My favourite concert moments

When Ben Folds reminded me of the time that Ben Folds Five brought Snow on stage when I saw BFF at the Warehouse in 1999, I was inspired to compile a list of my all-time favourite concert moments. Here they are in no particular order:

• The first time I ever saw Hawksley Workman play and he came out and sang the song No Beginning, No End. His amazing voice hooked TB and I immediately. We had just randomly gone to the concert because a pal of mine loved Hawksley and put some of his older songs on a mixed tape (remember those?) for me. (Rivoli, March 2001)
• The second time I saw the Weakerthans live, they sprinkled confetti on the crowd at the end of the show. When got home we still had confetti on us and it made for a good apres-concert picture. (Lee's Palace February 2002)
• The "Other Man Dancers" - Sloan had some people dressed up in animal costumes doing an interpretive dance during The Other Man when we saw them at Sneak Peak. Bonus - we'd gotten free tickets to the event. (ACC, May 2003)
• The Joel Plaskett Emergency doing a medley of pop songs including and Avril Lavigne song and R. Kelly's Ignition. (Horseshoe, Spring 2003)
• Hayden having the Elk Lake Serenaders (aka Cuff the Duke) back him up. (Lee's Palace, Novemeber 2004)
• A random guy asking Hayden to marry him, followed by another drunk guy being kicked out of the show, then Hayden playing "Woody", a great song about his cat. Catch it on the double CD set Live from Convocation Hall. Glad that I was there. (Convocation Hall, Fall 2002)
• The moment the giant light-up W stage appeared during the song Only in Dreams when I saw Weezer. (Molson Ampitheatre, Summer 2002)
• The Constantines and Weakerthans covering the Travelling Wiburys' End of the Line together. I love happy moments where two bands come together. Cheesy? Perhaps. But definitely enjoyable. (Lee's Palace, April 2005)
• Ashley MacIsaac playing "Stayin' Alive" on his fiddle when he opened for the Tragically Hip at their now-defunct Another Roadside Attraction festival. (Molson Park in Barrie, Summer 1997)
• The Smashing Pumpkins' "Farewell to Canada" performace at Summersault 2000 and they played my all-time fave Pumpkins song "Mayonnaise". (Molson Park in Barrie, Summer 2000)
• And of course the aforementioned BFF/Snow collabo...

Well, I don't think that's definitive but it's a good list of concert moments that have made me happy. I tried to only include specific moments as opposed to a whole show. I've seen many whole shows that are beyond enjoyable.

Anyway, perhaps I will have to update the list tomorrow after my free Sloan show!

If I'd worn socks, they would have been rocked off.

First of all, the Ben Lee/Ben Folds/Rufus Wainwright concert was great! Ben Lee was all cute and charming and proceeding to rock the socks off of the crowd. Some guy actually threw his smelly socks on stage.

Ben Folds followed with an awesome performance. This is the fourth time I've seen him and I think perhaps it was the best show that he'd put on. He played some old BFF songs, including Brick, Philosophy, and Army, where he led the crowd in singing the trumpet parts (if you've heard Ben Folds Live, you'll know what I mean). He also did a really hilarious cover of Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit" and a very good version of "Rockin' the Suburbs". I think my favourite was when he played the song Gracie from Songs for Silverman, which is a very sweet song for his daughter, but played it very up-tempo.

Ben brought up the last time he played at the Kool Haus (which was in 1999 and I think the venue still had the more respectable name of the Warhouse) and he'd brought Snow onstage. Oh yes, I mean Snow of "Informer" fame... This was before his comeback too, so it was quite entertaining to see Snow play informer with Ben Folds Five. I'm so glad that Ben reminded me of that!

Anyhow, after Ben's performance, a good 1/3 of the audience actually left. I rolled my eyes. Ben and Rufus are very different, but I honestly don't understand how people who obviously appreciate good music if they like Ben would leave and not see Rufus. Rufus was really good and played a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" which was great. I think my favourite song was "Beautiful Child". Seeing that song live has given me a new appreciation for it, and I think it's now my favourite Rufus song (at least for the moment).

Anyway, TB and I met up with a friend of hers at the concert who had brought her camera and got some awesome shots which I will post as soon as I get them. Which might not be really soon because she has to get a new cable to connect her camera to her computer...

So next on my concert-going agenda is a Sloan/Finger 11/David Usher show that I won tickets to. Yeah, I seem to be having quite the winning streak this week considering I never win anything. Perhaps I'll go find some more contests to enter online...

