Winter 2005 Sojourn

January 10, 2005

Had to fly through a number of AC connections, business class of course, to get to home - west, Toronto - Calgary(3hr layover) - Vancouver (2hr layover) - Nanaimo

So in Calgary, I've just grabbed a Traditional an am sitting down when I see  the back of a familiar head, call "Archie" and lo and behold it's Archie Thomas. He's going the other way, Kimberly to Toronto at 12:25, so at least I'll have someone for a couple of beers. Small world, but then again auditors can always be found in bars!

We reminisce and he brings his doings up-to-date. We decided, independently, that Bob & Winston have a tremendous physical similarities. We talk about organizing a Rio reunion for sometimes in October, chance that we can get Bob down here for it.

Gotta kill another couple of hour here and hope that I get so lucky and meet another for my Van layover.

Christ there's a lot of snow at my house!! And it's cold!!

Jan 12 - 15th

Getting re-acclimatized, everything's pretty familiar. Hell, Sherry at the Quarterway, got me my normal beer, naturally; had a good welcome back.

Got Star Choice installed; cool, great on the time shifting and the ability to get To TV & radio stations.

Friday went to the Queen's because Iris was playing; Deborah, http://www.cdisle.ca/showcase/debbie.htm'  gave me a warm welcome back. Great sets; of course her music you dummy!

Saturday, more snow, about 5" or so; shoveling sucks! Warmer and rain forecasted for Sunday & on.

 (Note that this is the worst that anyone can remember for 40 years!!!! And I chose this year to emigrate!!!)

Quarterway pub

Jan 16 - 22nd

Warmer weather & rain, making the snow disappear, it's about time!

Went to Victoria on Wednesday to look at furniture at Dodd's, buy beads and have lunch with Joe & Eileen. Great time, good stuff and partly sunny with a high of 17.

Had to take the truck in to Moto-Tech to get brake & batteries fixed; ouch! $1,500 later everything works fine.

Got my 4 tubs from home.

Bought a double bed memory foam mattress from John's & picked up on Thursday. Finally a great night's sleep, with no "camping" in-house.

Quarterway pub

Jan 23 - 29

In the 10s, generally overcast with occasional showers & fog, but sure beats shoveling! Grass is green and spring flowers, snow drops, crocus & narcissus, are coming out.

Still looking for furniture and picking up all the small things that are needed.

Muddy's & Quarterway

Gonna be a busy day Wednesday, with federal Nanaimo-Albernie Conservative AGM & having to make it back to the Queen's for Cherry Bomb.

AGM went well with about 75 people in attendance including Lunney, Peter McKay, Ahearn & Jim Prentice.

They had a pre-arranged slate of 16 directors with their bio; if no objection since it wasn't up to the 30, a general vote of hands would be enough to elect the slate & dispense with the Y/N ballot. Asked if anyone else would like to serve, of course I shot up my hand. There was a long pregnant pause for a nominator but eventually Ethan, the Pres, & Andrew, the regional organizer, spoke for me. Reticence of crowd was due to my different appearance, long hair, beads, looking like an NDPer!. After I gave my stellar political bio, there was a gulp while they realized the mistake that could have been made. The Board re-elected Ethan as pres; the rest of the positions to be determined at the next meeting. Discussions with Board members was very positive and there are some skilled individuals; this is going to be fun (Of course what Karma later said “they don’t know what’s going to hit them”.

Win & I got to the Queen's by 9:30 and it was relatively empty with McMahon & The Dirty 5, http://www.ryanmcmahon.com/main.html,  doing their sound check. They finally came on at 10:30 and did an excellent 1:15 set. Good range, variations, and lyrics. Talked to Ryan about their new stuff, trip to TO and got them to sign their CD. This group has definite potential! If I can play my cards right, could be a talent impresario!

Now Cherrybomb,  http://www.cherrybombmusic.com/cherrybomb_main.html, is another story! A sexy girl rock n roll band should be good! Wrong. Looks - terrific, band setup - un-professional, lyrics - not bad, voice - too range bound overpowered by band, set length - short,  new cd with their best song "Speed of Light" delayed 'til May. Strange, I came for Cherrybomb but was most impressed by McMahon. BTW, about 70 max with $5 cover; lots of girls for local McKinnon but lot had left for Cherrybomb.

Thursday - Jan 27th

Went to the Port Place Theatre for a benefit concert, Open Minds Open Windows, mental health stuff. Excellent presentations by the 20 or so artists from all forms, Allison Crowe to Dawn Tyndall; will do it again next year. Went to the Queen's afterwards, very light crowd for the Tina Jones Band. Most exiting part was when the bouncer, literally dragged an unruly patron out the door.

