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Last night I had a real taste of what an accident can feel like. It was quite slippery on the roads (as discovered by Vero and I slipping our way across the Hilton parking lot to the car) but in my mind, it did not immediately register that there was ice on the roads as soon as I got behind the wheel.

We headed towards the Highway 5 on ramp and there were a few cars waiting to turn left onto it. As I applied the brakes I caught a patch of black ice and the car was out of control.

I have to admit that my mind was on auto-pilot and not clearly thinking about what to do. I don’t recall thinking “I must apply intermittent pressure to the brakes”, I just did it. I started heading towards the median on my left but then realized that I would still rear-end the car in front of us. Without thinking about it, I tried swerving to the right to get into the two lanes of traffic and luckily the tires must have hit a good patch of pavement and it gripped and we made it out of the trap.

The only thing that was going through my mind at that point was that it was probably better to potentially hit a car on its side by swerving right than to hit some person from behind. I never had the time to look to see if there were cars to my right or not. We’re talking the span of this entire event was three seconds so some fast acting was in order.

My heart racing, we continued down the road and eventually turned back towards the on-ramp. I’ve never been in a close call like that before and it was quite scary. Now that I can reflect on it, I must say that driving experience subconsciously helped me out in this case as the habit of pumping the brakes on ice just inherently happened.

That was the end of our night.

The beginning of our night started off with me heading to Canadian Tire to get an oil change. After heading to Best Buy and then back to the waiting room at the store, I watched some TV, had a snooze and started wondering where the heck Vero was as she had said she would be there at 5:45 to pick me up to go visit her grandmother who was in town on a bus tour, staying at the Hilton at the Casino Lac-Leamy.

6:15 rolls around and she shows up and we head out to the Ramada Inn in Gatineau which is across from the Casino. Let it be noted that the only thing Vero’s grandmother told her was that she was staying at ‘the usual hotel’. Well, for the past five years, that usual hotel was the Ramada Inn. Unfortunately for us, when we arrived there, there was not Grandmother Cantin waiting there! We had the front desk guy call the Hilton and sure enough, they were over there.

Vero, her grandmother, uncle and I headed towards the Casino to go to the Banco buffet. I’m pretty sure I’ve been to this place for a work Christmas party and it’s a nice joint. The buffet was also excellent and we had some good times. I will be seeing her again shortly as Vero, Mike and I are heading back up North for Easter break. In fact, I found out a slew of us are heading up North, including Eric and Annie as well as Dana! Quite the crew!

Finally, FINALLY, the remastered Beatles albums are coming out this September!  I swore at one point I had a savings account to buy all of these albums.

The greatest news of all is that there will be a separate box set of the mono mixes as well!

You see, here’s a little history lesson for those born after the sixties.

In the early 60s when The Beatles started out, stereo technology was not around.  It was all in mono therefore all their instruments were mixed for a mono release.

Then stereo started catching on so it would be commonplace for awhile to mix both in mono and stereo and release both versions and you could pick up whichever version your system could handle.  Think of it as a comparison between DVD and Blu-Ray films.  They are the same films but with some differences.

Here’s a real interesting comparison between the two mixes of the Sgt. Pepper’s album, taken from Wikipedia:

The Beatles were present during the mixing of the album in mono and the LP was originally released as such alongside a stereo mix prepared by Abbey Road engineers led by Geoff Emerick; the Beatles themselves did not attend the mixing of the stereo version. (The mono version is now out of print on vinyl and was not officially released on CD.) The two mixes are fundamentally different. For example, the stereo mix of “She’s Leaving Home” was mixed at a slower speed than the original recording and therefore plays at a slower tempo and at a lower pitch than the original recording. Conversely, the mono version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is considerably slower than the stereo version and features much heavier gating and reverb effects. McCartney’s yelling voice in the coda section of “Sgt. Pepper (Reprise)” (just before the segue into “A Day in the Life“) can plainly be heard in the mono version, but is nearly inaudible in the stereo version. The mono version of the song also features drums that open with much more presence and force, as they are turned well up in the mix. Also in the stereo mix, the famous segue at the end of “Good Morning Good Morning” (the chicken-clucking sound which becomes a guitar noise) is timed differently and a crowd noise tape comes in later during the intro to “Sgt. Pepper (Reprise)”.

Other variations between the two mixes include louder laughter at the end of the mono mix of “Within You Without You”, as well as a gush of laughter between the coda of the title track and the beginning of “With a Little Help From My Friends”, and a colder, echoless ending on the mono version of “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!”.

