Saturday evening was a very special day in the life of two of my very good friends, now Mr. and Mrs. Josh and Joanna Zaslow. After all the stress (for them not me, all I had to do was remember how to tie a half Windsor) and running around and waiting the big day was finally here.
Unlike most subjects I write about there’s not a lot to say even for this somewhat unconventional wedding. There were only 30 people in attendance and it was held at the pub just around the corner from our house. The ceremony was short and sweet and I had a very awesome chair, and the first and only dances that followed were nice.
The rest of the evening was simply hanging out with the bride, groom and rest of the guests chatting about memories and congratulating the newly weds (and some shots too). The event was low key, as what probably should have been expected from the two parties involved, but it was nice and intimate and reminded me of seeing your favourite band in a lounge as opposed to a stadium.
Even with the lack of spectacular fireworks the night felt very genuine and still was one of the best parties I’ve been too in a long time and even had a few surprises including us convincing the groom’s parents to do shots with us. This made the night easily the most memorialble wedding I’ve ever been too and a great event to partake in.
In closing to my dear friends I know I don’t say it enough (and you’ll probably never stumble into this corner of the internet) but I wish you all the best. It was very obvious from the first time I saw you together that you both made each other very happen and were going to make it to this day. The way you both are able enjoy yourselves and each other in one of the healthiest relationships I’ve ever seen gives me hope that statistically I might be able to find someone before I give up. It was a privilege to be able to partake in your wedding and share in event.
Here are some pics of the evening:
Chris Langley and I
The Happy Couple
One of the rounds of shots
The final bar tab looked like a laundry list and came in at just under $1000. I think in total I drank:
- 2 Pints
- 1 Bottle of Beer
- 3 Rum & Coke
- 1 Irish Carbomb
- 1 Yager Bomb
- 1 Shot of Something Blue
- 1 Shot Liquid Cocaine
- 2 Shots of Swedish Berry
- 1 Shot of Vodka
I’m impressed that I was able to consume that much and then go one my run the next morning without dying, now we’ll see how I fair on my birthday.
Scotty B Personal
Last night I saw Fleetwood Mac in concert in my continuing series of concerts by bands that were popular before my parents were married. I’m going to try to keep this short as I’m not good at the short concise blog post and should try to get better at it because it would probably lead to me blogging more often.
First, no matter what anyone tells you Scotiabank place is a pain in the ass to get too and any traffic problems that would have been caused by it being inside the city would be moot, as I could have walked downtown in the amount of time that I was sitting in my car not moving and getting parked (and this doesn’t include the commute out there). Great now I just started ranting and took up three (now 4) perfectly good lines that could have been used to actually say something, oops.
The show itself was great, for fans of the band it was everything you could have asked for with no opening band to get you right in the action followed by two and a half hours of music (including two encores). The inclusion of Stevie Nicks’ solo song Stand Back right after Go Your Own Way was a pleasant surprise and even though the band has aged to varying degrees (I still don’t know how Stevie Nicks looks that good at 60) they were still able to rock out as hard as any band I’ve ever seen with Lindsey Buckingham doing a guitar solo that must have lasted over three minutes and Mic Fleetwood is still able to set a furious pace with the drums.
It was interesting to see how Nicks and Buckingham each dealt different with the lose of their higher vocal range. While Nicks tended to change her line or move to harmony Buckingham would always go for whatever note he was feeling at the time. Both these attitudes could also be seen with their on stage performance with Nicks being very deliberate with her actions and costume changes and Buckinham running all over just having a good time rocking out.
I found myself taking one of their final songs to heart more than I normally would as I realized how much it applies to my current situation. I sit here in an interesting point in my life where I’m as stable (or possibly more so) than ever before and still everything is moving at break neck speeds around me even when I might want to find somewhere to settle in. I have a wedding of two close friends to go to in a few days as well another in the summer, friends of mine are still getting engaged left, right and center, people all over work are having kids and my small list of university friends still living in this city is dwindling day by day.
As the song says “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow, It’ll soon be here better than before. Yesterday’s gone, don’t you look back”
—- Dammit still at 500 words and 30 minutes longer than I wanted, guess I have to work on this
Scotty B Personal
Apparently my blog lately has somewhat revolving around the plot of the SciFi (or SyFy, but that’s an angry rant for another day) series Battlestar Galactica which ended on a mixed note last Friday. Most of the general consensus I’ve been hearing in my group of friends and the Internet in general is that with the exception of the mutiny episodes (which could be two of the best episodes of the series) season 4 has been average compared to the rest of the series.