I've also found myself a new musical boyfriend. A couple of months ago I'd downloaded the song "Unplayed Piano" by Damien Rice. This song was written for Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi who has been under house arrest for 10 years. For more info, you can go here. Anyway, I bought his album O on Tuesday and it's excellent!

Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket - I'm luckier than I thought!

Well, it's been awhile since I've update the ol' blog. It's not that I've been extremely busy, but since I was at the 'rents for a bit, I was confined to using very dial-up which was slow and I had to pay for it by the hour.

I took the the train back to Toronto this evening and was greeted by a good phone message. A couple weeks ago, my roommate convinced me to enter a contest in Eye Weekly and I won! My prize? A Death Cab for Cutie DVD and poster! Not too shabby! Anyway, I'll probably end up spending $4 tomorrow on the subway to go collect my prize. As Homer Simpson has been known to say: "Ya gotta spend money to make money!"

So the rest of my trip home was pretty relaxing. On Saturday, a couple of my high school pals and I went to our friend's family cottage. We had a few pretty good parties there back in the day. We had a bit of a tamer evening though; we played a couple of games of Cranium. If you like party board games, be sure to get it! A warning: if you have a drama queen friend, she may end up showing a bit too much skin while acting out things like strip poker and the Barenaked Ladies...

On Sunday, I ended up running over to Zellers to get some stuff for my mom and boy, was that trip a fiasco. Here are the things that annoyed me:

1) One my way there, I was driving behind a tourist who slammed on his brakes and almost caused me to hit him. (In Stratford, if it's summer, and you encounter a really bad driver, conventional wisdom dictates that this person must be a tourist.)

2) When I was checking out, I almost got what I'm pretty sure was bleach in my eye. I was putting a bottle of it on the counter and I touched my face somehow and noticed that my hand smelled like bleach which lead me to the conclusion that the bottle was leaking. It wasn't, but I'm pretty sure that there was dried bleach or something on the bottle that I very well could have gotten in my eye! Damn Zellers!

3) While leaving the store, the first set of automatic doors wasn't working and instead of holding the door for me who needed a shopping cart to carry my purchases, the woman walking in front of me slammed it in my face! Aren't small town people supposed to be polite?

4) At least the second set of automatic doors was working, but there was this big gang of seventh graders sloooooooowly walking in front of me, blocking my exit from the store which caused the automatic doors to close on me. Argh! I should have run them over with my cart!

5) While I was trying to leave the parking lot, some crazy woman in a mini-van came flying around the corner at about 60 km/h not realizing that it is much safer to drive slowly in a parking lot.

6) When I got home, it turned out that I'd gotten one wrong item on my mom's shopping list so I had to go back to the store and exchange it for the right thing. But, being such a nice daughter, I did not complain and just did it. (I did get to eat my parents food for free for a week after all.)

Anyway, tomorrow is my Ben Folds/Rufus Wainwright concert. I'm soooooooo excited about that!!!

Here's a hilarious probing analysis of "Hollaback Girl" that I can across awhile ago via the blog in Eye Weekly. Great stuff.

Only in dreams

My dreams are always very vivid. I remember a lot of them, but sometimes they get lost five minutes after I wake up. Often something I come across during the day will make me remember my dream.

I'm watching the Daily Show in the background and they've got a bit about John Bolton's appointment as UN ambassador and it's made me remember one of my dreams from last night.

I decided since I still have month of vacation left, I should travel somewhere else, so I hopped on a bus to Washington DC. When I got there, I started to tour the government buildings and I wandered into one where John Bolton was giving a press conference and it was open to the public. That piqued my interest and I wandered in and sat down beside three twenty-something girls.

As we waited for the press conference to start, we discussed that we were all opposed to John Bolton's appointment. They thought it was great that I agreed with them because I could help them with their protest. Instead of shouting "boo!" at him, they each had a piece of paper that they would hold up to spell out the word "boo". They had wanted a fourth person to hold up the exclamation mark, so they asked if I would do it. I said sure.

Anyway, when John Bolton walked in we held up our signs. He looked at them and became really really upset. He asked us to come speak with him in the hall. He wanted to know why we disliked him so much and we explained we didn't think his attitudes would make him a very good ambassador for the UN. He said that he was very sorry for his comments in the past, and thought the UN was such a great organization and vowed to listen to other countries. He then asked us for our emails so he could keep us updated on his progress and gave us his, so that we could email with any comments or suggestions.