Considering the Beatles weren’t even in the ROOM during the making of the stereo mix, I feel that the mono mix is the definitive version, but here, after all these years, I’ve only heard the stereo mix because that’s the one that was released onto CD.

This is pretty cool news. KISS is going on tour this summer and they are planning some of their tourdates according to their fans voting for where they should play! So if you live in Kapuskasing, you never know! They also say that the voting will be based on the actual percentage of the population which is great news for smaller towns!

http://eventful.com/performers/kiss-/P0-001-000062428-9/competitions

This past weekend I headed to Paisley with Rob as his grandmother had passed away.  Turns out that they knew this may be coming at some point so the family had a great opportunity to see her the week before which is probably the best thing that can happen, I suppose.

Grandma Beech was a kind woman who always liked a good laugh.  She shared Grandpa Earl’s love for playing cards.  I had met Rob’s grandparents on a trip to Marmora one Thanksgiving weekend were we toured around in a camper.  It was quite the fun time although I paid for it on the Sunday after a Hallowe’en party gone wrong.  Hey, in fact, they had a picture of that weekend up in the funeral home now that I think of it.  I should try and get a copy of that picture.  Grandma Beech always had a good time wherever she was.  The last time I saw her was at Rob’s and she tried out the Nintendo Wii Fit game where she proceeded to have us in hysterics while she tried out the hula-hoop game.

We decided to head out on Wednesday night and it was good night of driving.  The most exciting part of our trip happened around Oshawa when the fuel light came on and from my vantage point, I thought we had awhile to go.  We ended up on the other side of the 400 HWY and were still goading each other as to how much gas we could suck out of the tank!  I felt like we were Kramer trying to run the car to the point of no return!  In the end, we found a gas station, filled up and I proceeded to look in the car manual to discover that we still had six litres of fuel to go!  We could have definitely made it places with that amount!

After the gas station, we were hitting the open roads of the Georgian Bay area where it’s a criss cross of roads linking farmlands together.  We stopped into McDonalds in Orangeville around midnight to fuel our hunger.  A random employee commented to us about how it would be real sunny the next morning.  We thanked her for the information and kept on trucking.

About ten kilometers away from Paisley, we came up over a hill and Rob yelled out and I looked up and there were not one, not two, not three, but FOUR deer in our path!  Rob slammed on the brakes and miraculously we didn’t even touch a deer, but cruised on by them all as they looked at us.  Rob said his grandmother must have been looking out for us.

The next day we awoke and it was a beautiful day out.  The snow was pretty well gone and so we picked up some drinks and headed to his grandmother’s house where we washed all the vehicles.  The rest of the day was spent visiting people and having a grand time and by night’s end, we were out in Cargill at Rob’s brother Kevin’s place and I recall us trying to feed some rye to a fly as well as me trying to tune an electric guitar with an amp that had a horrible buzzing sound to it.  I finally retired for the night while the party kept going.  I was probably the wiser of us all as there was no rest for the wicked the next morning and we had things to do.

We headed back into town and managed to get our suits ready and I even got a great haircut from Rob’s mom.  We headed to the funeral home and I paid my respects for awhile and then I headed back home once a crowd started to gather to pay their respects.  Rob’s mom was trying to trade me in for one of her sons so they could have a break from saying hello to the hundreds of people who showed up for Grandma Beech’s wake!

The next day the funeral was held which was quite lovely.  There were a few tunes played by a fiddle player.  Some great stories were told and the lunch afterwards was good as well.  We headed to the Legion later on for a few drinks where I read this interesting story of a resident of Paisley who was in the World War and how the soldiers had ‘rum rations’ every day and he loved being next to the guy who didn’t drink so he could get a double shot to keep him warm during the night.

We woke up around 4AM the next morning to hit the road and get back as Rob had some things to attend to back in Ottawa.  Quite the whirlwind weekend!

iplaying: Too Little Too Late – Metric (Live It Out)

There are quite a few concert happenings coming up soon…

This morning I’m going to attempt to get U2 tickets for their show in Toronto. I don’t know how lucky we will be with this…the U2 fan club gets pre-sale tickets so they may have already been all scooped up by now. Here’s to hoping.

This Wednesday Metric and Malajube are playing for some event put on by the University of Ottawa. It’s only $10 so I’m pumped to see both of them as Malajube is amazing, and I’ve never seen Metric live. I’m hoping there are still tickets available to purchase because we have been scoping out an opportunity to get in for free instead…

Metallica is coming this fall to Ottawa! Awwww yeah! I’m pretty excited to see them in a proper concert form…Joe and I went to see them at the Summer Sanitarium tour in Montreal and it was great but I would like to see them in an arena as well.

