The days are short & the nights are long

May 5, 2011 Filed Under: Blogs & Blogging, Concerts, Music = Love, Post a Day 2011, Roadtrips!, SO EXCITING!, Things That Make Me Happy Tagged With: , ,

It’s no secret that One Tree Hill has been one of my favorite shows since it first started 8 years ago. It’s gone a bit weird in a few seasons, but I’ve never been able to stop watching. I practically grew up with the show- It started when I was only 13 years old.

One of the really awesome things about OTH is the music. Ever since the beginning it’s featured the most amazing songs and artists- many of them becoming some of my favorites over the years. In December 2009 I wrote a short blog post  about the musician the show was featuring at the time; Wakey Wakey.

2 days ago I took a road trip to Burlington Vermont with two of my favorite people to finally see him live. Not only are these two girls my concert buddies, but we’ve all been obsessed with One Tree Hill since forever. We just HAD to be at this show (even if it meant missing a really good one back home on the same day.)

Oh, and also? Road trip into the States means I can finally cross off #44 on my 101 Goals list! Yay!

Anyways, I don’t even know where to start with this show. I missed nights like these and road trips like these too. We have the absolute best time sitting in a car for hours, blaring music, singing along horribly to said music, and making friends at every show we go to.

Classic road shot!

We left Montreal at around 2:30 on Tuesday and headed straight down to Burlington in the pouring rain. We ended up getting there around 4-4:30 and decided to kill some time at University Mall. We shopped around a bit and took ridiculous pictures, because what else is there to do at 4:30PM in Burlington on a Tuesday?

I didn’t really fit… But I was entertained nonetheless!

We met Justin Bieber! Well.. Cardboard JB anyway.

Afterwards we went to Applebees for a quick dinner (we were a giggling mess, let me tell you) and finally around 6:30 we drove down the street to the venue. There wasn’t a line-up at all so we just waited in the car until 7PM when the doors were about to open and then we ran inside the venue. Obviously we took about 800 pictures while we waited.

Carey Price smile #8763… We like to make fun of the way our hockey goalie smiles. Every SINGLE time we’re together.

FINALLY at 7:30 the show started. The first band literally blew out my ear drums. I think they had potential to be pretty good but their sound was totally off. It was so loud that we were all feeling sick by the time their set was over nearly 40 MINUTES later. Needless to say we were crazy excited for Wakey Wakey to come on next.

The show was honestly just amazing. Mike Grubbs, the main artist (who was featured on One Tree Hill) sounded exactly the same live as he does on his CD. He’s also the most down to earth guy ever. He spent the entire show making jokes, talking to the audience, laughing at himself, and just being the coolest person ever basically.

One of the highlights of the show for me was when he performed the song ‘Got It All Wrong’. On the album, it’s a bit of an electro kind of song (look it up! So good!) but he made it into an acoustic guitar & violin only song for the show. I can’t stop listening to it. Check out my (somewhat alright) iPhone video of it:

After their (hour long?) set we really REALLY wanted to meet him, but we were getting worried about the weather. It was raining like crazy and all the rivers were like overflowing on the way there so we wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. We went straight to his Merch booth to say hi along with a bunch of my other friends who came down to see him as well. When we told him we were all from Montreal he got SO excited and told us his band wanted to play here really badly but it’s complicated with licenses and other things I don’t quite understand.

The three of us told him we were driving back home and were hoping to get pictures with him and he told everyone to get out of the way (in a hilarious not rude way obviously) so that we could go first.

Me & Mike Grubbs! Yay!

When we left, the three of us were just over the moon with happiness. It’s so much fun to drive out and have a show be so incredibly worth it. I miss that feeling after a really good concert; the mix of adrenaline, total ecstatic-ness & slight concert depression. We spent the whole drive home talking about our night and agreeing that we need to see them play again VERY soon.

Have you checked them out yet? I’m going to keep bugging you until you do.

www.myspace.com/wakeywakey

Okay, I’m done rambling about the awesomeness of concerts. For now. What are your best concert experiences?!

**Also, did you see my new blog look? I made things prettier! I have a new blog name! I have bigger sidebar pictures! It’s a work in progress, but what do you think? I feel like my new title is more me, more music-oriented, all that fun stuff!**

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Reasons to smile

April 24, 2011 Filed Under: Concerts, CONFRONT, Cute Stuff, Everyday Stories, Family, Friends, Post a Day 2011, Random Ramblings, Reminiscing, Things That Make Me Happy, Things To Remember Tagged With:

This last week has given me more than a couple reasons to be sad and disappointed. A few things that I’ve written about, and a few that I couldn’t get the courage to. Either way, I think sometimes it’s important to put those less awesome moments in perspective with a few things that make me happy on a regular basis, and that I am lucky enough to have in my life. So here are the first 20 things that come to mind that make me smile.

1. Waking up in the morning & having a freshly brewed cup of coffee while checking e-mails

2. A really nice long hot shower

3. Staying in bed for 10 extra minutes to cuddle with my kitty

we were playing hide and seek! 

