mmmmmmmontreal

(not my pic, lifted from their website)

Of montreal are beyond fantastic. They played Lee's last night, their second time in Toronto this year, and while dancing my pants off, for the first time in my life considered becoming a groupie. Owning an existence of long drives listening to nothing but the 8 gazillion Of Montreal records, and nights of dancing. But then I realized its more fun to dance with friends and Mark, because he's got the MOVES, so I'm staying put for now. The show started off with about 5 hits right in a row - all from the same album. They had butterflies on their guitars, gigantic smiles on their faces, choreographed rock action, and very very good fashions. I crushed and swooned (with restraint, and respect for my dancing man).

Check out some of their MP3s here!

Housewarming on Saturday!! 7pm or later, BYOB, and we've got the baked goods!

Vacationing subway stations

The TTC is announcing all subways stops, with hilarious results of course. This morning the commute was made a little bit funnier:

"Lawrence West is... uh... Now arriving at Lawrence West."

WHERE WAS IT BEFORE?! Methinks it just got up late, and thankfully managed to arrive just as my train got there.

Monday, day of rest.

I'm feeling not very refreshed after my 9-hour sleep last night, because it wasn't nearly enough to make up for the total lack of sleep over the weekend. I got to feel pretty lame on Friday after watching a What Not to Wear marathon with my mom, and then waiting up till 2:30 for my dad to call for a ride home from his night of beer and wings. He decided to find his own way home instead, forgetting that I was waiting up, and his feeling bad landed me his car rather than my mom's van for my road trip to guelph. For those (everyone) who don't know, his car has the best car stereo EVER (and air conditioning!). I think it could make even Britney spear sund fantastic. I had a very nice time blaring Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and other newly acquired music all the way to the Will Ferrel Marathon.

Speaking f Will Farrell marathons - if you're told that there's going to be a movie marathon followed by going to a bar, you're going to assume this things starts early, right? i figured Marathon = 3 movies, which at 2 hours each should mke a good start time about oh, 2 pm? I showed up at 1:30, figuring I'd be right on time with a chance to hit up the LCBO, only to find out I was SIX AND A HALF hours early. I'm the most unfashionable person in Ontario I think ;) It gave a me a chance to catch up with Aine, Lesley and Ben and get the nachos eaten before other people showed up to devour them.

In other Ferrell-a-thon news, they were actually raising money for will ferrell. They had a big thermometer sign (Ferrellometer) and a Save Ferrell cup that was passed around the party AND the bar. People at the bar chipped in about $10 - they love their Ferrell. Lesley is going to convert this money to cheque form, and mail it off to Ferrel, so he might be able to get a nice hot meal out of it. S random - but a very very fun thing to do at a bar.

Crash

For anyone who hasn't seent he movie Crash, see it. I watched it last night and it was absolutely shocking and terrible, but very very good. It's a bit of a look at racism and ugliness, with a bit of redemption (of the non-religious sort) thrown in so that you don't end up wishing the world would just go away.

Busy weekend ahead, starting from tonight: Sushi at Jun-Jun and then Pretty Girls Make Graves/Tangiers at the Mod Club. I think I'm going to work from downtown tomorrow since I need to get annie to the vet before she loses her remaining teeth. Then on Saturday, its off to see Aine and Lesley at their Save Will Ferrell-athon. The Sunday, back to Whitby by 1pm for a goodbye party for my big cousin, who's moving to Vancouver in a week. Good times!

puponabun

Lifted from puponabun.blogspot.com. I don't know them, but they have impeccable taste in weiner dogs:

Of Montreal!

After talking (to myself) about if for about a month, I finally biked down to Rotate This and got tickets to see Of Montreal next week at Lee's. If you're looking for a night of craziness and dancing, this the place to be. I'm going to get me a button this time. Between that and my (restraned) shopping at American Apparel on the way home, I'm broke, but my consumer urges are sated :)

Clap your hands say... khaki

Sooo funny:

Clap your hands say DANCE PARTY!

Don't rain on my grotto

I think Mark and I managed to get one of the only rainy weekends of the summer for our much-anticipated camping trip. It worked out well anyways, I'm not much for complaining. We had nice dry nights around the campfire, hiked to the Grotto at tobermory, and a beautiful beachin' day yesterday. We ended up driving to Sauble, where the water and waves were fantastic. It was nice to get back to a comfy bed last night though.

