'Fall'

A week or two ago we went for a day walk in Gatineau Parc, a huge area of wilderness that starts in Gatineau, technically in Quebec but really just across the river and basically a suburb of Ottawa (I'm sure most Quebecois would disagree). It's pretty bizarre to have this massive national park so close, but very cool nonetheless. You could probably hike for four days and still not get back to civilization.

Elli wanted to see it in the fall, and I'm really glad she had the idea - it was spectacular.

We've been to a couple of shows recently; we saw The Bell Orchestre, a band outta Montreal, in a church hall, which was very cool. A double base, synthesizer, drums, violin, a french horn and a trumpet (oh, and one song featured a type-writer!). Nice venue for it - most instruments were unmiked; at one point the two horn players wandered back and forth between the pews. We'd seen them before at Blues Fest, but it wasn't really the best atmosphere for them.

We saw the stalwart Yo La Tengo which was pretty cool. The acoustics and/or sound engineers weren't very good; their softer songs were awesome, but their indulgent electric guitar was lost in distortion. It was cool to see them all get up and switch instruments though: "Hmm, I feel like playing bass for this song.".

Last Friday I was compelled by patriotism (and Elli) to see The Cat Empire. They've definitely gained in confidence since we saw them last in Canberra - they can really work the crowd. I'll be honest: they put on a freakin' awesome show in an awesome venue with a frenzied crowd. We were all covered in sweat from dancing so much by the end of it. (Lots of Aussies there by the way.)

Going to have to pick and choose the next couple of gigs, can't afford everything! Although, I think I'm going to have to go and see Bob Freaking Dylan supported by the Foo Fighters, hello. Man, that's gunna hurt the ol' hip pocket.

What else is new? One Tuesday morning I walked into work to discover my boss had been fired. That was kinda weird. Oh yeah, we've finally got enough money so I can play some Ultimate, w00t! It'll all be indoor at this time of year, but it's better than nothing.

Well, hope you are all well and had a good thanks-giving (the Iswolsky's informed me that Canadian festival is more about the end of harvest, quite different from the American version [aside from just a different date]). I had an awesome turkey-on-steroids dinner at Peter and Jenny's; Jenny really cooked up a storm. Was funny to discover that Alyssa had been at two of those three gigs as well.

Peace out y'all.