bone in sub

last week was nice. i just played a lot of sports with my sister and cousins, and took a lot of naps and ate gourmet meals every night. tennis, basketball, badminton, kayaking, foosball, pool, darts, ping pong, and a ton of swimming. i guess i made up for not swimming all summer, because i was in the water for an hour or more almost every day. i have a pretty good tan now, and i don’t usually tan easily. played a bunch of guitar too.

a bunch of the employees there are recent immigrants from jamaica, and on wednesday there was a ‘reggae night’. on tuesday they overheard us talking about being musicians, so they asked us to play. we practiced a little and on wednesday night my cousin and sister played piano while my uncle and i played guitar and sang ‘eleanor rigby’. it was the first time i had ever sung while playing guitar and i was surprise-miced – i thought i’d be singing backing vocals while my uncle sang lead into a mic, but after we started playing the host held a (much louder) mic in front of me so i ended up singing seriously. my voice sounded pretty good, but the song gets a little out of range in “ahhh, look at all the lonely people”.

i think because of so much exercise, i took an hourlong nap every day and sometimes twice a day. during all these naps i would have the craziest, most detailed dreams, and when i woke up i always felt great.

after being in jackson’s point ontario for a week, suddenly getting back to downtown toronto in the summer is a small culture shock – city women dress so much hotter. wicked

i got a call this morning from my new landlord’s daughter – my landlord is in the hospital, but the old tenant is moving out this afternoon, so i’ll be moving in tonight! i think i won’t have internet access for a few days or more (probably pretty tough to schedule dsl installation in the first week of september), but i just went a week without missing it at all so whatever

i woke up this morning with david bowie’s cover of across the universe still in my head, so i was singing it while putting my contacts in. when i finished, as a little test i held the first note (“words”) and started playing the actual song on my computer…yep, right on, D to C#, i’m awesome

hung out with my folks last night, had a pretty nice dinner at “fred’s not here”. it’s hilarious how afraid my youngest sister is of the city. i don’t live in the nicest area (right now), and nearby chinatown is disgusting, but she was just freaked out. while i was at work yesterday all the multitracks finished downloading, so i checked them out with my dad. bohemian rhapsody seriously has 8 tracks of vocals, and two of them are already ‘chorus tracks’ with around 4 voices each, it sounds amazing soloing one or two voices in stereo over the piano.

i don’t feel like packing today, i’ll finish when i get back on the 31st. moving day is going to be crazy, i’m doing it all by myself!

eating two pizzas by myself was awesome until i laid down to try and sleep. wow i’m full! in retrospect i probably would have fallen asleep more easily on an empty stomach. my alarm clock is going to go off in 3 hours and i’m guessing i’ll sleep for maybe two of them. i haven’t had a really short sleep in a while so i’m kind of looking forward to the feeling of working all day on 2 hours of sleep. it’s great that i’ve been sleeping so well, but i’m a very different person when i haven’t slept, and i haven’t done that in months. it’s not unfamiliar, during school i stay up one or two nights a week, and at vcu i stayed up 2 or 3 days in a row a bunch. we’ll see if i can still pull it off and not act all crazy…

also,

my ex who i haven’t talked to in 7 months (and is now married i think?) visits this site more than i do evidently

i was supposed to go do stuff tonight but it didn’t end up happening. i actually enjoyed having the night off, i’ve been really busy! i’m almost completely packed, really just my desk and kitchen stuff left. i should pick up some more boxes tomorrow if i have time. it’s pretty sweet sitting in this room with just a desk and computer, and full boxes all around and a couple duffel bags of clothes in the closet a full week before i have to move.

i changed a lot in the last year, like a TON. i used to be pretty lazy and not shave or cut my hair for a while. look at this jerk, that’s me a year ago. now i am a very respectable looking young man, though i guess when i take care of my appearance i look a lot younger.

