Tonight

The very first non-symphony concert I ever went to was Leonard Cohen. It was on 'The Future' tour and I was still in elementary school so I was still very young. It was at the Royal Theatre and I just remember it being awesome!

Tonight, I will see him for the first time in roughly 20 years.

It will be awesome!

Update: It was awesome!

Ode to the Hot Water Bottle

As if the small dump of snow this morning wasn't enough, it is howling in Victoria tonight. My deck chairs are no where near where they were this morning and my windows are rattling so hard I keep thinking they're going to break. I know that a few people will probably throw a couple of curses my way for saying this, perhaps even burn an effigy from some leftover hair in their bath tub, but I like snow. I'm not a huge fan of the negative temperatures that come with it, but I like snow.

Given the dip in the temperature, I got out my hot water bottle a few nights ago. My dad lives in an old house with an old furnace and just-as-old radiators. My friends referred to it as 'the cold house'. Two fire places at either end of the building supplied most of the heat which left the bedrooms in the middle of the house with a mean winter temperature of about 5 degrees... on the Kelvin scale. Hot water bottles were a must in my childhood.

I no longer need a hot water bottle but it's a ritual that I can't break. The return of the hot water bottle heralds Christmas for me in a way that TV, radio and print ads never will. It is winter, I must have a hot water bottle. As I filled it up last night, I remembered a writing project from last year. Our professor would give us a topic once a week and we had to write 100 words on it. No more, no less. On the topic of 'winter', this is what I wrote:

The hot water bottle creates a small area of warmth at the end of my bed. I creep my feet towards it until I hit that spot where it gets too hot and I pull them back just a little bit. I don’t need a hot water bottle but it wouldn’t be a winter night without it. My feet dance to find that perfect location. I find it; my stillness signals my cats and they jostle each other for the best position on this heat source.  Tomorrow morning it will be cold, but tonight it is a comfort to us.

Oh, hot water bottle, thank you for holding not just heat but so many wonderful memories.

Getting Creative

The weekend is finally here!! YAY!! I'm especially excited because in just over an hour, I'm going to see my Baby Bro for the first time in 7 months. He took off to Europe last April to travel and spend some time with our family in Ireland. We're going for Thai food because the only Asian food he could find in Europe was "crap Chinese" (his words, not mine).

It's been a very busy week for me and this weekend isn't going to be any different. The only change is that I've been busy being creative and that's much better than being busy cleaning the house. My employer is going to be showcasing various employee's artwork or other visual art. At the suggestion of a friend, I put my name forward for my photographs and received a very positive response back. On one hand, that's really flattering. On the other, I've never actually shown my photos as works of art (other than on my wall) so I'm now trying to narrow done my thousands of pictures into 10 which I will post on here and ask you to help me narrow it down to 5. So far I've narrowed it down to 49 possible photos. Getting closer...

The other creative thing I've been doing is writing. I submitted the following for a "What Does Dance Mean To You" competition at MoonDance. Your submission could be writing, drawing, photo, sculpture, any creative medium you wanted but it had to capture the love of dance. The song I'm talking about is Beethoven's Peasant Dance in Eflat major.

I take my place on the stage as she sits at the piano. I love dancing to live music--so much better than pre-taped in my opinion--and I hope my joy and excitement about it transfers to the audience. She looks at me as she places her hands on the keyboard. It begins. It's a song I've heard so many times I could hum it backwards in my sleep. I have lived this music; every note, every nuance, speaks to me and directs me across the stage, long and flowing with the legato, quick and lively with the staccato. I give my all to the audience and when the final chord plays I have no regrets. Every emotion in the music was transformed into a physical manifestation through my body and I became the dance; it is the best performance not just of this piece but of my life.

She gets up from the piano and moves to the kitchen for a cup of tea. I pick up my audience, my beloved bear Pola, and follow her.

"Perhaps it's time we enroll you in some dance classes."

It is the happiest day of my eight year old life.

It Was a Weekend Fling But I'd Never Forget It...

I spent this past weekend in Vancouver visiting my dear friend, Carolyn, who had the misfortune of moving there roughly six painfully long weeks ago. Carolyn is not only a fantastic friend but she was my running buddy so it was a real Boo-urns moment for me. Yay for Carolyn for going after what she wants in life and all that, but if it's okay I'm just going to sit in the corner and be a little bitter about it. Originally my plan had been to surprise Carolyn by just showing up on her doorstep on Friday night (with a little help from the Boy, of course, because I didn't even know how to get to their place) but then she started saying things like 'come to Victoria' and 'visit' so I quashed that idea the only way I knew how: blowing the first surprise of the weekend.

I would have posted my own pictures but when I got home, I realised that the only pictures I took

were of wine bottles because they talked about Sheila having a few roos loose in the top paddock. Classy!

