Mexanese Mumbo Jumbo

My musical taste can be boiled down into 2 buckets - I like it, I don't like it. Basic criteria that's easy to follow. So I've never been a huge concert-going fan and will generally only go if asked or by force, preferably the former as the latter tends to leave marks. I went to the Killers concert on the weekend and while I wasn't ... overwhelmed with excitement, shall we say, I was excited to see the light show which was apparently all the rave.

The plan was to head over to Jo & Clive's for some pre-concert take out and then drive over. Solid plan in my humble opinion - I could proceed to drink and not have to pay for a cab all the way out to UBC. After a quick negotiation to let me into the building, the hiding of a prized chess set - in the tub of course - and a meal consisting of Incendio pizza & Guinness, we headed off in search of this so-called Thunderbird Arena.

The concert involved the usual suspects: good balance of old and new songs, decent transitions considering there were not wardrobe malfunctions to plan for, a couple of fist a cuffs amongst the unrulies in GA and of course a decent encore. The light show was very well done, timed perfectly, blinding the audience at times and zero-ing in on Flowers for his piano solo intros to songs like When We Were Young. The crowd was also full of the usual suspects: the normal ones like us, the fanatic fans, the posers in 4in heels in GA, the generic music-fan-concert-goers and of course, at any concert, there must always be the late 40s/early 50s couple with the gentleman doing the side to side off beat clap, swinging/twisting so energetically his jacket pocket was hitting me in the head. While I may not have had the energy required to be dancing along to all my fav songs like I wanted to, I was surprisingly pleased and walked out of the concert more energized than when I went it. The yawning that occurred on the ride home was simply due to company, not tiredness. Just kidding ;)

Volleyball season has started, albeit UrbanRec's version of vball season - outdoors in April, kinda cold. In previous years I've played on 2 vball teams on back to back nights and found it to be a little too much. Summer in Vancouver means an increase in social life which leaves little time for home and basic errands like grocery shopping, TP replacing and the always crucially important, cat litter changing. So when Justin asked if I would play on a 4's team with him, I was initially hesitant. History tells me I get annoyed and cranky when playing back to back vball nights. But has a scar from a previous relationship ever stopped anyone from entering a new one? So I agreed to play - just for one season. An old scar wouldn't stop me, but it did make me approach things with caution.

Justin, who seems to know everyone and is playing on two vball teams, decided to set up a meat & greet with his two teams. This would help that very annoying need of "finding a sub" for the delinquents. I rolled up to the Frog & Firkin on Broadway. I'm not a fan of the place, even on the drunkest of occasions when I don't even remember going there, and this was no exception. I found the vball crews at the very back by the washrooms, clearly positioned for optimum beer consumption time. I only knew a couple of people thanks to snowboarding up at Baker & Cypress, so I kept quiet for the most part and just listened to the stories. As the evening progressed I began feeling a little more comfortable and chatted with a couple of people. One topic of conversation that inevitably arises when you get a group of Aussies/Eastern canadians/Brits/etc together is the rarity of anyone being born and raised in Vancouver. I am one of those rarities. So after the "oh that's cool" type comments, one of the lads I'd never met before leans over and says to me "You look very odd for being born and raised here". Being short, and with a 3 syllable name, I've become accustomed to the various nick names and terms used to describe me (although I'll never agreed to the "midget" name) but "odd" has never been one of them. I understand he was just asking what my ethnic background was, but seriously - are you really that guy who couldn't come up with a better, less insulting word to use than "odd"? I feel sorry for the rest of the ladies you unleash those 'mad skillz' on.

I have been recently plagued with your typical run of the mill cold, and ended up spending the better part of 4 days confined to my 570 sq foot apartment under strict quarantine. Waking up Friday morning, the first stat holiday of the year, with a sore throat and what appeared to be remaining allergy symptoms was definitely not what I had planned. I defiantly ignored them, as is standard operating procedure, and decided to go about my day normally. Saturday I was singing a different tune. Something along the lines of Nina Simone but not as sexy. Over the next 3 days, in addition to the 2 boxes of kleenex and 1/2 a bottle of Nyquil, I managed to go through all the tv I pvr'd during the week, most of the movies I own, season 1 of Arrested Development and discovered Jack's secret stash of lost toys. Amid the numerous naps it occured to me, and I may be solo on this one, but being at home with a cold might actually a blessing in disguise.

Or not. I'm not a morning person. In the X amount of years I have been on this earth, I have never been a morning person. All my friends know this and never call me before 9am. Except my sister, but she falls into the family bucket who have been programmed to ignore such details and call at whatever time in the morning is convenient for them. Same rule applies for meeting up after work, the fact that I have never left work before 5pm in my life seems to have escape their memory but I'm still the black sheep of the family for never making a 5pm dinner in Richmond. Go figure.

Woot! First blog ever! Yeah, I'm pretty excited, but truthfully, I got distracted by Kelser's scoring chance at the 10 min mark of the 3rd period of the Calgary/Vancouver game. I mean, it is getting close to playoffs.