Sonic Youth are coming to town as part of the Virgin Festival in July. They’re one of my all-time favorite bands and I refuse to miss any of their shows. So today I’ll be picking up a ticket to the Sunday date which includes Sonic Youth, Ben Harper, and Jarvis Cocker. Ben Harper was amazing at Sasquatch this year and I’d love to see him again with his new band, The Restless 7. Their sound is more blues-rock than the softer stuff that Ben usually puts out. Tickets are on sale at noon today if anyone else is interested in attending. I’m only going to attend Sunday’s performance. Saturday is headlined by Our Lady Peace and, as the From Blown Speakers blog says, “apparently somebody considers an Our Lady Peace reunion headliner material.”
In other music news, Blitzen Trapper is at Richards on July 30 and The Jesus Lizard is playing the Commodore on Oct 24. I’ve always wanted to see The Jesus Lizard. I missed them when I lived in Calgary in the late 90′s, most likely because I was a broke student.
I’m back on early morning time again. Last week I was all sick and my sleep schedule got monkeyed up. I find if I don’t get a good start on Monday morning then it’s an uphill battle to be up early the rest of the week.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)Friday after work a pack of us made the trek up the Grouse Grind, a hike I’ve been meaning to try ever since I showed up in Vancouver in February 2000. I know why they call it the “grind” now. It’s 853 meters of elevation gain in just under 3 km of hiking! All you do is climb stairs for an hour until you stagger out of the trees at the top of the gondola. It’s a great workout, especially to prepare for hiking in the summer so I’m planning to hit it a few more times this season.
Saturday I was feeling energized from the hike so I took my bike out for the first ride of the summer. I went from Gastown to the Second Narrows, across North Van and back over the Lions Gate.
Here’s a map:
View in a larger map
Later in the day I went out to check out The First Ravioli Store because I’m a big pasta fan and they are reputed to have the best pasta in town. I came back with some butternut squash ravioli which I cooked up with a butter sage sauce. So tasty! I’ll be hooking up their pasta again soon.
Otherwise it’s been pretty chill. After the past few weekends out of town it’s been nice to stay home and get things cleared up. The camping gear is still strewn about the living room, but that’s how my place always looks in the summertime. I’ve finally installed a towel bar in the bathroom, which was a little bit of a donkey show given I haven’t done any construction work in the past few years.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)I have piles of things to write about but I’ve been so busy doing stuff I haven’t made time to write. So I’ll start with tonight and work backwards.
Tonight I got my key fob for the amenities building that’s part of our complex. I’ve got a key to the gym and now I just have to hook up access to the music rehearsal spaces and the photo lab. Looks like the music room is in limbo since their last program head left the building. The way it works is each area (metalworking, photo, music, etc.) has a head person. That person is responsible for getting keys to new people and organizing meetings and stuff. If there isn’t a head person, then it’s pretty tough to get keys. Hopefully that’ll be sorted out soon. If not, I’m going to have to push this forward one way or the other! I need my music room!
My tax return came in the mail today too so after I’d sorted out the key issues, done some shopping, and had a little nap I wandered through Gastown to deposit it at a bank machine. When I walked past Steamworks I ran into a co-worker and her friends who invited me over for a drink. Awesome! I love running into random people in downtown. It’s one of the things I enjoy most about being in the city center where you’re likely to crash into people you know at the strangest places.
Yesterday night was the amenities building meeting where I got an orientation and keys and stuff. Then I wandered over to Reilly’s place where the rest of our band was putting together some new songs around the kitchen table. I was told that I’m to provide Tom Waits style vocals to this eerie country thing they wrote. Reilly bows his acoustic with a violin bow while Aaron plays another acoustic guitar. I guess all they need are some weird scratchy vocals on top of it. I’m going to hit up a friend of ours to write something since I’m a terrible writer (not to mention an even worse singer!) The Tom Waits spoken word style I can probably pull off.
Rewind back to the weekend now. Friday I started feeling the beginnings of a cold kicking in. Shan got sick right after getting back from Sasquatch on Wednesday and it made it’s way over to me. I might have picked it up somewhere else too, who knows with these things. At any rate, I wasn’t about to let a cold stop me from going camping! So I threw my gear (which was still strewn about the living room after Sasquatch) into the car and rolled up to the backroads past Squamish. Josh had scored a campsite off a forestry road and I found myself parked amidst a litter of spent shotgun shells where some rednecks had previously been out to have some drunken firearm fun. The shotgun shells and the pile of burned beer cans in the firepit pointed to good times in recent weekends.
I’m afraid we didn’t pack any shotguns although Reilly did show up with a mountain of Pilsner beer and some bear bangers which we tested out later in the evening. When in Rome… 
I headed back to the city on Saturday and mostly spent the weekend sleeping and getting over the cold that had kicked in pretty hard. I did get out to see the new Terminator film at VanEast Cinema. I couldn’t sleep that night so I figured I ought to get out and do something. Sunday was another day of sleeping and then watching the Anvil documentry film which I’ll get into later. I’m kinda tired now so I’m ending this here. I’ll try and post more about Anvil tomorrow night.
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