I took the above shot out of the bus window coming back from Campbellton weekend before last. It was the day after the "big storm" that hit all of Eastern North America. I was watching coverage of it on my folks' cable TV... fascinating invention by the way... and it made top story on all of the national news broadcasts. I honestly don't remember weather getting this kind of play back when I was 7 and we seemed to get meter deep snowfalls every other week. Maybe snow in the 70s wasn't as dangerous as post 9/11 snow.
Hey remember when we were terrified to go outside because of ACID RAIN?!!!
That was fun.
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Anyhow... in case some of you are wondering why The 2400 blog has been mostly silent for the last little while... busy week, yo. It all paid off, though. Getting organized and postered up for the SPRING FORWARD readings resulted in a great Friday where our modest attendance projections were met and eclipsed.
We started things off with three readers (Mark Jarman, Karen Solie, WhiteFeather) at Westminster Books at 6pm... and from that point we had in the neighbourhood of 20-25 people. Then at Read's (Matt Leslie, Jesse Ferguson, Biff Mitchell at 7pm) most people stuck with us and a few new faces showed up. Finally at the re-christened Taproom (now Wilser's Room, me, Katie Brown, John Heinstein, Matte Robinson and Andrew Titus, 8pm ish) the beer flowed and the poetry and the folk/jazz via a scaled down Vetch duo. Maybe it was the culmination of a long week's work and 4 large pints, but I was home, in bed, asleep... before midnight. Still.
The next morning I was strong and hangover-free... the sun was out... all was well... except when entering the graveyard off Carleton extension I was about 30 feet behind this older gentleman (perhaps 70ish) who was dressed in orange cords and a grey coat. He had what seemed to be a nice spring in his step... but then I noticed that every 5 seconds or so he'd square back his shoulders, bring his hands about a foot apart behind his back and shake them extremely vigorously up and down... looked like he was trying to break a pair of handcuffs. The only other explanation I could think of, given his springy tread, was that he was trying to break free and hurtle upwards over King's Place. But he didn't. I carefully slowed my pace so as not to catch up with him then veered off over to the Happy Baker to avoid standing next to him at the crosswalk. Later I saw a 6 foot gray bunny handing out Easter eggs. Fredericton is fucked up.
After work I was resigning myself to an evening of cleaning my bathroom and putting up new shower curtains and maybe laundry, but Andrew Titus, my literary cohort, invited me up to dinner (if he ever invites you for God's sake go... the man puts on a spread like none other) followed by the light entertainment of filming pre-teens kicking the snot out of each other. We broke no laws... at least not knowingly.
On Sunday M. came for a visit... early in the week we'd talked about going to The Constantines show that night, just short of actually committing to the plan. In the end we just enjoyed the nice day, going down to Isaac's Way for lunch then walking up to the Superstore and Jumbo to get snacks and movies for the evening. So instead of The Constantines it was Marie Antoinette, A Scanner Darkly, Mediterranean pastry snacks, blue corn nachos and hot salsa, french bread with pepper corn cream cheeze, guacamole, etc. I think we made the right decision.
This morning we went on an errand extravaganza... starting with coffee at Starbucks, some costume purchases, a visit to Home Depot... then out to Scott's Nursery to buy seeds and stare down the iguanas, coy and a large slow gray cat. On the way back a quick stop at a tiling store to get some ceramic cut then on to Chez Riz for lunch (my second curry meal in two days). After lunch the art store on Queen, coffee at Read's and then... eventually the weekend ended. And here I am at work. Sigh.
So... no 2400 updates today either... though there is a new Surgery show up to listen to.
I'll get back on track this week... promise.
Really.
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