A reminder

A late reminder, yes, but a reminder nonetheless.

I’m playing at the Public Market today (Friday, Mar. 24) at noon.

Yee ha!

There really should be more of this:

Spontaneous serenades. Yesterday, while paused at a stop, my bus driver pulled a pan flute out of his pocket and began to play. He postively rocked out on that little pan flute, playing the most beautiful jazzy tune as though there was nobody around to listen–which, possibly, he might have thought was the case, as I was the only passenger, and I’m not sure he knew I was there. But I was glad for the song, and told him so when I got off the bus, much to his delighted dismay.

Sidewalk waltzes. Last night, The Gallus Brothers took a break from playing in a window nook at The Temple Bar, where much foot-stomping and boogeying was underway, and brought the accordian outside where they then played a waltz, which Morgan and I improvised haphazardly until a gentleman (who introduced himself as a ballroom dance instructor, and I believed him–for a big guy, he was quite graceful) offered us a quick waltzing lesson. “Like marching in place!” he said, between “one, two, threes.” I felt giddy and grand.

There’s nothing like a little self-promotion

In case you were feeling all bad because you don’t have plans for St. Paddy’s (which is this Friday, by the way, you’ve been warned) beyond sitting around by yourself drinking Guinness, now you at least have this: Friday night, at seven p.m., I’ll be playing my guitar and singing my funky little songs at The Public Market. Shawnee Kilgore will also be playing; the Gallery Walk will be underway. So you can come drink a cup of (highly recommended) old world hot chocolate and hang out and look at the artwork and listen. I can’t promise any Guinness, though, unless you go to the Nightlight after to watch the Clumsy Lovers. Which sounds like an awful lot of fun to me.

(Should you miss this show, but feel like catching another, Shawnee and I will be playing at the Market again the following Friday, 3/24, at noon.)

Sure, Canada’s not perfect, but…

Well, I’m freshly returned from my first ever dental convention. Having grown up in a medically-minded family where my nurse parents would take off on trips to mysterious “conventions” and return with pens, tote bags and foam stress balls in the shape of red blood cells, all boldly emblazoned with drug company logos, this was a bit like a trip into true adulthood for me. I returned with pens, tote bags, etc., to distribute among Mitch and the kitties (the kitties get the bags, and in exchange, we get hours of entertainment watching them play with the bags).

This mysterious convention was in Vancouver, BC, a city I fell increasingly in love with as the fog lifted and the skyline and mountains were gradually, teasingly, exposed. I’ve eaten more good food in the last 48 hours than I have in the past six months, and my magnificent bosses put us up in a swanky hotel on the seventh floor, from which I could look out over a small courtyard and watch fat flurries of snow fall and fall and fall and melt upon touching the ground.

It was a lovely trip, short and precisely what I needed–a few days outside my Bellingham bubble, a chance to be in the minority as I asked for the restroom and was told that I may find the washroom just down the hall and to the left. A bit of time in a distant country where crossing the border takes under a minute, as opposed to the trip home where we waited and waited and waited and were made to present small volumes of identification before being allowed back into our own country.

What the hell is this?

I work in a dental office, but I have cavities? Seriously, I thought my position granted me some immunity to tooth decay, but I see now that I was dead wrong. Pfff. Silly molars.

Speaking of molars, I am working on perfecting the art of the random subject change. The best example of a topic switch I’ve heard all week? In a discussion about identity, and how we people tend to define ourselves by clothes, possessions, smarty-pants books, etc., a friend of mine jumped in with, “See, this is exactly why I didn’t like jail,” and then proceeded with a bizarre anecdote about how he spent one day in jail and hated it. I laughed so hard I nearly fell off my chair, even though the story wasn’t particularly funny (cellmates? Bad food and violence? Not funny at all, really). It wasn’t until this morning that I realized he never mentioned what he was in jail for.

Which reminds me, if you buy one CD this week, make it Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I Am Not, by Arctic Monkeys. Listening to them makes me wish desperately that I had a British accent.