Corner of Bourbon & Division

curtana has asked me to write about the music I love. If I had infinite amounts of time, I would never get to the end of this subject, and tonight I only have about an hour in which to write this post, get dressed and run to work. Alas.

Working 911 here has been exhausting (in a good way), because not only is it quite busy but I also have to learn everything anew, since each comm centre works differently. So instead of waking up at 14:30 or even 15:30, I've been sleeping until 16:00 or even 16:30 every day (I also finish later in the morning, which means a bit less sleep than usual), and today I had a half-hour phone call with my parents, which resulted in my having even less time than usual for writing.

( Let me sing you the song of my people! )

Okay, NOT a good idea to listen to Joan Baez in November. She breaks my heart on a good day. But God, what a voice that woman has!

Makes me wish I had enough talent to sing like that. :)

I think that I live in the past, musically speaking. I have yet to find an artist past the late eighties/early nineties that I can truly get into. But anything pre-1980? Bring it on.

I'm not sure how I managed to miss out on the fact that Joan Baez is awesome. Just listen to the voice on her:



Only in my wildest dreams would I be able to sing like that. Wow.

Three more days of night shift. Tonight, and then two twelve-hour stretches this weekend. Yechh.

I have been reasonably productive today. I did a load of laundry and hung it out to dry, which is more than I usually get done during my night shifts. Actually, this whole week has been pretty good, productivity-wise. Either I'm getting used to night shift, or else it's because there's so much extra light out there and I'm just not sleeping as much this week.

I really ought to do my dishes. Don't feel like it. :P


sandman7's concert was last night. It was charming, and sandman7 himself was great, as usual. He performed from Phantom of the Opera, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and Le Blues du Businessman, all of which were a pleasure. I had lots of fun, and it was great seeing everyone again. Plus, owldaughter gave me a lift to work after, which was awesome.


Now I have to have "breakfast" and get going. I have an appointment at the gym, and after that I'm due at work. Busy, busy, busy. I just wish I was less tired.

Apart from mostly living under a rock this week, things got pretty stressful at work, albeit in a strictly work-related way, and not in an interpersonal-suck kind of way, if that makes any sense. Things also worked themselves out in the end.

Thursday we got a frantic call from a client who said his suicidal wife was missing, along with their car. We immediately went into high gear —human lives on the line tend to do that. We had that sucker tracked within twenty minutes, and found the car parked in a strip mall parking lot. Ten minutes later the police were on the scene, but there was no sign of the woman. A few more minutes' searching found her having her hair done at a local salon. So much for "suicidal and out of control." Our client appeared on the scene not too long after, and as the policewoman on the scene put it, it was pretty obvious that he should have been the one on medication and not his wife. I would say all's well that ends well, except that our tracker told us, when he came back to the central, that he was pretty sure that poor woman was going to get the crap beaten out of her that night when they got home. So, not a really happy ending. An okay ending, because we didn't have to prevent a suicide, but it was still of the suck for the poor woman who has to deal with her controlling husband.

Call number two came last night, from a big trucking company (name omitted so I don't get fired) who told us, and I quote, that their truck full of copper had been hijacked. There are two magic words in that sentence: "copper" and "hijacked." Any theft involving metals sends people into high gear, and hijacking a truck is a very serious offense. So I had the trackers' supervisor hanging over my shoulder (he happened to be in the central when we got the call) while I called Bell Mobility for updates every three minutes.

As the supervisor put it, we could smell blood in the water: the Boomerang unit was answering beautifully (always iffy on trailers, because the unit only has its own tiny independent battery, unlike other vehicles where it's hooked up directly to the main battery), and it was cruising down the 417 at a pretty decent clip. We weren't sure for a while whether it was going to turn north and stay in Ontario, or whether it was going to continue east and into Quebec. We had a police report number from the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) who were standing by if it stayed in the province, and we quickly got the SQ (Sureté du Québec) on the line and had them set up a roadblock at the border.

So the trailer crosses over into Québec, and the SQ take the guy down. Pull the guy out of the truck at gunpoint, shove him face first into the asphalt, cuff him and put him in a cruiser, only to find out that, umm, he's the driver.

Yeah.

So there was a little miscommunication. The client lost contact with the driver, and in his mind that automatically translated into "hijacking." >_< The SQ was understandably pissed off, but it was in no way our fault. So we told the client that he'd better give his driver an early Christmas present, and explained that they'd be getting a bill from us. Oh, and that he might want to apologize to the SQ for wasting their time.

