Random recollections:
Thursday night - Newspaper Taxi played "The Silver Dollar Room". The band North of Summer opened for us, and they were great (even though I only caught a smidgen of their set)! We talked to them after the show and are talking about playing some shows together, which is cool... they seem to be at about the same stage as us as a band, which is nice to not feel like we're "hangers-on"... nor that we're carrying some of their dead weight. We'll see how it goes. Some of their members are in Peterborough which, as far as I've heard, is marvelously supportive of "the arts" in general... so I'd love to get to play a show there.
After we sound checked, I dragged the band down to the Edge 102.1 streetfront studio on Yonge to drop off a CD for their "Extreme Band Slam" competition - their website made it sound like the whole band had to be there, which turned out not to be the case. It worked out great anyways, because while we were there we talked our way onto the air with Martin Streek -- who used it as a chance to plug the Band Slam and encourage people to vote -- but was also very good about getting our show dates known and announcing the website several times, and so on. Ari and Paul talked on-air with Martin for several minutes (you can't BUY that kind of exposure!) and 24h later we has close to 7000 new hits, well above the 2000 we'd gotten in the preceding 2 or 3 months. Martin invited us back to announce future shows, and we gave him a disk so... connections are being made! It's all very promising!
Friday night - I "thought" I had nothing going on; and was feeling pretty good about all of the band stuff that had gone so well the night before; and I'd found out that, just by coincidence, a very cute young fox was going to be visiting that night, meaning I would most likely get some awesome snuggles; and I'd just made plans to go visit with a different cute young fox the next week... then I was reminded by my bandmates that we'd all bought tickets to go see "Volition Aire", a band who's been very chummy with us and very supportive of us, and helping us to get a little more into the "music community" and getting some gigs and so on... which is really cool, and which I want to support, even though I think that they've got a ways to go before they are really at the same level as us. Volition Aire was playing a "battle of the bands" and I got there just in time to see them, but Paul saw a band play before them who he thought were really great and who would be a good match for us to play shows with - so more contacts were made at that show, also very cool. Then I went home and got much nice snuggles from the afore-mentioned fox. Yay!
Saturday night - Once again I had also sort-of temporarily forgotten my plans for that night (where has my brain been lately, I've been a real flake about what shit's been going on!) xeonbunny reminded me about Dakk's birthday party when he suggested we go together and then go to Blue Mountain the next day... which sounded like a fine idea. I made a shirt for Dakk (as previously planned), just a black T-shirt with a green "Playboy Bunny" symbol appliquéed on the front, and then Fuzz and I headed to the party.
Turned out to be a very interesting party, and generally a very good time! At first it was just gay male furries, but then some of Dakk's other straight friends showed up, and then more furries, and then more not-furries... but everyone seemed to be pretty cool and get along fairly well, and I certainly had some fun conversations with some of them throughout the evening! There were some fairly odd bits, too -- like spending half an hour or more trying to politely extricate a fairly "straight edge" fur from an uncomfortable conversation about LSD with someone who just WOULD NOT let the topic die... having that same someone find out at some point later in the evening that I was someone who he'd had a long-standing grudge against based on some perhaps-misguided assumptions, and him feeling the need to take me aside and apologize about that, now that he'd seen I was actually a pretty decent guy (which was cool but a bit awkward)... and then having his boyfriend be fairly flirty and forward in general (and not just with me), which fortunately didn't cause drama, it was amusing and he was flattering but perhaps a bit too earnest (despite being a very nice guy)... and then more conversations/activities of a sexual nature which made the straight-edge furry uncomfortable again, and then Fuzzybunny being his usual rambunctious-while-intoxicated self (which is several notches above his usual rambunctious-while-NOT-intoxicated self) and annoying many of the remaining party-goers, and at least somewhat traumatizing the straight-edge fur... and me feeling very sympathetic towards the poor fur who'd been traumatized repeatedly throughout the evening, and wanting to try to help make him feel more comfortable without really knowing how to do that... and then, when the conversation got into a particularly uninteresting (to me) rut for a good while, trying to retire to get some rest but and not being able to sleep... and then the party retiring to the bedroom and getting friskier, which could have been cool, but which I wasn't really into at the time, mostly due to "too much encouragement" from SEVERAL sources... and feeling empathetically uncomfortable for the poor "straight-edge" fur, who rather quickly extricated himself and went to sleep on the couch, and feeling like I'd much rather join him out there, but not knowing how to do so gracefully and without causing several flavours of drama... and then finally deciding to remove the still-wound-up Fuzzy from the situation and let everyone enjoy the rest of their night while Fuzz and I got some sleep at my place prior to skiing/snowboarding the next day...
