we're ba-ack ...part 2...

so where was i? oh yeah day 6...
...actually i think i finished day 6
...so day 7 - we wake up and hang out in the cottage, more puzzling, more eating, more swimming...later i get started making the first sangria (pineapple, lemons, limes, oranges, strawberries, one bottle red wine, some rum, some cointreau, a little vanilla...). nice and lazy day. drive into peterborough late afternoon to pick up adam and michelle and some more supplies (corn on the cobs, portabellos, steak, more booze, a ball, ... basically of stuff to feed and drink us for the next couple days - oh yeah oreos, chips, 2 bite brownies...).
when we got back to the cottage dan and shannon had arrived, so we hurried the supplies and adam and michelle and me down the hill to the cottage and the reunion of the bucks began amid many drinks and some food prep and a whole lotta eating. what a great night. it was so special to have everybody gathered together in such a great spot. we got kinda drunk. mighta been the tequila... also midnight swimming and throwing a glow in the dark frisbee in the lake.

day 8 - wake up and eat great pancakes and bacon and ... i know there was more but i don't remember what exactly... then more swimming. 1131 am adam says "1131...time for a beer". he got right into the spirit of things. and we couldn't let him drink alone now could we? a great water game for the afternoon - diving off the dock onto a floating double air mattress, dumping each other off the mattress, also diving catches off the dock where every catch is a glory catch...although we didn't manage to actually complete too many of those catches, and some of the splashes looked quite painful. and swimming frisbee. more drinking, shannon and dan paddle around the lake in the canoe, we all get lots of sun. some napping and puzzling and reading happens. i finished "the ice road" by gillian slovo. dinner becomes peppers, zucchinis, onions, and mushrooms, all marinated and put on kebabs, and steak kebabs, and marinated portabellos off the bbq, and corn on the kob and fried breads. nice wine, and a pitcher of sex on the beach. more laying around after dinner. played some taboo. another midnight swim where we saw shooting stars. does it get any better?

day 9 - breakfast is a herculean effort cuz not only do we not want to carry any food back up the hill to the car but we still need to fit adam and michelle and two tents, a cooler, and our stuff into a suzuki swift for the 2+ hour drive back to toronto....breakfast was omelettes with zucchini, onion and cheese, a mound of leftover grilled veggies now refried in butter, and some fried bread. did i mention that adam used 18 eggs to feed 4 people? (dan and shannon are vegans). we swam some more. threw the frisbee around in the water. enjoyed our last time at the cottage. lucked into a super easy drive back too.

so that's kinda what happened to us when we left the city. doesn't really tell the story of how much it meant to me. how good it was to see friends like that. how much i love sarah. if i say that people at work have been commenting on how relaxed i looked that might just start to give you an idea... maybe i'll try to explain all that stuff in the next post.

we're ba-ack

day one - drive to kaarin's family home near mansfield ontario, in mulmur township, leaving toronto a couple hours later than planned but still on time for the wedding. the setting was very pretty. a nice big house set a ways back from the country road, surrounded by trees and hills. they had a short ceremony under the spreading branches of a huge old tree, performed by an elderly couple - a practising buddhist and a christian minister. and then so much food, all made by the bride's mom (half dozen turkeys, a few hams, a pork roast, a salmon, and a smoked whitefish and tons of vegetables, all awesome). after all the eating, and a few speeches (short and funny) there was dancing and drinking. me and mark bury ended up dj-ing with our ipods after the light jazz band finished up. it was pretty fun actually, and we conjured up some pretty good sets. it was beautiful watching sarah with her eyes closed in front of the speaker, just dancing herself away to the cure and the violent femmes... slow dancing to marvin gaye with her... later after she faded out to our tent up in the pine woods, and after i got drunker, i was dancing a lot myself. partly i blame robin for what happened. see we got a little crazy and were having too much fun maybe, so when i suggested he should do the worm (remember how to breakdance folks?) he tried it. he dove into it only he just hit the dance floor. flat out. so it was only fair that i also make an honest attempt. luckily i "remembered" how to do the worm myself. and i was so loose and solid that i hit it perfect the first time. the second time maybe not so smooth. dove into it too far like i was not 30 years old, and i feel it in my back kinda but luckily i was very very loose at that point. third or fourth time - i'm not so clear - i hit the worm pretty hard and bruised both kneecaps. fifth, maybe sixth, seventh,....lots more times i think i was ok. dance until 4 am. sarah complains that i woke her up when i landed in the tent. mark and kaarin were both hammered and dancing up a storm. kaarin was a beautiful bride, and mark looked pretty sharp himself.

day two - a nice brunch spread too. turns out sarah's grandma, who we knew lived close by, actually lived around the corner and is really fondly remembered by kaarin's family. we drove by the old fairley farmhouse on the way out. and sarah got to walk down memory lane cuz the new owners were very generous. apparently fairley's drive past the farmhouse every once in a while.
we drive up to killbear provincial park, north of parry sound, and set up camp. it's pretty up there. all georgian bay shield rock. the water is amazingly clear. we swam the first evening, and went to bed early.