Yeah, so that was my dream. Maybe Bolton's not so bad. Yeah... right. Only in dreams, as the old Weezer song goes.

Metablogging...

Since I really did the grand total of nothing today (okay, that's a bit of a lie - I did meet up with a pal for coffee and show her my Australia pictures and then hang out with some pals at MJ's pool..), I will blog about blogging.

In teachers' college I learned that thinking about thinking is called metacognition, so I shall dub blogging about blogging "metablogging".

I'm surprised that I've kept up my blog for so long. When I started it, I figured that it would be like any other journal that I started, I'd go strong for a week or two or possibly even three, and then it would slowly stop. A few years later I'd pick it up, and then try to continue it in a sort of "Well, now it's three years later and my life is totally different and I can't believe I was concerned about all that crap since now my life is so much more complex but oh, if I could only re-live the innocence of three years ago" type statement. But surprisingly, I'm starting my 6th month of this blog, admittedly with a dry spell sometime in April and May.

So why have I kept up my blog for so long? I don't really know. Why do bloggers blog? I guess we all enjoy having our thoughts, beliefs, opinions and feelings up there on the web ready for someone to stumble across and say "Oh yeah, that's right" or perhaps "Whoa? What's this person thinking?" I think that might be why I blog.

One way I found that blogging has helped me is that I'm much better at writing down my thoughts. While I was travelling in Australia, I kept a pretty rigourous travel journal, and I found that writing in it was much easier than usual. I attributed to this to my blogging. Not only was writing easier, I found that I felt freer to jot down any thought, no matter how inconsequential or meaningless it may seem at the time. When reading back over my journal, I found that these "meaningless" thoughts were my favourites. Such as the time when I was flying over the Mississippi River, eating a pretzel, and I decided to pull out my journal and write about it. I liked that moment and I probably would have forgotten it. So, thank you blogging, for allowing me to save my Mississippi-pretzel moment forever.

Metablogging... over.

99 red balloons floating in the summer sky...

Well, I had a good day yesterday in London hanging out with my TO pals. We went shopping for awhile where I bought some frivolous stuff - but at least it was all on sale. It makes me grumpy about how all of the stores have their fall stuff out already. I don't want to think about that yet.

After shopping we had dinner then headed over to the London Balloon Festival. It was pretty neat. I wish I had brought my camera to take pictures, but I'd forgotten it in TO. We watched the balloons go up, which was neat. The first two balloons that went up were huge and very patriotic. One was a big Maple Leaf and the other was a flag. We were standing very close to them as they were filling them up with air and at one point it felt like they were going to fall over on us. After those two, a bunch of regular shaped balloons went up and then there was la piece de resistance - a huge green T-rex. It was so cool - I wish I had a picture of it! Unfortunately, his tail didn't really get inflated and his hindquarters deflated while he was in the air, but it was a really good balloon.

After we'd had our fill of balloons we played a round of mini-golf. I love mini-golf even though I lost. Yeesh, and I thought mini-golf was my sport.

Coffee & Trains

My dear friend TB kills me. Today we were on the same train. I was going to Stratford to visit my 'rents for a bit. She was on her way to London to visit our old mutual roommate. Anyway, I'd convinced her to take the train with me because a) the Saturday morning train is really cheap for some reason; and b) they give you free refills on coffee. Honestly, I love sitting on the train in the morning while drinking coffee and watching the Southwestern Ontario scenery go by.

As soon as the train started moving, TB started saying "When do we get the coffee? I'm so excited for the coffee! How do they serve it? Do they have a cart like on planes or do you order it and they bring it to your seat? Is it here yet?" I explained to her that they serve it on a cart and that it would be coming shortly but we were on the last car so it might take awhile to get to us. I was sitting in the aisle seat and could see where the cart was so I assured her that I would let her know as soon as it got to our vicinity.

Well, dear ol' BT got out her change purse and waited. Finally, the cart came and the girl got her beloved coffee. No sooner than two seconds after we were served, I looked over at her cup and it was completly empty. "I wanted to make sure I was ready with my empty cup when the refills come around," she explained. "I wouldn't want to just get half a cup."

Awhile later the cart was passing by us and stopped. TB reaches over me and stops it with her cup. The attendant was quite startled to have a cup stuck out at her abruptly and said "would you like a refill?" Anyway, I laughed so hard at the girl. She was so excited about her coffee. I'd never seen someone railroad a serving cart in such a manner.

