Anyway. So it's been awhile again since I've updated. Some highlights from the past ten days:

Went to Maggie (a friend from work) and Kaveh's apartment for Sunday dinner and became much better aquainted with their little guy, Michael. The kid loved me people! He was pointing out a myriad of things that he found fascinating, most frequently the sky out the living room window of the apartment. He can't talk yet, but I did enough talking for the two of us. "That's a lamppost. That's a car. That's the sky. That's my sweater." I like to think in the short time we hung out I contributed to his development. Also drank wine, ate roast beef, crumble for dessert. Very tasty. A home cooked meal away from home. Much appreciated. Was also introduced to "The Osbornes" on videocassette. I actually kind of liked it... I didn't want to (this "reality TV" craze has gotten out of hand)... but as I watched it I was constantly fluxuating between two opposite thoughts: "These people are so bizarre" and "I can't believe how normal they are." I was hooked.

Hung out with my Japanese friend, Ayumi, on Monday... wandered around by the water at False Creek... checked out a Chinese Herbal medicine store... walked and talked basically. She is heading back to Japan Saturday. No more Japanese lessons for Lodger. Looking forward to keeping in touch with her via the net. Will be cool to see how her English progresses. Also cool that I can now say I know someone in Tokyo.

Tuesday during the day Lynn helped me clean out some stuff from my storage locker. A bigger job than I anticipated. Donated a few boxes of stuff to the Salvation Army, all of it really good stuff, I think, especially the books. I have way too many books! After that we went to an Asian Strip mall on Willingdon, where I purchased a ten dollar (mock) "Swiss Army" watch... we ate Pocky... Lynn bought fruit... saw rootbeer flavoured creamsicles for the first time and resisted buying one (what was I thinking???!!!). Then went home to get ready for...

BONEY M.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's right. Steph and I went to the Boney M. concert at The Commodore. Steph's a huge fan and I'm, well,... not,... but I had a blast. There was no actual band behind Boney M. Just a cd track. Oh yeah! Fourty bucks to see a dude sing karaoke in front of three lip-synching female back-up vocalists. But honestly, once you accepted it, and just kind of went with the vibe, it was all good. We laughed. We danced. We drank.

The opening band was great. They were an actual band (two guitars, bass, drums, and lead vocals) called Boogie Fever and they did disco covers to the letter. The Bee Gees. KC and the Sunshine Band (my personal favorite - "Get down tonight! Woo!"). Again, not really my musical taste, but what the hell. The lead vocalist was amazing. Karen. I could not take my eyes off Karen. An image sent from heaven with a voice to match. Sigh.... Every so often my attention would fall upon a guitarist playing a solo or a cool bass line, but my attention always returned to Karen. At the end of their set she declared she would be coming out to join us to watch Boney M. perform. Nope. No trace of Karen anywhere during the show or after. Once again... sigh....

After the show Disco night at the Commodore kicked in which was kind of fun. I got a little tipsy and noticed two girls dancing beside Steph and me. Steph and I watched them for a bit and we both decided that one of the girls was "awesome." Feeling somewhat carefree, armed with a gin and tonic fueled fearlessness, I marched right up to "awesome girl" and said, "We've both been people watching and we both agree that you are awesome." She replied with the "too much drinky drinky" hand signal, but laughed, and later we ended up meeting her and her friend. We talked for a good while, exchanged emails, and it appears that a friendship very well may emerge from it all.

This has been a paid public service announcement for "gin and tonic fueled fearlessness." (Must be legal drinking age of nineteen.)

Bye.

No I'm serious. Really.

Annoyingly vague announcement: Big changes are coming for lodger in the new year. That's all I can really say. Sorry. Possibly a new weblog will accompany these big changes. But that's really all I can say. Really.

Two songs by Lyle Lovett:

Pontiac

I park my pontiac
Down the hill in back
Late every afternoon
With a coke and a cigarette
And all the neighbours there
They see a nice old man

And the girl there across the street
She sits on her front porch swing
She never realized
What I told her with my eyes
How back in the second war
I killed twenty German boys
With my own bare hands

And the woman inside my house
She won't stop talking
She never says a thing
She just keeps talking
And I might just leave her still
After the sun goes down
And I smoke this cigarette

The Fat Girl

The fat girl
She always stayed inside and played piano
And she told her mother
The children made her cry
And her mother told her
They don't mean it
They don't mean it
They don't mean it
They don't mean it

Now the fat girl
She ain't fat no more
And lord how she plays piano
And she sings loud
And she sings low
And she sings of love
And blind compassion
But she don't mean it
She don't mean it
She don't mean it
She don't mean it

Two songs linked together in my mind. Both haunting. Both about loneliness, painful memories. Both favourites of mine, but definitely only for certain moods.