(Sunday) - ...which could still have happened, since my Sunday night band practice was canceled due to funkdooby being ill... but which didn't happen because the rabbit was too broken. But the rabbit and I watched The Forty-Year-Old Virgin together, which was freakin' HILARIOUS, and then the rabbit headed off for home... and as I was settling in to make something of my evening, I got a call that Saviolo's father had passed away last night, and that he and fuzzmonster wanted some nice, quiet, comforting company for the evening... so I brought a couple bottles of (as it turned out, very enjoyable, particularly in Dralen's new Spiegelau glasses!) wine for the evening, and we went out for Japanese food, celebrated the life of his father, and watched a couple movies.
I FINALLY saw Trick which was a very nice little movie with a LOT of mouth-watering eye-candy (read: hot, HOT boys!) in it, which has motivated me to start hitting the gym again (starting after work today!); and then we saw "Tampopo" ("Dandelion") which is a great little Japanese flick about a women (named Tampopo) trying to keep her husband's noodle shop running after his death... and despite a couple of scenes which were probably a little painful given the occasion, I think it was enjoyed by all, since we're all quite "into" good food, and it being a movie largely about the quest to make really good food. :)
And, through all that, I failed to:
get enough sleep on ANY of the last three nights;
go grocery shopping OR make any of the meals I had planned for myself (Moroccan Pork Stew, Thai Coconut Chicken Soup, or Indian Butter Chicken);
send off any more CDs to radio stations (must be done this week!);
go snowboarding;
see the movie Walk The Line which I have been meaning to see anyway, and which I wanted to see even more after hearing Joaquin Phoenix' and Reese Witherspoon's impressively accurate vocals on the soundtrack, in an HMV listening station this weekend;
investigate the White Meadows Sugar Maple Farm in Niagara are, which I'd like to visit at an appropriate time to go to a "sugaring off" (OK, just did that sorta... apparently I've got another month before sugaring off starts, but I should book a spot now);
research the political parties, their national leaders, and the candidates in my own riding, including my riding's voting history, in order to appropriately direct my vote later today (which I will do real soon).
Tonight - Finish work, work out, vote, band practice, sleep early...
Tomorrow - Wake REALLY early, work early, leave work early, drive out to visit previously-mentioned cute fox before rush hour makes that a painful proposition.
B.
After we sound checked, I dragged the band down to the Edge 102.1 streetfront studio on Yonge to drop off a CD for their "Extreme Band Slam" competition - their website made it sound like the whole band had to be there, which turned out not to be the case. It worked out great anyways, because while we were there we talked our way onto the air with Martin Streek -- who used it as a chance to plug the Band Slam and encourage people to vote -- but was also very good about getting our show dates known and announcing the website several times, and so on. Ari and Paul talked on-air with Martin for several minutes (you can't BUY that kind of exposure!) and 24h later we has close to 7000 new hits, well above the 2000 we'd gotten in the preceding 2 or 3 months. Martin invited us back to announce future shows, and we gave him a disk so... connections are being made! It's all very promising!
Friday night - I "thought" I had nothing going on; and was feeling pretty good about all of the band stuff that had gone so well the night before; and I'd found out that, just by coincidence, a very cute young fox was going to be visiting that night, meaning I would most likely get some awesome snuggles; and I'd just made plans to go visit with a different cute young fox the next week... then I was reminded by my bandmates that we'd all bought tickets to go see "Volition Aire", a band who's been very chummy with us and very supportive of us, and helping us to get a little more into the "music community" and getting some gigs and so on... which is really cool, and which I want to support, even though I think that they've got a ways to go before they are really at the same level as us. Volition Aire was playing a "battle of the bands" and I got there just in time to see them, but Paul saw a band play before them who he thought were really great and who would be a good match for us to play shows with - so more contacts were made at that show, also very cool. Then I went home and got much nice snuggles from the afore-mentioned fox. Yay!
