memory card ran out partway through the second video, and then after that my camera batteries died! So I was lucky to get what I did.

The guy with the keyboards played some more popular songs (Sadi, another attendee, told us one was the Tunisian equivalent of Britney Spears, but it sounded better than Britney Spears to me) and Ahmed kept working on people to dance. A few men got up to dance initially, mostly the younger of the conference organizers. Men dance together here like North American men would not. A few women were invited up, and I was happy to join in. Eventually there were about ten people up and moving, and then suddenly the numbers doubled - I later learned that these were graduate students of one of the key conference organizers, who didn't feel comfortable dancing with their professor around.

The dinner had progressed at the usual laconic Tunisian pace - like Costa Rica, no one here is in a hurry, and nothing starts on time - and yet we were surprised to find it past midnight. After the music died down, a handful of us stayed up and talked until about two, about our cultures and languages and also about web accessibility (the topic of the conference, after all!). Moném, one of the organizers, invited us out to go to the clubs, which open at midnight and don't close until five. They were just getting started, but I was pretty much ready to shut down for the day. Natasha and I said our goodnights to the group, but we still ended up talking to each other for another hour. I hadn't expected such a rich evening, and also hadn't thought I'd really get to know anyone at the conference, especially considering all the languages and cultures. But it gave us a real fuel for conversation that could've gone on for hours more. Still, one has to sleep sooner or later...

I still need to catch up with the past day and a half of blogging, which is mostly about the conference and some of the super people I've met here. In the meantime, here's some odds & ends...

• When Natasha and I stopped by the hotel's front desk yesterday, the staff told us that the two of us had been on local TV the day before, in a news story about the conference. I'm famous in Tunisia!!
• For everyone who told me "You have to go see where they filmed Star Wars!!!" I'm not going to make it there; it's in the south of the country and would take several hours to get there. I'm only a day-tripper since I head back to Milan on Monday.
• The currency here is measured in thousands rather than hundreds, so prices appear like 26,000 or 19,500 instead of 26.00 or 19.50. And yet, with no pennies, your wallet doesn't get weighed down with such small change.
• It's neat to meet people from different countries who speak different languages and piece together a great conversation from what you know of each others' language. But there's also several deaf attendees, who are going through the exact same thing as they all speak different sign languages. And I can see they're having just as much fun doing it.
• The few North Americans here have been shocked at the number of cell phones going off during presentations. Apparently that's not a big deal here. Not only that, but they all have the same ringtone - you know the one, I think it may be a Nokia default - the little descending melody, "De de do de, de de do de, de de doooo deee deeee..." It's starting to make me twitch whenever I hear it.
• I had a sandwich into which french fries were embedded. I liked it.
• The Hotel Marco Polo's room service apparently includes taking any item of clothing that might have been left on the bed, and folding it into a fan shape.
• Now that I have a towel, perhaps I should go enjoy the "Excellent outdoor Poo" mentioned in the brochure. (It is a pretty crappy towel.)

More later...

Natasha and I gave our presentation on Friday morning. It seemed to be pretty well received. The audience here was not as demonstrative as an American or even Canadian audience would be, and with some of the crowd receiving translations in Arabic and French it's hard to know how it all came across. But later in the day a few people told us that they really enjoyed it, thought it had some important ideas, and so on. We'll take that as a good thing!

As the sessions started a bit late again this morning, we didn't get on the road to Nabeul as quickly as we would have liked. We knew we were going to catch just the tail end of the market, but thought we might as well go anyway. We took a taxi, and since I had said we were headed to the Nabeul Souk, the driver dropped us at the entrance to the touristy souk, rather than the weekly farmer's market, which was what I had in mind. So we wove our way through yet another medina, with mostly the exact same souvenirs and whatnot. There are always a few differences at different locations - Carthage had little bronze figurines and mosaics as well as leather bags and Gucci knockoffs - and here I spotted several Bob Marley dolls and a Che Guevera wall plaque. Go figure.

We finally emerged from the shops into a set of narrow streets near a mosque, which we wandered around aiming towards whatever seemed to be the most reasonable direction for a real market. We saw fewer and fewer tourists. Eventually we found more booths and tables, and these were obviously temporary, unlike the previous batch, so we knew it was the outskirts of the Friday market. Instead of tacky silver jewelry and leather-wrapped camels, the sellers had fresh bread, baskets of beans and nuts and dates, and tables heaped with mountains of... mismatched shoes?

Most of the souk is in a large walled area. We had missed most of it - a large area of the market was empty, and people everywhere were packing & loading to go home. While I wish I'd seen the whole thing in all its glory (especially the camels and goats!!), it was still an impressive sight. We zigzagged around the fruit & vegetable stands, where you could smell fresh onions and something like fennel. Strawberries are big here right now, and the mountains of strawberries looked tempting.

I was astonished by the clothing tables. It looked every rejected item from every Salvation Army store for the past decade had found its way here, to dozens of tables, into these two-foot-high walls of old clothing. Truckloads full of used, crappy clothing, all piled up here. Where does it all come from? Why so much of it here in Nabeul?

We spent some time wandering through the area, and eventually ended up near the entrance. A man spotted us and bounded over to tell us that the souk was closing for the day. He was pleased that I spoke a reasonable amount of French and excitedly joined us to ask us about ourselves. He introduced himself with a little hand-written card as being a restaurant chef, and invited us to follow him to what I assumed would be his restaurant, but turned out to be a little spice shop we had been eyeing on the way in. The walls were lined with heaping barrels of bright orange saffron, coriander and local spices. I was happy to take a look, and happy to buy something, though I wasn't entirely sure what it would be; I'd already declined the little packets of spice that are everywhere in the market, and while the stacks of olives looked appealing I really didn't want a large quantity of them.

He told us what some of the different spices were for, let us smell them, showed us the local spicy sauce which is called "harissa", and insisted on everyone taking photos together. We were obviously novelties and he was very pleased to have us in his shop; it was fun for everyone. Of course, then the time came when I tried to decide what I was going to buy. I picked up one of the sets of spices and he told me "No, those are poor quality for tourists only! I sell those for the tourists - but this is what I give my sister," digging the scoop into an massive pile of couscous spice.

I figured you can never have enough cumin, so I said I would take "un petit peu" of cumin. I've never cooked with saffron so I figured I might as well get a little bit of that as well. You know, just a sample to show some goodwill.

He and his helper dug deep into the barrels, and presented me with a bag of cumin bigger than my fist, as well as one bag of whole saffron and another of ground saffron. I'd say they're big enough to fit comfortably into my palm, maybe a little smaller than a computer mouse.

Try as I might I couldn't seem to get them to understand that I wanted less spice. He was asking 12 dinars, and I knew perfectly well it was worth far more than that in Canada, so I wasn't planning to make a big deal about haggling. I knew how to say something was too expensive, but not how to say "I only want five dinar's worth". And I was having a mental block on the word "miens", or "less".

So I ended up buying the lot for 10 dinars (about 9 dollars).

If anybody needs any cumin or saffron, please let me know. I've got quite a bit.

We felt it was time to head back to the tourist district from whence we came. Our seller walked with us to the gates, saying something about his restaurant, navigating us through the entrance to the souk. But to my surprise he continued with us after the entrance, and so we weren't entirely clear on where he was intending us to go. Like an unreliable cell phone signal, my understanding of his French drifted in and out, and I could catch the basics but not the subtleties. He asked us if we were married, and if our husbands were here, so that put me on my guard. A block later he asked us which hotel we were in, which I didn't answer. When he included the word "massage" and rubbed his chest, Natasha and I were both alarmed. For all I know he could have been saying that saffron is good for you when rubbed on the body, or that the tourist hotels offer great massages, but I really didn't feel like seeking an explanation. When he pointed us down a long narrow street that ran parallel to the main tourist market, we excused ourselves and said we were going to go home. He was most gracious and raised no objections, so we never felt threatened, merely wary. It's hard sometimes to tell what you're missing when you're not sure about the language or the culture, whether you've misinterpreted someone or misheard the language or whether that's just the way something is. But we chose to err on the side of caution.

The tourist markets were starting to feel like home now, with their predictable goods and reliably omnipresent sellers. Natasha haggled for a bit of henna and I did likewise for some small perfume blocks, which I am not quite sure what to do with now as the consistency is a bit hard.

It baffles me that all these tourist shops can stay open. Tourism is the biggest industry in Tunisia, yes, but can these places really all make a living? They mostly sell the exact same pottery, leather bags, and designer knock-offs, and it's a rare joy to find some truly unique and unusual artisans in the tourist medinas.

I had brought along a long blue dress that is actually far too big for me, which I wore at the first day of the conference and had to admit was just not right. I thought I'd see if I could trade it. I probably would have had better luck at the main souk, but since everyone was packing up and I didn't really have time to scope out a likely buyer, I tried the tourist shops. Most said no, since they couldn't re-sell the dress in their shops. At the end, I found an courteous older man to bargain with, and one of his employees thought his sister would like the dress. I tried to trade for two shirts, but he would have none of it; I tried a fine linen shirt but he wasn't interested; I finally chose a nice dark blue embroidered shirt, very soft fabric, and that made everyone happy.

We took a taxi ride back to Yasmine Hammamet from an old guy whose eyes didn't appear to track in the same direction. He kindly stopped so we could take a picture of the large ceramic orange bowl in the center of Nabeul, and also insisted that we should take pictures of some pottery along the way, pulling over and backing up to make sure we did so. As we turned into Yasmine Hammamet, there was a police checkpoint as usual, but this was the first time we'd been stopped. It seemed to be simple routine - our driver dug some papers out and shortly we were on our way. Since this is a manufactured tourist town, they're pretty careful who they let in, I guess. We've noticed that since the conference began, there's been at least one security guard on every floor at all times.

More stories to come, mostly from the conference - there was an excellent gala dinner last night, and I think I've been inspired to learn belly-dancing - but I must take advantage of the wi-fi being alive right now, since it was a bit spotty this morning...

I suspect we are somewhat out of place at this conference. It's mostly men in dark business suits, and the majority of the other panel sessions are fairly technical and more oriented towards programming and proofs. Our session, on the other hand, is titled "Talking about People, Not Technology", and we're wandering around in fairly colourful garb. The participants have been friendly and the hosts gracious, but it's a significantly different vibe from our trip to Los Angeles last month.

I have three conference badges now - one which says "Ole Kirsten", one which says "Bole Kirsten" and another that declares me as Kirsten Bole from "Canda".