Tomorrow I'm going to meet up with TB and old roommate in London. It'll be weird hanging out with my Toronto friends on my sort-of-home turf.

So far I've had an okay time back in Stratford. I just went for a drive to Shoppers and Zellers. I find driving always such a fun novelty when I'm visiting. I've noticed that as I've gotten older, I don't even run into people I know anymore here. Which is a mixed blessing I suppose. I no longer run into people I'd sooner forget, but I also don't run into enjoyable people either.

Which 90s subculture do you belong to?

Thanks to Aphelia for leading me to this quiz. And, I was very happy to find out that I'm indie! Woo! All of my hours rolling my eyes at my friends who love Nickelback have paid off.



I'll take this oppurtunity to recommend the new Cuff the Duke CD to all. I'm loving it right now. And, it looks like the CD is $10 pretty much everywhere, so everyone should buy it. I guess Cuff the Duke is totally the buzz band of the moment; they've been in all the newspapers and even on that stupid CTV entertainment show that has Ben Mulroney on it. Oh no! Are they going too mainstream? What shall I ever do? I wouldn't want to lose my Indie designation...

In that instant it started to pour.

Today I watch the movie "The Corporation". Good stuff. I especially like what Michael Moore says at the very end of the movie. Kudos that it's a Canadian film too. I also felt a sense of shame while I was watching the movie and thinking about how attached I am to certain material goods in my life - like my iPod.

Tomorrow I'm taking the Saturday morning train to Stratford to stay with the 'rents for a bit. It'll be good to catch up with my pals from home.

I think that right now I'm in a bit of a downswing coming off of my Australian holiday. I just don't know what to do with my time. There's a lot I could be doing - cleaning, organizing, planning for next year, reading, exploring the city - but I'm not. Well, maybe some time in Stratford will be good for me. I'll walk around the river. That's always good.

Oh here's my favourite Koala picture from my trip. I think I took it at the Rainforestation in Kuranda. I caught the little guy having a snack!

"I love you for the Destiny's Child!"

Yet another relaxing day in the world of my summer vacation.

Anyway, I told my roommate that she should come see Rufus & Ben with TB and me on August 9th. One of today's tasks was to go pick up her ticket for her. I figured that was only fair since the girl works insane hours and I'm on summer vacation...

Anyhow, while I was waiting in line to get her ticket there were these two young guys (maybe 19) behind me. They were very excited and talking in Spanish. One of them comes up beside me and says "I love you for the Destiny's Child!" Now, the funniest thing was that I heard the "I love you" part way ahead of the "Destiny's Child" part and I was quite taken aback, since strangers don't confess their love for me on a daily basis. But once the Destiny's Child part registered in my brain, the shock turned into me trying not to laugh really hard. They ended up telling me how they came up from Mexico especially for the Destiny's Child concert and were, quite obviously, very excited. I had to enjoy them for their enthusiasm, even if it was for Destiny's Child.

Oh, and after all that, the Rufus & Ben concert is sold out, so poor roomie can't go. I'm relieved I have my tickets.

If only I were taller I'd see past the clutter and plan my escape...

So I really did a whole lot of nothing today. I walked down to Yonge & Eg and wandered around some shops for a bit but that's about it. Oh, I got at Tiamo at the Second Cup because they're only $2 on Wednesdays.

I wasted some time using this fun thing. I sent TB a painting and she asked might she acquire a print for her cubicle at work. Here's one of my masterpieces.

The Life of a Penguin is NOT the Life for Me.

I had a busy night tonight. First I met up with TB to go to the Cuff the Duke CD release party at Soundscapes at 6:30 pm. Man, it was sooooooooooo hot, but their performance was really good and I picked up their new disc for $9.99! Woo!

Then I met up with an old neighbour from my days in residence to see the flick March of the Penguins. It was very well done. It's a documentary about a year in the life cycle of Antarctic emperor penguins. They certainly didn't evolve to have an easy life. At the beginning of winter, they walk 70 miles from the sea to their breeding ground where they pair up. (They're monogamous for one year). The female lays an egg, then passes it over to the male to take care of it while she walks 70 miles back to the sea to eat. Then, she wanders back to the breeding ground, feeds the chick (who has hatched while she was away) and takes over for the male who walks the 70 miles back to the sea (he's starving by this point). Anyway, the male and female take turns feeding the chick, who is super cute by the way. Finally, after 9 months, the parents leave the chick who goes on its own way to the ocean.

