Hello, as most of you may already know last Friday, August 14/09 was our 10 year wedding anniversary. Jennifer and I decided to celebrate by spending a weekend in Winnipeg (without the kids, thanks grampa and auntie's Natalie and Michelle.)
Thursday, August 13/09
The weekend got off to a rockin' start when Jennifer slammed the car door onto my left hand whilst I was loading up our car topper, I'm pretty sure it was an accident!
We met Grampa Dick in Kenora Friday afternoon where he picked up Cameron to spend the week with him in Selkirk. Needless to say Cameron was pretty pumped.......
"Whatcha gonna do at Grampa's house Cameron?" "I'm gonna go to McDonald's, eat jellybeans......"
We checked into the Inn at the Forks Thursday night and I gotta say, what a nice hotel! The lobby and dining room was decorated with a definite "water" type theme, complete with a stream running through the lobby. We had an awesome room with a view of the Forks and the city skyline. The room itself was very nice with a king size bed and a glass sink and counter top in the bathroom.
After dinner at Earl's we checked out "Funny People" with Adam Sandler, very funny movie, both of us laughed out loud a couple of times, I think I embarrassed Jenn a little. After the movie it was back to the hotel, I'm not telling you what happened next.
Friday, August 14/09
After an awesome breakfast at the Current, the hotel's restaurant, we shopped a little until we had to go and see Dr. Ahmed, Jennifer's radiologist at Cancer Care.
At the appointment, Dr. Ahmed told us exactly what we wanted to hear, in his thick East Indian accent he said, "I saw your latest CT scan and there is no more cancer activity, we don't have to do anything else." Definitely a nice anniversary present!
After the visit to the hospital we power shopped! Or power "looked around" is more like it, we hunted the city looking for some specific items we wanted but couldn't find anything. Jenn did buy some clothes and I bought an organizer for my desk at work, rock on!
At 5pm following a stressful car ride through rush hour traffic, we arrived at the Rinestone spa at our hotel for a couple's massage. Rinestone is a very cool place, like any other massage business, you fill out a card with your medical history on it, then you put your slippers and robe on and make your way to the waiting room. The waiting room at Rinestone is, as you would expect, very relaxing. It was dimly lit and had a waterfall trickling down one of the walls. They had snacks, tea, and water there if you wanted anything. We had a "relaxing couple's massage" where both of us got massages in the same room at the same time. (Get your heads out of the gutter some of you, that's exactly what happened!) And it was very relaxing!
After that we "cleaned up nice" and headed out for our anniversary supper, which we wanted to have at the Ichi Ban Japanese Restaurant, easily our favorite place to go in Winnipeg. We drove downtown and had a hard time finding parking space due to construction, but we got there.
The the suckiest part of our trip happened! The Ichi Ban was closed! We were in shock. The lady said they were closed due to not enough business, what a disappointment. We hummed and haahd about other places before deciding on the restaurant at our hotel. We get back there and guess what? Yep, CLOSED!
So yeah, our anniversary supper was at the Old Spaghetti Factory, not by choice, but by convenience. It was actually pretty good.
After supper it was back up to the hotel for some more of I'm not telling you. Saturday morning we packed up and went to visit Jennifer's dad and step mom before heading home. All in all a great trip.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Fireman's Social 2009
Hi everybody,
I'm not posting on this blog as much as I thought I would, but I guess when it comes down to it my life is pretty boring most times and it's hard to find interesting things to write about.....
But such was not the case last weekend as my band Edible Rex played for the sixth consecutive year at the annual Fireman's Social, an event put on every year by our volunteer firefighters during Sioux Lookout's Blueberry Festival.
This year's event was NUTS! I'm not sure how many people attended but my guess is between 300 and 400 souls, most of whom got into the spirit of things and danced the night away as our band played.
Our first set began at roughly 10:15pm, a little later than usual but that was on purpose because in the past, we went on earlier and played to a pretty much empty room. This year was different and the late start helped, I think. People got up and started dancing right away, much to our surprise and delight. Our last song of the set was "Long Cool Woman" by the Hollies, which features a righteous solo by our guitarist Neil at the end of the song. When we were done our first set I remember thinking "Man, I can't believe we have two sets left!"