The conference started an hour late with a speech by Tunisia's Minister of Education and others. This was apparently a big deal as there were a lot of cameras. The speeches would be in Arabic, and translators were on hand for the occasion. We were told we'd need our passports in order to borrow a headset with the translations, which made us grumble a bit - I mean, really, we're registered attendees with conference badges and it's hardly as if we're going to steal them. When we actually brought our passports down we learned that they wanted to hold the passports while we had the headsets. I balked outright. Anyone who's done any international travelling should know better than to ask to keep peoples' passports for something so trivial. Eventually they settled for our room key and a business card instead.

I'd never listened to a live translator, though, so that was a bit of a novelty, and with a small isolation booth housing the translators at the back of the room I could pretend I was a delegate to the United Nations. However, it was exactly the sort of general politician-style speech you'd expect, on the importance of accessibility in society and so on. When I got bored I'd switch over to French for a little while.

My French seems to be getting worse each day instead of better; I could barely make myself understood when attempting to arrange to have two shirts ironed. We had running water in our room this morning, which was nice, but no electricity this afternoon, which was not. However, our beds were sprinkled with rose petals after housekeeping came through this morning, which was a lovely surprise.

I had understood that our hotel room had to be paid for in cash, but failed to comprehend that meant "by me" rather than by UBC, so I had to get some money out of an ATM in order to have enough cash left over for the rest of the trip. After a cashier told me there weren't any ATMs in all of Yasmine Hammamet, I found one right across the street, which only goes to prove to me that my French really is quite bad; I don't think the mistake was on the cashier's part. Especially considering that I then tried to withdraw money on two different machines using my Shoppers Drug Mart points card, and was quite perturbed that it wasn't being accepted. I wonder what this will have done to my points balance?

It's cloudy, drizzling and cool today, so I haven't taken many pictures (except this pirate ship: yarrrhhhhh!!!). We've mostly been in the lobby on our computers or at the conference or the buffet. I've been noticing that I've been coughing a bit today, and it's undoubtedly a result of the copious cigarette smoke throughout the lobby. It's been a while since I was in a place that allowed smoking indoors, and I'm obviously more sensitive to it than I used to be. It's both shocking and unsurprising how much smoking there is.

Tomorrow is our presentation, and if we get time afterwards we're hoping to make it over to Nabeul for their weekly souk, or market. It'd be a major difference from the ones we've seen, specializing in livestock, fruit and spices. Unfortunately we won't make it there until after noon, by which time the best camels will already have been traded, but perhaps there will still be a few feisty goats available. (Psst - don't tell Canada Customs.)

We travelled down Avenue Bourguiba, which is said to be the Champs-Elysee of Tunis: a large avenue with two rows of trees and a pedestrian walkway down the center, lined with apartment and office buildings laced with ornate grillwork, past the national theatre and a cathedral and other significant items. At the end is a large stocky arch and behind that, a fountain. Behind this is the entrance to the medina, which wraps around a large mosque (which was closed for the afternoon). Our guide assured us that this was more of a real medina than the tourist concoction we'd visited in Yasmine Hammamet.

We visited the cathedral first, which was nice but I've certainly seen better, then dove into the medina. It was quickly apparent that the Yasmine Hammamet version was nothing but a training ground; this was much more like what I'd been expecting, with twisty, narrow streets winding off in all directions. (I didn't take pictures here, not wanting to block the flow of people and fiddle with my bag and camera.) Each side of the road is densely packed with little closet-sized shops and booths, and a few larger stores here and there - "larger" still meaning not much more than maybe 200-300 square feet. Near the entrance there was the usual heavy saturation of touristy gadgets, but the further in we went, the more we found Tunisians shopping for everyday items: clothes, fabric and jewelry, decorative items for the home. Sections of the medina seem to subdivide into clusters of similar items, leading to comments like "I guess we're going through the artificial flower district now..."

The sellers were similar to the ones in Yasmine Hammamet, politely trying to distract you or slightly impede your progress past their store, guessing whether you speak German or English or French or otherwise. The first time I heard "Hey Heidi!" I wasn't sure I'd heard right, but the second time I realized it was indeed aimed at me and started giggling.

"You, you are English!" I was told by another, and so I asked "How did you guess?" "Because the colour of your skin, it is so white! White like snow!" And at another booth, when I hallooed back at a fellow who was gregariously hallooing at me, I got, "Hey Snow White! Oh my god, lovely."

It's all very good-natured, as far as I can tell, and with a respectful air. I'd read plenty about women being hassled by Tunisian men, but I think it depends on how you define hassle. Certainly men look at you more directly, or even shadow you for a few steps. And I heard "salut" or "bonjour" muttered several times while passing, which I don't think your typical local hears in the city. Now, maybe if I understood French better I'd have heard some things that insulted me. But I just avoid eye contact overall, ignore some people, nod and "bonjour" back to others while moving briskly, and that seems to be more than adequate.

Natasha made some more class-act haggles for a few things. You could tell she got a good deal because the sellers were scowling. I could learn from her. I tried on some interesting dresses that didn't look right on me, but had to disappoint the seller by not buying. The only thing I bought in the entire massive medina was from a young woman, dressed in more traditional Muslim wear, who had a lovely shop with handmade pillows and aromatherapy-style products. Her booth was so completely different from the others, her products apparently unique to her store - which is unusual! - and I was immediately drawn in. It made me wonder where the other creative types are, where are the young artisans, what part of town? What's the Muslim equivalent of Commercial Drive?

It's been interesting to watch the women. The ratio of women to men on your average street, anywhere but the main cities, is probably about 10 to 1. As you'd probably expect, the older women are more likely to wear traditional clothes, covering themselves head to toe. (I've never seen anyone with a covered face.) There are a lot of heavy-looking black coats and jackets, which seem to me to be horrifically stifling - it may not be the heat of summer, but it's still around 20-25 degrees Celsius here now - but I suppose people are used to it here. (Even our male driver was wearing a turtleneck under a leather jacket in a warm car, while we had lightweight shirts and I wore a skirt. ) We passed by a school or two on the way, where girls clustered together with girls and boys clustered together with boys. The girls mostly wore jeans, but always long-sleeved shirts; even under t-shirts, they usually wear something with black sleeves to the wrists.

The medina was more than extensive, and we wondered if we'd be wandering in circles forever. We followed a simple counter-clockwise route, avoiding the myriad sidestreets, and eventually looped back to the beginning. A prayer boomed forth from loudspeakers near the mosque as we exited, filling the air so loud and long it seemed half-human and half-horn. Wahid drove us back to the hotel where we rested up and headed to the buffet. The food at the Hotel Marco Polo seems to be a compromise between Tunisian and European/North American cuisine. It's good but not great., typical hotel buffet fare. (I tried bacon and eggs at breakfast today, which was a strange interpretation that was technically correct but somehow missed the spirit of bacon & eggs completely.) The desserts, however, have been the most consistently excellent items: local sweets made with dates, sesame, almonds and honey; halvah and puff pastries and fascinating cookies.

Now I have to switch out of vacation mode for a few days to deal with this conference. Which may be good as I won't be writing these essays every day, and maybe I'll even make it to the pool. I still need a towel, though.

Today was the only day that Natasha and I would both be here that we're not at the conference, so we made plans to visit the Roman ruins at Carthage and wherever else we could go in a day. Our driver, Wahid (I have no idea if that's the spelling, of course!) picked us up at 9, and took us through Tunisian wine country towards Carthage.

Tunisia seems to be, at any given moment, either brightly colourful or bland and beige. I'm fascinated by the immense walls of cacti that frequently separate the fields. It's like nature's own barbed-wire fence, only green and beautifully embedded into the landscape. The highways are pretty normal by North American standards, and the driving is frenetic but not terrifying. On the way we got to see more of where the "real" people are, and we learned that where we are staying, Yasmine Hammamet, is a completely new resort town, most of it built in 2003. That explains why it is relatively sparse apart from hotels, discotheques and La Medina, and why it feels artifical: it is.

Touring Carthage consists of visiting several separate sites. Our guide, a polite but not particularily outgoing fellow, waited in the car while we visited each site. Not wanting the added expense of another guide at each site, we wandered without direction and decided to look up the information later. So I've just learned that the first site we visited, called the Tophet, was in fact a place where infants and young children were sacrificed to appease the gods. We knew it was an infant burial ground, but that critical word "sacrifice" somehow didn't make it onto the English version of the informational poster we read at the site. Puts a slightly different spin on things now knowing that "Tophet" means "place of burning".

We stopped briefly at a port that may or may not have been where Hannibal came ashore - our guide sounded a little uncertain on that point - and continued on to the Antoine baths, which is probably the most famous and photogenic of the sites, being very large and right on the water. This was my favourite, and it was what I'd been looking forward to the most.

I'd been looking forward to it partly because I was anticipating a real feeling of time and age, looking at what would be the oldest place in which I had ever set foot. I didn't really have that feeling at all; if anything, I felt more like it was just easier to visualize being in that time period and what it would have felt like to walk around, be part of it. Of course, you have to use your imagination to reduce the wear on the walls, replace the missing stones and decide what each building and room might have been for. But it's easy to see that it would have been a lovely place to be a wealthy Roman, relaxing in the bathhouses before stepping out to feel the pleasant breeze from the ocean. Not a bad way to spend your time.

We continued on to what used to be a residential area further uphill, with a lovely view and a lot of mosaics to look at. It dawned on me for the first time that not only did people have to make the mosaic one piece at a time, but they had to shape the stones for the mosaic too. There were more sculptures here as well, most of them headless (even the one of a large bird).

Somewhere along the way the zipper to my purse had become stuck closed, with fabric caught in it. Neither I nor Natasha nor our guide could force the zipper open, pry the fabric out, or make it move in any way; I had resigned myself to cutting it up with some scissors later in the day. On the way out I took an interest in a small bronze horse sculpture. (The seller, a weathered old man, assured me he had excavated it himself, but the museums wouldn't pay him for it. Yeah... that seems likely.) I haggled him down to one-third his price, then enlisted his help getting my purse open. Ironic, I thought, that I was so concerned on this trip about bringing a purse that wouldn't be easy for someone to get their hand into; here I was now needing a stranger to help me get to my money! He finally made some headway, I was able to just get enough of a hand in to get to my wallet, and the deal for my little fake horse was sealed.

We moved onwards to an amphitheatre, which was being restored, and then another site hosting a cathedral, which was closed for renovations, and the Carthage Museum, which wasn't much different from any other museum with ancient goodies. The main draw of this place for me was the absolutely spectacular view of the town and the water and the mountains behind, looking like something from a painting.