With the series being so good when it came out and the buildup in the fist part of the final episode I had high expectations for the finale and even though they weren’t met the episode was still good, but it just didn’t cut it. Looking back at it now on paper (by the way obvious huge spoiler alert here) the episode had everything I wanted and hoped for in the finale: An epic battle, character resolution and very uncommonly for this series a happy ending for the good guys and some justice for the bad guys.
I think in the end they tried to do too much for whatever reason which is disappointing because despite my lukewarm reception there were moments that reminded me of why I loved the series. The most of the first half is great and gives us some foreshadowing of the scale of the battle to come and gives you the most defining moment in Baltar’s life as a character to finally do something not selfish, and the battle itself while not extremely epic does do justice for it being the final battle for the show. The Tyrol killing Tory and completely screwing over what seemed to be the happy ending and dooming the cylon’s to extinction was totally unexpected as well as the president dying while Adama is talking and not paying attention to her.
I found two things very annoying about the finale: first were all the flashback sequences, they seemed tacked on and it didn’t feel natural to be trying to tell back story this late in the game; and my second problem is the epilogue. The problem is in the length and how direct the epilogue is. They spell out in big capital letters most of the mystery of the series and then don’t explain at all one of the biggest questions of what Kara was and how she was the harbinger of death when she didn’t destroy anything more so than she has in any other episode. I did enjoy the Ron Moore cameo and the inclusion of the Jimi Hendrix All Along the Watchtower but the overbearing nature of how the anti technology message is given is somewhat insulting given the tone of the rest of the series, the original shot of the dancing robot was funny but the montage that followed seemed very preachy.
What I enjoyed about the messages in Battlestar were the fact they were asked, given context but were never overtly answered and it was always up to the viewer to make their own opinion on what they thought of the topic and the messages inside the show. I should be listening to the commentary for the episode tomorrow as I normally do which will give me some more insight into the context of why the decision were made and will probably temper my feeling at little, suffice to say I’m glad I had the series to enjoy for the past 5 years but I’m also glad its over.
Also seeing as I didn’t have time to read this before going to the concert, it was great more thoughts on it tomorrow (I’m going to try to blog more often, we’ll see if it actually happens).
Scotty B Commentary, Personal
So it’s been a while since I last blogged due to a me being extraordinarily busy at work combined with the fact that I don’t blog very often to begin with. After catching up on some of my blog reading I ran into an interesting post on Jeff Green’s blog (For those who don’t know he was the former EIC of Computer Gaming world and host of the funniest gaming podcast ever) about how twittering has cut down the number of posts he makes on his blog.
This is interesting to me because I find myself in the same boat as I got on the twitter bandwagon around the same time as blogging which means I caught onto one trend before it got popular and the other one I was very late to the party. I use twitter a lot because it is literally always at my finger tips on my blackberry and the 140 character limit means that everything has to be to the point and there is no room to edit or sit on your thoughts like a blog.
I also find it interesting how I use twitter, until recently I only followed people and posted updates so that I could see them updated on my websites but recently I’ve been getting into more of the conversation aspect of it with friends of mine joining combined with people commenting on facebook where I push all my twitter updates to.
Segueing into another aspect of online conversations a word of warning to not install spam filters for your blog’s comment section after getting home from the bar at 3 am. Well ok installing the filter is a good idea and would have saved me from accidentally deleting one of the two real comments I’ve ever gotten. I’m sorry aunt Irene I did read your comment and actually had approved it a few days earlier but unfortunately the UI puts all my comments in the same screen so when I went to delete the 44 spam comments yours got clicked on as well so hopefully this filter does its job and I won’t do that again.
As this point I am reminded of why I don’t do this often as I’m now sitting down for a second time to try and finish this post and it is already past 380 words and I haven’t really said anything yet and have so much more running around in my head that I could be talking about at the moment so here goes before I lose the interest of the one person reading this (Hi Mom, o wait you don’t like computers…. so you’re probably not here) .
Last night was a great time out, even if we couldn’t convince josh to go to the strippers (and before you judge me it was a bachelor party, as far as tradition goes I think you’re supposed to have them). The 67’s won and we had a good time at the bar afterwards with more yelling than my voice could handle apparently.
The first part of Battlestar Galactica’s series finale will be watched with the usual group later tonight and while the last couple of episodes have been pretty good I’m hoping they go for broke in the finale and we get to see a huge battle with the kind of payoff the series deserves.
On the gaming front I’m enjoying the DLC for Grand Theft Auto 4 and the character development hasn’t fallen flat and I think has a better chance of sustaining itself because it’s so much shorter.
Lastly my ‘playoff’ beard is coming in a lot better than expected considering every time I try to grow one I shave it off in under a week as I think it looks ridiculous but this time I am committed to keeping the it until version 3.0 is done or the wedding because even if it is growing in well I still probably looks ridiculous with it.
Scotty B Personal