I don’t go for complaining about being busy. If you are going to do it, you should enjoy it. I have, however, been unusually scheduled recently.

I was away last week, which was busy in a different way, but leading up to that I had worked all but two days at my various jobs and now, having come back, I am in the middle working six days in a row.

Within all this I hope to catch up on knowledge i have gained and created and on recording events of the past few weeks.

Last month I took a beginner voice over course to learn about auditiioning for and working as a voice actor for radio commercials and TV voiceovers.

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Tuesday morning Lenks came by and we walked to the gelato place for a sandwich. I had a grilled panini with salami, roasted red chlies monterey jack cheese, and dijon mustard, She also had a sandwich. We also went to a grocery fruitstand and got an apple and an orange.

On the way back we spotted a car stopped at a stop sign and not moving. The people were lost. When we got near an elderly lady got out and asked us for help. She and her husband were looking for a church. A particular one and she told us she what thought  the denomination was.

There are two of those churches nearby, we said and started to describe their locations. She got confused by our directions. I offered to get in the car and we would find their church. Lenks had to go, so she left and I hopped in.

We went to the nearest church. That wasn’t it.

Then we turned to the other nearby one. That wasn’t it either.

We came in from a nearby town she told me. On your main street.

This one I asked. Our main street? Not that one. She eventually came up with the name. It wasn’t the main street.

Let’s go down to that street and we can retrace your steps.

They were coming into town to the church to play duplicate bridge. The venue had moved from the regular one.

There’s a park and I think a church by the park where we turn. I thought I knew where she meant now. It wasn’t a park, but a company. We turned down the street and passed where we first met them. By then I had learned their names, Audrey and Don. Now I knew which church they were going to too.

We just continued past where got in the car about 500 metres and got to the church.

Audrey stopped on the road and asked if I needed a ride back. I declined and said I only had a short walk.

Let us buy you a coffee then, everyone likes coffee, she said. Maybe you should pull into the parking lot, I said.

I didn’t argue further and took the four dollars. I will put it in my RRSP.

We had Thanksgiving dinner at Hiro and Dave’s. It was great.

Hiro, Dave, Dan, Ahmed, Morgan, Jordan, Erica, Mubi, and Melba, (and me, of course) were there. Mariano came by later when he got back from his Preston luncheon.

We had a 22 lb turkey, brussel sprouts, tomato salad, cheesy scalloped potatoes, gravy, country harvest bread, semolina artisan bread, apple pie, pumpkin pie, vanilla ice cream, and another pumpkin pie.

Melba told me on the hpone she would get an apple pie. When Jordan or someone heard that we wouldn’t have pumpkin pie some of the guys went to get one, or at least ingredients. They came back with a pumpkin pie and Melba eneded up bringing a pumpkin pie. The pies were okay, but I find store pumpkin pies way oversweetened.

Morgan brought two bottles of vin blanc: Yellow Tail and Little Penguin. We also had the Mission Hill cabernet merlot, that I brought.

We cooked and ate and talked.

At nine I had to take a conference call for an hour. Then I came back downstairs and the guys were playing some adventure video game that start6s with Z.

I started telling the guys some logic puzzles that I read recently and we solved them and talked.

On Friday after work, I went to Owen’s house where they had: Gallery Grand Opening

Please join us for the opening celebration of the new gallery here at 130 King St. N. Featuring the art of Hayley Schmalz, and a special performance by Wax Mannequin @ 130 King St. North, Waterloo, $PWYC

The gallery was in the attic which had been freshly painted white with a grey floor.

It is interesting. I had been to a living room concert, but thitherto not a house art show.

I attended the Leadership Waterloo Region Annual General Meeting 2007 last Wednesday.

From our 2007 class, I saw Muthu, Bruce, Patti, Bianca, Katherine, Sharen, Jeff, and Guy.

I ended up sitting next to Linda who used to manage a TD branch, but now works as a life coach. We had a good chat.

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We left for Ann Arbor quite late Friday 17 August.

The trip is about 350 kilometres. We stopped in Windsor and I got some US currency then we crossed the Ambassador Bridge. When we got into the Ann Arbor after midnight, I found that the directions I had printed off to get to the city followed a route on the highways different that the directions to our accommodations — that I had expected to susquently follow. We drove down Main, Liberty and State streets, but then doubled back and drove down Packard and stopped at Stadium at the circleK to buy a map.