day three - more swimming, and walking along the shore. later some cliff jumping. everything is pretty nice up there. drive to a store outside the park for ice cream cones. the most amazing sunset i've ever seen turns the cliffs red and the sky a million other colours. we watched it from the beach after a rain storm.

day four - sarah's dad joins us, bringing steaks and more beers. and we have a nice visit with him. more swimming and cliff jumping and diving. i wish i coulda gotten pictures of sarah jumping. she says she'll be one of the really cool moms cuz she'll be jumping off the cliffs with our kids too. she's pretty great obviously.

day five - (i think) we wake up and as we consider making brunch the sky turns darker and darker and darker and as we rush to pack up and load the car, it starts to rain, and it only gets harder and harder and harder, and we get wetter and wetter and wetter. the rain is in fact so ridiculous that if it had stopped the moment the car was loaded we wouldn't have surprised.
and we drive to the cottage. settling in there around dinner. more swimming. after dinner i had a beer and start on a puzzle. vacation is now in seriously full swing.

day six - we drove into peterborough for some brunch and some more groceries. return to cottage and swim some more and eat some more really good food. drink more beers and do more puzzling.

to be continued tomorrow .... or some time soon...

vay-cay-shun...things to do ...

ok so ya won't be hearin nothin for a week or so. today we leave town for a wedding near creemore ontario, then tomorrow we continue on to killbear park until wednesday, then we go to sarah's cottage for the rest of the week where we'll be joined by a couple other folks. all along the way there will be beers to be drunk, and lots of nothing to be done...sort of...
see you when i get back

wisdom? i'm not an old man but i play one on the basketball court

well folks, long time no posts....sorry bout that...i was busy turning 30 and celebrating my friends bbq of love and playing basketball and dying in the heat and drinking drinks ... not in that order i think...actually i'm drinking a nice manhattan right now...another sign of being old...?
ok so here's the big sign of my advanced age...i played basketball tonight and i didn't dive for a single loose ball...old guys don't bounce so good on concrete...that's wisdom right...i could've gotten to a loose rebound too if i'd hit the dirt but i didn't...hmm...sarah will be so proud...or did i miss that rebound cuz my reflexes are too slow now that i'm 30? doh....
i better get to bed cuz it's almost 11pm and i need my beauty sleep.

ps. happy birthday jen. and if you look anything like a soccer mom then that can only be a good thing for soccer moms. don't mind my silly musings...

shantaram part 2

i think i'd like to travel in india.
i've never really thought that before reading this book. india is still something totally outside of my experiences and maybe i'd have to change...or find more patience or personal space tolerance or openness?...to really enjoy it or even to be able to appreciate it, but i'm fascinated. i know it's all romanticised bullshit, but then so am i a lot of the time... it's a bit over the top cuz i'm only a couple hundred pages into this book and maybe i even want to learn to speak hindi or marathi or something. the main character learns it and locals are amazed and entranced and overjoyed just to hear him say "my name is lin" in marathi...it's a bit heart-warming. maybe it's like hearing non-raptor journalists mention toronto or the raptors...or like the little smile and flutter of excitement i got when lin met a couple of canadian tourists in bombay and described the open friendly expression "he came to associate with all canadians"...
this book is just so beautifully written, and smart, and funny, and new to me...and something i figured out walking home from cherry bomb coffee shop this evening - for me, one of the best importantest things about books is having characters i can measure myself against...that's what so much of it is about...the act of measuring is even kind of unconscious, or not, and an act of admiration and striving for more or betterness or purity or truth...maybe holding onto the flaws that define me or strengthen me and reaching for what else there is to be made into me that i want to be...maybe to want to mean someting... characters can do all that and strive and try and dream and if someting didn't happen there wouldn't be a book i guess. but fiction doesn't detract from wanting and dreaming shouldn't just be frivolous or ever discarded... and we don't get the kind of tests that heroes get, where there's clarity in the results or confirmation of who we think we are, and whether or not we can be special...but the characters in books do and so we can measure against them and take what we can and fine tune and balance and add and subtract and in an equation of hopes and dreams find the variables to equal ourselves to ourselves in our own inner mirrors...?
...apparently i'm inspired. i'm so thankful for that. it's rare, but not too rare i guess. very precious at least. thank god i work in a bookstore i guess...

i think maybe i'll try to learn indian cooking next. and maybe the language that goes with it...

i got some good news today - aaron's (a guy i work with who kendra knows) sister has some other commitments and besides she's already seen bruce springsteen 3 times (!?) so he has an extra ticket to the solo acoustic show at the acc on july 14th that's sold out...so i get to go instead of her! i've never seen the boss, and i'm extra excited that it'll just be him doing a solo show.

hmmm...time to go walk sarah home from work.

shantaram

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured."

that's the first line of the new book i'm reading. pretty good start. it's called 'shantaram' by gregory david roberts. it's about this guy who escapes from prison in australia and makes his way to bombay. he's part poet, or at least a writer, but maybe also a gangster kinda...haven't gotten that far into the book yet but the jacket said something like that. the indian mafia, and his part in it, are part of the story. i have a feeling from the first line that at some point things are not going to be going so well for Lin, the main character, but so far he's pretty interesting and happy...kinda glowing with excitement or new energy in the face of new experiences.