Saturday night - Once again I had also sort-of temporarily forgotten my plans for that night (where has my brain been lately, I've been a real flake about what shit's been going on!) xeonbunny reminded me about Dakk's birthday party when he suggested we go together and then go to Blue Mountain the next day... which sounded like a fine idea. I made a shirt for Dakk (as previously planned), just a black T-shirt with a green "Playboy Bunny" symbol appliquéed on the front, and then Fuzz and I headed to the party.
Turned out to be a very interesting party, and generally a very good time! At first it was just gay male furries, but then some of Dakk's other straight friends showed up, and then more furries, and then more not-furries... but everyone seemed to be pretty cool and get along fairly well, and I certainly had some fun conversations with some of them throughout the evening! There were some fairly odd bits, too -- like spending half an hour or more trying to politely extricate a fairly "straight edge" fur from an uncomfortable conversation about LSD with someone who just WOULD NOT let the topic die... having that same someone find out at some point later in the evening that I was someone who he'd had a long-standing grudge against based on some perhaps-misguided assumptions, and him feeling the need to take me aside and apologize about that, now that he'd seen I was actually a pretty decent guy (which was cool but a bit awkward)... and then having his boyfriend be fairly flirty and forward in general (and not just with me), which fortunately didn't cause drama, it was amusing and he was flattering but perhaps a bit too earnest (despite being a very nice guy)... and then more conversations/activities of a sexual nature which made the straight-edge furry uncomfortable again, and then Fuzzybunny being his usual rambunctious-while-intoxicated self (which is several notches above his usual rambunctious-while-NOT-intoxicated self) and annoying many of the remaining party-goers, and at least somewhat traumatizing the straight-edge fur... and me feeling very sympathetic towards the poor fur who'd been traumatized repeatedly throughout the evening, and wanting to try to help make him feel more comfortable without really knowing how to do that... and then, when the conversation got into a particularly uninteresting (to me) rut for a good while, trying to retire to get some rest but and not being able to sleep... and then the party retiring to the bedroom and getting friskier, which could have been cool, but which I wasn't really into at the time, mostly due to "too much encouragement" from SEVERAL sources... and feeling empathetically uncomfortable for the poor "straight-edge" fur, who rather quickly extricated himself and went to sleep on the couch, and feeling like I'd much rather join him out there, but not knowing how to do so gracefully and without causing several flavours of drama... and then finally deciding to remove the still-wound-up Fuzzy from the situation and let everyone enjoy the rest of their night while Fuzz and I got some sleep at my place prior to skiing/snowboarding the next day...
(Sunday) - ...which could still have happened, since my Sunday night band practice was canceled due to funkdooby being ill... but which didn't happen because the rabbit was too broken. But the rabbit and I watched The Forty-Year-Old Virgin together, which was freakin' HILARIOUS, and then the rabbit headed off for home... and as I was settling in to make something of my evening, I got a call that Saviolo's father had passed away last night, and that he and fuzzmonster wanted some nice, quiet, comforting company for the evening... so I brought a couple bottles of (as it turned out, very enjoyable, particularly in Dralen's new Spiegelau glasses!) wine for the evening, and we went out for Japanese food, celebrated the life of his father, and watched a couple movies.
I FINALLY saw Trick which was a very nice little movie with a LOT of mouth-watering eye-candy (read: hot, HOT boys!) in it, which has motivated me to start hitting the gym again (starting after work today!); and then we saw "Tampopo" ("Dandelion") which is a great little Japanese flick about a women (named Tampopo) trying to keep her husband's noodle shop running after his death... and despite a couple of scenes which were probably a little painful given the occasion, I think it was enjoyed by all, since we're all quite "into" good food, and it being a movie largely about the quest to make really good food. :)
And, through all that, I failed to:
Tonight - Finish work, work out, vote, band practice, sleep early...
Tomorrow - Wake REALLY early, work early, leave work early, drive out to visit previously-mentioned cute fox before rush hour makes that a painful proposition.
B.