Wahid took us to Sidi Bou Said, a beautiful village on the water. You may have seen photos of it before - it's painted entirely white with blue accents, He dropped us off at the bottom of the hill, and we browsed our way up the winding streets, ignoring as usual the touristy trinkets and looking for the excellent view we'd been promised. A seller put a falcon on my arm trying to convince me to pose for (and pay for) a photo with it - I wouldn't fall for it and started walking away with it before he gave up. I took more photos of doors than I know what to do with. We stopped at Cafe Des Delicés, a hillside cafe with a multilevel layout and a panoramic view, and had crepes and juice before making our way back down.

From here we went to Tunis and a real medina, but that'll have to be a story for tomorrow since it's already 10:15 pm and I need some sleep for tomorrow's conference.

Time does start to behave in weird ways when you travel this sort of distance. Right now it's about 29 hours since I left Vancouver, but with a nine-hour time change it's the next evening, but having only had about 8-9 hours of sleep scattered here and there throughout the past 48 hours, my brain isn't quite sure what's going on.

The flights were good, for the most part. Poor Natasha got stuck behind the screaming demon toddler from hell on our first flight, the most obnoxious and ill-controlled little girl I've seen in ages. Prime Supernanny material. Our next two flights were on Alitalia, which was more than adequate. I got a row of two seats to myself for the longest (8h20min) flight, which was lovely; even though I didn't manage to sleep all that much, it was restful and calm and strangely enjoyable.

It was fun to land in Italy. I like the look of it and I'm looking forward to going back to Milan for a few days on my way home.

Eventually we made it to Tunis, where we had somehow both managed to completely miss the announcement about having to fill out a card when exiting the airport, and got booted back to the end of the line again. No problems the second time, no problem with the luggage, and we had a friendly driver waiting for us, sent by the conference organizers. He whisked us out of the airport and on our way to Hammamet, about a 60km drive on a reasonably large highway. It gave us a chance to eye our surroundings and observe those startling differences that make you aware that you're nowhere near home: things like goats next to the freeway, enormous fences of cacti between fields, Arabic on all the signs...

The Hotel Marco Polo is massive and impressive. The lobby is just gorgeous, with details that you don't really see much in your typical Western hotel of this price. Out back, there's a pool and a lovely landscaped area that leads out towards the beach. And then there's the beach, with ridiculously fine sand and that Mediterranean blue water - I realized I'd never actually been to the Mediterranean before.

Nobody was on the beach, surprisingly - I guess it's pretty far from high season still. I was going to swim when I arrived, but the hotel asks you not to use their
towels there and as it turns out, they don't supply any at the pool either. Not having packed a towel, I may have to cough up a few dinars and buy one since I can't imagine not swimming at all this trip.

The hotel is lovely and magnificent, but at the same time it's not always what you'd expect from a place that looks this elegant. There's things that look in poor repair, things that you'd take for granted at a Western hotel, like for example this morning when there was barely enough running water for me to take a cold shower. But there you go, you can't have everything.

We walked down to La Medina, the big new market area south of the hotel. It was built to recreate an ancient market, and it's quite atmospheric, though like a few of the hotels we noticed along the way, it has that fake-ancient quality about it that is at once appealing and slightly fake. Inside, it's a tourist trap, but at least refreshingly different from any tourist trap I've seen before. Nearly every store sells the same things over and over again - leather bags, trinkets and bracelets, painted pottery, those carved camels covered with leather, mini drums, and a truly ridiculous quantity of cheap Gucci, Armani and D&G knockoffs.

I had read plenty of warnings about the market and how aggressive the sellers can be, but either they mellow out in the off-season or the tourists who wrote those warnings weren't prepared. They will try to steer you into their stores, or get you into a conversation, or try to guess your language, anything so that you wander in, but by avoiding eye contact and just mumbling a quick "bonjour" you can get past it and they won't really bother you further. The problem is if you actually do want to look at something, you're instantly engaged into negotiations. Some of the stores are "prix fixe", so what you see is what you get and the sellers more or less ignore you, but in the others you're expected to haggle. If you're looking for touristy items, it's not a bad idea to go into the prix fixe stores, or in some of the little shops and markets on the way to the Medina, and figure out what their prices are.

There was practically nothing I actually wanted enough to make a thing of it. I found one interesting mortar & pestle, got the guy to drop from 45 dinars down to my bid of 25 by walking away, and then while walking away decided I didn't really want it that badly. Then I found it elsewhere, offered 15, and eventually that seller came down to 23 plus gave me a necklace. I probably should've pushed it further, but it does take some getting used to. Natasha had her eye on a few leather cushion stools, and had a great volley with one charismatic fellow who played his part well - they got a hilarious repartee going on, including him asking her never to set foot in his store again.

While you can get away with a lot of English in the Medina, my high school French has been serving me surprisingly well. I'm amazed at how much I can dredge up, and I've even been able to have a few precarious conversations, which continue until I get stuck. I get to play translator for Natasha sometimes, too, which is fun. Now, of course, everything I'm talking about is pretty much exactly the sort of thing you learn in high school - discussing directions and menus and making arrangements, not explaining a biochemistry paper - but that's all I need. I'm enjoying it, and even starting to think in French from time to time.

It's Wednesday morning now. I started writing this last night but fell asleep partway through and decided it could wait. We've made arrangements to get a taxi to Carthage and the area, and will basically have a private tour guide. We almost got into a tour group, which would have been cheaper, but it was too late to book as the agent closed at 8. It would have been in Spanish anyway, which neither of us speak, so perhaps this is just as well...

Well, Monday morning I'm off. Vancouver to Toronto to Milan to Tunis. It's going to be a long, long day, especially with a 9-hour time change to contend with.

I'm not sure what my internet situation is going to be while in Hammamet. The hotel website doesn't hint at their connectivity, but there is a conference taking place, which gives me hope that at least they'll have some kind of business center where I can hook up once in a while. I'm pretty sure I'll get time to blog, as Natasha and I will likely have evenings to work and to write - everything that I've read says that it's unwise for women to go out at night without a male escort. So I'll probably just write my posts while offline and upload them when I can connect somewhere.

Onwards into a strange & unusual week. I'll keep you all posted.

I've been pretty preoccupied with

• having a cold and recovering from it;
• getting the things done that I couldn't get done while I was in LA;
• preparing for my trip to Tunisia next week;
• trying to get the things done that I can't get done while I'm in Tunisia.

So, not a whole helluva lot of blogging.

But here are some videos you might enjoy. Sorry they're not all nicely embedded in the page, but I'd have to hack b2evolution to allow me to use the object tag, and I don't feel like doing that right now.

Also, I was going to create a Favourites list on YouTube and point to that, but it's not working; it won't let me create a playlist and it won't let me save any favourites. THANKS, YOUTUBE.

Fine, so here we go.

1. Greg found this on Neil Gaiman's blog, where it was described accurately as "magical and disturbing". It's called Rabbit.
2. Alanis Morissette took the Black Eyed Peas' inane and irritating "My Humps", and did a fantastic send-up. I hate the original song so, so much, and I thank Alanis for doing this. I think it was necessary.

I had another one in mind, but I've forgotten it. I guess I'll repost if it comes to me.

UPDATE: Greg reminded me! It was the chicken police.

It's not like I have time to play this game. But if I did, I'd find it very peaceful and enjoyable.

UPDATE: The site seems to be down at the moment (horrors!) but there's another copy of the game here.

While Thursday was pretty much a write-off, the rest of the week went smoothly. Friday was mostly a conference day, with a few sessions interrupted by a swim and some grappling with the LAX Marriott's pathetic room internet access. I wandered the exhibit halls, one set of which was mostly centered on blind/low-vision tools and the other mostly for augmentative communication tools. The AAC section was both daunting and inspiring; it's overwhelming to imagine one's ability to communicate reduced to simple pointing at pictures, or "typing" by using headtracking devices, slowly and methodically. But at the same time you can imagine the relief and joy for someone who's been locked in their body all their lives, unable to get their thoughts out, who finally finds a device that lets them say what they want to say, however tedious it may be. It's something that able-bodied people don't like to think about much, but it's real.

I headed back to Hollywood in the evening - a cab again this time, not keen to take the Metro again. Having already been up and down the Hollywood & Highland area plenty of times, I did a bit of window-shopping and real-shopping. I spent a ridiculous amount of time in Sephora, a chain store we don't seem to have locally. I've never been much of a make-up girly girl, and perfumes are little more than an annoyance to me half the time. But with so much time to spare, I wandered around for ages, sniffing everything, trying a few things on and removing them, comparing prices, looking at stuff I didn't need, and generally enjoying the frivolity of it all. I escaped with only a few minor purchases.

Mike Rofé, who hosted Tuesday's WCS showcase and booked Wednesday's set at the Rainbow Bar & Grill, had invited me to see his band, Vekstar, at the Pig & Whistle, and I was pleased to realize that I actually knew where it was, having passed it when Natasha and I did our first saunter down Hollywood Boulevard on Monday. The bands play on a small stage in a back room of the restaurant. The first three acts were all solo singer/songwriters. The first was a stunningly gorgeous red-headed girl (model? actress?) and the music was just okay. The second was a guy singing slow, thoughtful songs about life out on the farm; nice but I started to zone out after a while. The third was much better, was the only one of the three who really played their guitar instead of just strumming it, and seemed to be aiming for a Jeff Buckley thing; not quite there yet, but promising.

Vekstar was a nice change from the singer/songwriter pattern. A three-piece, with one Mike on vocals and guitar, Cole on keyboards, and Mike Rofé on drums, they had a bit of a Tragically Hip sound to them. Which is a bit odd, when you think about it, since Tragically Hip is considered "Canadiana" and these guys are all about Los Angeles... but there you have it. Interesting songs, really listenable, solid stuff.

After the show we all headed over to the coolest apartment complex I think I've ever seen. It's named Normandie Towers but has been dubbed "The Village" by the residents. It was built by Charlie Chaplin, and over time has also housed Marilyn Monroe, and apparently Errol Flynn, Rudolph Valentino and more. Here's a site with some pictures in daylight. At night, there's lights everywhere, and the old buildings have a rustic Swiss farmhouse look to them, only there's palm trees along the narrow paths, alongside towers from which Rapunzel would have enjoyed hanging her hair. The Village is populated with actors, artists, musicians and writers, and there's a real sense of community in the groups hanging out in the yard or around an open-pit fire. Everyone knows a little bit of the history of the buildings, and can point out who lived where. There's pride among the residents, and perhaps an unspoken hope that maybe someone will someday say they lived here.

At this fine Hollywood party with Vekstar & friends, I discovered that I'm far better at Nintendo Wii bowling and tennis than I could ever be in real life. My boxing skills were a little weak, though.

