May 2-4

So, how was everyone's long weekend? (Well, the Canadians, anyway?)

Mine was pretty busy... it included some quality time with friends, lots of cleaning/organizing and getting ready for my upcoming move... and yesterday, I spent the day at The Beach with my aunt. It was such a gorgeous day out, so I'm glad I got to spend it outside in one of the most beautiful areas of the city. Here are some pics.

I chose this one as my Project 365 photo of the day... 144 days in, and I'm still going strong! Woohoo!

(On a rather disappointing note - I can't believe how they've let the city just get overrun with weeds. It looks horrible. I get that they're supposedly going for the "natural" look, but it just looks unkempt, and dirty instead. And there were so many people sneezing/sniffling. I do wish they'd bring back pesticide use. Or at least find some kind of natural alternative to the ugly weed overkill)

(My aunt took that one of me) Hope everyone had a nice weekend, whether it was a "long" one or not :) More pics at my flickr.

A little bit of business

My apologies for the lack of entries lately... I was working on a new series called The Morning After Show which is an after show to the new series, The Dating Guy which will air on Teletoon in the fall! I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot more about it at that point in time.

In the meantime... I have two things to share with you:

1. If you enjoyed my EyeStudio posts (or even if you didn't...), Matchstick is asking for a few minutes of your time to fill out this survey. For every completed survey, Matchstick will donate $2 to The Redwood, a family support shelter that offers assistant to those less fortunate (www.theredwood.com). So if you have a couple of minutes, give that link a visit.

2. Matchstick, together with the Canadian Cancer Society, is holding a pretty great fundraising initiative. They're calling it the Girl's Night In, and the mission is to hold a party/get-together at your place, and whatever you would normally spend on a night out on the town, you instead donate to the cause. The timing doesn't really work out for me, with my big upcoming move and all, but if this is something you're interested in, check out the link for more details and to register as a host.

And since I'm doing the promotion thing... I would also invite you all to check out this site I found called Swagbucks. It's this pretty neat little application where all you do is use their search engine instead of Google (or whatever you use), and you get rewarded with "swagbucks," which can be exchanged for prizes and gift certificates. It's pretty easy, and it's free money! I just redeemed a $5 amazon gift certificate yesterday! (And if you love me, you can sign up using my referral link and help me win prizes too - the karma will be paid forward!)

Other than that... I have a pretty big announcement coming up soon that I'm pretty excited about. Standby for details!

Spring has Sprung: The High Park Cherry Blossoms!

One of the certain signs of spring in Toronto is the blooming cherry blossoms in High Park. The trees were a gift from Japan to Toronto in 1959, and were planted in appreciation of Toronto accepting re-located Japanese-Canadians following the Second World War.

Before this year, I had never seen them in person. The flowers only last for a very short time, before they blow away and turn into the summer leaves.

Last weekend, I packed up my camera gear, met up with a friend, and headed down to High Park to appreciate the blossoms first-hand, for the first time. (Unfortunately, I think 90% of the city had the same idea... it was packed!)

I am very pleased with the results! Here's a few of my favourite shots:

For more of my photos from that day, check out Cherry Blossoms on Flickr.
What are the signs of spring in your neck of the woods?

CMW '10 - almost a month later!

So much to blog about, so little time! March has been an INSANE month (those of you closest to me know why... everyone else... stand by, it will all be announced in good time!). I've been meaning to update about Canadian Music Week for a while now. I'm ashamed to say this, but I haven't even finished editing my photos from the last show I went to (although, in fairness, I did take like, 200+ photos at that gig). Here's a brief recap of the shows I saw.

I was super excited heading into CMW weekend, because I found out that the Our Lady Peace shows were open to the first 50 wristband holders that showed up at Massey Hall. It was also super cool that once I got my wristband for the shows, the seats were down on the floor, pretty close to the front! I was expecting to be way up in the 2nd balcony, so this was a pleasant surprise!)

