September 2006 Archives
Man, what's up with Nike? I just went to their Bloor St Toronto store to look for a gift for Carol, who has just taken up running. It was a really, really crappy experience. I chose to go to the Nike Store over, say, a department store, because I was hoping for better, more knowledgable service (I'm not a runner myself). Instead, I got a classic department store experience: I had to hunt for help, couldn't get decent advice and finished up with an unhelpful cashier. In short, it really sucked.
I went downstairs first to look at clothes. I decided to buy a running jacket, but the saleskid made me leave it down there while I went to look at watches upstairs. It's clear they're they on commission, and worried about not being credited. Cheesy. It was like Future Shop or something. Up at the watches, I had some poor guy who knew nothing about watches trying to find the boxes so we could figure out the features from the manual. Eventually I got someone who knew something, and selected a watch. Luckily I was allowed to take that downstairs to pay for my items together. Imagine!
Tt the cash, while they were ringing in my $200 purchase, I talked with the guy about how this was a gift, so could I get a box? However, I forgot to explicitedly ask for a gift receipt, and when I mentioned it at the end I was simply told, "Oh, sorry, it's too late now." She'd rung it in. Shrug. Frankly, if Carol's birthday hadn't been in a couple of days, I would have just returned it all and left. As it is, that's my last time at the Nike Store. I can have this experience at The Bay or SportChek for way less money.
Leighton started "real" school this year -- going to Pierre Elliott Trudeau like Campbell -- and I'd almost forgotten about the trauma of leaving your crying child behind. Oy. It doesn't get any easier even when you know it's coming. What happens is he melts down when I leave, then gets taken to the principal's office for a bit to calm down, then comes back and has a grand old time. And Carol says he's perfectly happy when she picks him up in the afternoon. He seems less intimidated by the French than Campbell was, which makes sense as he's heard a lot more of it than Campbell had at the same age, but he needs to make some friends in the class before this will get any easier. For us all. Sigh.
Just bought My Morning Jacket "Z" (I love how they chose a name that defines you as Canadian or American just in how you pronounce it) on a whim. I have to say I'm impressed. I'd heard some of their stuff before and figured, with that singer's distinctive voice, that there wouldn't be a lot of variation in the sound. (This is the bane of the modern album, but that's a different post.) However, the songs are really good, and surprising in terms of range.
And for those of us with, uh, "non-traditional" singer's voices, it's quite inspiring to hear how well he uses it to good effect. That, and lots of reverb, to good effect.
Just called Direct Energy to make sure our natural gas contract cancellation had gone through, and I think they must be hiring English majors now or something. I don't know if I've ever had such a well-spoken rep in my life. He actually said, when I inquired as to how long it would be before the contract was removed from our bill, "It's a surprisingly Byzantine process, with various levels of regulatory approval required before it comes off your statement. I'd estimate about 30 days or so."
"Byzantine"? How often do you hear a process described like that on a service call? If he uses it regularly, I can imagine the pause he must get at the other end of the phone... "Uh, does that mean, like, a business-ish process?"
Oh my, did it really ever happen? The Farm thing seems so far away now. But we've been listening to the CD, and recently sent Garth a fix list of notes/directions to keep things moving. Apparently, he's started working on the drums, and his "minions" (as he calls them) will go through the songs and tidy them up.
If I were to change anything about what we did, it would be that we should have defined our "perfect tempo" for each song, and then quantified it with an actual BPM number. We'll never be the type of band to play with a click track (speeding up and slowing down is part of our charm) but you can't just underestimate how nerves and a new environment can change the way you play a song -- in our case, we tend to speed up. So a couple of the songs are way faster than they need to be.
Here's a nice shot of the studio, compliments of Mike. We really did close all the curtains and turn on the glow lights -- psychadelic baby!