It wasn't a terribly late night, and I was up in time Saturday to pack everything up, check the ol' email, and then meet up with Jesse for lunch. He kindly took Natasha and me out for some ramen in Gardena and then a trip to Amoeba Music, which is a sort of mecca for new and used CDs and DVDs. It took great restraint to come out of there with only 3 CDs and 1 DVD.

So I'm back in Vancouver now, and currently dealing with a souvenir I didn't want: a nasty cold. I think I would have been fine except I went in for vaccination 2 of 3 against hepatitis A & B, and I suspect that it distracted my immune system enough to let the cold virus take over. Not good timing, because I've got a lot to catch up on - but better now than two weeks from now, when I'll be on a lengthy series of flights to Tunisia!

You can see my Los Angeles photoset on Flickr here. It includes a few photos of Heidi Klum (oh dear, what is THAT going to do to my blog's referring search terms)...

Earlier this year Darren Barefoot posted an inquiry looking for people to test and blog about on the Litebook, a light therapy lamp. Feeling rather bogged down and greyed out this winter, I sent him a note quickly, and also volunteered my friend Jen, who has a tendency to sleep far more than she'd like, and thus seemed like a good candidate. Darren suggested we could each take the Litebook for a few weeks and see how it worked out.

Some time passed, and in the meantime, spring started to happen and I also found out I'd be going to Los Angeles and Tunisia - both pretty sunny places - so I'm not sure I'm an unbiased test subject any more. Therefore, I'm handing over the Litebook to Jen for the full month, and she'll be guest-blogging here about her wild times and adventures under the glow of the full-spectrum LEDs. I'm pleased to present her first report, and she'll be popping in occasionally with updates over the next few weeks.

A warm welcome for Jen, everybody!

---

March 19, 2007

Well, the first morning I used the Litebook it was a bit intense. My apartment is really dark in the mornings (especially since the new DST) and the strength of the light on the little litebook was a bit much for me at first. I admit, although I was coming down with a cold at the time, I think it did make me feel kind of ill for an hour afterward (nauseous). But during subsequent use, I haven't noticed that ill feeling again at all. One thing that is great about it is that it doesn't always have to be plugged in: it is light and easy to move to wherever you are because of the battery system. I am always running around in the mornings and was skeptical that I could even manage to put in the solid 15 minutes of exposure. But now I sit, eating my cereal bathed in the glow of the litebook for about 8 minutes, then spend the next 7 minutes with it in the bathroom, putting my makeup on. So it hasn't really disrupted my schedule very much. I have no comment yet on whether it is having a positive effect on me. I have only used it 3 times. I do also have a cold and we're on the lighter end of the tunnel as far as the Vancouver winter goes. But I know there will be a lot of rainy days yet to come.

Jen

March 26, 2007

It is now a week later and I have managed to keep up with using the litebook (I actually refer to it as "the Magic Light" now). I feel a bit silly this weekend as the sun beams through my windows and I sit at the computer supposedly zapping my blues away with the artificial light source. But I understand the theory behind the unit which is all about the wavelength and the angle that the light hits your eyes. So I know that a bit of sunlight through my windows isn't an adequate substitute. I had a doctor who once told me that to cure S.A.D. I should take a walk or jog each morning running right towards the sun. Of course, this was before I moved to Vancouver- we lived somewhere you could have easily run down a country back road for an hour without a car coming by. Still, I never managed to try out his suggestion and this litebook seems a lot more realistic.

I'm not sure if it's doing anything yet. I still accidentally fell asleep for 4 hours after work the other night, woke up for an hour and a half, then went back to bed as if I had never slept in the first place. I was kind of hoping the litebook would negate the irresistable urge I often feel to do just that. But one thing I have noticed is that I am waking up earlier on weekend days instead of sleeping in solidly till 1 pm .

I still have about two weeks to go so we'll see what happens. And this last week has been day after day of biking to work in the pouring rain, which isn't exactly uplifting.

Jen

...when I get a bit of time! Yargh!

This'll be a quick one. The morning was spent attending conference sessions, and then in the afternoon, despite an annoying stomachache AND a bit of a headache, I headed back to Guitar Center to return the Whammy pedal. Natasha came along for the ride, and I was glad of her company, because we travelled on the LA Metro from the airport. I've been on plenty of NYC subways, but the Metro made me a little uneasy. It made me very aware that everyone in LA who can afford a car has one, and so there's a sharp class difference between the car people and the Metro riders. There was a little more diversity among the passengers closer to Hollywood. But there I managed to distract myself from my stomachache by falling against a seat when the train started, and apparently spraining my right middle finger (just when my ankle was all better). Good thing I wasn't planning to play a half-hour set tonight, eh? *sigh*

The trip there and back took about an hour longer than we expected, and made us miss part of a reception. I decided to cut my losses, skip the open mic I was thinking of for the evening (which might've been anticlimactic anyway) and the Barry Keenan CD release in Santa Monica (a songwriter who played at Tuesday's showcase - it would've been fun, but hard to get there & back) and stay in and catch up on blogging. Of course, then the hotel's net connection was down for about an hour.

Can't be a rock star every day, I guess. Let's hope for better luck tomorrow...

At noon on Wednesday, Natasha and I presented at the conference. I think it was one of our better presentations, actually. We went slightly overtime so that anyone who wanted to ask questions had to do it during the lunch break, but other than that, it seemed to go really well; we had a lot of people and they seemed to be happy with it. I enjoyed giving the presentation, and didn't have any of those "blank-out moments" where you sort of run out of what you were going to say and realize that everyone is watching you expectantly. I must be getting better at presenting, or something.

In the evening, I headed out to "Guitar Row", where all the nifty guitar shops are clustered near each other. That was fun, but I didn't invest in anything besides a nice strap for my bass. I also picked up another Whammy pedal - I hadn't brought mine from BC because I didn't think I'd ever get to play more than three songs. HA. Nobody rents pedals here, as it turns out. A few people told me "buy it from Guitar Center and return it". I couldn't do that. I told them upfront what my situation was, and that I would want to return the pedal; they finally agreed that it would be alright, and charged me a small rental fee as well which should cover their hassle on the return.

I bussed over to the Rainbow Bar and Grill, which is a terrific-looking place. The place feels so soaked in character, you can practically smell it in the wood panels. In the downstairs area, the lights are low and slightly red-tinted, and everyone looks like they might be "somebody" but you're not quite sure. (At least I'm not - I'm terrible with faces.)

Upstairs from the restaurant, where the bands play, is one of the weirdest stage layouts I've ever seen. You enter into a bar area. There's seating near the stage - and the stage area is downstairs from the seating. There are also steps to a special reserved area up above the stage. I took a look, and there's a teeny-tiny back room with a few small benches. It's so dark and secluded that you can only speculate as to whom it's reserved for and why. The end result of all of this setup is that the audience peers down towards the stage, between the supports for the upstairs area and the railing for the stage.

Mike, who books some nights for the Rainbow, had told me I'd probably be playing just to a few people - 8:00 was a pretty early time and Wednesdays aren't the biggest time. And I did indeed play to about 12-15 people total. But I'd prepared myself to play to much less, so that was fine with me. It meant I didn't have that rush of nervous excitement that I like to have before a bigger show, but maybe that's just as well - this was my first time out with a full set of my own material, so why up the pressure?

I decided to put my weakest songs first so that anyone who showed up later would get a better impression. That was a good choice, and meant I ended up a strong note. My one mistake of the evening was putting "Grey into Grey" on the setlist at all. It's kind of slow and a bit dull, honestly, without the backing sections. Partway through I decided to skip a verse, and then that threw me off and I couldn't quite remember what the notes were in the bridge, so I stumbled around there, broke tempo and lost momentum. I kept going, but felt very alone down there for a moment.

Other than that, though, everything else went smoothly, and by the end of it I was playing the songs that I enjoy a lot more - my newer songs, mostly - and feeling confident. I threw in one cover that shows off my voice well, and ended on "Metamorphosis", the new song I'd played the night before at the showcase. So I was feeling pretty chuffed by the time I got down - er, up - from the stage.

I've been hearing from several people that my performance is completely unique to their experience, that they've never seen a solo bassist/singer before, that it seems unusual and fresh. I've heard this in Vancouver, which is nice, but hearing it from numerous musicians in Los Angeles, some of whom have been in the business for a long time, gives it a bit of added impact. I figured people here would be jaded and would have seen everything. If I can impress them, I must be doing something right.

The other bands were interesting - a girl with a very strong voice playing keyboards, sort of a blend of other styles; a danceable electronic duo named Odd Modern, vocals, keyboards and drums with backing tracks; a group of apparently-gay guys playing straight-up rock, and a very technically talented band that played about 50 times louder than any of the others and, while they were obviously very good players, were not really my thing. (They also had about 1/4 of the crowd that I did when I played, which amused me. Of course, theirs paid to see them...)

At the end of the evening, as the place shut down, Tim the sound guy put Radiohead's first album, Pablo Honey, on the system. Just before we left, "Creep" came on. The last time I was in Los Angeles was to see Radiohead play, and they happened to play Creep, their first big hit - which they had hardly played at all for years, so it had a big impact. After the show we all went to Mel's Diner, where someone was already singing "Creep" at karaoke.

To hear the song now, again celebrating the end of a great night, seemed like a strange and wonderful coincidence. I popped back down to the stage and belted out the peak of the song along with the recording before heading out through the bustle of the restaurant and the valet parking lot and the crowds of shiny preening people on an average Hollywood night.

Tuesday was mostly a pre-conference day; we hadn't actually bought the expanded registration to allow us to attend the workshops, so we only went to the welcoming reception. We sat near two sullen women who barely acknowledged our presence and could not be drawn into conversation. I suppose they're not at this conference to "confer", but for the free schwag?

During the morning we went to Santa Monica (Natasha drove the 'Stang this time) and I wandered the beach. It was nearly empty there on a grey, drizzly day, only a few lone joggers; I watched a sandpiper piping, listened to the waves, and felt the most peaceful I'd felt in days. I found a consignment store and got some really neat clothes for cheap. We ate at a nice sit-down Mexican restaurant, then headed back to work on our presentation.

I was torn between a well-reputed open mic or a West Coast Songwriters showcase, but ultimately the showcase won; it was far, far closer, and there would also be a music supervisor from Warner judging the event. I had my trepidations about attending a judged event. As I learned at Shindig last year, when they announce a winner you feel like you lost, no matter how well you play; I'd rather just play a show and feel good about it. So I was relieved to find out that I wouldn't even be eligible to win unless I was a WCS member, which took the whole competition factor out of the equation.