It was just that kind of week.

Today went really well, OTOH. Got up at a decent time, had breakfast with the Parental Units, and then had a kickass practice with Random Colour, after a month's hiatus. We beat "Enter Sandman" into submission, did some great work on "First We Take Manhattan," and made tremendous progress on "The Bonny Swans." The latter especially felt good by the end: we've definitely got a good idea of where that song is heading now, which we didn't have before.

After band practice I walked to Archambault, where I replaced my Cat Stevens album that was eaten by my tape recorder a few years ago, and bought "Surrealistic Pillow," which I'd been meaning to get for a while. They were both half-price, so I actually stayed within my budget. Yay! I then walked over to Chapters and spent all my gift cards on books. I got a new Charles Todd and an Ellis Peters that I didn't have before, and I have started collecting the Amelia Peabody mysteries, so that I can read them anytime I please. :D

Then I went off for dinner with the Parental Units, where I found out that the alarming rattling sound I was hearing when I drove the car (which my father generously offered to check out for me today) was the ball bearing on the rear left wheel coming apart. It was only a matter of time before I lost my wheel going down Autorout 15 on the way to work (or coming home), it seems. So the car is now back at the garage, and I'll be getting it back on Monday if all goes well.

owldaughter lent me the second season of "Slings & Arrows," which I am now off to go watch. I've already watched the first episode, and it looks just as awesome as the first season, but in a completely different way. Yay!

I got kimberly_a's CD mix in the mail today.

*bops happily*

I have spent the day doing nothing but post to Bluebook and sleeping. Sleeping is good. Sleeping is my friend.

The concert rocked hardcore. If you didn't come, you missed something really fun.

Invisible played first, opening with their hit single "Little Black Plane," and rocking out throughout the set after that. Highlights were

1- talyesin on backup vocals, which I had never seen in performance before. He made me choke on my water during "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend," and was generally awesome.

2- gmarc on drums. Watching the bass drum and the high hat bounce away from each other over the stage was hilarious. The high-hat grab and the "Oh shit I lost a drumstick! Oh well, I'll just improvise with one!" was awe-inspiring.

3- sandman7, the "Great Old One of Good Clean Fun," as a backup vocalist was great too. He does have a really nice voice. :)

4- baronscartop working the hair. I'd never seen him do it before, and I was very impressed. He has rock star hair and a pink bass named Honey. What more do you need?

5- The lead guitarist. I mean, that guy is hot.

"My Girlfriend's Girlfriend" is my favourite song of their set.


Random Colour kicked ass and took names. Not only that, but we did it amidst a plethora of technical difficulties. We covered "A, D, E" by Invisible, and our guitarist broke a string.

"A, D, E" was a last-minute addition to the set list. We decided to try it out last week, and ended up doing it in walz time, to the great pleasure of our audience. Of course, the joke was even better because Invisible performed that song just before we did it. :)

We got very nice feedback on "Do You Get High?" which I appreciated because it's our weakest song and I always feel as though I'm butchering it. It was good to hear from an outside perspective what we actually sound like when playing that song.

Then one of the soundboards went wonky during "Julia," because none of us could hear the right notes coming out of the cello. That worked out well in the end, and the song went really well after that. I didn't screw up the tempo either on that or on "Stutter," which I'd been doing all the night before, and I didn't even really need my metronome, although I took it onstage with me just in case.

And, of course, the final insult was karine's microphone falling apart at a crucial moment during "Bad Reputation," although to her credit she picked it up, put it back together and kept going almost without missing a beat, and the rest of us followed suit, and the song continued almost as though nothing had happened.

Naturally, our encore song was a big hit with Invisible. We'd tried to keep it a secret for as long as possible, but two of them figured it out. Still, doing "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?" was a great deal of fun, and chews the hell out of my drumsticks.


So it was a night of triumphs, with a couple of frustrations to keep things interesting. I' d like to take this opportunity to say how much my friends rock. You guys are all awesome. You keep me on my toes, you keep me creative, you keep me from stagnating. I'm am very proud to count you all friends. Here's to many more years of rocking out.

And, today, I rest.

Rock on.

So, owldaughter took some photos of me at one of our past practice sessions, and in a fit of heretofore unseen bravery on my part, I've made some icons of myself. Yes, I know I've done that in the past, but these show more of my face than the others.

You can see one of them attached to this post, and here are the rest, in no particular order:



This last one was me being silly with my image editing software. I may not keep it.