4. Reading a good book, and reading it fast because it’s too good to put down

5. Blaring music, listening to a favorite song and not being able to listen to it loud enough because it’s just too good

6. Retail therapy

7. Doing interviews for CONFRONT magazine- meeting some of my favorite musicians because of that job & then getting to write about it!

8. Spending an afternoon (or a day, night, morning) with family. I’ve been so lucky that my brother married into such an amazing family, and I’ve adopted them as my own.

9. Hanging out with friends. I’m lucky enough to have a really big handful of GOOD  friends and they all know how to cheer me up, and when I need it most.

10. Holidays with really big meals (and family, friends). That feeling after eating a ton of food and wanting to fall asleep but laughing too much with those you love.

They’re not all family, but they may as well be!

11. Buying concert tickets, roadtripping for a concert, waiting that hour between doors opening and the show starting. I love all of it.

12. Getting random text messages, knowing someone out there is thinking of you in that particular moment

13. A really hot summer day with no plans except enjoying the sun outside with my ipod

14. Going to the park with a friend and sitting on the swings. I love feeling like a kid again!

15. Meeting someone special, even if it doesn’t last long. Holding hands, being close to them.

16. Planning the vacation of a life time with best friends, getting excited months and months in advance

13 week countdown! 

17. Helping customers at work and making a difference in their lives. I’ve met so many special people at my job, even if it’s part time, and I see them all the time. I’ve even met a really good friend of mine because of it!

18. Spending a day doing nothing productive at all, and feeling like I could do it all over again the next day.

19. Going out and having the absolute best time, when there were no plans at all

20. Last, but not least… Making my already amazing family bigger. What on earth does that mean? I’m going to be an aunt for the very first time! And I just can’t wait to spoil the hell out of that baby<3

What are you happy for today?

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Girls’ Nights & Other Fun Things

April 18, 2011 Filed Under: Friends, Girls' Nights, Post a Day 2011, School... and Whatnot, SO EXCITING!, Things That Make Me Happy, Travel Tagged With:

This last week has been so overwhelmingly busy for me that I haven’t been able to blog once. I have a few things saved into my drafts (AKA the last bits of my Music Challenge) but I’ve got some other catching up to do first.

Last week I had 2 of my 3 exams, so my first few non-blogging days were basically me studying like crazy in hopes of passing Calculus with flying colors. I’m not too sure if I’m going to do AMAZING because that exam was really tough, but hopefully I did pretty well. Fingers crossed. My second exam was an English essay which went quite well I think- the best part was at the end of it my teacher gave back our final big paper of the semester and I got an A+!! I actually couldn’t believe it. I feel like those are so hard to get because that basically means the teacher wouldn’t change anything about it. Atleast that’s the way I see it. So I’m super happy about that!

My English exam was on Saturday morning, so I pretty much spent the weekend stress-free of studying and partying like I haven’t done in months. Me and 5 girls from work  rented out 2 hotel rooms downtown where we watched the hockey game, got ready all together and went to party at a club until the very early hours of the morning. It was amazing.

We got to the hotel, turned on the hockey game, put some face paint on and then took pictures for 2 hours!

The girls started doing handstands, but really, hotel rooms are not built for that kind of activity. Poor Christina got kicked in the face!

We basically lived the whole night through mobile photos VIA Facebook because we completely forgot to take actual pictures. I think that might be due to the fact that we were just having too much fun. We headed to a random club called Music, and we pretended it was our friend Christine’s Bachelorette party. We made her a list of 10 things she had to complete that night as if she was really getting fake married, and we had tons of people incredibly convinced for the first half of the night that she was actually getting married.

The second half of the night was a crazy blur, we met a group of guys who were celebrating a Bachelor party, and they were convinced for a bit that our friend was getting married too, so we all celebrated together. There was a bit of a crappy ending when another one of my friends’ lost her brand new iPhone, but I think overall the night was a success! We didn’t come anywhere near finishing the Bachelorette list of things to do, but here’s what the accomplished version looked like…

We had to pencil in a few extra things that Christine ACTUALLY did, but weren’t there… You know, just for the sake of being witty and what not.

It was just a really fun and spontaneous “let’s see where this leads us” kind of night. We lost a few friends, messed a hotel room (and then cleaned it as girls do) and woke up not feeling well at all. It was the first time we all went out together and partied like that, but it was such a great way to just let loose and forget about our real lives.

The state of our poor hotel room at 4AM when the two of us got back! We were the last two standing! Slowly but surely the other 4 girls made their way back home and ‘The Hangover 3′ jokes ensued.

If you’ve seen The Hangover, you’ll understand this one. If you haven’t, please go see it immediately.