All in all, it was pretty much the complete opposite experience of Monday night's open mic. The venue, Karma Coffeehouse, was cozy and welcoming and wonderful. Out of about 15 performers, there was only one who you'd even say was mediocre, and that was only because he was obviously inexperienced; the others ranged from decent to fantastic, and the talent level was staggering. It was a wonderful evening not just as a player, but as an audience member; everything was very listenable.

In fact, when I got up to play, I was startled for a moment by how intently everyone was watching. I've grown used to audiences that are half-listening at best, and Monday night was exceptionally bad in that regard. I realized as I stood there that it's easier to play when you know no one's listening. At Karma, you could hear a pin drop, and to play without the ambient hum of people chattering was actually unsettling at first. I got into it well enough, though. I played my newest song, which was a bit of a gamble as it's a little tricky, but it's more interesting than some of my others. My fingers tripped once or twice but without breaking tempo. (Advice for open mic players: don't ever call attention to your mistakes, make faces or apologize. Nobody wants to feel sorry for you, and half the time they won't really have noticed anyway. If you forget lyrics, make them up - your audience doesn't know them anyway!)

Anyway, I got a good solid round of applause and settled in to watch the rest of the evening. After the event I had some great conversations with the other players. It seemed like we were all in awe of each other. I got asked to join someone's band, which was nice, if not practical. ;) The Warner judge had very kind things to say about my song and was interested in hearing more.

And the highlight of the night: Mike Rofe, the host, asked me to play a half-hour set tonight at The Rainbow Bar & Grill on the Sunset Strip. This is a bar that seems to be steeped in LA history. I'll be playing from 8-8:30 - before the other bands start, so Mike says there probably won't be many people there, but I don't care. It'll be the first time I've played a full set of my own songs (okay, I may throw in a cover or two if I need to fill time) and to do it here, in Los Angeles, is just a thrill.

So I'm just riding on the clouds today.

I still have to give my presentation at this conference, of course, at noon. I think I'll be a little cautious about saving my voice, though...

I'm in LA now. The flight was reasonably uneventful; I couldn't gate-check my bass but they put it on special baggage and it came through unscathed.

Natasha and I decided to rent a car for a day or two, since we're stuck out by LAX, cabs to anywhere interesting are ridiculously expensive and buses are kind of slow. The conference doesn't start until Wednesday so we have a day or two to play a little.

We stopped by the rental desk, but unfortunately the smallest car they had available was a 2007 Ford Mustang (hardtop).

...Which she let us have for the economy price.

I giggled like an idiot while driving to Hollywood in a new powder-blue sportscar, with my bass in tow, feeling like a real rock star for a few minutes.

That was pretty much the only rockstar moment I got to have that day, though. We did some basic tourism, scoped out Hollywood Boulevard and the Sunset Strip, drove through Beverly Hills to see how the other half lives, and then headed to Molly Malone's Irish Pub. We were pretty early, and there was only one other musician waiting, a kind of wild-eyed loner scruffy guy.

The place was nearly barren when we got there, and then around 8:00 it started getting really crowded. Packed, actually. And not with the usual open mic musician types I expected - seriously overdressed LA girls with self-conscious laughs preening their hair, among other youngish types. I knew there was another band playing on the main stage that night, and figured they were there to see that band and they'd drift back and forth between rooms.

Nope. As soon as the band started, the entire crowd flooded into the other room, and there was nothing left but tumbleweeds and a few lonely guys with guitars.

Scruffy guy took the stage first. You need to know his, er, name. I don't want to post it exactly in case he routinely googles himself, but it was "Mystical Angel" without the "-al". And, um, he was pretty much your worst-case open mic scenario. I can't even properly describe what he did. Quiet, high-pitched mumbling singing of unintelligible repetitive phrases over a guitar that was completely inaudible because he'd pushed away the microphone. I try not to make faces at open mics - but most of us there were sending around looks of open horror and pain.

We had been told we could each play three songs that night, but when Mystic went up somehow it was mysteriously downgraded to two.

Oddly enough, people started coming back into the room over the course of the next player or two, so there was almost a respectable crowd by the time I went up. Nobody was really paying any attention, though. I played my two songs to the two or three people who were actually watching me, and learned afterwards that my voice was mixed so much lower than my guitar that you could hardly hear it.

So it wasn't much of an event, but that's alright. I have no idea whether any of these evenings will be worthwhile in any way whatsoever. It's just something to do that might be interesting, and I can probably learn something. Today I learned to look for whoever is paying attention and enjoy playing a show just for them. And Natasha recorded a bit of me playing on her camera, so I could see that I looked alright but it wouldn't hurt to be a little more dynamic, move around a bit. See? It wasn't a complete loss...

Alright, my foot is in better shape, the week is almost over, and I'm ready to head to Los Angeles on Monday. We've got everything pretty much ready for Wednesday's presentation. I still need to pack, which won't be happening today.

Being already well acquainted with open mic nights in Vancouver, I've done some research on open mic nights in Los Angeles and have come up with a tentative plan of attack:

• Monday: Molly Malone's Irish Pub, 8:00
• Tuesday: Mr. T's Bowl, 8:30 or else maybe Karma Coffeehouse, 8:00
• Wednesday: El Cid, 8:30
• Thursday: The Rumor Mill, 7:30

There's not very many on Friday, and the best-sounding one is by lottery rather than by first-come first-served.

I've been in touch with all of them except Molly Malone's to confirm that the evenings are still going ahead - you never know with open mics. I'll probably give them each a call on the day-of, as well. The first three are all quite a distance from my unfortunate location near LAX, so I don't really want to take a chance on a long trip only to find out nothing's happening.

On another note, renting gear there seems to be a completely different industry than here. For the prices I was quoted to rent a bass for a week, I could buy a new one instead. So I'm going to lug my bass with me - always makes me nervous bringing it on a plane, but I've done it before and read plenty about traveling with guitars. A bass guitar in a hardshell case won't fit in the overhead, but unless the flight attendents are in a bad mood that day I should be able to gate check it. This is a far, far better option than travelling with it as luggage, as it means it is only ever hand-carried and doesn't make it into the baggage system where it can get thrown around. We'll see how it goes.

Unfortunately it looks like I'll miss peak cherry-blossom time in Vancouver, but that's okay, I'll just enjoy the palm trees down south.

Greg took me out last night to rent some crutches. I'm impressed that you can rent crutches for $0.80/day. That actually seems like a fair and reasonable price. It almost makes up for the cost of my vaccinations.

So after some unpleasant armpit-bruising I'm finally getting the hang of these things, and boy, they're tiring. I'd only ever played with friends' crutches before - when you can give them back after a minute - so never really had to get around this way. They're a pretty serious workout for your arms, once you stop leaning on the armpit part so much. I may be letting my legs atrophy this week but at least my biceps will be in shape.

They also have the side effect of making all your coworkers react with shock and sympathy to see you limping into the office with what appears to surely be terrible and crippling damage. To save everyone the trouble I wanted to stick a sign on me that says "It's Only A Mild Sprain And It'll Be Better In A Few Days, Thank You For Your Concern". But Heather gave me a piece of chocolate and that was lovely.

My ankle is feeling vastly better than it was yesterday. One night's sleep did it a world of good, so I'm trusting that a second will show similar improvement. I think I'll ditch the crutches by Friday at the latest. I should be fine to walk by the time I go to Los Angeles on Monday - fortunately, since LA is not a walkable city, it won't really affect my travels the way it would anywhere else in the world...

Yesterday afternoon I went to get my vaccinations for my Tunisia trip - hepatitis A & B in my left arm, and typhoid in my right. My shoulders are a little sore, but not as sore as my budget - even my usually-generous extended health plan won't cover preventative vaccinations, and to avoid these two particular diseases cost a grand total of $180. I suppose they've crunched the numbers and figured out that it's cheaper to take a chance on having to treat typhoid and/or airlift me from an African hospital than to just give me the damn shot in the first place.

Then in the evening I went to help a friend move some drum gear out of a practice space. While carrying some small speakers that blocked my view of my feet, I managed to trip, fall and wrench my left foot on the bottom step before the parking lot. It hurt quite a bit at the time, but after a few minutes elevating it, it seemed to be alright and I could use it again. I took it easy during the evening and figured it would hurt a bit the next day.

Sure did - I was up at 2 AM with an ice pack on it, and can't put any real weight on it at all now. I worked from home today, hobbling around gingerly using a sturdy umbrella as a cane. As someone who likes to fidget, pace and generally be mobile, this is infuriating to me. I'm pretty sure it's a standard-issue sprained ankle as I didn't fall with any real impact, just a nasty twist, so it should be okay in a few days... but really, was this necessary?

That just leaves my right foot, which I'm hoping is exempt from this whole limb-hurting trend because of a weird incident a few nights ago, when I woke up with little pulses of pain on the underside of the knuckle of my big toe, occurring at about 30-second intervals, just enough to keep me awake for a while. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what it was about. I finally got back to sleep and dreamt about pulling a HUGE pine needle out of the toe, and after that I was fine, so I'm hoping it was merely psychic trauma and it's all better now.

Bodies are such inconveniences.

Great. I just hooked up my iPod to my computer, and it popped up a little window giving me the option to change the iPod's name. I absentmindedly clicked it, and as I did so I realized that it ALSO had a checkbox on it - CHECKED - saying to automatically sync music with my computer. It was already too late - when I tried to un-sync it, it warned me that it would remove everything from my iPod. I managed to stop it but it had already wiped about 3/4 of it.

I had lots of things on my iPod that weren't on my computer any more, so I'm not too pleased about this. Thanks, Apple.

Between one thing and another, I've barely had time to post this week. But I gotta squeak this one in.

I'm going to be doing a bit of travelling in March and April. March 19-24 I'll be heading to Los Angeles with my colleague Natasha to present at a conference on accessibility and technology. (And being as it is LA, and the conference has very few evening events, I'm going to bring my bass or rent one and hit some open mics while I'm in town. What the hell, it'll be good practice.)

So that's already pretty nice. Okay, I don't really like LA, but I'm not complaining about a free week there.

But just this week it was also confirmed that we will also be presenting at a conference in Hammamet, Tunisia in April. I'm still reeling with the idea, even as I frantically read up on everything I can about the country and culture and warnings and travel tips, arrange for vaccinations, and look into replacing my already-shredded suitcase. I've never been to Africa, or anywhere near it. As African countries go, it seems to be a good place to cautiously set foot; while it's not democratic and there seems to be a certain amount of censorship, it's fairly foreigner-friendly. Hammamet is also the most touristy spot in the country, which has its good and bad points, of course. The photos make it look absolutely fantastic. I don't know how much of the country I'll see - I expect just the area around the coast - I'm especially looking forward to seeing the ruins of Carthage. I've just never been anywhere that old before. I've travelled a fair bit, but mostly German and French-speaking places; Costa Rica's the most exotic location I've seen, and I've really never been anywhere this different from what I'm used to.

