Solstice, not Solace

So, not so much for no computer meaning more posts.

But, in my ongoing quest to turn the solstices and equinoxes into major holidays, happy summer/northern/June/Taurus solstice everybody! Today marks the day when the Earth's axis is tilted the most towards the Sun here in the Northern hemisphere. Unfortunately it is very cloudy here in Montreal today, making celebrating the latest sunset of the year more difficult.

And, just so this post isn't totally brief, my favourite ever summer solstice happened in 2002 when my friend Chris bought a pizza at Wreck Beach in Vancouver from a man wearing a fleece vest and no pants.

Crisitunity!

So, my computer is dead for now. What started with a warped DVD stuck in the optical drive ended up with a zapped hard drive and a broken Mac. A bit of laptop surgery later (of course I'm qualified to take apart laptop computers!), the disc is out of the optical drive, but the hard drive seems to be toast.

Failing to take my own advice to everyone, my last backup is about five months old. I haven't lost much actual work, since I've been mainly at the bench these last few months, but I might have lost quite a lot of writing in my journals. I haven't exhausted all the possible ways of resuscitating the hard drive or recovering the data yet, so all hope is not lost for getting the writing back.

In the meantime, while the computer is getting fixed, I think I'll treat this as a "crisitunity" - a chance to do more reading and more thinking, an opportunity to get outside more, get more work done, and to just generally spend less time online. Paradoxically, that might actually mean more blog posts, since those tend to get written in "productive thinking time" rather than "internet wasted time". We shall see!

Get A Haircut

Three of my favourite artists right now are M. Ward, My Morning Jacket, and Neko Case. So combining all those things together should be pretty awesome, right? Well, not so much. It’s OK I guess, but it seems like a bit of waste to put two incredible singers (Jim James and Neko Case) up there and have them just lay low.



My theory is that bands playing one-offs like Letterman or Conan should just play the most rocking song they have, regardless of what their current single or most popular song is. Also, I don’t know what to do now that Jim James has short hair. How will I know when to rock? For reference, this is what he used to look like:

What's that? New Wilco Record?

Watching A Stretch of Road

I got JB to take a picture of me the other day to show off my new glasses, and I thought it would be fun, or at least interesting, to re-create a photo of me taken when I first arrived in the lab. Before:



And after!



I guess I've mostly just become bigger and better-lit.

Meaningless to Almost Everyone In The World

One of the funny things about research is that it’s often really hard to relate to people when you get results. Especially when those results take the form of faint patches of light against a dark background. But for now, I’ll just say that this picture makes me very happy:

Time Flies When It's Someone Else's Son

Four years ago today:

Designed and Directed by His Red Right Hand

Inspired by JB’s triumphant return to the inter-tubes, an actual post! Or at least some semi-connected ramblings.

Facebook has ended up being a lot of fun - somehow it’s easier to get in touch with my sisters via that web-site than by email or even telephone. I think I have a very bad combination of personality traits for Facebook: a good memory for names and faces coupled with the belief that everyone I’ve ever met wants to know that I’m growing a beard again.

The beard is indeed back, so long as the Canucks stay in the playoffs. One unfortunate thing about living out East is that most of the games in this series won’t start til 10 p.m. in my time zone. I used to be a night owl, but in my new place, even with curtains, I wake up a little after 6 a.m. with the sun. It looks like this:



“At Dawn” is also one of my favourite My Morning Jacket songs. I once saw part of a MMJ show when they were opening for Wilco, but I had no idea what they were playing at the time.

Wilco has a new album, not yet in stores but available on the web after a few pre-release online listening parties sanctioned by the band. I was going to write a quick review of the album, but then realized that to get the proper context, I’d want to write a giant story about me and Wilco, filled with sentences like “when I pick up a guitar, the first song I’ll usually play is ‘Far, Far, Away’” and “those two albums, released in the same year but coming to me five years apart, basically define growing up for me”. So I’ll save all that for now, and just say that Sky Blue Sky has some really great moments, but is frustratingly uneven as a whole.

Finally, I have joined a band so awesome that so far I’ve played acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, drums, and cowbell. Our name is Katie Loves Pain.

I Like My New Apartment

That is all!

I Wrote Two Entries Today Just Because I Put A Link To Here From My Facebook Profile

Hello Facebook people, this is my totally exciting blog! It's mostly about the weather in Montreal and taking Peanuts cartoon strips out of context, but also about listening to music, making bad hockey playoff predictions, and speed-metal videos.

I Didn't Sign Up For This

This blog will now be enhanced in new, picture-y ways. Awesome! What’s not so awesome is that, after a brief tease of Spring, it’s snowing again today in Montreal. Here’s a photo from a week ago, after the first “revenge of winter” snowstorm.

Vernal, Not Venal

Tonight, at 7:07 p.m. in my time zone, it’s the vernal equinox! Happy Spring to all, and Happy Birthday (tomorrow) to sister Christie.

