Carrie's Birthday

Here's me and The Birthday Girl!

The Lilac Festival

We met up with some friends from UVic at the Lilac Fest. Here are Celeste, Morgan, Carrie and Vanessa. Let the good times roll!

Ryan enjoying the festivities.

Piano Bars Rock

Last night I went to a piano bar here in town. It was awesome.

It started off with your typical Canadian sobriety. Everyone tapping a finger or a thumb to the beat as we do with reckless abandon. However, in what seemed to be just a turn of the head or an acknowledgment of a comment I hadn't heard people were dancing on the stage and screaming the lyrics of some Chimpanzee song that I had never heard, but had a ring of familiarity. From then on it was mayhem. People were line dancing, kissing, conga lining, and all around having a good time.

I enjoyed this all thoroughly. It beat the hell out of the dance bars and was something to talk about. We would be a better people if these bars really caught on: at least they would be worth mentioning as a redeeming cultural property.

Book Review: Neither Here Nor There and The Lost Continent

I am doing these books together since they were in the same book I took out from the library. They were both very good and ran the same sort of theme. Here is a man who wanders alone through foreign countries and makes commentary about the places he is and the places he has come from.

Bill Bryson was born in Iowa, but moved to Britain when he was in his early 20s and still lives there. His books are fantastic to read and the pages seem to just peel away. I enjoyed Neither Here Nor There; which takes place in Europe, much more than The Lost Continent; his American adventures, simply because it didn't seem like Mr. Bryson had much to work with in the States. I mean that the US is so omnipresent in our mental environment that nothing surprised me much. Europe, on the other hand, supplied him with much more material. From the snotty and arrogant French to the notoriously negligent Italians, I was gripped.

His commentary is nothing short of hilarious. He longs for a bygone era that wasn't quite so polished, but had character and a time when every commercial opportunity hadn't been shamelessly exploited. In these respects I could relate to the writer and sympothized with him. Both are worthy reads and I recommend either.

Books on CD

I walk to work and have been shamelessly borrowing Carrie's MP3 player everyday to keep me company and get me going. I figured this would have to end soon as I feel bad hogging it and although Carrie would never say it, I think she wants it back. It's just that CDs are so passe, and I hate carrying them around everywhere and having to change CDs frequently when I get bored of the musician. My compromise: a book on CD.

I was at the Calgary "Public" Library (unlike BC, every city in Alberta, the richest province in Canada, makes you pay an annual fee for access to the library: it's ridiculous, but that's another post) the other day and was browsing the fiction titles when I came across some books on CD. "What a great idea," I thought. I can feed my mind during a time usually reserved for a mental recess.

So, I took out The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and have been so far impressed. The opening paragraph struck a chord with me and I have been mesmerized by the narrator. It is really a fantastic way to pass a walk to work. I highly recommend it to anyone who commutes. It sure beats the toilet humour and commercials on FM radio. I do, however, have to come up with a way to express that I haven't actually read the book. Maybe I will say that I have experienced it.