Sunday Morning with Cat

I’m sitting here on Sunday morning with Cat Stevens’ ‘Tea for the Tillerman’ album playing on the stereo.  I’ve already went outside to enjoy the crisp sunny morning to fix my wiper blade.  Whatever it is, it’s not that pin that I had torn out last week.  I removed the other wiper blade and there’s no such pin.  My original assumption was correct that the pin was part of the old wiper blade.

That being said, I hope the wiper blade doesn’t try and fall off again.  I noticed that the driver’s side blade tends to snap into place whereas I don’t really feel a snap when installing the passenger side wiper.

Unfortunately for the Mazda3, there’s a little damage in the rear.  Mike and I were walking by it yesterday and noticed that someone had side-swiped it!  Argh!  It isn’t TOO bad but there definitely is a little scratch of paint which was lifted.  Considering I’ve had the car parked in the driveway for many a moon, I can only imagine that it happened during the road trip to Barrie/Meaford last weekend.  Lord knows where it happened…it could have been out on the street in Barrie for the half hour it was there, it could have been outside the hall that we were all partying at (we were parked on the side of the road), or it could have simply been in the driveway of Carol and Danny’s when someone was backing up.  Heck, it could have been anywhere.  What peeves me is there was no note left.

That’s right, there was no note left apologizing for the nice damage you left on my car Mr. Sideswiper.  What kind of low individual are you that you care more about your money than your conscience?  I hope you live with regret until the end of your days good sir.

The weekend has been entertaining so far.  Eric, Annie, Philippe, William and Mike gathered at our house for some Chinese Food on Friday evening to welcome me back to Orleans.  That’s right, I have returned!  It looks like the busses seem to be operating at a capacity that can get me to work…tomorrow morning shall be the real test.  Will I get a spot in the Park and Ride parking lot?  Will I get a spot to sit/stand on the bus?  Who knows?  I’ll find out tomorrow.

Later that evening, Mike and I headed over to Eric and Annie’s place as they had to put the kids to bed.  We ended up watching the film Crank with Jason Statham.  It was over-the-top slapstick action.  I had some good laughs at the absurd situations the main character gets himself into.  The deal is that he is drugged with some poison which will kill him if he doesn’t keep his adrenaline up…so he does everything under the sun to keep the adrenaline pumping in his system.

On Saturday I got the chance to replenish my cupboards with some much needed food.  I also saw a colleague from work who I didn’t know lived in Orleans.  Turns out that a few guys from work live out here and he was saying how we should open an office out here!

Saturday afternoon was spent doing some research for my group project in my Images and Communications class.  It will deal with rock posters (which was not a subject I immediately suggested but am quite pleased that we are working on it).  For awhile I couldn’t find any literature on it so I hit up the U of Ottawa library and lo and behold, I hit the mother lode in the form of a book called ‘The Art of Rock’ by Paul Grushkin.

This book is amazing.  Weighing in at a good ten pounds, it’s full of poster artwork from the 50s – 70s time period and delivers a history of how they came about.  It was interesting to read about the posters in the 50s being very ‘block type’ in that there was a standard spot for a picture of an entertainer, his band name, the date he was playing, etc.

Then you move onto the psychadelic era which started out in San Francisco with the group of artists called Family Dog.  They would hold dances and advertise them with great posters across the town.  These soon became collectibles and people would steal them off the lamposts 30 seconds after they were put up!  In the end, Familiy Dog didn’t care as they were still getting the word out to the people who wanted to go to these events.  The poster scene grew bigger and bigger when Bill Graham of the Fillmore clubs started making his own posters (which the Fillmore still does to this day!).

It was quite an interesting read and I want to have this book for myself.  It’s a beautiful oral history (they have tons of interviews with the people involved at the time) of a great time for music in general and the general art/music scene that was occurring at the time.

The rest of the evening was spent bonding with Mike over some BBQ steak and some great Mill Street Stock Ale.  We both love this beer immensely, but the $40 a case is making us cringe at buying another case in the future.  Perhaps it shall be reserved for those special days.

iplaying: Cat Stevens – Longer Boats (Tea for the Tillerman)