Yearly Archives: 2011

And I shall call him Leonard and he shall be mine

I was going to wait to see how his per­son­al­i­ty devel­oped before set­tling on a name, and for a while I was call­ing him Serge (after Gainsbourg) cause he was almost over­ly affec­tion­ate, con­stant­ly paw­ing me and rub­bing my face with his. Eventually, I real­ized it’d be impos­si­ble for a cat to live up to such name­sakes, so I went with my first choice, which was Leonard. It has Leo in it, which is per­fect for any­thing from the fel­i­dae fam­i­ly. I could nev­er call him Lenny though cause “Lenny Cohen” sounds so wrong to me.

Leonard the cat on Dolly

 

I love cats with goofy faces, and I can tell Leonard has a bit of one already from the way his cheeks puff out. I also like my cats fat cause there’s more to hold when they decide to crawl into the cov­ers. As nov­el as it is to see how tiny Leonard is in com­par­i­son to Dolly, I’m look­ing for­ward to see him putting on some more weight.

Unfortunately, Dolly’s per­son­al­i­ty has changed. She’s a bit less affec­tion­ate, less vocal, and more sick­ly; I’ve been deal­ing with per­pet­u­al res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tions and eye abscess­es ever since I brought Leonard home. I’m won­der­ing if she asso­ciates being mis­er­ably sick with the arrival of the new kit­ten. Her mater­nal instincts seem to kick in when he lies next to her, and she’ll try to lick and groom him, but he does­n’t seem to like it much and they end up fight­ing. Hopefully, he’ll grow into the habit.

fourth show

It was a small open­ing set for a vernissage with a theme called Rumour Has It, fea­tur­ing forty artists in a bike store in Hintonburg.

Jesse had the set list planned around the whole rumour theme, and we start­ed learn­ing the songs when I showed up for rehearsal. But I only found out we were play­ing that night when my cal­en­dar alarm went off to say the show had start­ed. I thought we had an extra day at least to prac­tice, but due to a time zone bug in Google Calendar, the show was instead hap­pen­ing in two hours.

fourth show

Jesse’s dad with his trusty old Martin.

I was­n’t ready at all — men­tal­ly or musi­cal­ly — and if I’d have bailed if did­n’t have so much respect for Jesse, only because being under-pre­pared real­ly isn’t my style. It was worth it just to be a part of what must be the world’s first father-son cov­er of Piece of Me Britney Spears any­way, which end­ed up being a great clos­er for the set. I don’t think I’d be exag­ger­at­ing if I said the four peo­ple watch­ing us rocked their fuck­ing balls (and respec­tive tits) off.

The Ultimate Smart iTunes Playlist

If you’re like me, you nev­er lis­ten to the radio because you’re very par­tic­u­lar about the music you hear. Thankfully, this is the age of the iPod, when some­one can car­ry their entire music library in their pock­et, and you don’t have to wor­ry about hear­ing a song you don’t like.

However, that does­n’t mean you’re always in the mood for cer­tain songs. And if you have lots of sin­gle songs or old clas­sics in your music col­lec­tion, lis­ten­ing to them means you have to search for them. Just turn­ing on the shuf­fle option in iTunes does­n’t cut it, because it’s a lit­tle too ran­dom; a song will be cho­sen regard­less of whether you just heard it an hour ago or a year ago, and regard­less of how much you like it.

really smart iTunes playlists

The solu­tion is a smart iTunes playlist: a playlist that will not only have a mix of new music and old clas­sics, it’ll adjust accord­ing to your tastes. That means you won’t need to inter­act in select­ing or skip­ping songs, and a song won’t play over and over again, unless you want it to.

Another advan­tage of a smart playlist is that you can put on some music quick­ly, with­out hav­ing to decide what you feel like. If you tend to get focused on projects for hours at a time, it’s nice to not have to con­stant­ly be choos­ing the music to play in the back­ground. And whether you’re tak­ing a 5‑minute walk to the gro­cery store, or a 5‑hour dri­ve out of town, a smart iTunes playlist will fill the time with music per­fect­ly.

Here’s how I do it.

Continue read­ing “The Ultimate Smart iTunes Playlist”…

You were supposed to be the rest of my life.

My hap­pi­ly ever after. My crunchy peanut but­ter soul mate.

I think of you every day, but it’s nev­er a con­scious act. More of a reflex in a con­tin­u­ous stream of thoughts: the cov­er of the album that’s play­ing, this tea is get­ting cold, maybe I’ll go out tomor­row, the way you looked the first time I saw you with your glass­es on, I need to buy floss, the humid­i­fi­er needs refill­ing…

It’s nev­er some­thing I can help. There are reminders of you in the colours of every sun­rise, in the cho­rus­es of my songs, in the back of my mind when I’m left to my own devices. You became a habit I nev­er want­ed to break.

I for­got to give you this one too. It was sup­posed to be us. We were sup­posed to own the sky, to be it’s chil­dren, danc­ing under clouds you’d lat­er paint. Sharing head­phones on a bus, me in blue cardi­gan, you with fab­u­lous hair. Walking to the gro­cery store on sum­mer nights; you’d cook, I’d do the dish­es. Catching up on each oth­ers days before drift­ing off to sleep. All the every­day stuff that would nev­er feel ordi­nary again if your hand was in mine.

It was­n’t sup­posed to hap­pen like this.