It's going to be a long, long couple of flights there, of course - we leave on April 9 at 7AM and get there on April 10 at 10AM, and with a 9-hour time difference, that's, um, 14 hours of travel. The flight goes through Milan, and I decided to take a day and a half there on the way back, since the opportunity presented itself. I've never been to Italy, after all. I'll be staying at a hostel there since "normal" hotels seem to run upwards of $400 a night... not quite in my price range.

So I am very, very excited to suddenly be planning a trip to Tunisia and Italy next month. Very. The only downside of everything is that Greg can't come along, since it's in the middle of his semester. I also thought a bit about hopping over to visit family in Switzerland, but the flights cost more than I was comfortable with, and since this is something that Greg and I have talked about doing together soon I didn't really want to go without him.

That's my big news. Yes, I'll be bringing a camera.

I've been meaning to thank Beyond Robson for a few useful posts lately.

hairblogging

First of all, Shallom posted about a great stylist for curly hair, Karyn Rudance. Being a Mount Pleasant resident, I don't tend to frequent Yaletown as I don't have the right all-black ensemble, but I guess it's true that they do know about style over there. Karyn did an absolutely wonderful job on my hair - rather than just cutting it all the same length like most stylists, she dried it and then cut each curl so that my hair would be balanced when dry. It makes so much sense, and the resulting cut is a positive curl explosion that I'm thrilled with. She's also a neat person and we had a grand ol' time talking, which is a real bonus.

She has a referral program, whereby for each person you refer to her you get 15% and with 4 referrals you get a free cut. So here's a plug: Karen Rudance, Derek London Salon at 1075 Mainland Street in Yaletown, 604-684-5905. Tell her you saw this on Kirsten's blog (or mentioning Shallom would also be fair, since she posted first!)

parklogging

On a more serious note,
Terri posted recently about Save BC Parks, a campaign to prevent proposed tourist development within many of British Columbia's protected parks. The government is proposing that private hotels, lodges and cabins - and all the necessary transport, water and sewage facilities - be constructed in the parks. It's not hard to see that this defeats the purpose of having a protected park in the first place. Making it easy for people to get in makes life hard for everything that calls these parks home.

I signed the petition last year, and have been receiving updates, but it didn't occur to me to blog about it, which was a definite oversight on my part. So I'm passing the link along now, and if you're in BC or would like to visit or just like the idea of wild, open land not being plundered for tourist dollars, please take a look at the campaign and do what you can.

As I sit at home, trying to write copy for a presentation for work, I can hear loud hammering from one of the apartments downstairs that they're fixing up to sell, as well as some kind of electric saw from a construction site down the road. These things went on for, I think, several minutes before I really, truly noticed them. But now I can't seem to tune out.

The construction in this city has reached ridiculous, epidemic proportions. Not only is every building more than 10 years old being torn down and replaced with overpriced and overhyped condos, but every road is being ripped up and redone, for whatever reason. Seriously, I don't think there's one route in the city that is construction free. Cambie is a complete mess as it's being ripped apart for the RAV line, and at every major intersection of any use to me - 2nd, Broadway, 12th, 16th - there's a bottleneck trying to get across it. Broadway around Macdonald seems to have been gutted so they can lay pipes or something underneath it (plus rip up the trees that were planted too shallow and are pushing up the sidewalks) - so forget trying to get through there. I was surprised to find a construction nest far down Main Street recently while trying an alternate route home. Every time I think I'm going to be clever and try another path, I find myself confronted by orange & white cones and barrels. And being on a bus doesn't help - I had to wait half an hour for an 84 last week because of the Cambie snarls.

Biking is about the only halfway sensible way to get around, but I'm a wuss about biking in the rain and tend to avoid it. Once it warms up a bit I'll be back on two wheels more often - of course, half the seawall is taken up for Olympic Village construction, so there goes my favourite route.

I feel like I need a month in the wilderness in complete silence save, perhaps, some birdsong. But I remember camping on the coast a few years ago, and even three or four ferry rides up, there wasn't really anything approaching isolation that I could see. On San Juan Island, in Washington, there was lovely wilderness but still people everywhere, on the water in boats and in the parks. How far do you have to go to get really, truly away from the noise?

Please tell me now, because this hammering is REALLY. STARTING. TO. GET. TO. ME.

I was wondering why the local blogosphere was so quiet today, and then I remembered it's probably because everybody is at Northern Voice, our delightful Canadian blogging conference.

I went the past two years, but decided not to go this year; the first year was fantastic, but last year I felt I'd lost that childlike joy of discovery that initially came with blogging. Nothing on the program really resonated with me, so after some halfhearted contemplation I figured I'd just skip a year. I hope everyone there had a splendiferous time and maybe next year I'll feel the vibe again.

I'm just taking a break from ARCTIC recording to come home and walk the dog, and then it's back to the studio again. So I'm making use of my time in a way that pleases me. Which is one of my ongoing goals in life, so that's probably a better thing for me to be doing today anyway.

UPDATE: I guess the meeting of the minds also included a delightful cross-pollination of germs from all over this fine land. I'm glad I missed that, at least...

A colossal squid was caught in Antarctic waters last week. It's absolutely massive - about 450 kg. It's 33 feet long. It took two hours to land, and it's the first adult colossal squid anyone has ever managed to land intact. It's a truly amazing find.

Of course, it's dead now.

This bothers me. I understand that it's a landmark scientific find (I'm married to a biologist, remember?). I know that they can learn so much about it, many things about living at the bottom of the ocean, it'll be a treasure trove of new and wonderful information. And I know that taking some pictures or videos probably wouldn't have satisfied many people; the age of the Victorian naturalist-collector may be over, but we still like to marvel at a real specimen of an unusual animal.

But this is an incredibly rare find, and we don't have a good idea of how many of these squid are out there. How can we safely assume that the death of one adult won't have an impact? We're already doing plenty of damage to the ocean and everything in it. We've already got lots of extinctions to our credit. Perhaps now is not the time to be meddling.

We do know that cephalopods are some of the most intelligent animals out there. Without getting into a debate over what consciousness is or whether squid are conscious (or, for that matter, whether humans are conscious), it seems that a squid of that size, caught in a two-hour life-and-death struggle, would be suffering significantly. If you ran a similar story about a large whale being dragged onboard in a two-hour struggle, you'd have a public outcry... well, maybe that's not true. But I don't think we can assume that this is a dumb, unfeeling beast, given what we know about smaller squid already.

Squid are often described as "alien" and otherworldly. No wonder aliens aren't flocking to Earth, eh? Maybe they figure we'd just wrangle them into submission like rodeo cows.

As a sporadic attendee of open mic nights, I really appreciated the existence of openmic.ca, which was a reasonably up-to-date list of all open mic nights in the Great Vancouver area. But it sadly vanished about a month ago, and I wasn't able to track down the owners.

I missed it so much that I decided somebody'd better set up a new open mic site for Vancouver, and just launched openmicvancouver.com. It is now up and running, with a large but probably incomplete list of Vancouver open mics.

I'm ready for any and all updates, and not only that, I'm ready for more editors. It's a wiki, and while it's not an unlocked wiki that anyone can edit, you can register by emailing me and introducing yourself. And even as an unregistered user you can add comments to the listing pages.

(BTW, I know there's a whole war on whether it should be called "open mic" or "open mike". I've made my choice. Although maybe I should just call it "open stage" and avoid the debate entirely.)

Enjoy...

It's very, very rare that I see the dawn voluntarily, but I woke up this morning at about 4:15, couldn't get back to sleep, and finally gave up at 5 and started working on a variety of things. And now there's a distinct brightening of the sky, which I'm led to believe actually happens on a daily basis. I'm usually not aware of this event, unless I have to get up early on a winter morning when it's pitch black anyway. So this is a bit of a rare thing.

Now, I can't actually see the sun or anything. Looks like a typical solid-cloud morning.

I'll probably try to sneak in an hour or so of sleep before really kicking into my day - I'm getting groggy now, finally - but at least I'll have witnessed this daily ritual the planet goes through, whether I like it or not.

I ran into Super Robertson at a MusicBC schmoozefest the other night, and he invited me to come down to the Super Robertson Supper Show and play sometime. I'd heard of said show but never actually seen it - a few months ago I saw one of his other projects, Supersimian, of which Super is one half of the name and Sim (alias of a certain occasional ARCTIC drummer) is the other.

So I figured I'd just pop down to the Railway Club and check it out, y'know, get a feel for it, see what it was all about, lurk a little, but I was up on stage before the hour was over.

I haven't seen anything like the Supper Show in Vancouver, and it's nagging at me trying to pin down what it reminds me of. Super's band, 21 Tandem Repeats, have a wonderful accessibly quirky vibe, like early Barenaked Ladies before they started trying to get all serious, but with a hilarious stream-of-consciousness lyric style. It also brings back memories of a crazy variety show I saw in Pittsburgh once. I get the impression that large chunks of things may be improvised, but it's hard to tell what because they're so smooth, and Super's deadpan delivery doesn't always give it away. Or maybe he just covers it up by doing push-ups. Either way, I thought they were damn good and I found myself laughing a lot. A lot.

Being Valentine's Day, the crowd was a bit thinner than I gather it usually is (though there's no reason this couldn't have been a good event for a date, but what do I know) - the good thing was, that meant that when Super started launching chocolate into the audience, we all got plenty!

I hadn't really been planning on playing, but towards the end of the hour Super asked me if I wanted to come up and play a song, and I thought why not? I really like the Railway Club and the idea of playing my own stuff there. So I borrowed a bass - I had a moment of anxiety about switching back to a 4-string again, but it worked out just fine - and played "Setup", the overhand tapping song I do, borrowing a drummer named Shawn to accompany me. It seemed to go over very well, but I decided just to do the one song and not push my luck. But I do believe I'll be back next week, and bring my bass and some of my gadgets, and play a few more songs and see what happens.

The Supper Show is every Wednesday night at the Railway Club from 7:30 to 8:30. As you might guess from the name of the show, food is available. And you never quite know what's going to happen on stage.

• On my way to yoga last week, I saw people swinging fire poi around outside their apartment.
• Like spotting a rare creature in the wilderness, I was lucky enough to have an Opera Man sighting last Thursday.
• Riding the bus downtown over Cambie Bridge, I could see Science World reflected in the window so that it appeared to be hovering over the buildings - like a giant firework in the sky.