Short backstory: OLP was my absolute FAVOURITE band throughout my teen years. I was a crazy-die-hard fan. They fell out of favour with me when guitarist Mike Turner - now in the band Crash Karma - left OLP. Now, I've seen OLP in the time since Mike left the band (and in fact, told the longer version of this story here on my blog during last year's CMW recap), and I wasn't really *THAT* into them anymore - however these shows were bound to be different. They were playing two nights at Massey Hall - the first night, they played their entire Clumsy album, followed by an intermission and another set of songs from all the other albums, and the second night was Spiritual Machines, with another set.

I also got to hang out with a whole bunch of my friends from the "Clumsy Congress" days - it truly reminded me of being 16 again.

The Clumsy night was probably one of my favourite Our Lady Peace shows to date (and that says a lot, because I've probably seen them more than 20 times over the years). They sounded REALLY great, and it was amazing to hear the entire album from start to finish. The second set was also well-received, and I found myself even somewhat enjoying a few of the new songs. (Paper Moon is probably the best song I've heard them put out since I stopped listening). I found myself REALLY missing Mike Turner though - especially at the "OO-Wee-OO-OO-Wee-OO" part of Is Anybody Home, and some of my other favourite guitar licks & background vocals.

Spiritual Machines was also awesome. It's one of my favourite albums, and I loved hearing their interpretations of certain songs (like The Wonderful Future, which I don't believe they've ever played live, before this tour!). It seemed to be a little more difficult for the crowd to get into this show - at least, the people around me, who were all CMW wristband holders. Maybe they didn't realize that the first set would be entirely Spiritual Machines. Lots of people sitting down for this set.
There were also less people who showed up to get wristband tickets, so I was able to sneak two of my friends who had tickets up in the balcony down to come sit with me. It was much better being able to share the show with my friends! The best part of this show was rushing up to the front of the stage (when Raine called for everyone to move forward - in an orderly fashion), and really feeling like a part of the shows - just like back in the day.

Here's some shots of the two nights:




The last night of CMW was very exciting for me as a die-hard Twilight Fan. Jackson Rathbone's band, 100 Monkeys was playing an all ages show at Tattoo Rock Parlour. I was worried about the "all ages" bit... but it actually wasn't too bad. In the lineup before the show, most of the people were getting 19+ drinking wristbands (though, I assume that most people just got them to identify as part of the 19+ crowd, because I didn't see very many people drinking). And the younger set that was there wasn't too shriek-y.

The show was opened by two bands, Desperate Union and New Teeth. Both bands were good. Hard to say much more than that this long after the show, because it's not quite fresh in my head anymore. But I do remember enjoying them. And it was nice because I was able to move around to get shots from various angles (Not so much during 100 Monkeys' set)




When 100 Monkeys began to set up their gear, the girls in the crowd got a little more crazy. The set was really cool, I hadn't realized before the show that each of the members of the band played all the various instruments. They would up and rotate every few songs. The music was wicked. I haven't gotten around to editing all my 100 Monkeys photos yet, so there will be more on Flickr in the future, but for now...


Check out more from Canadian Music Week '10 right here

Go Team Canada!

So, I'm not sure if it's a world-wide thing or just a Canadian thing, but I (and the vast majority of my friends) have been crazy about the Olympics this year! Have you been watching?

I gotta say, even though it's way on the west coast of the country, thousands of kilometres away from where I am, there is a definite sense of unity that seems to be bringing Canada together. Every time we win a medal (especially the first time - Yay Alexandre!), every time we suffer a heartbreak (mad love to Joannie Rochette), every time we're disappointed (don't even start about Team Canada vs Team USA last Sunday...) - it seems like the entire country is feeling it, together. My facebook and twitter feeds just explode with commentary and cheering.

I gotta say - it's a pretty awesome thing.

Tonight, we cheer on Team Canada against Russia. A team that we have not beaten at the Olympics since 1960. Can we do it? If the faith of the fans is any measure, yes we can!

GO CANADA GO!