The film-making was amazing. I can't believe that the makers of the film spent so much time in Antarctica. Added bonus: narration by Morgan Freeman.

Here's a picture of Australian little penguins and a Fjordland penguin that I took at the Taronga zoo in Sydney. I loved that zoo. It was definitely my favourite of the many we visited in Australia. The best thing about it is that it's pretty compact so you don't spend half your time trekking around the zoo. Not that I can really complain. At least I'm not an Emperor Penguin.

Worried that your blog is dull?

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Weirdness with Blogger Images

Okay, so I just discovered Blogger's new Images feature which makes uploading pictures sooooo much easier. But with my last post, I find that the text in between the pictures is sometime disappearing... Weird. When I scrolled my browser up and down, or highlighted the text, it would reappear.

Odd.

So yeah, there is text in between the pics in the last post.

Funny Australian Signs

One thing that my travelling buddies and I noticed in Australia was that many of their signs were very illustrative. Here are some of my favourites.

Below is a sign on one of the crocodile enclosures at the Australia Zoo which is home of the infamous Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin. It instructs the proper position for viewing the crocodile. As noted, other positions will result in death.

Here's a picture of the foam Steve Irwin that made an appearance at the Australia Zoo. Guess the real one was busy that day. Anyway, the quality is rather poor since I was pretty far away. I will admit that he's also not a sign but still funny.

Our good buddy Mr. Foam Steve Irwin made an appearnce at the zoo's "Crocoseum". Gee, did they make that word up?

An interesting sandwich board that we passed by at the Brisbane bus terminal.

Another wonderfully illustrative sign at Mossman Gorge.

A helpful sign warning you of stingers at the beach at Cape Tribulation. If you look closely, you'll see that there is a bottle of vinegar in between the yellow sign and the white sign. Luckily, we weren't there when stingers are in season. They're pretty bad in the summer months and are apparently very very painful.

And one more helpful sign to show you what not do when by crocdile infested waters.

It's good to be home...

I think one of the nicest things about taking a holiday is actually looking forward to coming home. After a very long flight from Sydney to LA, a quick connection, and a significantly shorter flight from LA to Toronto, I made it back to Canada in one piece. Even better, I survived the traffic from the airport to my place.

So I think I have the weirdest case of jet lag ever. I was pretty tired when I got back, but I spent time chatting with my roommate and then TB came over to collect her souvenir and see my pictures. We drank a bottle of Wolf Blass Rose to commemorate my visit to their winery in the Barossa Valley outside of Adelaide. Even after that, it took we awhile to fall asleep. Anyhow, the thing that makes my jet lag strange is that I woke up at 7 am this morning, after only about 6 hours of sleep and couldn't get back to sleep. All this after not sleeping for over 24 hours... Odd.

Anyway, I killed time in the morning playing around on the Interent and then I went to the overpriced crappy grocery store that is a short walking distance from my apt to get some basics. I had lunch followed by an afternoon nap. Then it was off to see "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" on the Imax screen at Paramount. I enjoyed it a lot. Even better, I got to see the preview for the next Harry Potter movie on such a big screen. I had also seen that trailer in Australia when we did the Gold Class Seating thing. I'm so excited for that movie.

Speaking of Harry Potter, I of course of course of course picked up the new book the day it came out when I was in Australia. I'm glad that the Australian version, like the Canadian version but unlike the American version, was printed on rainforest-friendly paper. Anyway, I loved it and finished it long before the plane ride home. My initial plan was to save it for the flight. But once I started it, I couldn't stop. I can't wait for the next (and last) book!

Anyway, after the movie, TB and I wandered around Queen St. and did some shopping. I fell in love with a limited edition purse designed by Paul Frank for John Deere that has old fashioned tractors on it. It's really neat. It was on sale (but still expensive) but I bought it. So that's my impulse buy for the summer. After that, we had sushi for dinner then we wandered to her apartment so I could see her Thailand pictures.

Speaking of pictures, I definitely will try to upload some fun pics from Oz on here tomorrow!

Only two more days and one really really long flight to go...

Well, now I'm in Sydney! I've been here, for about 36 hours and I like the city so far, despite the fact that it is "the dead of winter". You should see how some of the people here bundle up for their 18 degree weather.