it’s kind of weird when i notice that my facebook picture has been there for a month or whatever and go to change it, there are a lot less pictures taken of me lately. i guess not being at school and not having a girlfriend is the main reason but it seems like whatever stuff i do go to people aren’t taking pictures really. no complaints, just an observation – is it my age group maturing? my social circles’ preferences? or is the digital camera fascination of the last 10 years wearing off? i don’t know.

i swear the windows sound effects on my computer have gone down about a tone in pitch sometime in the last month and it’s freaking me out. or is time going a little bit slower?!

i just got the multitracks to ‘killer queen’, ‘bohemian rhapsody’, and four songs from sgt. pepper. i’ve got to work early so i’ll check them out tomorrow night. this is going to be sick.

i had a great day today. i slept in, woke up around noon and went to the registrar to finish my RESP paperwork. i went back to my house and dropped some stuff off, bought stamps & envelopes and sent off the forms. bought some packing tape and nail clippers (i shattered mine today? my nails aren’t even really tough…) and went off to see an advance screening of this movie.

it was pretty bad, or rather it was mediocre and of a genre i really hate (children’s/sports). basically it was air bud except with a girl instead of a dog. the best part, there was a good crowd there, and when everyone was leaving, some people picked me out of the line and asked if i would go on tape with my thoughts about the movie. i told them it wasn’t my style, i don’t like that kind of film, but i’ve seen worse. she tried to salvage the interview and collect a usable clip by asking me my favorite part and i said “that’s tough, i don’t think i had one so i can’t answer that”. wicked

right after that i ran into russell, the dean of the faculty of music and a former teacher of mine, right outside the paramount theatre with his wife. i said hi, we talked for a bit, and i went back home and packed a bunch.

i took apart my ikea loft bed today, by myself. it was really tough to do – not as hard as building it, but still took over an hour mainly because i had no help. there are really a lot of parts to it, i hope i can sell it or give it to someone soon because i don’t want that sitting in my new place. maybe i’ll buy myself a bigger mattress too…

my room looks and sounds way, way different with less stuff in it and no bed. having a mattress right over your head really deadens the acoustics like crazy, so when i was on the phone after taking the bed down it was kind of surreal, the place i lived for two years suddenly sounding completely different. it’s really nice walking in that room and seeing almost everything ready to go, though, i am done with a 6×10 room.

i talked to my sister on the way to the theatre – she just moved away to her first year of university yesterday. she’s doing a very different thing from me, going to a small school in a small town an hour away from our parents, as opposed to me going to a huge school in a huge city 700 miles from ‘home’. she’s still on edge about being “by herself”, which i guess is understandable; she’s not the independent type and she gets along with our parents.

tomorrow i just have a bunch of packing to do, for both the resort week next week and moving day on the 1st, and i think i’m going out that night. yes!!!!!

cnn is repulsive. the only reason it’s even in my rss aggregator is because sometimes it has “one of those” stories, as in ‘i can’t believe this is in a national news outlet’ such as the special olympics protesting tropic thunder. my breaking point: in the last couple days (2 or 3?), at least five stories about gary glitter and his exact whereabouts. SHUT UP!!!

tonight i can’t sleep and i’m also pretty angry in general. i wonder why. oh, it’s girls. BLEGH!!!!!

i didn’t have the foresight to put some of my music on my hard drive before i moved out to my uncle’s, so i’ve just been listening to whatever he’s downloaded recently. some of it’s interesting stuff i haven’t heard before but he also has some stuff from like my vcu days, what a trip

newly released statistics put pneumonia’s hospital-bed death rate at eleven percent, that’s actually kind of huge and surprising.