Update (Feb 16): Opera Man just walked, singing, right down my street! Neighbours appeared on their balconies, small dogs started barking, and I grinned like an idiot. Hooray for Opera Man.

The skies are solid grey again, I'm feeling a rolling wave of stress, and so it is important to acknowledge things that make one giggle.

• The best Monty Python mashup I've ever seen, or perhaps could imagine.
• If you owned a Commodore 64 or PET, these demos may seem familiar. I really only knew the Rolling Demo, but oh boy did it bring back memories. And it's hilarious now how the demo boasts of the sophistication of the C64 - after all, graphics can scale in the X and Y directions! There's another demo I miss, that isn't listed here. It had a little guy who came out to introduce the 64 and said "I'm a sprite and you're not!", which seemed very funny to me at the time for some reason. I often entertained myself by changing the text throughout to the video to whatever wonderfully silly things amused me as a ten-year-old.
• Jealousy is an ugly thing. But when it gives us headlines like Diaper-Clad Astronaut Attempts to Kidnap Rival for Other Astronaut's Love, at least it's good for a chuckle now and again.
• Cheese rolling or cheese racing: which is more fun? I for one cannot decide.
• I could watch this ridiculous dog clip over. And over. For hours.

I was going to write a blog post explaining my lengthy absence, but then I realized it's actually only been three days since my last post.

It's been a long three days, though. One of my best friends had their mother go in to hospital on Friday; it was quite sudden and quite serious. Along with about a half-dozen other friends, I've been taking turns occasionally checking in with the family members who have been staying with her, bringing food, keeping company with whoever needs it.

Fortunately, her prognosis is very good, the doctors seem happy, and the difference in her between Friday and Monday is, to me, phenomenal. She grows increasingly lively, with more colour in her face. And she is a riot. She's an upbeat British lady with a sharp mind; she loves having people around, people to talk to, new people to meet. She keeps cracking us all up on a regular basis. If humour truly is the best medicine, she will be fine.

It's been an overwhelming experience (and I haven't even been there the whole time, just a few hours here and there). It's something I wouldn't really have expected of myself, honestly. I hadn't met her before Friday, though I'd heard a lot about her and had been looking forward to meeting her (under better circumstances). But I keep finding myself drawn back to the hospital, and asking myself why. It makes me feel good to be there. I feel appreciated, it feels good to be able to be there for a friend, I feel positive from seeing their mom's condition improve, and perhaps most significantly, the sheer amount of love and hope that fills that room when everyone's there is simply inspiring. It's a rotating door of friends and family, all rallying around her and each other.

I was trying to explain this to Greg and he suggested maybe I should volunteer there. I think he's on to something. I'm sure it's different when it's not somebody you're connected to, but there is something startlingly fulfilling about being able to help. Maybe when the emotional rush of this whole thing has abated I'll see what I can do. It's a short bike ride and I could spare a few hours a week. I just never thought I'd want to, before.

I'm looking forward to dinner with my parents tomorrow night. I would anyway, but it's more so this time.

It's a cliche, but it's true: it does take a good crisis to make you think about what's important.

Last night, while walking the dog, I happened across a box left out on the sidewalk, destined for the garbage. Sticking out from the box were two framed pictures.

The first was an painted scene of a lake, done in various shades of beige - or maybe that was just an effect of the streetlights overhead. Pine trees framed the water. Two figures were swimming in the lake, their clothes discarded on the shore. The painting was obviously by an amateur - something like I would've done in my teens, probably, and couldn't do much better than that now - the lake and woods done in oils, stiff, uneven blobs, and then the people drawn in pencil, finer-detailed, not fully integrated into the scene.

I held the painting briefly, and wondered if the painter was trying to recapture a beautiful moment in their life - a perfect evening, just past sunset, swimming in a beautiful isolated spot with someone dear to them. And no matter how they tried, the painting just couldn't recapture the magnitude of that moment. Even if they'd had a camera, they couldn't have pinned it down. Maybe the painting sat in their basement for a decade before being discarded. Maybe they threw it out, fondly but sadly. Maybe they now despise the other person in the painting and want nothing to do with the memory.

Or maybe it was just a high school art project with no personal significance. You never know.

The other picture was one of those corporate motivational posters, for "Perseverance".

This morning, when I walked the dog, the painting had vanished.

But "Perseverance" remained.

I've been working for the past few months with Glen Morris, an amp builder based in Welland, Ontario, on his web site, and it's been the most fun I've had in ages building a site. It's been a very organic, casual process, and Glen's been so enthusiastic and easy to work with that it's been a joy. I had a moment today where I was almost sorry that the site was finished, but then I remembered we'll be adding soundclips and more over time, so there's still more fun to come.

It's also clear that however enthusiastic Glen has been about his site, his enthusiasm for his amplifiers far surpasses this. His attention to detail, his curiousity and persistence - it comes across very plainly that he is dedicated to finding the best ways to get the best sound he can, that he loves a challenge and that it's fun for him. Owners of his amps seem almost fanatical about them. If you happen to be in the market for a point-to-point, hand-built, hand-wired guitar amp, you'd do well to check him out.

I knew I was right to worry about the crow roost being cut down.

Sometimes I don't like our species very much.

[UPDATE: For those of you searching for a list of open mics in Vancouver, I've just started a new site at http://www.openmicvancouver.com. Share and enjoy.]

I've been sorely out of the open mic loop - in the fall, I was completely focused on the ARCTIC shows, and then it was the holidays and then I got a cold and a cough and had to emerge blinking from the haze thinking "What am I doing with my songs again?"

I think the last one I went to in 2006 was at Cafe Deux Soleils on Commercial. It's a regular Thursday open mic in a lovely venue - it's warm and cozy and gives you a sense of being immersed in creativity and excitement, much like a beat poets' cafe in New York must have felt like in the early 60s. It's a high-calibre open mic, with a lot of talented artists, good for experienced players but not for the shy first-timer. It's also ridiculously popular. Unlike most open mics which are first-come first-served, you have to submit your name into a jar from which fifteen performers will be randomly selected and announced at the start of the event. If you don't get picked, your name gets left in the jar, and you can resubmit again the next week so your chances go up. It's not a bad system, I guess, but you have to be aware of the potential letdown of not getting to play.

Last Thursday I figured I'd take a stab at the Purple Crab. They usually do open mic nights on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday unless they've booked a performer. I've been there a few times before, and every time there's been someone else running it and different musicians playing, some very talented, some painful. But it's low-key and usually not terribly busy. Of course, this time I headed up Main only to find out there was indeed a band playing already. Phooey.

It was already pretty late, but I wasn't far from the Anza Club, which also has a Thursday night open mic in the downstairs lounge. I like the Anza Club as a hangout spot, but hadn't been thrilled with their open mic before. Most people at the crowded bar are there to hang out and play pool and talk with the other regulars, not to see musicians, and so you feel a bit irrelevant. I was underwhelmed by the sound system, too. But I thought hey, let's give it another chance.

The open mic supposedly starts at 9:30, but I know nothing in this city starts on time. I got there about 9:45 anyway and while no one was playing yet, I was told I probably wouldn't get on until 1:00 am. Aw, too bad, I figured; well, at least I'll stay and have a beer and watch the other performers before going home. Yeah, right. Nothing even started until 10:45. I sat by myself and saw one and a half performances before deciding I might as well go home and get some sleep.

Sunday night I headed down to Darby's at 4th and Macdonald. Darby's has a relatively new open mic, which started this past summer. I'd been there two or three times and enjoyed myself, though with the sunny evenings and rooftop deck there wasn't much of an audience, and only a few performers. The upside of this was that you could pretty much play as long as you wanted, and jam with the other musicians a little, because nobody cared.

Things have picked up considerably, as the host Rob has been proactive about promoting the night, and between the weather bringing everyone inside and the hockey fans going to check out the game, there was quite a crowd last night. Unfortunately, the hockey fans forced Rob to hold off on starting the open mic until the Canucks' win was obviously inevitable. But in the meantime I met some neat people and got into some great conversations, to the point where I started to worry my voice would be gone by the time I got up to the mic!

I played three songs, "Setup", "Living on the Ceiling", and Fiona Apple's "Shadowboxer". "Setup" is one of my two overhand tapping songs (the other I haven't played live yet) and it always seems to surprise people, because they're not used to seeing someone tap on a bass. Surprising people is fun.

There's something weird about "Living on the Ceiling" - when I play it through a PA with no monitor, the bassline in the chorus sounds horribly out of tune to me. Previously, I've stopped and tried to tune my bass and been confused when it was fine, while people look at me blankly because they don't know what's wrong. This time, I barrelled on anyway, but I know I wasn't fully "there" because I was listening to the tuning and trying to keep my singing consistent despite the discrepancy I was hearing. Afterwards people said it was fine (and hopefully they weren't just saying that). I think I won't play that live now unless I've got a bass amp, or figure out why it sounds wonky. My mic also died at the start, and I stopped, but should've just kept going and let Rob fix it.

"Shadowboxer" was a bit of a bust. I asked if someone would come up to drum (there's a snare with brushes), and a kid came up who was on the list to play guitar later that night. Despite my best efforts to guide him by suggesting a beat up front and then TAPPING MY FOOT LOUDLY while I played, he kept playing 4/4 time over my 6/8 song at about twice the speed necessary. I gritted my teeth and played anyway, trying to ignore the wildly incorrect beat; I was trying to be polite, since he'd volunteered and all, but finally I just stopped and turned and said "I'm sorry - it's in THREE!" He shrugged and said "I'm not a drummer," and let Rob take over, and everything went beautifully after that. It was good for a giggle, anyway.

(On a side note, while an open mic is a great place to find good guitarists and singers and even sometimes keyboardists and bassists, drummers never show up, because no one really wants to hear a lone drummer. That's only part of what makes it hard to find a really great drummer. If anyone figures out where the good drummers all lurk, please share this information with the rest of us.)

There were some excellent performers - a woman singing terrific a capella, a shy fellow who sang and played beautifully for only his second time ever on a stage, and a seasoned guitarist who got everyone singing along with some classic covers. There was a couple - he played guitar, she sang - it was her first time and she was the cutest, most adorably puppylike girl we'd ever seen, practically bubbling over with joy and enthusiasm until none of the rest of us could keep from grinning right along with her.

All in all, it was a good night, and I'm going to try to make it more of a regular stop. If not every week, then every few weeks, anyway. I'm posting this so that I'll be less likely to get lazy and weasel out of it - but if I keep having as much fun as I did last night it won't be hard to get me to keep going.