Oh, and on Friday, I got to go see some of the tennis tournament with Mark and some of the kids frm Variety Village. What a great time, and what a sweet bunch of kids. Adults I guess. I got to see Clijsters kick some ass in the quarter finals - I felt a bit bad for her opponent, but it was really cool to see someone play so well that another pro can't even get on the board.

Here are some pics, including the first visitors (Basia & Becky) to the new apartment:

I normally like Thursdays. Today, however, has been wierd. I have a strange feeling in my stomach and even though I know the cause, it still feels strange. It's a result of the horrible dinner (hot wings, onion rings, and popcorn) that made me sick and didn't let me fall asleep till two; it's because of the really emotional Me and You and Everyone We Know and the almost being hit, and definitely being hated on, by cars; and it's the complete craziness of this week. I also dreamt that one of my best friends was dating my ex-boyfriend, and they both were following me around to see if i was ok with it and I just couldn't get away. So upsetting.

Tonight I finally have a peaceful night at home - it's going to be relaxing but also maybe a bit lonely. Mark's going home to Richmond hill so it's going to be very quiet. We still don't have TV and I'm not missing it at all, but maybe I'll bring the laptop home and watch some movies and bake cookies. Ideally I'll unpack some more boxes.

Tomorrow is camping - a long drive to MacGregor Point at Georgian Bay, which means that I should get to do some serious relaxing this weekend.

A good weekend.

Friday's show went really well - no technical slips and I felt really happy and confident. I chair-danced the whole time. Here's the setlist:

What Ever Happened? The Strokes

Gentleman Reg/ The Boyfriend Song
Sam Prekop/ C+F
Arcade Fire/Neighborhood 2 (Laika)

On to you/Cons
Sufjan Stevens/Predatory Wasp
The Notwist/One With the freaks
Of Montreal/The Party’s Crashing Us now

(Cuff the Duke/the future hangs
Great Lake Swimmers/Various Stages
Kind of Like Spitting/Old moon met New
Clap your hands say yeah/In this home on ice
Broken Social Scene – 7/4

Friday night was a mix of furious packing and relaxing at Future's - I meant to go for a half hour for one cup of coffee, and ended up staying till two (3 hours) for that cup of coffee plus two pitchers of Sangria. It was really night to have a good night with Ainaz and Kurt before the move. We stayedup packing till about 4, and were up fr 7 to move up to the new apartment. It's looking pretty messy right now with all of the boxes, but I'm pretty sure it'll be beautiful when everything's done. I'm happy.

I'll put up some pictures as soon as it's a bit more organized - tmorrow if tonight is productive!!

Up for Sale!

I thought I already posted this... but it's dissappeared. I'm sitting here feeling slightly hung over from the four drinks I had last night over 6 hours, and I've decided that the only thing that will fix this mess is a Louisiana Chicken sub and possibly a new apartment. Good thing both are in my grasp...

I'm filling in today for Daria's show "Up for Sale" on CHRY 105.5 - Nicole's going to help me out :) I've made a semi-finalised playlist and i think it's going to be a very good show. You can listen at the interweb. I also found a brand new broken social scene song, "7/4 (Shoreline)" that I'll be playing for folks who like that sorta stuff.

Tomorrow I get to move, which means tonight my hungover self gets to pack.

Holopaw just put out a new record. I haven't heard it yet, except for the 'single' (curious) which can be found here, but I'm sure its just beautiful. The last album they put out was one that I always knew I should buy, because it's wonderful, but I never actually got around to buying it. I'm pretty sure I'll own this one by the end of the week.

Also, Audioscrobbler just updated their site, and it's got a lot more pink and a lot less blue than before - I guess they're trying to attract the ladies ;) Anyway, its a great site, you should add yourself, and then add me as a friend - I'm here.

My mom saw my new apartment last night when I went to pick up some boxes from Nicole, and I'm shocked that she actually likes it. I mean, I think it's nice and warm and beautiful, but my mom is known for hating the places that I live in - she actually cried when I moved into the place on Dupont, and it wasn't because I was leaving home again. 3 days!!!

Annie embarrassed me into actually packing, rather than reading and looking at the empty boxes by actually climbing into one.

A quick thank-you

Thanks very much to Matt, from the great mp3 blog/music info site

You Ain't no Picasso

for giving me the code for my new "playing incessantly" section!

