I'm looking for something that can't be found on the main drag.

Things I'm digging today:

1) Being able to leave work early enough to get to a favourite pub way before it's busy and having a great catch-up session with a good friend.  Often, this place is too busy to get a seat, but I'll let you in on a secret: Wednesday, 4:15 pm.

2) I'm currently listening to the new Rufus Wainwright album, Out of the Game, on heavy rotation.  I enjoy it a lot.  Reviews have said it's a throwback to his earlier pop sensibilities and is one of his most accessible albums.  I agree.  I really like it.  I listened a lot to Rufus in university.  His album Poses was a staple while Becca T and I would be studying.  Just listening to his voice on this new album brings me back to happy times, and I like it a lot.

The title track is a favourite, and I think the video with Helena Bonham Carter is pretty cool.  Even cooler, Rufus is doing a free show for Luminato in June.  On top of that, a bunch of musicians are going to be playing his songs before his plays, so it's going to be a Rufus-tastic evening.  And, he's moved to one of my favourite Toronto neighbourhoods, the Annex, so maybe one day I'll run into him on the street.



3) The first book that I downloaded for my Kobo was Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed.

It's a woman's memoir about hiking a crazy trail that stretches from Southern California to Washington state.  It's very well written and interesting.  She starts this hike as a way to find herself after some negative events in her life (her mother's death, her divorce), and is a bit unprepared for the demands of long-distance hiking on such a challenging trail.  Some of the things that happen to her on the trail have caused me to gasp aloud while reading.

This book reminds me of my one true camping/hiking experience and I don't know how people can hike for months on end.  After two days, I felt so grubby and smelly; I can't imagine how weeks of intense physical exertion without proper bathing would feel.  There were a couple places in the book where she almost ran out of water, and I remember being at the end of a long day of hiking and being really thirsty while waiting the 30 minutes for the water treatment pills to work, like she has to do while being extremely dehydrated.  However, I did not wake up to frogs covering my body, like the author did.  I think that's definitely the most memorable incident in the book for me.

Anyway, I am going to finish this book tonight, and I highly recommend it.  Also, Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods is another very entertaining crazy hiking memoir, but on the other side of the US (the Appalachian Trail).  I might just have to re-read it.