In Adelaide, many of the locals were crying about the "cold spell" they were enduring. It got as low as 12 degrees during the day. Oh, the humanity!!!

I really liked Adelaide, it was a very British-y city with a really easy-to-navigate layout. I think if I were to live in one of the Australian cities that we've visited, Adelaide would be it. I'd live there despite their cruel winters. Sydney's good though; I was happy to get back to the hustle and bustle of a big city. Adelaide felt kind of like Toronto if it had been injected with a large dose of a heavy sedative.

Destination #2 - Cairns

Wow! Cairns has been absolutely amazing. I love this place. We got here on Saturday. Beautiful weather greeted us. It has been 25-27 degrees each day with sunshine and 0 humidity. I've heard about the heat wave in Toronto and can't say that I'm sad to be missing it.

Cairns is right on the Pacific and is surrounded by rainforest-covered mountains. Our hotel is 3 blocks from the ocean. Since it's the dead of winter here, Cairns isn't too busy. It's got Night Markets and lots of neat restuarants and things for travellers. Right now we're on a down day so we hit an internet cafe to get caught up.

On our first day here we went on a Great Barrier Reef Cruise. It was amazing! FF got seasick. Snorkelling there was amazing!

The second day we went on a tour of the rainforest. We took a train to Kuranda, which is a village in the rainforest. We took the Sky Rail back, which was so cool.

Looks like it's time to leave the cafe and head down to the ocean! I love this place!

Week 1 in Oz

The good news - I've survived the 13 + hour flight from LA to Brisbane. The better news - my week in Brisbane, which is nearing its end, has been amazing! First off, the weather has been absolutely beautiful. It's been sunny every day and about 22 degrees. Wonderful. And don't forget, this is the dead of winter for them. Lucky ducks.

Here is a quick summary of my activities thus far:

July 1st - Flew from Toronto to LA. Had a 3 hour layover in LA where we had dinner. MC confused the American waiter with use of the word cutlery. Boarded flight to Brisbane at 11 pm.

July 2nd - We lost this day.

July 3rd - Arrived in Brisbane at 6:05 am after being in the air for over 13 hours. My feet were swollen. Miraculously met up with W's roommates visitors and shared a "Maxi Taxi" to W's place. Caught up with W, had a wonderful shower and watched my feet return to their normal size. In the afternoon we visited the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary where FF met the goal of her trip - holding a koala bear.

July 4th - MC, FF and I took the bus to the Queen St. Mall. Arrived back at W's for a BBQ with roommates, other visitors and other residents of Brisbane's Canadian ghetto.

July 5th - Took long train ride out of city to the Crocodile Hunter Zoo. Crikey!

July 6th - Saw "Batman Begins" in Gold Class Seating. Paid $17 but got to sit in a super comfy lazy-boy recliner and was waited on hand and foot. Learned the invaluable lesson that eating a chocolate sundae in the dark usually means I'll end up with ice cream on my shirt.

July 7th (today) - Wend on bus tour of Sunshine Coast. Visited a ginger factory (surprisingly fun), learned about the legends associated with the Glasshouse Mountains and visited Noosa, a posh beach town. Would have enjoyed Noosa more if we didn't spend the majority of the time there in a restaurant, waiting for our lunch. If you ever find yourself in Noosa, do not eat at La Vida on Hastings Street. Afterwards, we continued to Under Water World. Met up with W's roommate's visitors who had gone swimming in the shark tank there. Yes, you read right, swimming in the shark tank. They said it was amazing.

That brings me up to date. Tomorrow we don't have much planned except doing some laundry and going to a pub. Then on Saturday, we're on the plane to Cairns. I think Cairns will be great.

I've taken loads of pictures and I'll upload a bunch when I'm home. I'm going to devote an entire post to "Australian Signs that Make Me Laugh".

G'day!

Bon voyage a moi!

Well, today is departure day!

What that means is that I survived the last day of work (no problem). I got my courses for next year and they're not too shabby. I have some grade 10s mixed in with my grade 9s. The day I get a senior course, I'll probably keel over from shock. But, on the bright side, it looks like I have my own room!

But blah blah blah about that.

So I'm off today! T-about 6 hours until my flight. I'm mostly packed, I just gotta throw a couple more things together and finishing tidying the national disaster zone that is my apartment. Blech. I hate cleaning.

Anyway, I may blog a bit while I'm in Brisbane. After that, it might be awhile.

Au revoir!