makes me think about the number of times i’ve ‘escaped death’…i think it’s below average. it seems like most people i talk to have been closer to death or serious injury way more often than i have. i’ve never been really sick (food poisoning once?), i’ve been in one major car accident (nobody was really hurt), i have no chronic illnesses or genetic flaws (other than seasonal allergies), my family history of disease is only high blood pressure (evidently 30% of americans have this though?) and kidney stones, nobody in my entire extended family is overweight, and i can’t think of anybody i’m related to by blood that has died before 80. all my grandparents are in their seventies and doing great (my grandmother broke her foot a couple years ago, she’s fine now – that’s the only health issue among the four 70-somethings i’m related to!), and i had three living great-grandparents until i was 10 or 11. my dad and uncle have awesome metabolisms, and so do i. all of us can eat as much as we want (or in my case, can) without going over a certain weight, i think 180, 150, and 160 respectively. (we’re all the same height.) i’ve only been to the hospital for myself once, when i broke my collarbone, and i was given a sling and asked if i wanted oxycodone. wow, now that i think about all this and write it out, i’m very well-bred…

my near-death experiences are pretty much only falling into lake ontario when i was 3 or 4, and riding my bike to class in a blizzard during rush hour a couple years ago. because the “law of averages” and gambler’s fallacy are garbage, it seems like i will probably live a very long life – assuming i don’t get murdered by making the wrong person angry at me. a couple days ago it was upstairs on a table with the table, 6 inches of soundproof insulation, a floor and ceiling between it and these studio monitors, and it still woke me up down here with its GSM buzz.

i’ve not really dated anyone for a little while now…and i think that’s the only reason i’m looking forward to school starting. not that i hate school or anything, i guess a little bit of schedule will be nice, i just don’t like having to learn boring solo rep and meeting women at school is easy. orchestra is going to be sick, though, i love orchestra. my first two years at U of T there were pretty much no attractive women in the music program (seriously, like less than five). i was in a relationship most of that time but it still wears on you to only be around frumpy flute players and female brass players in general. something happened last year though, and all of a sudden there were plenty of beautiful women. i don’t know if it was a bunch of hot first years or the ugly ducklings grew up, but that was sweet. regardless of what actually happens it’s just really nice being around hot people.

i can’t wait to move, but i’m putting off packing until tomorrow. i have to go to the university to take care of some paperwork stuff, then i’m going home and taking apart my bed and putting most things in boxes. friday i guess i’ll pack a bunch and then go out that night. saturday my family (haven’t seen them in months) is going to visit me at work, then i’m going out to dinner with them, followed by finishing packing. sunday my aunt & uncle are picking me up after work and we’re going to a family reunion 50th anniversary week at the briars. that will be pretty cool – the last 2 weeks have kind of been a vacation already, and now i’m going to a resort for the last week before school. i haven’t been swimming at all this summer which is ridiculous, and i haven’t really played any sports either. doing that stuff with family i don’t see that often (but family still close enough that i enjoy their company – no distant relatives) will be great. my dad asked my grandpa if he could help pay for it and my grandpa said “nope, it doesn’t matter anyway, it’s coming out of your inheritance!”. i’ve never played guitar hero, and my parents and sisters are totally into it and really want me to try it (they’re bringing their wii). i think most music games are ridiculous (drummania is pretty sweet, rhythm heaven doesn’t even pretend to simulate an instrument) and guitar hero seems to attract a bunch of disgusting nerds, but nobody in my family is a nerd and my competitive side wants to beat 4 people at something i’ve never played before. we’ll see…

i don’t know where i’m going to get a bunch of boxes, i guess i’ll see if the lcbo by my house has good ones. i also have NO idea whether there will be any furniture at all! there was some pretty nice stuff there when i looked, but it might all be going. there’s a chance i’ll have a desk, two chairs, a wire ikea dresser, and a mattress (all i own), but there could also be a big bed and a whole kitchen set (dinette?). i’m really excited to not have a loft bed, seriously. climbing in and out of it, falling off of it when woken up suddenly, no bedside table, noisy…terrible. new place is going to be amazing

i find this really funny

this is crazy, one of the keys on my uncle’s laptop’s keyboard keeps shocking me. it’s down around the ,./ area and i get zapped maybe once every 30 minutes