Another memory:

Recently I was thinking about this and I don't know why. When I was in first year at college there was a girl in my English class named Samantha. Samantha was very skinny, had brown tightly curled shoulder length hair, and her voice was unusually low pitched . Although she was kind of awkward, she spoke up often in class and sometimes her comments were followed by snickers from people who sat close to me, likely weak minded people who had no opinions of their own to share and thus felt the need to compensate by ridiculing others. Naturally, being skinny and painfully shy myself, I developed a crush on her. We never spoke in class, but we rode the same bus at times, often exchanging glances and awkard smiles. Then, one day at the mall, she bounced up to me, her face beaming. "Hi. How's it going?" In response, I'm sure I said something clever like, "Good," or "Allright." She asked me several other questions, all in an open, bubbly manner. I was like a deer in headlights, providing only one word answers in response. She ended the conversation with, "So I guess I'll see you in class," and then giddily bounced away to be with her friends. After she left, the friend I was with ribbed me a bit, and then said, "I think she likes you." Like an idiot, and with complete honesty, I said, "Really. You think so?" But I knew he was right. A door had been opened. Over the next day or so, I planned out what I would say to her in class, rehearsing variations in my mind, over and over. I had decided that Samantha was cute, in a quirky sort of way. And I recognised a vulnerability in her that I admired, vulnerability that came from being open and taking risks. She was someone I wanted to get to know. But when class came around again, I didn't talk to her. We never talked again, in fact, although we did continue to exchange the odd glance or awkward smile. About a month later, I was driving in my car and listening to a call-in talk show on the radio. A girl was talking to the host about how she was finding it difficult to meet people in college, especially guys. The voice was unmistakeable. It was Samantha. She went on to say that guys just didn't seem interested in her and she wondered if something was wrong with her. Hearing her put herself out there like that, speaking so openly about her fears and insecurities roused extreme feelings of empathy and admiration from me. I thought I should tell her I heard her on the show, that I felt the same things she did. But of course I never did. I think about those early years in college and university and I wonder how many friendships, experiences, romances I might have had if I had overcome my fears and insecurities.

I think I've been thinking about these types of things lately because my life has changed so much in such a short time. And I'm on the verge of still greater changes. It seems like every choice I make now is pregnant with consequence and ripe with risk. I've come a long way since the Samantha days. But at times, in the area between my chest and my stomach, I still feel a tightness inside me like the wound up dense core of a baseball, something I felt often in those early college days. I still heed it, but while then I let it hold me down, now I choose to believe it merely grounds me, a subtle difference certainly, but pragmatically, I think, a significant one. Learning to live with fears, intense moments of loneliness and dislocation--with doubts that seize your guts and weigh you down--then learning to accept and even embrace them: this has been a key lesson for me. I wonder if ten years later Samantha has come to the same conclusion. I imagine she has.

Just experienced a freaky horror movie moment in the laundry room. I take the elevator downstairs to pick up my freshly dried clothing items and the first thing I notice is the door to the laundry room has not closed properly and is thus unlocked. A little odd, but hardly very alarming, but I do briefly think, hmmm, wonder if my laundry's still here. Has someone been in the room? Next, I flick on the lights. Two flourescent jobbies. The ones in the tubes. They flicker for a second, and I think, no problem, they often flicker a bit before kicking in. They need to warm up before kicking into high gear. Kind of like old lawnmowers. But not this time. The lights just continue to flicker. Okay. Again, no problem. Guess I'm folding my laundry in flickery dimness. And from there my imagination takes over. In horror movies, when the lights flicker, it means one of two things. Either something ghostly is going to appear in the corner between flickers, or the lights are about to go out. I think about both options (not conciously, but of course whenever you tell yourself not to think about something, you always do). I quickly fold my laundry and get the hell out of there.

I'm such a freak when it comes to this kind of thing. Rationally speaking, I'm actually a skeptic and I really don't believe in the supernatural. But... certain things can still spook me. Two such incidents come to mind. During the summer I was fourteen I hung around with a group who were kind of into the supernatural and we played with a Ouija board. I won't go into all of that, but I remember a couple of girls telling me about this "bloody Mary" thing. You go into the bathroom, turn the lights out, and spin around thirteen times with your eyes closed and say "bloody Mary" on each pass. Apparently, when you open your eyes, you see a girl's face with bloody eyes or fiery eyes or some such thing. Whatever. I wouldn't know anyway, because I never had the guts to try it! I was quite smuggly skeptical about it, but I still felt it was something I didn't want to mess with. And to this day, I will not.

Incident #2: My buddy Craig from high school had a tape player that could play tapes in reverse. One night, we were driving home from a lake on an isolated dirt road after midnight and we decided to listen to "Stairway to Heaven" backwards on this tape player. And yes, about half-way through the song, very clear messages can be heard, all of a Satanic nature. "Satan is Lord," "Worship Satan," that sort of thing. I knew, from reading about Led Zeppelin, that in the studio the band used a technique called backwards masking to put those messages in purposely and yet, when I heard them, my heart raced and I became kind of paranoid (and no, I wasn't high). For the rest of the drive home I was freaked out and I didn't sleep well that night. I guess I'm smart enough to know that most of the supernatural stuff can be rationally explained and yet also smart enough to know that certain things shouldn't be messed with.