The news is all over town already about The Police rehearsing at Studio Five. I feel a bit smug that I had heard the rumours two days before The Province wrote an article about it, but I guess I'm not a good Citizen Blogger™ because I didn't post it. (I have to protect my sources, you know.)

I have to say, this is the first reunion tour that's ever really made me sit up and take notice. Partly it's because for twenty years, Sting has met with the idea of a reunion tour with nothing but spitting rage. It's not as if it's something that's felt inevitable, like every other aging band, just heaving it all on stage to cash in and have some fun one more time.

But mostly it's because although they were such an essential part of my musical experience, I completely missed them while they were active. I didn't really get into them (or any rock music) until around 1986, at which point they were long gone. I wouldn't have been old enough to see them in concert at the time, nor would Newfoundland ever have been a tour stop, but I always wistfully regretted that I never saw them live.

A reunion tour might not be exactly the same thing, without that "wow" of witnessing something great while it's emerging. But it's a second chance that I hadn't counted on.

As for the likelihood of getting tickets - um, let me worry about that some other day, alright?

A while ago, Boing Boing posted about Amie Street, an interesting new music site with an unusual model. Songs on Amie Street start off free, and then as people recommend and buy the songs, the price goes up (98 cents is the limit).

I signed up and posted ARCTIC's 2003 release Music for Rain, and it's been a fun process watching the numbers go up and the feedback come in. One of the songs made the site's Picks of the Week, and as a pleasing side effect it was mentioned on GarageSpin, a blog dedicated to the indie musician that's been part of my blogroll for some time now.

As of right now, "Some One Turning" is at 19 cents and "Launching Pad" is at 15 cents. No one's going to be rushing out to buy a sportscar any time soon, but unlike most music sites where you have the feeling you've just left your mp3s to rot, at Amie Street you feel rewarded, and it keeps you coming back to see how things have progressed. I also get the distinct impression that Amie Street's developers are very excited and interested and involved in the site (a trait shared by Project Opus, my other favourite music network and community). So, y'know, warm fuzzy feelings all around.

Like olives and coffee, smoked food is one of those taste categories that some people love and some people hate. I happen to love it, which is a bit funny since I'm a non-smoker. But really, I could eat just about anything smoked. Consider these fine possibilities:

• Smoked fish: I could live on smoked salmon. You know how dogs seem to love eating the same kibble day after day? If you filled up my bowl with those little "indian candy" nuggets of maple smoked salmon from Granville Island, I'd be just as happy.
• Smoked tea. Crazy talk, I know. But I love lapsang souchong, a comfy black tea that tastes like the smell of a campfire.
• Smoked meat is obvious. I'm just remembering now that I dreamt about bacon last night. But we never buy bacon or other smoked meat, aside from some gently smoked lunch meat once in a while - so much of it is insanely fatty.
• Smoked cheese: I think smoked gouda is my favourite. Tragically, I'm moderately lactose-intolerant, so I can't indulge in this to the extent that I would like.
• I've got a smokey tomato chipotle hommus at home right now that is magical.

Am I missing anything here, people?

Now, unfortunately, eating lots of smoked food (and pickled food - who knew?) is associated with stomach cancer, so I won't be filling the fridge with hickory sawdust any time soon. But once in a while, I say a little smoking is okay.

I tripped across twitter.com today, and I am both intrigued and repelled by it.

The basic idea is that you create an account, and then you answer the question "What are you doing?"

So this could be helpful if, say, you're busy and you want people to know you're working on a project, or stuck on the bus, or on a date with Scarlett Johansson - updates can be sent and received by IM/SMS. Kind of a constant status report.

It sounds like fun, but it also sounds like one of those things that I would get keenly interested in for about three days and then abandon. More likely, if I did get into it I would get obsessed with making sure my twitter was accurate - if, say, I didn't change my status from "waiting in line for a movie" to "waiting for the movie to start" to "watching a movie", it would nag deeply at the depths of my soul and then it'd be ONE MORE PIECE OF TECHNOLOGY I have to keep tabs on.

But there is a pathetic little part of me that wants everybody to know and understand at all times who I am, what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. (Maybe that's why I blog?)

Do you twitter? Is it worth your trouble?

So far this week I've heard two venue-related rumours:

• SOMA, the lovely hipster cafe on Main Street, is moving.
• The Marine Club, a neat old bar where we played for New Music West last year, is closing.

Can anyone verify or deny these rumours, or offer any more useful information?

I hope neither of them are true but suspect both of them are.

UPDATE: Darren confirms the Marine Club closure. And I can confirm the SOMA move - I stopped in and asked them this evening, and apparently SOMA and Monsoon's lease is up, the building has been sold, and the new owner just "wants the place to be empty when he takes ownership". There's probably more details to it than that, but AAGGGH! SOMA and Monsoon are two of my favourite things about the neighbourhood, and they're getting the boot. Why would anyone want to close such terrific little places? *sobs brokenheartedly*

It's been a week and I've barely been out of the apartment. I started feeling better on Saturday and went to the studio, but after a few hours I relapsed into a snivelling coughing mess again. Over the last two days, I have seen things come out of my nose that I had only heard of in legend.

I've been passing the time by:

• Staring at the insides of my eyelids for long, long periods of time.
• Staring at things moving on a TV screen, ranging from The Kids in the Hall to Apocalypse Now (redux).
• When mentally capable, attempting work on a website.
• Reloading my blogroll to see if anybody's updated anything.
• Playing Lucinda Green's Equestrian Challenge on Playstation 2 for hours on end. Greg spotted this game on our King of Prussia expedition, and it has pretty much saved me this week. I now have a fine showstring of six horses at various levels of training, and I've won gold in every event at the two- and three-star level. (Four-star cross-country is still kicking my ass, but I'm getting better at it.) I love that I can do dressage in the game - in real life that's my favourite equestrian event, and it tends to be overlooked in games like this because people think it's boring or something. The dressage could be a little more challenging, but I still like it.

  It's probably the most realistic horse animation I've seen in a game - in most games the horses aren't important enough for them to bother to really get it right. There's a few things here & there that I'd change about the gameplay, but all in all it is the best game for the horse geek that I've ever seen.

• Drinking tea.

I really hope I'm better for real soon. I don't feel so bad today, but after Saturday I'm wary; I might be faking myself out, and really I'm at the top of a downward spiral. We'll see.

UPDATE: Yeah, I knew it. I hadn't even published this post yet, just saved it to finish later, and while working today I sneezed with enough force to throw out my lower back. It'll be okay in a day or so, but, really... was that necessary?

Greg made an interesting observation during our trip east this year. He noticed that on the flights from Vancouver to Chicago, Chicago to Philadelphia, and Philadelphia to Chicago, the plane was filled with videoscreens: passengers with laptops, portable DVD players, PDAs, games, you name it. Walking from the bathrooms at the back of the plane towards out seat, each row seemed to be aglow.

On the flight from Chicago to Vancouver, though, it was all books and magazines.

We're not exactly frequent flyers, so it gets me wondering: is this a familiar pattern? And if so, does it apply just to Vancouver or to all Canada? Does it happen on flights to Toronto as well? Does it depend on the airline (we were flying United)?

All our flights were in the evening or night, so it wasn't as much a matter of people just getting work done in daytime flights and napping in the evening.

Maybe some of you air mile millionaires can shed a little light on the subject...

I'm not sure we're getting the best deal on this-here global warming thing. This is Vancouver - you'd think it'd start feeling more like, say, California. But while the rest of Canada is getting "unseasonably warm" temperatures, we're getting windstorms, hailstorms, and more snow in the past two months than I'd seen in the previous three winters here.

Still, at this moment the snowflakes are huge, mega-sized cartoon flakes, falling softly in the dusk. And you can't really complain about that.

So far in 2007:

• New Year's started with an issue between friends that resolved, more or less, but wasn't a great intro to the year.
• Eight-hour drive to Portland, including snow and Seattle rush hour.
• Nephew's birthday party in Portland featured 20 five-year-olds, who were extremely well behaved but still caused me a huge unpleasant wave of anxiety about the pros and cons of having kids.
• 20 five-year-olds are also the perfect breeding ground for germs, and so now I'm home sick with a nasty sore throat and the first hints of sinus trouble.
• Which doesn't compare to how the year started for Derek over at Penmachine - send some good thoughts his way.
• For the second time, someone who was supposedly committed to buying my old bass has gotten cold feet (without even coming over to see the bass, I might add). I'm not in a huge hurry to sell it, but this is pissing me off.
• Recording continues, but the pace has slowed a lot. And there'll be no band shows to look forward to for a while; rehearsals and planning make recording grind to a halt.
• My day was brightened by the Apple iPhone announcement, but I'm annoyed to learn that they didn't announce an update to iLife. Which I need because my old version of iPhoto '05 can't handle the number of photos I have in it, and I'm hardly about to buy iLife '06 if '07 might come out this year...

And the weather continues grey and lifeless as ever.

There've been good things too, but when you're sick and self-pitying it's easier to indulge in sulkiness...

We were supposed to drive down to Portland today for the weekend. Greg's parents kindly offered to fly us down, but we said no no, that won't be necessary, it's only six hours, we don't want to wait around at airports, we like driving the new car, the only way it could be a problem would be if there were a snowstorm, and that really doesn't happen too often.

This morning:

Out of curiousity, I checked the airport's site... most flights seem to be leaving on time.

Nothing particularily auspicious about this year so far. I guess it needs time to find its feet.

Most of the past week has been spent recording, specifically a song called "Anything More". It's been slower going than some of the other songs. The solo version is quite different from the band version. The band version is much more upbeat and energetic, and it's sort of what we're used to now. But we're not recording the full band, and the song needs to have more of the same lonely haunting quality as the rest of the album. So this is more like the solo version.

We're trying to keep it simple, but as we've discovered time and time again, "simple" is harder than it sounds. We've spent hours fine-tuning a short keyboard line, or adding an interesting guitar part, only to decide in the end that the song was better without it. These explorations can be frustrating, yet at the same time necessary. It's easier to accept something you've done as good once you have toyed with it a bit and discovered that it didn't need anything more. It's like in order to keep things simple, we have to start simple, add tons of layers, and then take the layers back off again.

Plus, who I am kidding, all I have to do is count how many tracks we've got and I have to admit it's not really all that simple.

But it's slowly getting there. And even though "Anything More" bogged us down for a few days, we've still probably made more progress in the past month than we did in the six months prior. We did the end guitar part of "December 25th" in one day, and it felt right immediately; hardly any tweaking necessary. The biggest thing remaining is final vocals for most of the songs. Of course, now that the holidays are over and "real life" is picking up again, the pace may slow slightly, but it's nice to hear real, measurable progress in the meantime.