i picked this book up partly cuz they use that first line on the jacket, and it sounds like good writing, but also out of a desire to read about something entirely new and different to me. i'm really connecting with the main character, maybe cuz i recognize his sensitivity, and he has a perception i'd like to possess, and a grittyness too, and respect...anyway, i like him, but the setting is so far from me that it's stretching the powers of my imagination. which is odd in a way. i think it's stretching my powers farther than any fantasy novel i've read in a really long time. india has never been a place i've been very interested in, except for the food, but this book might change that. i'm fascinated by it in this book. and the characters are pretty brilliant too. of course there's a love interest. a beautiful woman with really green eyes, who's totally enigmatic, and says brilliant things, and might be dangerous or powerful or both.
it's definitely an adventure, without the indiana jones. more like an adventure of survival, and something totally new. maybe it's the totally new that has me so hooked... the really good prose sure doesn't hurt either.

...

played a solid hour and a half of 4 on 4 full court basketball on tuesday night which i can only describe as being kinda glorious. flat out running and good ball. i was knocking down shots pretty well, and it turns out that i actually have a little left hand finish ability around the basket. 5 left handed layups, out on the break, in traffic, off the dribble....(i'm right-handed and not ambidexterous so yes this is an achievement, and i've NEVER done it before tuesday night.)

...

work has been a real drag lately. i'm a little worried about coming to the end of my shelf-life at indigo actually. there's been no change or any real issues or anything this week, just not liking my job. hopefully that will pass - i seem to go in phases, and today was actually pretty good. hopefully also i will get the promotion i interviewed for a couple weeks ago. i'll hear about it by monday latest. fingers are crossed. if it doesn't happen then maybe it'll be time to look into other options...i'm cursing myself now for not getting more sorted out about a teaching career in time for september, and for missing an application deadline for a theatre sound-guy job that i just remembered wrong. oh well. something will come up. or i can start reading self-help books...

things i never thought i'd see...?

anybody else watching live8? here i was, innocently trying to conquer medieval japan on my computer...tv in the background with live8 on (hey there's no basketball)...and then motley crue took the stage. apparently i still love them. but more on that later. they start out with 'kickstart my heart'. pretty rocking. mick mars is doing all the heavy rock guitar intro stuff - mega feedback wail resolves into opening chord let it reverberate shake the guitar for new feedback wail and then the band comes out...vince neil is looking ok - a little rounder but not too much and give him a break anyway, quitting heroine will do that to ya...he does his best jesus christ pose with a big too simple to be faked grin - really really happy to be on stage on the nicest day in 10 years - he says 'how's it going canada?' and holds the mic out to hear the audience....this is just rock and roll. tommy lee totally rocks in with huge drum fills and they're off and running. yeah i apparently still love motley crue. and then it gets strange... between songs vince neil says 'so today is not just about the music...it's about 8 guys in a room at the g8...we're gonna send them a message...let's hear you send them a message...' or something along those lines.... i didn't know vince neil knew what the g8 was. so wierd...
and then they went back to being cock-rockers. they're pretty good at it. they've been doing it for over 20 years. and they didn't say anything else political anymore so no more wierdness to mess with me....just good clean (and they are too since nikki sixx actually died and was rescusitated -spelling?- in the late eighties or early nineties after a heroine overdose) rock and roll. there were some odd/funny moments too. for example, even though it was only 5 or 530pm, vince neil couldn't help but saying 'tonight' - as in 'how y'all doing tonight?' and 'let's get those hands in the air tonight' and 'make some noise tonight'...he did that about 9 times...
sarah says maybe it's cuz they've been up since 4am if they flew in or something. i think it's cuz they're rock stars. the other funny thing is that vince neil keeps holding his mic out to hear the crowd sing the next line or whatever only the crowd doesn't seem to know the words... buncha punk kids...i knew all the words. i actually feel like i have to sing along when he does that. watching it again (thanx to my tivo, and sarah just got home so i'm making her watch it...except she's just admitted that she doesn't know any crue...the shame...) ...watching it again i'm still impressed. he's lost a little bit of voice but he can still wail. it's so funny. they are more fun to watch and seem to be having more fun than most of any bands that have been formed since 1993. ya know why? no irony. they are really unselfconscious and just going for it even though they've been doing this for a couple decades. rocking out...pulling big moves...drum stick twirls...leaning on the guitar or bass players back...having total rock hair... and they're all smiling - at least when they're not making rock guitar faces or metal grimaces. it's kinda giving me goosebumps. maybe i should grow out my hair again so i can rawk... this totally made me think of you mere.

...

oh my god. dmc, as in formerly run dmc - until run got shot not that long ago, just came out on stage and they're getting some help from the actor who plays warrick on csi (las vegas)... and for their second song they're rapping over 'all along the watchtower' holy shit i think that's robbie robertson playing the guitar for them...i'm ....i don't know what to say....robbie robertson sounds kinda awesome...