Category Archives: Alan

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Folk Fest 2011

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I’ll start this off with the same promise of my Sasquatch 2011 post – posting who I saw with the hopes of fleshing things out with individual reviews and pictures once I have time.

One thing I will say about this year’s festival – there were a ton of “new to me” artists that blew me away, leading to no less than 10 album purchases and a boatload of names to watch for when they come to town. As with the Sasquatch post the bands that stood out are in bold (either individually, or the strongest part of a workshop), purchased may be bold as well as italic.

you may question how I was able to “see” so much on Saturday and Sunday, but it is really easy to understand. As a general rule I don’t like workshops where it is band A plays, then band B, and the other artists try not to look bored while they wait for their turn. I would generally give it a swing through the 2-4 artists on stage, and if they didn’t get it together I’d move on. Also, I generally like a bit more energy from who I’m watching, if not from their music then from their crowd interaction and general stage presence. A quiet artist with an arresting voice and a genuine connection with the crowd can be just as enthralling as a high energy, raucous band that is blowing the roof of the place.

Onwards to my busy folk fest viewing schedule!
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Victory is mine!

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TTR Germany

After god only knows how many times of playing Ticket to Ride, I finally managed to pull off a win last night. And WHAT a win.

We were playing the Marklin edition (Germany), and I kept 3 of my first 4 destination cards (2 long routes, 1 short). At first glance it didn’t seem like they had any relation to one another, but with a bit of creative thinking (and collecting a ton of train cards before I started claiming routes) I managed to string together a fairly impressive route on the right side of the board. I got two of the 7-car routes, and while everyone kept questioning what I was trying to do when I only had a single 2 car train on the board, I stuck to the plan. I did a second destination card pull with 4 train cars left in front of me (everyone else had quite a few, so I was confident I’d be able to do something with at least one of them), and that was really the margin of victory.

In the end, I completed three long destination cards (worth 16, 18 and 22 points), as well as one of the shorter ones (for 8). If I hadn’t made the final pull for destination cards on my second last turn the game would have been a lot closer, but I had 132, the two next closest were 105 and 104, and then 73 and 69 to round out the scores. This was without passengers (which further inflate the scores in this version), and perhaps the main reason I was able to do this successfully was because I wasn’t playing with people who make it their sole goal to f with my plans.

you know who you people are..

Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo 2011

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So, for the first time ever I decided to go down and check out the Comic Expo over the weekend, and it was overwhelmingly geek-tastic.

The crowd on Saturday was incredible, and it was in large part due to the fact that William Shatner was on site to do a couple of autograph sessions as well as a photo op. Needless to say, you always knew where he was going to be because the crowd would shift from one side of the room to the other, stampeding over anyone unlucky enough to get in their way. ;)
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returning to normal

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after so long, do I really know what “normal” is anymore?

Every day that goes by I find myself thinking more about normal stuff, and less about what I need to do to win the war I’ve been waging for the last 5 months. A large part of this is because I took a fairly expensive and drastic measure and cooked my house to ensure there wasn’t a living organism left to torment me, nothing left to ruin my sleep and cause more stress than I’d ever have imagined possible from such a small creature.

After the thermal treatment I took steps to ensure that even if there were any survivors (doubtful when you consider the temperatures and the durations they were held for) they had no way to get back in (or out), and if by some small miracle they did find their way back in… well, I don’t suspect they would live long enough to cause a problem. I’m still following procedures until I’m clear of the 60 day mark, but in my mind I keep telling myself that it is finally over and I can take my life off pause and get things back on track.

Today was a small step towards doing things I used to do, or at least putting things in place so I can do them again. I haven’t done any real baking (muffin mixes and jell-o don’t count) in probably a year or more, and so when I went grocery shopping today I made a point to go through the baking aisle and fully stock up. My cupboards are still surprisingly empty after dropping a fair amount of money at the grocery store, but I’ve now got ingredients in place to create stuff again.

I hope that I haven’t completely lost the knack, but the good thing about baking is that your mistakes are almost always still edible…

other things in my life that have been ignored for far too long and need to be dusted off as soon as possible:

biking – not since September of 2009, after riding 99% of the days the year before

walking – my knees are too bad for running these days, but I need to get out and be more active now that I have the time and energy (both physical and mental) to do so

taking pictures – and then uploading them to flickr. it’s been so long I can’t remember the log in info for my flickr account.

reading and playing games – it’s tough to do these when you don’t want to be in your house for more than 5 minutes.

there are other things, like writing on here, but I’m enjoying the idea of simply having my friends over for a night of fun fairly soon. having people over and actually relaxing in my house. what a novel concept.

it feels good to be getting back to normal, and I look forward to the day when I can look back at this five month period and be glad it is just a distant memory.

Today is day one

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On October 30 I discovered the two people I took a chance on when deciding to rent them my house left more than excessive dirt and a destroyed carpet behind in their wake…. they left me a lovely parting gift.

Bedbugs.

I know what you’re thinking, and I couldn’t believe it either. Bedbugs are something you worry about in hostels and divey hotels, not in your home, not in your sanctuary from the outside world.

I honestly got lucky to discover them as early as I did, and the only reason I found out was because one was just a little too eager to get to the buffet table (me) than it should have been. I was going to bed, and what looked like a piece of lint was on my red flannel sheets. I was planning on vacuuming the house the next day so I just tried to brush it off to the floor and go to bed. I missed, and it started to run away. I went to grab it, thinking it was an ant or something, and it squished in my fingers making them all red.
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