Plus…a bunch of festivals all over the place that have me thinking…Lollapalooza is on in Chicago the weekend that we are heading down to Windsor for Mike and Mel’s wedding. That’s only another five hours away! We could easily go down for the Friday and the Sunday! Plus, there are rumours that AC/DC will be playing some summer dates all over the country…will they end up in Ottawa? Who knows?

As always, if you’re interested in attending any of these events with us, let me know!

Friday night I headed over to Matt and Karilee’s place so we could take a look at the new re-release of Pearl Jam’s Ten. We ended up watching the MTV Unplugged DVD (which is killer) as well as watch a special on jungles from the Planet Earth mini-series, all the while chatting up a storm about everything and nothing. It was an entertaining evening and it’s always good times with those two.

Saturday began well as it was beeeheuuuutifullll outside. I proceeded to haul the bicycle out and clean it up…adjusted the brakes, oiled the chain and voila! It’s in high biking order! Mike and I then went for a jaunt down to Sobey’s to pick up some hot dogs and came back to have some excellent BBQ meat. I also tried out some hot mustard I found at the grocery store…it wasn’t kidding. It was really hot.

I had grand aspirations to head downtown and walk around but after calling Vero, I realized that my body was calling for a nap so I decided to do that instead. The rest of the day was spent editing Sam and Marc-André’s wedding video which has hit the part where I have a rough edit complete (around 5 hours of footage!) and now I have to figure out what I want to cull.

Mike, Vero and I then headed out to Bean Town Ranch to have a grand Sugar Shack of a meal. You may remember the Bean Town Ranch from such entries detailing Jason and Monique’s wedding…which was also the place where Annie almost gave birth to Philippe but luckily they managed to get to the hospital. There were quite a few people there for the supper and we found our seats after finding some Beau’s beer on tap. There was a good crowd of Vero’s theatre friends there and we gorged into servings of bread with ‘crotton’ (some kind of pork/onion paste), pea soup, crepes, back bacon, potatoes, quiche and loads of maple syrup. Mmm boy. I believe I may have brought my ‘A-Game’ while eating as I had enough back bacon to feed an army.

After supper, we headed out on the horse drawn carriage for a tour of the maple syrup grounds and ended up in a barn where they laid out some maple syrup that we could put onto a Popsicle stick. We were also treated to some ‘caribou’ which was a shot of some sort of maple syrup liquor. We proceeded to help ourselves to not one, not two, but three shots of this ghastly stuff and Mike, J-F and I all realized the third one may have not been needed.

When we returned to the main hall, there was an acoustic set by a brother and sister. They were playing some good Beatles, CCR and other classic staples, along with a few French tunes as well. The brother also had a saxophone which he played occasionally. I especially enjoyed it when he played along with ‘You Shook me All Night Long’ by AC/DC later on the night when the DJ was playing that song. I enjoyed some good company with the boys…Simon, J-F and Mike and we chatted about the assorted characters we saw around the room…including the old guy with leather pants and cowboy boots.

The DJ then came in and the dance floor became PACKED with kids. We didn’t know where these kids came from but they dominated the place. I swear I saw a little mosh pit starting on the right hand side of the crowd. There was jumping, there was flailing of arms and legs, there were crazy dance moves…it was quite the spectacle from my perch at the table. We had a good laugh at some of the moves being brought out…I especially loved when the Macarena was playing and one woman made her own moves up. These kids must have been from a school or something because around 10PM they all left in one fell swoop. This pretty well killed the dance floor and we were left inside a hall all by ourselves dancing for another hour.

I really enjoyed the night as it was nice to get out of the city and see some stars at night. I really miss that. I chatted with J-F and Mike about the conundrum of where to move next (in terms of a house)…do I move closer to the city so we are closer to work, and subsequently I can start biking a lot easier…or do we head farther out of the city so we can have a little bit more land, privacy and be able to see the stars at night instead of the glow of the city lights?

The next morning was quite dreary and it never stopped raining all day long. Krista and Ben were planning to show up for some BBQ hot dogs so Mike and I picked up some beer and headed back home only to find out that Krista said she may be running late. I started installing the new version of Final Cut Pro that Vero graciously obtained for me (this version is built to natively run on the Intel chip set as opposed to the older version I have, so I’m hoping it will have less issues with my Macbook) and we watched a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother. Later in the day, I headed over to Vero’s for awhile and tried to contact Krista a few times but no dice. I was trying to get in touch with her to help me study for a written exam I have coming up this Wednesday and it deals with matters of Parliamentary legislation and other things I’m not too familiar with. In the end, I found out she wasn’t feeling all too hot so we decided to reconvene at work on Monday and Vero and I had some supper and watch the red carpet gathering of the Junos.

