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How should I start this? Well exam week was over last friday and I wrote all 5 of my exams. I think I did Ok. On Friday night as you may know I went to go see Alexisonfire at the KoolHaus.
When my friend and I got to the concert the line to get in was out the building around the building and and around another building (about 2 blocks long) but thankfully it was moving pretty fast because it was kinda cold that night. When we got in we saw a really long line for coat check so we decided to check our coats later (we never got around to it and we were grateful we didn’t because that long line was there when the concert was over and we would have had to wait along time to get our coats.) and go straight into the club. We went to the “VIP” area which was the bar area since the main floor seemed to be filled with a bunch of 13 year olds. We sat for a bit and waited for the concert to start and when it did we got up to watch it.
The first band to go on was Sleeper Set Sail (band said website would be up soon) a band I had never heard of before that night but they were really good. The next two bands I didn’t really like that much The Planet Smashers a Canadian Ska band and The Constantines a surprise guest band. Once the three bands had done there sets Alexisonfire came on to perform and everyone went crazy.
During one of there songs I saw George Stroumboulopoulos I’ll talk more about that later. While on stage they interacted with the crowd really well and it really looked like they were enjoying themselves while on stage. They said that there family was at the show and that they were going to go spend time with them after the show because they hadn’t seen them in a long time. So about George once Alexisonfire was done there set (before encores) people were screaming for more and then the lights on the stage turned on and you could see George on the stage and he started to talk about the music industry in Canada and how bands never get gold records but with fan support it can happen and that he was there to give Alexisonfire there gold record. The band was touched, and they thank everyone who supported them all along and a special thank you to George for helping get there video’s played on Much Music. They also gave one of the gold records to a someone who had come to almost all of there concerts in North America. After that they performed three encores and then the show was over.
Just before the show ended the dropped balloons on the crowd (I tried to get one but couldn’t) with the Alexisonfire logo on the front and on the back it read:
From your friendly
neighborhood music nerds,
Alexisonfire
So after that I went home to sleep because I had to catch the 7:45 am train to Montreal because I was invited to Lizzy’s company Christmas party at The Ritz-Carlton, Montreal. The evening started with cocktails and then progressed to dinner. We had a wonderful dinner that started off with a butternut squash soup, and then a salad with sun-dried tomato oil dressing, and then the main course which was one of three choices (Veal, Fish or Veggie Lasagna), and then desert that was one of two choices (Chocolate cake that I didn’t have and a raspberry cake that was really good). After the tables had been cleared they had some gifts to be won by the employees. They had bottles of wine, port and other alcohols, they also had a DVD player a stereo and a digital camera. One of the other co-op students won the digital camera and Lizzy won a bottle of port. Then there was some dancing and we decided it was time to go home because the next day (Sunday) Lizzy was moving back to Ottawa.
Her brother was in Montreal to help and late in the afternoon Sunday we had the truck packed up and we were all set to drive to Ottawa to meet her parents who had arrived the day before with stuff being sent from Toronto. I had to follow behind the truck in Lizzy’s family car (which was in montreal because her brother took it up to allow for extra space for stuff) from Montreal to Ottawa. Thanks to a bunch of traffic I got almost lost them about four times but only one of those time they actually got out of my site which was somewhat bad because I almost missed the on ramp to the highway but thankfully I spotted them as they got on and I followed a few cars back. Until the exit for the highway to Ottawa I was probably 10 to 15 cars behind them which was also not too fun because I couldn’t get any closer because of traffic but everything worked out in the end. We got to ottawa safely and a bit later than planned for more than one reason. When we got there we moved everything from the truck and car into the apartment and had dinner. After that her parents drove home to Toronto and her brother went back to montreal to tie up loose ends.
On Monday Lizzy and I set up a bunch of furniture, and put stuff in to closets and cupboards. We spent most of the morning putting together an Ikea closet system together. it took so long because of it having already being put together once and taken apart (those plastic things that hold the hinges in the door do not like to come out once they are in place). All the screws for they system were in one bag so we had to figured out which screws went where and so on, but once that was done and we had put stuff away we went for dinner at one of our favorite places to eat. After dinner we went back to the apartment and set everything else up and went to bed because we had to get up and go home. we were getting a drive from her brother who still had the car.
Well you think you go to bed early and you get sleep right? Wrong the building fire alarm went off and it was really loud, so we put on warmer clothes (because it was really cold in Ottawa) and we go downstairs to the lobby to get out of the building like you are supposed to do in a fire alarm situation. When we got down stairs no one was there. People started to trickle down a few min after we got down stairs. Apparently the apartment doesn’t get a good turnout when the alarm goes off (I think its because you can mute the building fire alarm). So the Ottawa fire department showed up and checked things out and found the cause was a burst pipe in the parking garage. So they said everyone could go back up to there apartments. Once we got back up the alarm we off again and as we were about to go downstairs it stopped so we went down anyways to see what happened this time and we saw the superintendent who said that the pipe set the alarm off again and to ignore and other alarms that night because he was waiting for a plumber to come and fix the pipe and that if the alarm did go off he would turn it off. So when the alarm went off for a third time we just stayed in the apartment and didn’t go downstairs.
So Tuesday morning we got up and did the finishing touches on the apartment and had lunch. While I was walking to go get lunch I noticed two familiar faces Tom Green and Phil Giroux I decided to not go and bug them because they were talking about stuff (Phil was saying something about skateboarding down some street and Tom was giving me a funny look). So I crossed the street and while I was walking I looked over at them and Tom was still looking at me which was kinda weird but I went into the restaurant and got my food and by the time it was ready they were long gone. Lizzy’s brother showed up and we put up a mirror door and then we hopped in the car and drove straight through to Toronto.
The whole time I was away I was completely unaware as to what was happening to all the bittorrent sites. All the big sites closed down before they could get raided by police. The site I would get everything from was one of the site that closed down. It was torrentbits.org. I really liked the community that the site had and the minimal design of the site and the really nice download speeds.
I want to say thank you to all of the mods and admins at torrentbits for setting up a torrent site that was a cut above the rest and that everyone wanted to be a part of. I hope to see something new from you guys soon.
Ok I started this blog update at about 11 pm and now it’s 2 am. It took me that much time because I wanted to find you guys pics of the different things (some needed to be photoshopped), and find proper links for other things. I hope you enjoyed this really long post about my really long and busy weekend.
Happy Holidays from your local internet Macaddict
Dave
P.S. I updated this on Thursday with extra links and pics.
