A wedding! A wedding!

Hooray for a wedding!

I'm at that time of life when I don't get invited to weddings much anymore.  The people my age tend to be married already or unlikely to get married by now, and if they do get married, the weddings are low-key, small affairs.  We don't have children, so no weddings that way, including weddings of their friends.  I am trying to recall the last time I attended a wedding, and I am struggling.  Maybe Justin and Troy in about 2021?  And before that?  I'm blanking.

Two friends did get married last week, however.  Chris and Allister, a lovely couple for several years, are now husbands.  Congratulations to them!  I'm so delighted.

Chris,

you may recall, is one of our online happy hour members.  I've known him since we met on the gay swim team in Montreal in 1998.  Half a lifetime ago.  Chris invited the whole happy hour gang, and all of us showed up (except for Conrad who couldn't come at the last minute under doctor's orders).  There were other folks I knew there as well:  Bruno (who was the wedding planner) and Doug,

Giuseppe and Brian.

As you can tell from our outfits, we were asked to be the flowers at their celebration. 

I think we did a great job, as did the other guests.  A lot of bold colours and prints and fantastic outfits on them.  Outdo us - that was another directive Chris gave us, and we tried.  But come on:  look at that straight-from-the-runway ensemble Chris was wearing at the reception that followed. 

No outdoing that!  Allister is not similarly inclined to fashion, happily letting Chris shine while looking handsome in an open-weave shirt.

The wedding took place on a late summer Friday afternoon on the lawn at Hart House at Deer Lake in Burnaby.  Cocktails followed, and then we made our way to our tables, named for movies that had significance to the couple.  Van, Marie, and I were at Damaged Lives, which made us chuckle. 

Chris and Allister had left a handwritten card for each of us at our setting, which was touching. 

The drinks flowed, my steelhead was tasty,

and we finished the meal, contented, and ready for the dancing.  I didn't dance much - we were enjoying conversations - but I did get out on the floor for a little bit.  By 10:30, though, Van and I were ready to head back into the city to our hotel.

Congratulations again to the happy couple!  When we're through Vancouver later this fall with Conrad, the three of us will take them out so that Conrad can celebrate their marriage as well. 

Vancouver scenery

Hey folks!  How about an easy photodump post to start this Tuesday?  Sound good?  Good!  So then, enjoy some photos from a few mornings ago in Vancouver.  It was a lovely start to the day, a nice little walk before needing to get my suitcase packed and head to the airport.

Happy Tuesday! 

Oasis

It's Labour Day.  Eight days ago I was in Toronto, enjoying a concert.  Time flies!

In the 90s, BritPop was my jam.  I visited the UK in late 1994 and devoured the music press I found over there, and then devouring all the music I could find when I got back home to BC.  Blur was my favourite, but I was deeply enamoured of Pulp and Suede and Manics and more.  And then there was Oasis.

Look, in the whole Battle of BritPop thing, I wanted Blur to win.  I can admit, however, that Oasis ultimately won out.  I did like a lot of their first two albums as well, but didn't really stick with them after that.  An occasional song, that's it.  Their tumultuous break up brought me no join, just kind of a resignation that it was about time given all the shenanigans.  I figured that I would never get to see them live, and appreciated that seeing Noel and his group were likely to be the closest I would get.  I had seen Blur, Pulp, Supergrass, Suede, Manics, and a few others musical acts from that era.  Oasis, though.  An opportunity I never had.

And then they announced a reunion tour with stops in North America.

I couldn't even get into the queue for tickets for the two concerts here in Pasadena, but a friend of Allison's in Toronto pinned down tickets for four, and that included me.  So, Toronto it was!

I'll comment on Toronto more in another post, so let me focus on the concert here.  And let's get the not-so-great out of the way:  that venue, the new Rogers Stadium way north in the city, was not good.  From what I know, it's temporary - 5-10 years of planned lifespan - and built only for concerts, not sports.  It isn't far from two subway stations, but it is a trek across an old airfield to and from those stations.  There is next to no shelter, and all of the energy and noise from the crowd dissipated upward rather than bouncing back to the band and feeding on itself.  And that lack of shelter means that we all got rained on for the last hour and a quarter of the show.  It also meant that if there had been more than (I swear) those two flashes of lightning, then where would all 50,000 of us have gone?

Allison and I got the the venue minutes before the main act went on (we had barely heard of the opener and were fine missing them) and managed to scoot through a merchandise store, buying a t-shirt each (to go with the football jersey that I had bought earlier that day and wore to the venue)

and getting to our seats right as the introductory music blared forth. 

From there, it was two hours (with a handful of minutes between the main set and four-song encore) of the hits and some select B-sides/album tracks with the crowd around us singing along. 

The band was in fine form,

the rain came down,

and we had a great time.

