November 8th, 2008, posted in Entertainment
A year or so ago someone sent me an email with the most insane Christmas light display on a house and it was set to an amazing piece of music. After digging around a bit I finally found who it was and got the album. Trans Siberian Orchestra. I’d never heard of them before but what a great ….band?? I’m not sure what to call them. They are a rock orchestra, sort of hard rock music, sort of classical, and oddly they seem to appeal to a rather broad spectrum of listeners.
Jump forward a year and they announce a show in Vancouver. We picked up tickets and went to the show this evening, not totally sure what we were in for.
We should have brought sunglasses and suntan lotion! The music was amazing and the show was divided into what amounted to two shows in one. The first half was a narrated Christmas story…with rock Christmas music and an amazing light show. Absolutely fantastic.
The second half just got more insane. It started off with a piece of music, that after a few moments we realized was the theme for Inspector Gadget. Then came….Batman?? In the same set was Oh Fortuna! And the lights! There were fountains of fireworks, flames shooting up everywhere, snow falling inside GM Place….it was crazy and blinding! My eyes were actually starting to water at one point and I had to shade my eyes…many people were, at another. I have a bit of a headache behind my eyes from it all!
Two and a half hours of music and lights and I could do it all over again. What a show! Definitely buying tickets next year! I’d recommend it to anyone! There was the most amazing cross section of people. Kids as young as two or three, and as old as 70+. Tons of kids in the 18-25 range…really in every age range you could imagine.
If you haven’t seen them and you have the opportunity..don’t think twice, just buy the tickets! You won’t be sorry you did.
November 4th, 2008, posted in Random Musings
In my last post I was grumbling about the nature of the internet leading to vitriol and general nastiness. True, I still feel that way, but at the other end of the spectrum I have to admit that I’ve actually met some very nice people in a way that I never thought would happen. Over the past 15 years on email, I’ve pretty much ignored any random emails from people I didn’t know that were not related to work or school. But int he past 6 months something strange happened…. I started talking to strangers…. and I rarely do that because I am generally an antisocial individual. Really! I won’t even chat with people at the pub until they have been at the same table for several weeks. Yes, I’ve been accused of being standoffish, a snob, etc… but in reality, I’m just plain old shy and self conscious of myself. I’m crappy at small talk, really not much of a conversationalist.
So what happened?
I joined Flickr. And then my friend invited me into a Challenge group….and then there were a few emails as I was trying to learn the ropes, and then a few people cracked jokes (OK, it helps that the vast majority of them are English and I’m a sucker for the language (British English is so different and yet so similar to Canadian English) and the humour).
So here I am a few months later actually contemplating rearranging some of our travel plans for our trip to Greece next year just so we can take a day or two and head down to the Cornwall area to meet some of these people that I am on the verge of considering as friends….and I’m really chintzy in the friend department.
So maybe the Pen Pal has a place in the 21st Century after all….and it’s kinda cool….
November 4th, 2008, posted in Critical Thinking
Ever notice how an overwhelming number of blogs seem to be forums for vitriol and general nastiness? The internet holds a certain (somewhat false) aura of anonymity. For some reason, those deep dark resentments and other weird and wonderful things that we would never say to an other human face to face, the things we used to keep to ourselves and write down in private journals and diaries…seem to have bubbled to the surface on the internet. Why is it that so many people use the internet for hate mongering and venting? It’s absolutely amazing to me the way the internet has fueled such a radical change in human behaviours on such a massive scale in such a short period of time. An interesting article on CNN today….#@*!!! Anonymous anger rampant on Internet
November 2nd, 2008, posted in Photography, Technology
Just testing out a plugin for adding photo galleries while on our trip…… these are some images from our 2005 trip. Click on the first image in the series to open the larger images in individual windows with caption details.