After about a 10 minute break we tore into set two, with people dancing again like crazy. Unfortunately for me, I had some "technical difficulties" when the batteries for my wireless transmitter somehow became disconnected, forcing me to connect straight to my amp via patch cord. All in all I think it was about a one minute delay, I have to give a special thank you to our singer Suzanne, who noticed I didn't have enough slack in my patch cord to reach my vocal mike, so she moved the mike stand closer for me! The highlight of the set for me was our version of Bille Jean, which we played as a tribute to Michael Jackson. People dug it, and some started shouting "wooo!" when the bass and drums grove kicked in.
After a five, yes five minute break we were back at it with set three, usually our most danciest set of tunes. I was able to fix my wireless, therefore I spent some time during the set walking through the crowd while playing. I thought I would get more of a reaction than I did, but most folks were pretty juiced by then and were having too good a time to notice one of the musicians jamming away right there on the dance floor. We do a version of Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" in this set, I say "a version" because we funk this song up with Ryan's awesome drumming and Neil's
jazzy guitar picking during the intro to the song. At a little before 1am we finished off with "Move it on Over" by Hank Williams, but made more famous by George Thorogood. We finished off to a sparser crowd as most folks trundled off to get in line at the bar, but that's ok. By the time I toweled off and hauled my gear out of there I was home at 1:30am.
I'd just like to conclude with some thank you's. Thanks to Heather and Aaron for helping us haul gear, and thanks to Scotty for being our DJ in between sets. And I just want to especially thank Rob, Kevin, and all the firefighters for having us come and play and building our stage to boot! Thanks guys, see you at hockey!
"Edible Rex" is composed of me, Neil on guitar, Ryan on drums and Suzanne on lead vocals. We've been together for six years or so. We only play one or two times per year and are always on the lookout for more gigs. If you want us to come and play your bar or event, you can email me at rickmckenzie_69@hotmail.com and we'll talk. We don't play for free, but we play for cheap!
I'm not posting on this blog as much as I thought I would, but I guess when it comes down to it my life is pretty boring most times and it's hard to find interesting things to write about.....
But such was not the case last weekend as my band Edible Rex played for the sixth consecutive year at the annual Fireman's Social, an event put on every year by our volunteer firefighters during Sioux Lookout's Blueberry Festival.
This year's event was NUTS! I'm not sure how many people attended but my guess is between 300 and 400 souls, most of whom got into the spirit of things and danced the night away as our band played.
Our first set began at roughly 10:15pm, a little later than usual but that was on purpose because in the past, we went on earlier and played to a pretty much empty room. This year was different and the late start helped, I think. People got up and started dancing right away, much to our surprise and delight. Our last song of the set was "Long Cool Woman" by the Hollies, which features a righteous solo by our guitarist Neil at the end of the song. When we were done our first set I remember thinking "Man, I can't believe we have two sets left!"
After about a 10 minute break we tore into set two, with people dancing again like crazy. Unfortunately for me, I had some "technical difficulties" when the batteries for my wireless transmitter somehow became disconnected, forcing me to connect straight to my amp via patch cord. All in all I think it was about a one minute delay, I have to give a special thank you to our singer Suzanne, who noticed I didn't have enough slack in my patch cord to reach my vocal mike, so she moved the mike stand closer for me! The highlight of the set for me was our version of Bille Jean, which we played as a tribute to Michael Jackson. People dug it, and some started shouting "wooo!" when the bass and drums grove kicked in.
After a five, yes five minute break we were back at it with set three, usually our most danciest set of tunes. I was able to fix my wireless, therefore I spent some time during the set walking through the crowd while playing. I thought I would get more of a reaction than I did, but most folks were pretty juiced by then and were having too good a time to notice one of the musicians jamming away right there on the dance floor. We do a version of Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" in this set, I say "a version" because we funk this song up with Ryan's awesome drumming and Neil's
jazzy guitar picking during the intro to the song. At a little before 1am we finished off with "Move it on Over" by Hank Williams, but made more famous by George Thorogood. We finished off to a sparser crowd as most folks trundled off to get in line at the bar, but that's ok. By the time I toweled off and hauled my gear out of there I was home at 1:30am.
I'd just like to conclude with some thank you's. Thanks to Heather and Aaron for helping us haul gear, and thanks to Scotty for being our DJ in between sets. And I just want to especially thank Rob, Kevin, and all the firefighters for having us come and play and building our stage to boot! Thanks guys, see you at hockey!
"Edible Rex" is composed of me, Neil on guitar, Ryan on drums and Suzanne on lead vocals. We've been together for six years or so. We only play one or two times per year and are always on the lookout for more gigs. If you want us to come and play your bar or event, you can email me at rickmckenzie_69@hotmail.com and we'll talk. We don't play for free, but we play for cheap!
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