Lonesome Paul at the Kaffé 1870

Jody called me on Saturday and asked if I wanted to come over for supper and then go see Lonesome Paul.^Note She and Michael had been out in Wakefield and just happened to see a poster that said he was playing that night.

For some reason, the poster made them think of me.

I'd been swimming and Kathy and we had talked about going to a movie because her usual Saturday night date had a big D&D game, and mine had wallpaper to remove. So Kathy and I went out to Michael and Jody's.

Before supper they played us a few recordings that will be on their next CD. Even before mixing they sound really good. We especially liked the one that Michael wrote about Jody. Kathy kept going on and on about it.

If you don't want to wait until the CD comes out, you may get a chance to hear these songs this weekend:

Saturday night: Ball and Chain at the Elmdale

Sunday afternoon: the Ottawa Opry at the National Library

After supper and a lot of talk about how much Jody and Kathy like little dogs, we made our way out to Wakefield. If you thought that the Black Sheep Inn is the only place to see music outside of Ottawa, you were mistaken. (But if you thought Wakefield was the only other town to go to, you're still right.) The Kaffé 1870 is cozy. Apparently the lead singer for the Fiftymen is one of the people running the place, so they understand how to put on live music. (Although they don't seem to know about placing listings in the Xpress.)

Paul had a fabulous group of musicians backing him up. Dave Bignall on guitar, Peter Van Althen on drums, James Stephens on bass and Keith Snider on fiddle and banjo.

Jody was getting all nostalgic because she remembers dancing in front of Dave Bignall and James Stephens 30 years ago when she first moved to Ottawa.

I've only been dancing to their music since 1987, so it didn't make me quite so nostalgic.

Links:

• Kaffé 1870
• The Fiftymen's stale website
• Ball and Chain's slightly stale website
• Where the Lonesome Paul quote came from
• A website that helps you find the right dog for your lifestyle

Foiling the Snoops

Those little terrors, Liam, Jane and Heather were here on the weekend. "Can we go up to your room?" they asked upon arrival. I knew they didn't want to play the sousaphone, watch TV, use the internet, build things with Lego, borrow some books or do any of the other diverting things one can do in my monster bedroom. They wanted to snoop around.

To the untrained adult eye, they seem like sweet, innocent children. Fortunately I know them to be the nefarious busybodies they are. They will find anything in your house that you want to hide. They found almost all the chocolate that had been carefully hidden throughout my house. So far I have only managed to find two chocolates following their rampage.

They will also find things you didn't know you should hide. You can try to distract them by leaving puppets out for them to play with, but long-time readers will recall that on their visit last summer, they were all abuzz that I used the "wrong" gender of deodorant.

I was ready for them this time.

Leonard Cohen's Timeline: Manhattan Project

• Video
• Lyrics
• Wikipedia

Previously:

• A Graph for Dave Taylor
• Driving with Fred Eaglesmith

Lightbulbs and Aloe Gel

Remember my lightbulb TV screen?I've learned some important lessons about liquid filled lightbulbs since I made it.
First, if you use binder wire and the wire goes into the liquid it will start to rust and make the whole thing turn a disturbing brown colour.

I am still using binder wire to hang regular-sized bulbs, but now I am wrapping the wire around the outside of the threads and applying some solder.
I am also trying a new liquid, aloe vera gel. I think it might look cool because air bubbles in the gel don't seem to move.

A Suit to Dye For

Zander likes to wear suits to formal occasions, but they have to be suits that he can tie-dye. This is his latest.

The linen jacket and cotton pants and shirt were all purchased at Value Village.

I understand it's important to use natural fibers like linen and cotton when you're tie-dyeing rather than your polyesters and nylons.

Zander's suit gives me a wistful feeling for a pair of bell-bottom Levis I had in grade nine. They started out brown, but after bundling them with elastics and soaking them in a bucket of diluted bleach, they turned red, orange and brown.

This was 1974, so they were long past being fashionable, but I still really liked them.

Sad to say, I don't think there is any photographic record of them. In contrast to Zander's suit, which I suspect was photographed many times on Saturday night.

A Tie-Dye Instructable

Sunday Things

"Swimming on Sunday?" Kathy asked me.

"You bet," I said.

"Will you call me or will I call you?" She asked. I shrugged. "Right," she said, "whatever."

This morning, I didn't feel like going swimming. There was no way I was going to call Kathy. But at noon, the phone rang. "Wanna go swimming?"

"You bet," I said.

Twenty minutes later, on the way to the pool, Kathy says, "You didn't want to go swimming today, did you?"

"Nope," I said. "Not at all."

"Me too," she said. "I told Roy I'd call you, but if you said you didn't want to go, I wouldn't go either. It's lucky we have each other or we'd never swim."

"It's true," I said, "but even now if you said, let's just go to the Pho 99, I'd be all for it."

"Roy wants to join us at the Pho."

"Damn. That means we have to go swimming first."

That's the thing about swimming. The hardest part is getting to the pool.

Back at home, I did some stuff with lightbulbs and made a gesture at organizing. Here you see a clear bag, filled with clear plastic. I don't know what I'm going to use the clear plastic for, but I have a strong feeling it will come in handy for something. The bag is one of those zippered ones that bedding and pillows come in. I love these bags. (I mention this in case you wanted to give me a present.)

Fire Alarm on Lebreton Street

It is common to see emergency vehicles in this neighbourhood, but rare to see fire engines on Lebreton. They're much more common a block over on Bell Street. I lived at 211 Bell from July 1986 to July 1987. There were a lot of fire alarms there. So many that people usually waited for confirmation that there was an actual fire before leaving. Some people didn't leave even if it was a fire. During my last week in the building we had three alarms and two were for actual fires.

If I had my camera with me during one of them, I would have been able to show you a photo of smoke pouring out a fifth storey window and people on a fourth floor balcony watching firefighters climbing past them to deal with the fire.

I don't think these trucks on Friday night had a fire to deal with. Bells were ringing inside the building, but the people on the sidewalk didn't seem especially worried.