The show ended a few minutes before 11, and we joined the thousands streaming to the subway stations.  On the way south, between stops, there were Oasis fans singing their songs together.  Fun!  Allison headed home, and I made it back to my hotel just after midnight.  I was due to head to the airport around about 6AM the next morning, and I needed to come down from the concert high and get to bed.

I do have Pulp again later this month, which is great, and who knows what BritPop there is left to see - I'd love to get to see Manics again and Sleeper if they ever reunited and came this way.  But I've checked Oasis off the list, thanks to Allison, and I am thrilled that I got to do so. 

 

every four days, it seems

Hello!

I am home from Vancouver,

and I have much to say about that.  And Toronto.  Hooray for a holiday tomorrow - I can catch up on blogging.  For now:  hello!

55

I've put a little distance between my actual birthday and posting an entry about it, and then my irregular habits at blogging took over.  But let's dial back to the Vancouver trip last month before the next Vancouver trip (tomorrow!) takes place.  How about it?

So, yeah, 55.  I'm ambivalent about it.  I still have this notion of myself as young and not fully baked yet, that I'm not a grown up.  I'll be with other people and have this feeling like I am the most immature one there.  So the idea that I am half way between 50 and 60 is just such an odd notion to me.  And it's not really a milestone either:  it ends in 5, and until I hit 75, no birthday that ends in 5 really matters that much.  So it was a just a birthday, it included a drive from Vernon to Vancouver, and it included a very nice dinner with Conrad, Van, Marie, Courtney, and Robert.  So let's not focus on the 5 at the end of the date but on the meal itself.

Zarak by Afghan Kitchen was my choice for birthday meal. 

I'd enjoyed my first time there, and I thought the others would as well.  It did not disappoint.

Cocktails first.  Oh, the cocktails.  I think I liked Van's Peanut Butter Manhattan most of all, but I was absolutely happy with my Band-e-Amir, a gin-based drink that went down easily. 

Of course, Marie's cocktail, the Dr. Damji's Negroni, was the showstopper. 

A smoked drink presented in a cloche, I am sure everyone around us watched the presentation.

The menu at Zarak has an option that is simply "Let us cook for you".  It wasn't a difficult sell.  We happily went along with it.  And we dined very very well, both in quantity and quality.  I don't think I captured everything we had on camera, but here's what I did get:

Chilled eggplant dip with naan.  A nice, light starter.

Buttermilk fried chicken.  I would order multiple of these if I could.  Yum!

Mantu - beef dumplings that were good and hearty.

Spiced cabbage dumplings.  The only spicy/hot thing we had, and too much for Van.  I loved them - I am such a fan of cabbage - and I delighted in how they set me aglow with a sheen of perspiration.

Slow cooked lamb shoulder.  I think everyone was slowing down by this point (there were at least two dishes I didn't photograph), and maybe not everyone loves lamb like I do.  So tender!

The were three desserts for us, one with a nice message and candle. 

As much as I love Zarak, I wish they could tweak their desserts a little.  The vegan chocolate mousse is alright but feels out of place,

and the tres leches cake also seems like it shouldn't be on an Afghani menu (or maybe not by that name).  I do like the gelato dish, though.

We enjoyed a couple of bottles of a BC red along with dinner, and I can't fully recall, but maybe even some dessert wine for one or two of us.  All in all, a wonderful meal that left us very very full.  The walk the next morning was badly needed! 

COTU

A quiet week that led to a busy week of travel.  I am in the Centre of the Universe for a whirlwind visit.  Good old COTU.  More to come!

this girl!

It's been a mild few days, and I haven't checked in.  The reason is simple:  Conrad came back from NZ with a cold, and that's had him laid low through the weekend and still getting over some of the symptoms.  Poor guy.  So that meant a weekend where we stayed away from each other in the same condo, where I made him simple meals and mostly just read and listened to music and watched some Netflix.  Not much to blog about.  Morning walks (hello, coyote!)

as well - the fog this morning was unusual for us, it felt,

and I wish it was a sign of cool weather and rain ahead (it's not) - but not any fun dining or cocktails or other big things to share.

Van is gone to Big Sur for the week, and Conrad and I are taking care of Olive.  So, since there has been nothing of substance going on in my life these past days, let me provide a semi-regular reminder that Olive is a beautiful girl.  Who can resist her?  Not us! 

cacophony

In recent mornings I've been doing my walks in and around Old Pasadena, and it seems that the parrots have decided to hang out in this part of town now.  Oh my word, what a racket they make!  The one morning it felt like the sound of them was still following me for blocks.

They are handsome birds, just the same.  I found a feather on the ground near City Hall yesterday, and I was struck by the coloration.

On the other hand, I do get why people who live in neighbourhoods where they seem to roost more usually do warn folks looking to buy in those areas that they will have to adjust to having such noise!