So it pretty much snowed a bit on Tuesday.

Winter is just around the corner! It's been getting to about 1C lately with wind and such, I almost died on Tuesday! I really need to look into buying some gloves (or mittens!) and a touque (found out the correct spelling of those, I forget if I mentioned learning Canadian..but I don't think so. Coming up soon!) and a scarf... maybe soon. I saw some cute mittens while I was in Halifax this week though, they had lots of different ones dressed up like animals, I could have had zebras, seals, pandas, or kitty paws! But I was so undecided on which one, so, like me, I passed on the lot. Hopefully I'll find something back here in TO!

So I decided to go to Halifax for two days this week because I was told a return flight for $256 was a steal so, like a thief, I took it. It was nice feeling like a tourist again I must admit.
For those who don't know about Halifax it's the second largest sea port (largest is Sydney, Australia) dans Le Monde! It was an important stronghold for when Great Britain held power over it in the 1800s, so important that they built garrisons on THIS ISLAND (and also held Arcadians on there for being Arcadians in 1755) and other points in the harbour to protect it from attack.AND to stop land attacks they built a giant fort on top of a hill! This guy tells us about it.


I also manage to find LITTLE HOUSES in the hill with a chimney? Perhaps they had SECRET gnome warriors in those houses...


Or perhaps they stored their ammunition in them... as I find out later to my disappointment.



So Halifax has a big and important history in Militia, trade, and the founding of Nova Scotia (which is Latin means New Scotland. When the French had control of it it was named Arcadie, hence the depositing all Arcadians for a while on that island above when the Brits had control. They had issues back then, Great Brit and France). BUT, they also have a very neat underground music scene, and luckily I got to catch a night of the Halifax Pop Explosion (H.P.E) while I was there! The H.P.E is pretty much 125 bands from Canada and abroad, I think mostly US, packed into 5 nights and 15 different places. Unfortunately I was tired most of those two days trying to fit heaps of things in and not getting enough sleep the night before leaving Weds morning. But it was still fun! The first night I was there I went to have dinner at the Economy Shoe Shop which is actually not what it sounds! It was a pretty nice restaurant, I had Salmon with a Pinot Gris and dessert, $35?! From what I've been used to so far that's a lot for one, it's a lot for one anyway. Most of the food there I found to be more pricy than TO, so that's where most of my cash went! So I was going to go to the Coconut Grove for a 10pm show as part of the H.P.E. but it was still early so I decided to catch a show at the harbour for $3 which I was a little skeptical about, but it was nice. The girl was called Kate Quinn and she had a really soulful voice,very pretty. Her and her band played mostly variations of soul/blues covers and a few of their original stuff, by the end of it I was almost dozing off though so I had to get out of there! Crashed by about 11 so I missed seeing any explosions that first night.
The second night I caught a film called 6015 Willow about a house at that address, notorious in Halifax for being a creative house full of musicians and artists etc. Once they hosted the smallest B&B in their attic, and the smallest art gallery up there too. So basically, these two dudes who had lived in that house for about 6 years were moving out, and they deicided to leave with a bang SO they make this film with 20 Halifax bands playing in each room of the house including the bathroom and the tiny attic! It was pretty neat. About 11 members of the 20 bands had lived in that house at one point too, granted a few of the members were in multiple bands.
Afterwards I catch a few bands from the pop explosion playing who were pretty good. Boxer the Horse, The Rural Alberta Advantage, Rich Aucoin, Ghost Bees and Laura Barrett. I would go more into these guys, but I don't feel like it at the moment!
And that was pretty much my time in Halifax. It was a nice change from TO, had a nice small town feel to it. I couldn't notice very much of an accent that these guys are supposed to have, but then I didn't talk to that many people =p

So not much news aside from that this week, unless you want to hear about work dramas which aren't really so much dramas more than me bitching about Sam who's pretty much incompetent and annoying and unfortunately not fired. Ummmmm, aside from that I saw the Notwist play a couple weeks ago which was fun, check them out (www.deezer.com, your new favourite site!) and that's where I learnt about touques and how I should have one for winter (touques I thought were spelt touks and they're pretty much those hats with the earflaps on them as I found out earlier this week!) and I also went to:

ImagineNATIVE which is an aboriginal film festival from many places around the world including NZ! So I saw a few films last week which were pretty awesome, and went to the music one too where they played Tiki Taane! Yay. He totally got an honourable mention at the awards for it. They also had 3 artists with natives in them playing live and they were pretty fun too. But OMG I was dancing to Derek Miller and this dude comes up behind me and starts punching me in the back! I was so confused. I turned around and I stare at him like wtf dude but he keeps going NOT COOL! So I move and he follows and I'm like srsly, if you don't stop that I'm going to hurt you fortunately he did, weirdest moment ever.

