‘Sup? June 23, 2009

It’s been awhile…I have no real reason.  Well, maybe I do; I haven’t finished any projects lately so I haven’t had a lot to share.

To tie you over, here are some of my favourite pictures I’ve taken lately.

I went fishing with my dad on the day before his birthday, and we found a new-to-us lake called Phyllis Lake.  It’s a campsite and lake and we had one of our most successful fishing trips ever!  I even caught (and released) well more than five fish including rainbow trouts, perch and suckers (yucky suckers).  But my favourite part was watching the birds.

Lazy bald eagle.  One of the other fishermen said that the eagles were lazy as they would wait for the osprey to catch a fish and then they’d go after the osprey and steal it from them!  And then I saw it happen!  Dirty bugger.

Industrious osprey.  They were very busy catching meals for themselves and others.

Last night when I came home from work I saw a much-pierced young man on a bicycle doing something on a Telus box in front of my parking lot with a wicked grin.  I’m not sure if he was the artist or just taking a picture but when I saw what it was he was so devilishly admiring I had to get a picture (the signature was added on to the photo, it’s not on the box, I’m too straight laced to make graffiti).  If you’ve been reading this blog (and it’s preceding blogs) for awhile, you’d know that I admire graffiti (with the exception of simple tagging; I like colour or well stylized stuff), and this little stenciled piece was a delight to me.

And if you’re interested in personal stuff, I’m here to let you know I’m trying to lose weight.  This past year has been tough on me for reasons unknown and I gained about 15 lbs.  If you pay attention to BMI stuff, I’ve stepped over my proper BMI line and headed into obesity, which is such an alarming word.  Anyway, I’m really interested in losing my muffin top; but not so much my bust.  And maybe my thunder thighs, but you know, whatever.  So I’ve been working with Spark People, and if my neurotic scale can be trusted, I’ve lost 5 lbs in the last two weeks by monitoring my diet and exercising a lot more than I typically do.

According to my often lying scale, I’m currently at the weight I was in high school.  This is where I rant about BMI and all of that.  I weigh what I weighed in high school, but I am about 2″ thicker in the waist (and probably elsewhere).  BMI doesn’t seem to take into account that muscle weighs more than fat.  Being a farm kid, I was curvy but built (you don’t want to know what I was lifting to make me so buff), but now that I’m a costumer, that muscle has degraded.  So really, I’m trying to be more musculer and toned.  Anyway, that’s my rant.

How’s life in your world?

Waugh! June 3, 2009

I’m going to the Edmonton Folk Festival!  Woot!  I was flirting with the notion of heading to the Calgary one; they’ve got Gomez going there and I’ve been a fan for some time, and Esthero and Sarah Harmer will be there too, but mostly I wanted to see Iron & Wine and he’s coming to Edmonton!

I also got the Wednesday night ticket, through which I will see Sarah McLachlan!

The artists I am most looking forward to seeing are Jill Barber (check out the dress she’s got on in her bio!), Neko Case, Iron and Wine (who is far more than his cover on the Garden State Soundtrack…), Old Man Luedecke, Danny Michel, and Souljah Fyah (who I once saw when I first moved into E-town and loved them).  I’m also interested in seeing Kathleen Edwards, Eivør (they’re from the Faroe Islands and there’s some knitting tradition there, although I don’t know how much knitting the artists of this group do), and I’m hopeful that I’ll enjoy Great Lake Swimmers live because I haven’t fallen in love with them on CD.  And I’ll be very un-Canadian and probably try to shy away from Joel Plaskett; I used to like him, but now his voice grates on my nerves something fierce.

The coolest thing about the Folk Fest is the workshops.  They have all of these mini-stages set up throughout the grounds and most of the artists don’t just do shows on the main stage, many of them collaborate on the workshops, so you get a really interesting intimate setting with them.  Oh my heart. The other cool thing about the workshops is you get to know and love some of the more obscure artsists.

There will of course be knitting, and potentially spinning, in public.

And as I was writing this post, my copy of Iron & Wine’s Around the Well arrived in the mail!

Waugh!

Beast June 2, 2009

10 years ago, I was listening to the local “hard rock” radio station constantly.  It was playing in my office and in my car.  I didn’t like female vocalists, and the angrier the better.

If you had told me that within five years I would stop listening to that station I would have laughed.  But I did.  I couldn’t stand the repetitive nature of the playlists, and I grew weary of the completely sensless banter that spewed forth every five minutes after a song or two.

So I moved my dial to the furthest left on the dial where the local university radio station lived.

And if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have heard of nor appreciated the female vocalist that fronts a hip hop group like Beast.  Here’s their MySpace link.  Her voice is like a cool glass of chocolate milk or plush velvet; deep and rich.  I can’t tell you how much I adore her vocals, and the mix is fantastic.  If you’re not intrigued by my little paragraph of praise, just let me tell you that the female vocalist was a vocalist on Les Triplettes de Belleville.  Enough said.