I still managed to surprise her with a little trip to the spa to get our mani-pedi's on because if anyone deserves a little spa time, it's her. It was great to be waited on by four women (even if one of them did nick my big toe and drew a little blood) but it was even better doing it while watching Sex and the City 2. Cheesy, girly good times! Other than a little stroll that same afternoon, we spent much of our time just hanging out at her apartment which is really want I wanted: spending time with an awesome friend. She lives sinfully close to Max's so we were never without good food to go with our good alcohol!

This was also the weekend where I met a bunch of strangers. Okay, it wasn't a bunch, it was two: Stacey and Shannon. Are they still strangers if you know them through the Internet and they're not part of Nigeria's royal family*? We had plans to meet at the flower stand at Granville Island Market. I arrived a tad early after lunch with another Vancouver friend so I wandered aimlessly around the market trying to eat up some time. In wandering, I realised that such a busy time at such a sizable location when they don't really know what I look like and vice versa might not have been the best idea. Oh well. I wandered back to the flower stand and hoped for the best. Not only did we find each other, but we had a really pleasant afternoon. The girl's were lovely to chat with as Stacey ate her cinnamon bun (Your secret's out, Stacey. Sorry.) and I drank my coffee. The conversation flowed, I never once looked at my phone to see my twitter updates (although I did look once to check the time), and I would gladly hang out with them again. If all blogger meet ups are this awesome, sign me up for more! Especially if they're part of the Nigerian Royal Family!

I was a little surprised how many photos of accidents appeared when I googled 'BC Ferries' but

then I thought of all the accidents I remember times by the number I probably don't...

I realise that I'm very trusting of a corporation which has crashed more times than Super Dave Osborne.

Of course, all good things must come to an end so I woke up Monday morning, packed my bag, figured out my schedule and then headed off for one last coffee with Carolyn in a downpour of epic proportions. I would just like to take this moment to give a shout out to the awesomeness that is Gore-Tex. My jacket is four years old and it has kept me dry in Tanzania's rainy season and in Victoria/Vancouver's mini-monsoon season. Worth. Every. Penny. The ferry ride was exciting as it was the first time I had ever used the wi-fi. I was thinking I would write a quick blog just say 'dudes, posting from the ferry!' but by the time I made it through the 100+ blog updates in my reader, I had 10 minutes before we docked. Egads, that was a lot of reading.

It was fun, Vancouver, if over a little too quickly. Here's hoping we get to do it again real soon.

*My favourite scam email was 'someone in Benin with a last name that is the same as yours has died leaving no relatives and we need someone to claim the money'. Honey, there's very few people in Ireland with the same last name as mine (my own family has two different spellings, true story!), never mind a small West African nation.

Posts Are Brewing... Shortly

I had an awesome weekend in Vancouver. I have a lot to write about but a couple of things need to be tended to first. Blogging is my fun time so I'm holding it ransom until I'm done the other stuff. It won't be long but I just wanted to let you know that nothing happened to me so I can avoid worried phone calls a la my dad who left me a message about an hour after I planned to be home wondering if I made it home okay. That's the last time I joke that I'm meeting strange people as he and Big Bro drop me off at the ferry!

Dork in the Key of G Major

I am very excited because this time tomorrow I will be in Vancouver and I will most likely be drinking. I say 'most likely' because there is an off chance that Carolyn and I won't bust out the alcohol as soon as we see each other (it's totally cool to drink in a Skytrain station, right?) but I figure it's pretty slim... like Kate Moss slim. I'm so excited about this weekend and seeing Carolyn that you'd think it had been six months, not just six weeks, since I last saw her.

I may or may not be posting over the weekend (it depends on how much writing I get done tomorrow morning), but I wanted to leave you with some music geek humour before I check out. After hearing about my mom phoning me to laugh about the Corb Lund video, a friend asked if my mom was a fan of country. Prior to six months ago, the closest my mom ever came to listening to country was Beethoven's 6th.

I'll let you all go google that so you can see why I think I'm funny.

Good night, folks!

The Least I Can Do

Last year, I stepped out of the elevator and came face-to-face with #408. He was decked out in his dress uniform with all his insignia and medals carefully placed on his left breast from his time served in Korea. He had a small bag of what I assumed was garbage hanging off his cane handle. We smiled at each other as I stepped of the elevator. I put my hand out to shake his and said 'thank you'. He grabbed me in a hug, "no, thank you." With a lightness of foot I've never seen from him before, he jumped onto the elevator as the doors closed and was gone before I could react. I managed to keep my composure until I got to the door of my apartment and then I started crying.

A simple thank you will never be enough for all the men and women who served and who continue to serve our country. They do a job which I am far too selfish to ever do and they do it day-in day-out without question. Unfortunately, thank you is all I have. May you see many Remembrance Days and know how much you are appreciated.

Lest We Forget.

If you'd like to send a letter or postcard of thanks: Any Canadian Forces Member