There is a new member of the Chez Kenny/Lemmon household. The girls have a new kitten named Eliott. Eliott is cute. Very cute. He is six weeks old, black and white and holding his own quite nicely thankyou very much. I've never seen him show even an ounce of fear. On the second day he claimed Finnegan's favourite chair as his own and yesterday I saw him chase Finnegan up the scratching post followed by rambunctious play around the living room chair. A half hour later he was lying on the bed beside Finnegan, the two of them completely at ease with each other. Three days to win over the hearts of five individuals (two of them being male adult felines). Very impressive.

I am learning some Japanese. A hotel management student who did her practicum at the hotel is giving me informal lessons. I've been taught a few verbs, some vocab (including parts of the human body) and some important phrases. My skills at this point would allow me to excel in the following very specific scenario: Ordering 1-9999 beers from a beautiful waitress and then asking where the washroom is:

Conichiwa.
Watashi wa Rick des.
Beer o kadasai.
Domo arigato.
Anata wa kire i des.
Doedasisimasete.
Toilet wa toko des ka?
Domo arigato.

It's a start.

Today is my third day off in a row. Have plans to see two movies on this rainy November day.

Check this and this out. Hilarious.

Let's try this again... tried blogging last night. Wrote for, oh, about an hour and a half and then... wammo! Computer trouble... lost it all. I was not impressed. Anyway...

Been unusually busy socially lately. Last week was quite eventful...

Thursday: Canucks game. The Avalanche. They got their ass kicked, which sucked, but purchase and consumption of a few seven dollar beers helped take the sting outta the loss. In case you're wondering, seven dollar cups o' Molson Canadian taste exactly the same as four dollar cups o' Molson Canadian. We met up with Darryl and his friend after the game and we all went to Subeez for drinks. Discovered throughout the course of the evening that many of my compadres for the evening are closet Avalanche fans and that when things start to go bad for the home team they switch over tout suite. Traitors!

Friday: BC Lions game with Steph. Fabulous game. Had a blast with Lemmon. We had the good fortune of sitting in front of an insightful gentleman for whom beer seemed to be one of the four basic food groups. My favorite of his many charming remarks came during the half-time tribute to Canada's veterans. Apparently inspired by the appearance of the marching pipe band, he remarked: "Them Scotchmen are fierce motherf#$kers. You gotta respect 'm." Indeed. Oh yeah. The Lions won 28-3. Woo-hoo!

Saturday: Games night at the apartment. Cranium. Wine. Food. Drugs! Thankfully we didn't get into the Coco Crazy or things might have really gotten out of hand.

Sunday: Went out for breakfast with Steph. The Grove Inn, where they serve a fine greasy spoon breakfast. Mmmmm. Grease. Initially had three comp tickets to Dame Edna's matinee performance through a connection at work. At the last minute three turned into two. Was to take Steph and my cousin, but alas, Steph did not end up going due to the sudden ticket shrinkage. I declare here and now in this blog entry I will make it up to her someday, somehow...
Lesson learned: Knowing important people is less effective than being important people. The show was very funny and consisted mostly of The Dame tormenting unsuspecting audience members. In the wise words of Homer J. Simpson, "It's funny cause its not me." Cool sidenote: While at the box office picking up my tickets, I hear, to my left, a rich commanding voice: "Tickets for Ian McKellan please." As I look over my shoulder, my eyes confirm what my ears have told me. I am standing beside a great artist, a true-blue legend of film and stage. Sir Ian McKellan! After basking momentarily in Sir Ian's magnificent presence the experience is abruptly interupted by the ticket agent's slightly annoyed voice: "Can I have my pen back please." Oh yeah. Right. Planet Earth. I live here.
Strangely, that was my fourth celebrity sighting this month, although when you know two of the four as, respectively, that guy who's on that divorce court drama show and who use to be on Veronica's Closet, and some other guy I've seen on TV, the term "celebrity sighting" is possibly being used a bit liberally. The other celeb sighting was Jann Arden at 2nd beach.

Monday: Hiking in Lynn Canyon with Lynn and her little dog Hurley. Weather was lovely, as was the scenery. Didn't get lost finding our way back to the car which was good. Managed to find more stairs and uphill treks than we would have liked which was not so good. Had post-hike sushi at what seemed to be the only sushi place open on Lonsdale drive on Mondays. Feeling adventurous, I tried scallop roles for the first time... slightly sweet, quite tasty. Hung out at Lonsdale Quay for awhile, and then home in time to catch the final period of the Canucks game against Colorado. We won 4-2. Sweet revenge. Take that traitors!

Bye for now.