I navigated and we drove up Ferdon and got to Vitosha Guesthouse at Berkshire and Washtenaw. We followed the directions that Kei had given me on the phone and we got to our room and finally to sleep at about 02:30.

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We played our final league match this Tuesday. It has been an interesting season, that is if you find losing interesting. We will end the season with a terrible record

We have improved in our team play. In our last match I noticed how well I and my teammates improvised plays, dummied, supported and covered compared to earlier in the season.

We are much better than our record, but, still, we aren’t producing winning results. In almost a third of our matches we were winning at the half only to lose or tie.

Injury, poor attendance and thence few or no subs, and rotating goalkeepers, hindered the performance of the talent we do have and didn’t help the psychology of the team.

Anyway, I am glad to have played with the team, but it shows that it takes time to build a team.

I liked playing competitively and playing full regulation time matches. I don’t really like our team name, Merkins. I could have done without the cursing, complaining, and ungentlemanly conduct that seems to be a norm in the league.

• Won our first cup match in soccer 22 Jun 2007
• Inconvenient stormy 60 minutes 16 May 2007

Last Friday Ojo and I went to Queen Street Commons cafe (operated by the Working Centre) where we each had Thai noodle salad. We walked around in Victoria Park for a bit.

Later we stopped by a new cafe on King Street, Maestro. It is down a spiral staircase from the sidewalk. The blackboard sign list all sorts of coffee served. We tried Serbian coffee. It was very strong brewed with finely ground coffee beans still in the bottom of the cup and served with a glass of mineral water.

I rarely drink coffee and it was interesting to me to taste how much sipping the mineral water affected the flavour.

The guy also told us about Turkish coffee, Greek coffee and others he had on his list. We also asked about another type of coffee listed on the sign outside, Canadian coffee. That’s just regular coffee.

This afternoon, on my way to work, a kid zoomed by me on a skateboard. I recognized his t-shirt and he wore a wristband just like me, a wristband from Hillside Festival 2007. Yeah, I was a Guelph Lake for the weekend music, arts, and peace, a local hippy fest.

I volunteered for Chuck at the lake stage beer tent, which means I got to attend the festival for free. I saw loads of people, saw bands, ate food, sat in the sun, swam in the lake, and got the ultimate haircut.

The primary reason I attend the festival is to volunteer, other things are good too, but I see the hassle and price of a ticket as too great a cost. Volunteering, which I enjoy and gives me something to do, is a joy, so my benefit accumulates. Notwithstanding that, I do want to do other things at the festival, so I try to pack my shifts in early to be free for the rest of the time.

I came into the island in the early afternoon to do some training and then relaxed until my security shift started. I did security, then served beer until closing time. Then the next morning I did security from opening until the afternoon. Then I was free. I enjoyed it though. Serving was good. We served beers from Mill Street, F&M, and Wellington. While I kept the area secure, I got to listen to music.

While I was at the back stage gate, this band of young kids, Dancehall Free For All played. They are two guitars, keyboard, sax, trumpet and drums and played kind of jazzy funk or soemthing. They were great. They had real showmanship. When the guy was introducing them as soon as he said there band name, they busted into their first song. In their last song the drummer jumped up and started dancing while he beat the skins. There was a crowd of kids up front plus one older looking grey-haired guy dancing and bopping to their music.

For music, I also saw So Called, That 1 Guy, Dya Singh, Vieux Farka Toure, Sexsmith, and Ani.

I saw many people at the festival too. I served beer to Joe Dv the big little brother of a friend, I saw PilarH a girl from high school (which is long ago and far away), I saw Zara (who said “long time no see” I said “yeah about a year” since last Hillside), I saw NikiW,

I saw loads of people who were working security under Landry. On Friday I talked to Darren, Cake, and Madeline. Cake was excited when I told them that in our training they were referred to as professional security. I also later saw Sergeant, Mike Mkhnk, Amon, Fedy, etc.
I met people I volunteered with like: Megan, Adrian, Nadine, Dan, etc.

While checking ID I met a hapa dude who had several names Wee Armour was his mixed family name.

I also met a bunch of other people through people, John, Amanda, and Finn; Liz; Andrew and Sandra; Shannon and Harmony, Emily, John and Zanelli, Cynthia, etc.

So, it was a good fun weekend. There were plenty of children (good), plenty of music and food (good), unlike the performers, it was pretty white (weird), and there was loads of smoke, both legal and still criminal (bad).

Oh yeah, and I got the ultimate haircut.