I headed home to watch the rest of the Junos with Mike. They were a fun time. Russell Peters is freaking hilarious. I don’t know how he gets away with some of things he says. I enjoyed seeing the Sam Roberts Band play ‘Them Kids’ and they had this lighting effect that made them black and white. Coolness! They also took home the best rock album and best artist of the year awards. Nickelback also cleaned house…and justly so. Their new album is killer.

I am a happy man right now. Benoit gave me the tip awhile ago that with my subscription to Rogers Internet Service Provider, they offer a free Flickr PRO account. For the past many years I’ve forked out the $25 USD to have a pro account and all of sudden, I get it as a perk of corporations merging together! Flickr -> Yahoo -> Rogers.

Beauty! Treat yourself to a new Pro account if you have Rogers Internet, will ya?

iplaying: Paranoia – Sam Roberts Band (We Were Born in a Flame)

Thursday night turned out to be quite the eventful night.  Not only did we head out to Aux Quatre Jeudis, a pub near my work, but my Pearl Jam Super Deluxe Edition of Ten arrived from UPS, only five days before it should have!  Awesome!

I headed out to pick up this set.  Why do parcel delivery services have to be out in the middle of nowhere?  Both DHL and UPS are in far away areas of Ottawa.  I ended up having to pay $16 extra to get the package (must have been some duty charges on it) but that’s not a problem.  This thing was massive.

I went to Vero’s place for some good grub and then I finally managed to open up the set.  The set is beautiful.  It comes in a cloth bound box the size of vinyl records.  You pull out the three vinyl records in the set – the remastered version of Ten, the REMIXED and remastered version of Ten (dubbed Ten Redux), and the double LP set of the Drop in the Park concert.

Then there is a box which has a ton of goodies inside…CDs of the two Ten versions, a DVD of the MTV Unplugged concert, a cassette tape of the original demo that Eddie Vedder sent to the band.  It is quite hilarious to listen to as the lyrics are quite different on the song ‘Once’ whereas the other two songs (Alive, Footsteps) are surprisingly indifferent than what we’ve heard nowadays.

There is also a bunch of photographs, album liner notes, backstage passes, postcards, all sorts of memorabilia of the era.  My favourite part is a composition book filled with notes, photos and oddities from the era.  Like a diary of sorts.  It has given me ideas of what I want to do for my EuroTrip 2005 album which I’ve pondered for many a year.

I popped in the Drop in the Park LP and took a listen with a beer while Vero dozed off next to me on the couch.  It’s quite interesting to hear Pearl Jam when they first started out.  They were some crazy guys back then…Eddie Vedder was known for climbing up on the lighting rigs and swinging down by his microphone cord.  I saw a video of this on Youtube the other day and I thought he was quite insane.  There’s also this amazing photo in the set of him jumping from a lighting/camera guy’s stand above the crowd.  (edit: Hey, I found it!)  The look on the cameraman’s face is amazing!

Later on in the night, we headed out to Aux Quatre Jeudis for a few pints with Julie and Luc from Vero’s work.  On the way, we dropped off at the University so I could return some books.  On the way back to the car I wanted to make Vero laugh so I ran and leaped into the air.  Unfortunately for myself, I somehow tripped on the way down and I landed hard on my knee and my hands.  Argh!  I made it back to the car fast but Vero was there laughing because she thought it was part of the act!  It most definitely was not and I was a hurting man!  The worst was my left hand which I have confirmed still has a piece of glass inside it from running through the glass door at Uncle Greg’s place years ago (I was saving a baby, of course!).  It is sensitive whenever I push on a certain spot and that spot was hit hard when falling down.  I could see some blood appearing under the skin so I know that glass is definitely in there somewhere!

We then headed to Aux Quatre Jeudis for a few drinks with Luc and Julie, a couple of people that Vero works with.  Julie was in town as an anchorwoman for the week.  We ended up on the heated patio for the night and the night descended into madness with Vero and I returning home around 2:30.  This did not bode well for yours truly the next morning when he headed for work in the morning!

The next morning was quite the ordeal while trying to maintain my composure.  The light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be a freight train coming to pummel me head over heels.  Things started looking up by the time lunch came around as the team headed out to Molto for my going away lunch.  I had an excellent pizza (way too big!) and the team provided me with some excellent reading…a book entitled “What’s your poo telling you?”.  I thought this was hilarious and we found that it had some excellent medical points and drawings inside it.