Saturday - Jan 28th

Finally bough some bedroom furniture for the small bedroom, $1,400 from Joe's Bedroom Barn, same place as where I got my mattress; great quality, great prices.

Having a print framed at Bastion Art Gallery; Paulette McIntyre, one of owners, nice person, had been a city councilor and had run other times. Had a good conversation. Framing will be ready in time for my birthday.

Slowly narrowing down what colours I'm going to paint bedroom #1. Some schema from the Benjamin Moore 2005 hot paints.

Weather's been fine, generally overcast with some periods of rain interspersed with sun; highs around 11.

Monday - January 31st

Beautiful, clear, sunny day, high 15.

Lantzville Village Pub.

Feb 1 - 5th

Tuesday – On a hunch, went to the Judy Hill Gallery, http://www.judyhillgallery.com  in Duncan, got a couple of great copper etches and a terrific totem pole. I’ll be back, Judy and Mel are my friends now!!

Sarah & Vello over here these days. Went to the Foundry with Vel whilst Sarah was navigating between watery venues, some better than others. As usual, we solved all major world issues; of course the more libations crossed our palate, the easier the solutions came.

Wednesday had arranged to have a mini JP telephone reunion, self & Win here and Steve & Bill in TO. Had problem getting all simultaneously; so re-sched for next Monday. Dropped Bill and talked with Steve for a couple of hours; 'twas great.

Thursday, lunch with Sarah & Vello at the Lantzville Village Pub. Slowly getting Vel to come over to the bright side from the dark side, Sarah's on board. She's going to bring the boat to the Island this summer; that's going to be great as I offered Vel a place to stay as long as possible.

Caught Melissa Hill, http://www.melissahill.ca/, at Kat'z; Great evening! She appreciated our marketing and CD recording advice.

Had a hell of  a toothache on the weekend; appears to be under that new crown. Booze & pills didn't make it go away. Gonna speed up my dentist search.

Saturday - Weird day, up here we had about 7cm of snow while nothing in mid - downtown Nanaimo. I got snow and Win's got green grass; no rain, no sun, snow stay's around!

Sunday February 6th - Saturday 12th

Monday - got in to see Dr. Lawrence Lewis at the Northfield Dental Clinic. Appears to be concerned & good, and developed a good assessment & remedial plan.

Had that famous mini JP phone reunion with Steve, Rauenbusch & Win. 'Twas a blast, lasted for about 3 hours; of course I drank 2/3 of a bottle of Balvenie Doublewood 12 yr scotch. Great fun.

Tuesday - Had my first CPOC Board Meeting out at the Bradley Center near Coombs. Now am the Membership Chair and volunteered for other stuff. Already being looked as one of the cognizy; you start slowly and then build for the big climax. Now I must say, that there's a bunch of talented individuals here. It's gonna be fun!

Wednesday - Any day's gotta be great when you pull out at 9:30 AM and there's a deer crossing the road nonchalantly! Great work at the dentist! Been a while, but the Quarterway for a few, frozen palate, straw and all.

Calls from home and then talked to mon petit choux. Went to the Longwood Pub for a terrific evening.

Friday - Shopping, spent bunch at Costco with more to come; awesome sliding, compound miter saw, power toys for little boys!. Oh, did I mention the 2 deer as I pulled out from home.

Landlubber for lunch. C'est étrange, mais avait tout d'un coup un souhait pour réapprendre le français !

Making a Tourtière, from scratch, for supper. Tasted terrific but there’s no way that I can eat it all; gave away 1 to Gertrude, and froze the rest awaiting for a “thaw from the heart”

Saturday – Spent most of my day doing household stuff, from laundry to shopping. Most of the afternoon was spent in the kitchen doing preparations for the freezer, of course there was a bottle of unwooded, a Goundrey 2003 Chardonnay.  The strip loin streaks from the roast, chicken breasts, pork tenderloin and my famous buffalo meat patties, were all setup for freezing. ‘Twas a good day!!

February 13 – 19th.

Monday – Terrific day for Valentine’s!!! A little cool at night with a dusting of snow here but sunny and high of day of about 7°.

Had a meeting at the Lunney MP constit office to get the Membership info and laptop; this is going to be interesting, they appear to be a little unsophisticated (along those line, have already had 3 calls from other execs asking my opinion or advice; we will “help them along to see the right way”.

Then we fired a broker and now will assist in the investment of client's money with more to come!!!!.

Finally got to the Bastion Art Gallery to pickup my art framing. Looks awesome, but not sure where it’s going to go, right now its on a living room wall.