Most of last week I went out every night which probably wasn't the best idea but it was great! I went to a number of films as part of ImagineNative, learnt a few things about aboriginal history here in Canada (like how 10 years ago the Mayor of Oka in Quebec wanted to take Mohawk land and turn it into a golf course! I saw this amazing doco on the protest) and about this place in Russia that nobody knows much about. I met a couple of Elysse's friends, had authentic Israli hummus and I don't remember the last time I cooked dinner. I still have a pineapple to cut up from when I bought it a week ago. So I think I've pretty much caught up on everything so far, I skipped work stuff because it's probably boring, and yeah. This weekend I get to see Llamas play at the free cafe and I need to also work on a Halloween costume since now I have plans for that (thanks Helen for inviting me to these things! I have no idea what to wear!).

Groups that I have discovered recently/today that I might go see live:
Clap your hands say yeah
Broken social scene
Of Montreal
I also saw Okkervil River play a little while ago and they were amazing. I think I might have to go on a cd splurge sooooon... which also reminds me that APPARENTLY REAL GROOVY IS CLOSING DOWN and that makes me cry =(

Ok time for food! Should be more later. I'm getting better at this thing, 2 posts this month? wtf. It's almost November though! How silly is that?

xo.

So a lot happened last week.

Hey so this is my week from last week! Time goes by so quickly sometimes...

SUNDAY:
Suuuuuper busy day at work, but $55 in cash tips and $35 in card = a lot of tips, that was each. Apparently 2nd busiest day ever, first weekend working? No Prob.

MONDAY:
Get told I'm doing really well so far and that I get a pay rise! Woooooooooo.

Tuesday:
Am super tired in the morning so I end up having 5 espressos in one go... bad idea! I end up crashing and out of it the rest of the day. Rest of the day was terrible. Gail kept picking up on little things that I shouldn't be doing (like playing my own music and wearing sleeveless tops, although that was my first time ever and I had planned to wear my jumper most of the day anyway and Hilarie was wearing mostly singlets for the past 2 weeks and not a word!). A guest decided to tell Hil that she basically looked terrible and should go home, and afterwards the same guest, who had herself eaten for two, decided to comment on the "side boob going on" of Hil's top pinching her armpit...uhh? Hil then goes home early after throwing up gross things because she was actually feeling terrible. Two dudes come in for lunch, ask for their bill, decide to wait til Andrew and I are busy with other customers, say bye and walk out leaving $8.40 out of their $23.40 bill. So we basically get stiffed $15. WTF. So then I end up feeling terrible like I fucked up all day and just after I got told I was doing really well etc. Boo.

WEDNESDAY:
Weds works out much better. I decide to stay away from coffee for a while. Elysse from work invites me to go along with her to Nuit Blanche on Sat which I am very excited about. After work I visit Si, then head off to see a music film called "The Basement Sessions", a live recording of a bunch of artists familiar and unfamiliar spliced together. I think they were doing one every Weds of this month. This week was Thom Yorke, Albert Hammond Jr. , The White Stripes, The Shins, Neil Hannon (?) and one other group that I didn't catch the name of. It was a good film, there wasn't any kind of commentary or anything, it was just music. I was surprised at how few people there were in the theatre, only 6 including me. Meg and Jack White were so fun to watch live! The Shins, who I was looking forward to seeing weren't so fun, I was a little disappointed to be honest. Neil Hannon was pretty funny, he was only shown singing 2 songs, but they were both more like short stories which I thought was neat. Thom Yorke I generally find too whiney for me sometimes, and Albert Hammond Jr I hadn't heard before, they sound similar to The Strokes. After the film I went home and went straight to bed, which leads to...

THURSDAY:
Where I sleep for most of the day and wake up around 3pm. At this point I have no money after paying half of my rent (which is all I could afford) until Monday, so I stay home.