Hah - I just remembered a moment from my first relationship - he had called me I guess while I was sleeping, and I guess I just kind of worked it into the dream I was having. Anyways, I apparently thought I was talking to my friend about this cute actor boy she liked at school. I was, however, just babbling about this cute boy to my then-boyfriend, who was mad at me for a while after that, and I'm not sure if he believed me about the dream talk. I wish I talked in my sleep more often - I'm pretty funny sometimes.

Two Countdowns!

One is to this Friday, when I might be doing a radio show on CHRY from 3-4 due to Daria's New York vacation.

The other, even better one, is to Saturday, when Mark and I move into the new apartment, hooray! It's exciting AND stomach-churning.

And now a weekend recap:

Megan is amazing. I came home after work to find a bouquet of roses waiting to cheer me up , which really worked. Honestly - nicest girl ever.

Went out on Friday for Fadi's birthday - Here's us at Maggie's before the bar and before birthday boy got pukey:

On saturday, I got up early to take my mom and nana for a day of shoe-shopping and gambling. Nana got lucky and won a bunch on the slots, I got lucky and had a nice pair of boots bought for me, and a piece of nana's win :)
I got back to Toronto in time for fake prom, and ended up going to Taste of the Danforth instead with Mark and his friends - it was good times and sooo much food - although we spent the whle night looking for a good, cheap souvlaki and ended up not getting any before we were too full from other things


Sunday: Boated all day and the went to the Danforth AGAIN, this time just with my parents and Mark. What a nice, happy day.

Here he comes to save the day:


And yes, this is my mom climbing fully-clothed into the lake:

Pretty colours!

It's from my parents supremely thick-skulled dog, who took advantage of (planned?) me being laid up on the couch with my eye covered with a massive bag of frozen stir-fry to go and snoop around the kitchen for edibles.

Terrible and true...

Deborah pointed THIS SITE out to me. It makes me want to go be a bank teller or something.

Montreal part deux

So this was montreal for the second time in as many weeks, but this time the only goal was fun (and maybe a bit of loooove).

I had some of the worst coffee of my life on the way there at the big apple; it was full of terribleness to the last drop (which of course ended up all over the car door and my jeans. Put your head on your left shoulder:

Mark and I snuck succesfully into a single room at the residence, thus avoiding an extra $140. We got there at midnight on Friday, and walked around the city till 2ish when we managed to drag our weary bodies up the mountain and into bed. Woke up early on Saturday thanks to beautiful sun, and crazy Aussie rugby sounds coming from the McGill football field right beneath our window. The next 8 hours were spent walking around the city, basically having a culinary tour. Crepes (ham w/ cheese and apple & maple syrup) for breakfast, and Schwartz' smoked meat for lunch, mmm greasy.

We decided to nap at around 6, and were woken up around 10 by the fireworks (Symphony of Fire). We had a pretty decent view from our window, so we watched the whole show, which was absolutely beautiful. Tried to arrange some hook-up with Basia, and had some Sangria on St. Denis to kill time. We eventually found Basia at Miami's really sketchy rooftop patio, and I managed to get one drink out of the bartender (who was out of wine for sangria, sour mix AND whisky). It was a pretty fantastic night, hanging out with Basia is always fun, but it came with the added bonus of seeing some people from Western that I hadn't seen in a really long time. After the bars closed, we had some street peanutty chow-mein, followed up by poutine at the 24 hour poutine place... mmmmm.

Met up with Erin and Nick for Tam-tam on sunday, which was pretty cool but no where near as interesting as the crown of 60 medieval dudes wailing on each other with weapons made of duct tape and foam. Highlights included the Archer, who was very cool (relatively speaking) and Rat-Man who was super odd (relatively speaking.


We couldn't find the picnic that Basia had told us about so we ended up going to Fairmount Bagels and having some more yummy montreal food. Took Erin out for some belated birthday sangria, and then Mark and I split off for some romantic times in Vieux-Port. We had a really nice dinner at Jardin Nelson, the really pretty garden restaurant that I found with Seema a couple weeks ago, and then walked around taking in the place for the next few hours.


Yesterday, we came home (after another stop at Fairmount Bagels, and the best hot chocolate ever at Au Festin du Badette) and watched the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was nowhere near as good as the original. The drive home was nuts:

All in all, fantastic weekend that was at least 50% food-related.