Okay: Here's the scoop. As things stand right now, I will not be closing down my diary. The story of why I was considering it is a pretty stupid one (or perhaps not) but at the end of the day what it came down to was that I was going to be closing it down in order to please someone else. Having thought about it, what I wanted to do was keep my diary here, the way it's always been. And as things stand right now, what I want is going to have to be what's most important.

Thank you to everyone for all the kind words and thoughts that you've sent me, they have been appreciated and definitely contributed to the decision to keep the diary.

So yesterday was the Finn. Ben and I left NOrth Bay Rock City at 3, and made good time until we actually got into Toronto, at which point everything went to hell. (Read: it started to rain, freezing-style, and we took the 401 west instead of east--though that did prove fortunate as we avoided being part of a pretty big accident on the on-ramp for the Don Valley Parkway). When we got to the scene of the accident, we actually watched the firefighters (that's how bad this accident was--there were firefighters) slide across the road, it was so covered in ice.

I think it was about that time that we decided to stay in Toronto for the night and not drive back to Elmvale. We finally made it to the Phoenix, but there was no parking, so we decided to get a room at the Howard Johnson's up the street and park there. We got a sweet deal on the room (and the manager upgraded us for free because he felt sorry for us) but then we had to walk four or five blocks to the Phoenix, and it was still pouring rain outside.

So we finally got there, and caught the tail end of Rhett Miller, who seemed to have more enthusiasm than talent, and I saw an old co-worker from SMATH who totally didn't remember me. It was about that point that I started feeling nauseated. Basically, the half-hour or so that Ben and I saw of the Finn was punctuated by me running about and down the stairs to the bathroom. Finally I gave in and we left. I still feel disappointed, but I was in really rough shape. He opened with "Now We're Getting Somewhere" (!!!) and even played "Daytripper" (yeah, the Beatles) and oh man it was so good. Fuck. Ass.

So we went back to the hotel and debated whether me throwing up in the streets of Toronto would really be the all-time low point of my life. Thankfully, I did not actually cross that threshold. We talked for a couple of hours and then drove back up this morning. The weather is still pretty sucky--apparently my mum actually didn't go to work tonight, which is extremely rare for her. She's a 'come hell and high water' kind of person. A real trooper.

I watched part of a "Life and Times" episode about Sam Sniderman (of Sam the Record Man fame; for my non-Canadian readers, he started a hugely successful chain of music stores and helped to really push the Canadian recording industry when it was first starting out; the chain went under about a year ago) and it was really interesting. Definitely a very influential man. My dad grew up in Toronto and has all these great stories about how he used to go downtown to the flagship store (which used to be one of my favourite things about Toronto) and line up overnight to buy the Beatles' "White Album" and "Abbey Road" and stuff like that. It makes me sad because there will never be an album like that for me. Right now, the Finn is probably about as close as I would get to doing that; anyone else I would just wait and get it after school the day it came out.

How did I get so jaded?

Weird thought: when talking to my former co-worker at the Phoenix, he said that he really wished he had seen Crowded House before they broke up, and that he hoped the Finn would do a lot of CH stuff. (Which he did do in the brief time I was there). I also would have liked to have seen CH, but I was only 15 when they broke up. How odd is that?

{ prev & next }