Buckets of rain, buckets of tears

I upgraded my journalling / blogging software today, so I need to put something up here to see if it works again! I use MacJournal, which I highly recommend. I use it for my work logbook, my personal journal, my index for guitar tabs, and for all my blogging. Apparently I’ve written 52,000 words in journals so far this year. Uh, yeah.

And while I’m here, I’ll just say that we’ve had two days in a row of rain here in Montreal, and it’s been reminding me a lot of Vancouver. No more skiing for me, but I can go to sleep with the windows open again.

Also, I don’t have much to say about the TV on the Radio show except that it was really good. Heading to see Great Lake Swimmers tonight, and tried to recruit friends by telling them that they’re “pretty good if you're into the whole ‘guys with banjos and guitars singing in quiet voices about how sensitive they are’ thing”. Which of course I am, but maybe isn’t the most enticing way to invite people to a show.

Of Course This Is A Good Idea

"Of course this is a good idea - why wouldn't this be a good idea?"

I Just Want To See His Face

I broke down and joined Facebook, along with seventeen million other people. I was skeptical at first, but it’s really pretty fun seeing old friends and new turn up.

So, if you’re in the presumably miniscule group of people who (a) read this blog and (b) don’t already have me on Facebook - here’s a link where you can add me.

p.s. Hooray for Drew and Cara!

Where Were You?

And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy it

Inspired by my Anonymous, Bob-Dylan-quoting commenter, here’s a post after a long hiatus!

The Midlake show was pretty good - the band were obviously all physically ill, but they still put on a good show. Not too much deviation from the album, but a lot of really nice playing - a lot of their songs seemed to be in open tunings for the guitar, which I’m really fond of lately. It was also fun to go to a show again where there’s a delay because the band got stuck at the border, then came and hung out at the Green Room for awhile.

I ended up not going to Sparklehorse, even after describing them to my friends as “the aural equivalent of walking up to an old Southern mansion, only as soon as you enter, it's suddenly twilight, all the leaves have fallen from the trees outside, your friends are gone and there's a rabbit talking to you asking where all the stars went to”.

Last night I went to another show at Main Hall. How did the world know that just what I needed was to see skinny Norwegian dudes in tight pants and sunglasses shimmying around to drum machines and synthesizers? 120 Days were totally awesome. The main act, Shout Out Out Out Out wasn’t quite as good - kind of like a gang of happy robots with bass guitars breaking into your house while you’re trying to read, and playing the same song for an hour. Anyways, I still don’t enjoy dance music that much.

Tonight is TV on the Radio. I saw them before, opening for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, so we’ll see how they’ve transitioned to being headliners and critical darlings. I was initially skeptical about the new album, but I’ve come around a lot today, based on some re-listening, watching them on Letterman, and lyrics like these:

Hold these hearts courageously
As we walk into this dark place
Stand steadfast beside me and see
That love is the province of the brave

Happy Birthday, Charles

Hey, today is Charles Darwin’s 198th Birthday! So happy Darwin Day to all. There’s events all around, including at our own Redpath museum. Meanwhile, I’ll be trying to think of an appropriate caption for this image, and trying to write a review of last night’s Midlake show.

Oh You Yeasties, You Frightening Beasties , Sleep Tight In Your YPD

How easy it is to let half a month go by without adding anything here! Here are some scattered thoughts from a Thursday night in the lab, spent stealing DNA from yeast.

• When I walk to work, it’s about 1.8km. When I ski, which I’ve been able to do just about every day for the last few weeks, it’s around 2km, but seems to take a while longer because of the long underwear involved.

• Note to any roving ninja gangs: please don’t use that information to ambush me.

• My Morning Jacket’s studio albums are great, but are really only just a set-up for their live shows. This is something I hope to come back to, but for now I’ll just say that Jim James really knows the value of a well-placed random scream.

• I’ve started anthropomorphizing my yeast populations, and now sing them lullabies before letting them grow overnight. I’m not sure what this means.

• I picked up Jeff Tweedy’s recent live DVD “Sunken Treasure: Live In The Pacific Northwest” the other day. It’s pretty great, needless to say, but one thing I thought was cool was that the DVD had a special link to the Wilco website that lets you download MP3s of all the songs on the DVD, and some extra ones as well. Cool.

• I’ve decided to steal an idea I first saw at Neil Gaiman’s place, and start giving all these posts labels, which seems to be a newish Blogger feature.

• That is all

Il Neige!

We had our first big snow of the New Year - it snowed last night, and all throughout today.

A small dog came up to me on my way to work, and let me know that he would like it very much if I’d throw a tennis ball into the snow-bank for him. I did, and he followed me most of the way to work.

On the way home this evening, I decided to break out my cross-country skis, since they’d been sitting in the office all year. My new place is just on the other side of the mountain, so I can ski the whole way home. The snow was perfect, and there were already good tracks the whole way back. Just as I got close to home, I ran into a bunch of people sledding and snowboarding down Mont Royal in the fresh powder.

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.