Thursday, April 30, 2009

Carry a Poem in your Pocket Day and other Goings on in My Life

Ok, my excuse is that I have been really busy. I suddenly have a few minutes (I live in a “hurry up then wait” world it seems, so let me fill you in on the bits and pieces in my life at the moment.

Carrying on with the it is Poetry Month theme, today is “Carry a poem in your pocket day”… if you care to participate you can go to to poets.org and choose a poem and print it out and carry it around with you to share with others… hmmm, I appreciate the sentiment to promote poetry in this month but someone has too much time on their hands…

Car Shenanigans

I snapped this picture yesterday when I went out first thing in the morning to walk my dog Bella. Seems there is a practical joker in the area. I was wondering what the background to this prank was? Was the owner of the yellow car overly sensitive about others getting near his/her car so someone decided to help him keep others away or is it a case of someone else wanting to give him the message that he/she should not park here? In any case it did look peculiar.

Big Rude Jake (not) and Friends at Liberty Bistro

I went out on Tuesday night to one of my favourite venues for dinner, drinks and live music. I have been trying to get back to see Rude Jake for some time. See here for my earlier blog about Big Rude Jake. I wanted to find out if I had just fluked into a great night of drop in guests and open mic “friends” or whether his musical guests were always as good as the previous night I caught his show.

First we were dismayed to discover that Rude Jake was not going to be performing as he was moving house that day, however the waitress reassured us that the stand in hosts were really good also. We listened to a set featuring Heather and then Jennifer and then both together. Great girly singers on guitars and they each had quite nice voices. At one point heather did the Prettiest Bird song, which I have
blogged about and is sung by the Be Good Tanyas. She did a great job and her voice is probably as nice as any of those gals. Jennifer was of Mexican heritage and did a particularly romantic Mexican song, which my friend recognized (will have to ask him to tell me the name). It was all the more endearing since she had just learned it (so she said) and made a few mistakes with the words as she sang the song.

For dinner, my friend and I shared a baked brie (it was as good as the picture looks) and I had the chicken penne, my friend had the roast chicken. The brie was great and the chicken dishes were nice enough. The Liberty Bistro’s menu is quite limited, and the waitresses are just not what they should be, but they have a great outdoor patio and I love their Tues night entertainment. I am thinking next time to have dinner at home and go for drinks and music afterwards. Maybe one of these times I will catch Rude Jake again.

We paid our bill and were about to leave when a guy came wandering in during the break and said he was there to play piano. My friend joked that maybe he was a virtuoso and we should stay and at least hear his first song. Well, we were both astounded when he sat down to the keyboard and played like no one we had ever seen (in person) before. Greg Zawawski was his name and he is a classically trained pianist who knows how to entertain. He did a lot of really different stuff, including a Supertramp melody. What a treat! Of course we had to order more drinks and stay for another set!

There was also another lady (sorry, did not get her name) who accompanied Greg on a few tunes and then took over the piano when he left and performed a few of her own songs.

We wandered out of there way too late and I was soooo exhausted the next day - yesterday. But happy.

The reason I was not able to blog yesterday was that work (you know the paying kind) overwhelmed me and I ended up working into the night last night – and I was so tired! Hopefully I am back into the swing of things again and can get back to a regular blogging schedule!