FRIDAY:
I get invited out to a cd release party for Sarah Noni Metzner by Helen who was helping out on the door. http://www.livewithculture.ca/content/view/full/21797/
It's near home so I head out about 8:30 and almost freeze to death! It was probably colder than the coldest winter back home, even Helen thought so! I got scared after that since it's only fall and not even close to winter yet! Anyway. The show was pretty awesome. Instead of an opening band she had some acrobatics stuff, a guy and a girl doing fancy things with ropes/hoops from the ceiling. There was also a live painter there that painted the band while on stage! If I wasn't super poor I would have bought her latest cd, not only because it was good but also because the concept for the cover design was really clever. The cover had a square hole cut through it with various slides for you to choose from, so it was pretty much a "choose your own cover" deal. She also had these poetry books for sale, they had inside them lyrics and drawings and the covers were all different, wrapped in a nice paper with a button on the front and string to tie it up with. Very neat.
I get home about 1am, and K is getting ready to go out to a gig supporting the local radio station CKLN (which she works at on Tuesday morning 2-6am. She is trying to get me on there to talk about NZ music etc, I'm tempted to go up but work the same morning at 9 doesn't really work out.). I decide to join her so we drive out east to this bar where the last dj is playing his set. Nothing too exciting, but I did get to dance a bit which was fun and ended up back home about 3:30/4am woooooo!

SATURDAY:
Nuit Blanche!! Slept most of Saturday day, I would like to say in preparation for the night out but I'd probably be lying. Went out to meet Elysse and her friend at St. George and Bloor around 8pm, then went to another friends apartment for a couple of drinks before heading out. We walked passed the Bafta shoe museum and the ROM which were full of people (though unfortunately I learned later that they had a giant paint by numbers thing going on at the shoe museum that I would have loved to see!) and onto Queens Park which was supposed to be full of eerie sounds but too crowded for anything like that. So on we moved to see a waterfall made of plastic bottles!
Next is on towards Yonge and Dundas for pizza and the prison spotlight installment. I was a tad disappointed at that, mainly because the idea of it was really clever but to have it in the brightest place in the city was probably the worst idea ever. It was meant to be used as a 15 seconds of fame deal where the dude up in the tower would pick some random person out in the crowd with the spotlight and they could run like a fugitive, or dance, or whatever. It was the most prominant spot, but also the brightest so that ruined it. Next we wandered over to College Park where we saw this sign:

When we got there there were many people but no signs of zombies anywhere! So we wander around towards this large gathering of people trying to see if there was anything worth seeing, we got there just in time to see 2 dudes mooning everyone from the top of a building, hooray! One of the guys in the group says "quick, it's 11:11 make a wish" so we wish away, a few of us wished for zombies and MOMENTS LATER:
I guess wishing on 11:11 works sometimes? I hadn't even heard of doing that until that night. So that was exciting! Lucky for me there were only 2 zombies and 3 of us so I got to keep my brains :D
Afterwards we decided to wander west , stumbling across things like the blinking lights on city hall (I got a neat shot of a maple leaf from the streetcar) and a neat little art gallery on Richmond. Then along King west we managed to find this little art gallery hidden behind some buildings that had some amazing graffiti art. Finally we made it to Liberty Village and caught a few big things like:
And some other things too. By this time I had no idea what the time was but we're all getting tired and decide to head home but not before stumbling across(!) :


I must have taken about 50 photos of these guys! It was so hilarious. It must have been after 4am and these guys would have been dancing about all night so now and then you'd see them just go and pass out around the field after dancing up a storm or just getting up again. The crowd in the stands were going crazy! That was a good ending to the whole night, I basically laughed until I cried. Didn't get home until 5:30am which doesn't bode very well if one has work within the next 5 hours!

SUNDAY:
Work wasn't too strenuous which was good. I was introduced to Sam who had just started and was placed to look after the patio which many people didn't take up since it was pretty cold out, so I was basically back up for the whole day. I'm setting things up outside and wondering where Hill and Brit were (since they should usually be doing Sunday as well) when Gail pulls me aside and says "so a lot has changed since you were last here..." (wasn't that only 3 days ago?) So apparently Sam is Hil's replacement as she was fired on Saturday for not paying for her meals and letting her friend eat for free... =( and Brit was fired just this Sunday for sleeping in (she was supposed to open) and not calling until 10:30, this apparently was her third strike. So crazy! Brit was one of the oldest staff members too, so now all that's left is Brent and Andrew. So Sam, he dropped his cv in at work the week before, and I think maybe Gail was needing someone pretty quick to fill in for Hil, this is my guess and I'll tell you why soon! Anyway, so somehow I make it through the day, and I don't think anything else happens. I agree to work the following Friday close to cover Brit's shift.

So that was last week, the week just been is coming up! Boy my life is getting pretty busy or something, maybe interesting? Who knew!

xo.