To cap off the day pretty well , Karma called. I’m sure glad that she’s recuperating and that her mom and dad are out of trouble and hopefully seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and be able to return to a quality of life. She filled me in with the current solutions to the problems which I caused; and after all is said, I probably should have done what I suggested a long time ago. I’m very happy that she was acclaimed as Ontario PC 8^th VP; but am pissed off that Georgina is being challenged by _ _. Wish I were there to support Georgina!! Anyways, terrific update by K and we’ll do it again in the future.

And now to all, rest and sweet dreams about our hopes, of course if some of us had a bottle of wine, all the better.

Tuesday -

8:00 dentist call, did some good upper fixing, getting along great with Dr. Lewis & staff.

Good to received birthday calls from all at east home, Ryan, Caroll & Tanya & a little bit from Raiya.

Wednesday -

Dentist again today to fix some final lower cavities; strange thing, what he at first though was a loose filling actually turned out to be a piece of bone about 15 mm x 10mm. So that's what was pressuring the tooth besides the implant. He's going to try and have it forensically analyzed to see what it actually is.

Glow's for week's celebrations. Lagavulin 16 to start. Didn't have the 5 course chef's special & corresponding wines on the menu but Luc would create it special for me. Scallops over mushroom with organics & balsamic & an Aldernay white, herbed prawns with chipotle & chili oil with Sumac Ridge Sauvignon Blanc, pineapple sorbet with Crow's Nest Chardonnay, roast elk leg & Shiraz, cinnamon cheesecake & Saturna Riesling and of course, finished with coffee & a 10 & 20 (last of bottle) year Fladgate port.

As usual, a great meal with a variety of taste combinations and flavours & great presentation. Donnya no longer here, replaced by as gracious as ever server, Luc remembered me and we had a good chat.

(think window table at ends, booth (left) one side and nice table for 2 on other end (right) right for a good one. BTW 2's by the window were for Valentine's day.)

Friday -

Went to the Parksville Rec Center for a Provincial Liberal all-candidates meeting. They all gave their speeches and I quickly eliminated the Riding President & Cantelon (Nanaimo Councilor). Left 3; then finally decided on Joy Cameron as she would probably be best in beating the NDP female candidate and after all, the elected, Judith Reed is a woman. Told Joy that I'd support her.

Since we're here already, went to the Rod n Gun for something to eat, food is so so. Then went to the bar where Iris was playing, having just come back from their Banff tour. Deborah Pitre, lead singer, saw me and came over to give me a great big hug. They all had a great time and were playing to 400 house, with the best reception from foreigners. After a set, Win AK47ed with the band whilst I Sambucaed with Deb for her entire break; got to know her well. Talked about her recording a CD, she has lots of original material and would also like to switch genre to jazz. She's hooking up with a new Nanaimo jazz group and hopes to play some gigs here. As Deb has lots of potential, and her vocal range has broadened, especially now that she's stopped smoking, I'll see what recording deal I could possibly put together. At night's end, said our goodbyes and said we'd see each other in a couple of weeks when they're at The Queens.

Frédéric, the Rock n Roll Chef prepares terrific solo evening meals, to the tune of oldies & other greats, of course, chased by some great wine. (Note - research has now definitely shown that alcohol consumed with a meal prevents salmonella) I always knew I was on the right track!!

Sunday February 20th - Saturday 26th

Weather's been sunny every day with lows of -1 & highs of 12

Monday - Very saddened to hear that Karma's dad passed away. Spent entire day getting mailing out for riding tax receipts. What a pain when you've got to do everything from scratch. This Riding is very unsophisticated and not very well organized; apparently lot of internal friction last year amongst exec & Board.

Trying to cook up a storm!

Tuesday - Shopping, furniture look at & buy. Christ!! Diesel's now higher than gas 89.9 vs 86.9!!

Quarterway, had the curried prawns, different, light on the curry sauce, but fresh vegetable, rice done right, and prawns, seasoned & tasty. Different but actually quite good, and for $5.95 only.

Went for a very pleasant walk around Westwood Lake.

Gotta go to the Bradley Center for an Exec meeting. Should be interesting in light of some info gleaned from other Execs. Enough "pissing in the wind"! Need a focused strategic plan with concrete objectives, methods of achieving, budgets and measurement. Pretend that we're going to have an October election!! Great meeting, excellent election readiness plan by Dave, actually probably the best that I’ve seen, looks like we’ve got some focus and can get on with building a winning combination. This could actually be fun. Certainly has revised my opinion to being very positive as to how the Exec will operate.