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+food
+playing hooky
+survival love

after being stuck in bed for 4 days straight, tonight is exactly what i needed. i had the pleasure of catching Jaymay in Toronto, performing for her last night on tour. this girl can make mad trumpet sounds with her mouth and has those perfect speedy guitar fingers that i can only wish i was born with. even though most of her songs seemed to be about boys [save the one about her dog], they were all so unique and sincere. she’s like a little new-yorker-vocalist-musician-poet-artist. her pretty tunes and clean voice made me feel happy and comfortable and almost fully healthy again.

check ‘er out– MP3: Jaymay – Sea Green See Blue

now, Jaymay was great and all, but HAYDEN….ah, finally, Hayden. i’ve liked this dude since back in the late 90’s [anyone remember Bad As They Seem??] but it’s been hard keeping track of him over the years. he has some very loyal Toronto fans, seeing as he is originally from Thornhill [a suburb just north of Toronto] but most people i know don’t care much for him at all. i’d say that Hayden is quality Canadian music, and unfortunately rather underrated. i guess i’m a sucker for any male canuck who can rock the harmonica. and guitar. and piano. Hayden brought out his pal to play the trumpet for this show and it added a nice dimension to the performance. he asked the crew to dim the lights and serenaded us song after song and then again for 4 more songs during the encore. i don’t think i will ever like any of his newest or oldest songs more than his in-betweens, but i’m so happy i finally got to hear his music live. i found myself wishing i could tuck him away in my pocket and place him on my couch to play for me as i try to sleep tonight. we’re going on day 5 of the evil-winter-flu-cold-virus-thing and i can’t wait until i can breathe again!

Home by Saturday is one of my favourite songs by Hayden. i’ve always wanted to be able to play this song on my guitar.

listen to & watch le video here!

trois:
+ dynamite walls.
+ step into miles.
+ not getting diarrhea at work.

about a month ago, i woke up one morning with a pinching pain in my armpit. in the few days that followed, it spread down my bicep to my inner/side-elbow, along my forearm, and eventually into my wrist and last three fingers. the pain was sometimes sharp and at other moments it was tingly. eventually i started to lose feeling in my fingers which worried me the most. after a few dr. appointments, it was decided that i was experiencing the symptoms of Cubital Tunnel Syndrome and was possibly having some spine trouble. i have yet to look over all of my x-ray results with the dr. but i feel alright. about a week after the onset of pain, i was running for the bus and slipped on some ice. not only did i miss the bus and had to be pulled up by a nice stranger, but i managed to injure my wrist further. this all kept me off the computer for a while as i’ve been wearing a wrist brace. for all you right-y’s, try typing emails and posts with your left hand index finger for 3 weeks! i’m happy to report that though i am still experiencing pain, my wrist is doing much better. so i’m back! i hope to be posting a little more regularly from now on.

toronto is a winter wonderland and i love it. i am not usually a winter person and most of the season i spend a lot of time dreaming of warm and far off lands, flip flops, sipping drinks on a patio, and running through sprinklers. but there is something about trekking through mountains of snow just to get to the end of the driveway that makes me smile. i guess when getting to the bus stop is an adventure in itself, everything else becomes a little more exciting.

unfortunately, some ridiculously mean people decided they would steal my shovel from right outside my front door and that took a little fun out of the whole thing. i don’t, by any means, enjoy shoveling the driveway [especially when it is covered in 2 feet of snow] but really, what is a person to do when they wake up one morning blocked in by snow and realise they have been robbed of their one and only survival tool? not fun. and of course mums blamed me because i was the one who left it outside the night before :(

either way, i’m trying to appreciate the unusual weather. if only i were 10 again and could benefit from the snow days! we are to expect about 10 more cm of snow in the next two days. i’m going to give myself another week and if my arm is feeling much better by then, i hope to hit the slopes and give snowboarding on my feet another attempt!

three good things:

+ Douglas Coupland. i’ve gotten back into a Coupland mood lately and re-read Life After God [one of my favourite books] and am now onto All Families Are Psychotic.
+ sneaking homemade popcorn into the movie theatre.
+ finally meeting people you’ve always noticed and telling them about noticing them. it always makes me feel weird and stalker-ish but it seems to make other people smile!

some giraffes make flute-like sounds

ever since i met my first pig, i could not understand how anyone could possibly think he was saying “oink”. when i eventually attended french immersion and learnt that les cochons disent “groin groin” i thought either all pigs must be french, or english-speakers must not be able to hear at all. i was under the impression that all animals spoke the language native to their land, but humans could not hear the words for lack of something in our brains. i assumed animals could understand everything we said, we just couldn’t understand them. unless of course we had a special bond with them, like in the case of my dog.

i used to tell my friends that my dog could speak both english and spanish, and that i was trying to teach her french. when i played with cats, i would call to them in spanish with a “misu misu” rather than a “here kitty kitty”. they all seemed to listen to my grandma when she did so..i figured most of them probably spoke spanish. at that age, it never occurred to me that humans could not all make the same sounds.

nowadays, this interests me greatly. i’ve been looking for books on onomatopoeic words of various languages but i’ve had no luck. i am not only looking for animal onomatopoeia in different languages but rather all kinds of onomatopoeia – musical, mechanical, and the noises of everyday life, in different languages. how do you say “ding-dong”, “boing”, “fizz” any other way? if you happen to drop in on this post and know of any interesting ones, please send the titles over. otherwise, i guess i will have to start writing one myself!

***

happy 2008 !

three good things:

+ my cold is slowly disappearing!
+ this used to remind me of the end of summer but now it just reminds me of happy times in 07.
+ hah. this one’s for you..you know who you are.

until today, i don’t think i’ve ever felt life happen.

i’ve noticed it happening, i’ve seen it happen, but today i finally felt it.

folks, i’m engaged.

years fly by. two years ago feels like just two weeks ago, yet as i think about all that has happened between then and now, everything and everyone seem so distant.

clearer yet, are the sunny days we spent together many years ago. i can still remember the mystery play we wrote when we were 11.

*

this morning i had some sad moments. such moments call for the magic of monsieur Yann Tiersen . his song “Comptine d’un autre été: l’après-midi” is one of my absolute favourites .

in 2005, Aidan Gibbons featured this song in his beautiful short film called “The Piano”. a film about the past and how one man carries it with him:

for your smile and your voice, which i will miss always.

today was for forgetting about our worries and our strife.

baloo would be proud.

three absolutely wonderful things:
+racing mums home in the snow and ice..and winning.
+playing cards in our pyjamas.
+burning the cookies but eating them anyway.

randall munroe

i am imploding again

+you are the sun, you are the rain, dadadadadadadadada, whoa-oh whoa-oh
+hp
+just-a-sweater weather

+night-time confessions in coffee shops
+making promises you can keep
+knowing they want to know you for the rest of both your lives

three good things:

+ having a nice bowl of oatmel, on a sunday afternoon, in my pyjamas.

+ the autumnal equinox – HAPPY AUTUMN EVERYONE!

+ hockey season is très très near.

:)

*bonus: + the happy kind of news