Finally yesterday I got home around 1:30 on about 3 hours of sleep. I had been up for 23 straight hours because of my exam the previous morning, so I literally got home and completely crashed for nearly 4 hours. I woke up and headed over to Selina’s house to start planning my trip to GREECE! By 11PM we finally managed to get a rough outline of what we want our trip to look like. We’ll be visiting the beautiful Kefalonia for one week, Athens for 4 days or so (spread out through the 3 weeks), Mykonos for a fun weekend of partying and Santorini for a beautiful ending to the trip. That’s what we’ve got so far- we want to go and take it easy and not stress about it too much, and I know that whereever we end up, we’re going to have a blast.

Mirtos Beach in Kefalonia… Beautiful, isn’t it?! I honestly cannot wait!

How has your week been? Your weekend?!  

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30 Day Music Challenge: Day 11

March 21, 2011 Filed Under: 30 Day Music Challenge, Concerts, Cute Stuff, Music = Love, My Many Husbands, Post a Day 2011, Reminiscing, Things That Make Me Happy

Day 11 – A song from your favorite band

The video is actually my own. I took it in August when I had the once in a lifetime chance to see my absolute favorite band play on a reunion tour (I’ve written about that day many times, it’s one of the most unforgettable shows I’ve been to)

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of saying how much I adore Andrew McMahon as a musician. There are very few people on this planet who inspire me the way he does. He has the most amazing story and he uses his fame to help people. He makes music that matters, and to me, there’s nothing better. It’s the reason I love the industry.

The show was unforgettable, but this song was the most unforgettable of them all. He hasn’t played it live in well over 5 years, never recorded a real version on a record, and then Something Corporate broke up. But then, he played it during the encore. And I cried (yep, I cried at a concert. It’s only happened like, twice though!) but this was such a defining musical moment and I can’t quite explain why. I just remember being there and thinking there was no way I could possibly soak up enough of what was going on to remember it exactly the way it was.

So not only is this a song from my favorite band, it’s one of my absolute favorite songs by them, and of all times. (Sorry about the sometimes crappy-ish quality, my camera at the time did not have the best filming skills, but I mean, I had to have this moment forever!)

Enjoy. <3

Do you have a song that means the world to you?

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Thursday Tidbits

March 17, 2011 Filed Under: Concerts, Everyday Stories, Music = Love, my crazy obsession with TV, Post a Day 2011, School... and Whatnot, SO EXCITING!, Summer Time!, Things That Make Me Happy, Travel Tagged With:

I thought I might take a day off from the Music Challenge to do a regular post and update on a few fun and exciting things!

1. If you follow me on twitter you’ll already know this news, but for those who don’t…  Back in January when I first started posting every day, I wrote about my Top 4 vacation spots and I’m so so so SO excited that I’m finally going to be visiting one of them! Yesterday, my friend Agnes booked the tickets for the two of us and our friends K & S for 3 weeks in Greece. I actually can’t believe we’re doing it. I’ve wanted to visit that country ever since I can remember but I never thought it would be so soon! We’re going to start planning it in coming weeks, but we leave from August 7th until the 29th- I never imagined I’d be so excited to see the end of summer come!

Santorini, 3 best friends and a gorgeous country? Yeah sure!

2. I also posted just a few days ago about one of my favorite bands, Jimmy Eat World, and how I miss them so darn much and how it’s been 3 freaking YEARS since I’ve seen them! Well, they just started to announce the dates for their American tour AND THEY’RE NOT coming to my hometown, however they are coming to Burlington, a fun little US city only 2 hours away. And I already bought tickets. I can’t believe it!

3. I’m officially beyond broke.

4. I’ve been crossing things off my 101 Goals like crazy and I can’t wait to write more about it in 2 weeks when the month of April comes around!

5. I’m currently addicted to this show called Parenthood. I started watching it 2 days ago and I’ve got one episode left to the first season. I don’t know what took me so long to catch on to this show, but IT’S SO CUTE. I love Peter Krause and I’ve missed him terribly since his days in Six Feet Under!

6. I’ve also been going music crazy and have been downloading tons of stuff and listening to lots of randoms. Currently on repeat on my ipod? Owl City. Seriously, love this band. The music is very pop-electro but it just makes me so happy!

7. I can’t believe I only have like 3 weeks left of semester. There’s so much to do, so much to study and lots of math crash course to attend. I just signed up for a 12 hour tutorial in Calculus and I’m kind of afraid for that weekend to come. But I want to KICK butt this semester!

I think that’s all that’s that’s new over here. I’m really especially excited about saving up lots and lots of money for Greece, I’m basically not going to have much of a life until then but there are lots of fun things happening in the next few months and really, I just can’t wait that summer is right around the corner.

What’s going on with you?!

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Jack’s!?!?

March 8, 2011 Filed Under: Music = Love, Post a Day 2011, SO EXCITING!, Things That Make Me Happy Tagged With: ,

My absolute favorite band will be in Montreal ONE week before my birthday. It’ll be one year since I last saw them perform (well, basically anyway) and i’m already SO excited!! I seriously miss them.I’ve seen Jack’s 3 times and I saw the lead singer, Andrew, in his high school band Something Corporate last summer. This will be the first time that they play in a huge stadium which is both really awesome and not so awesome because it won’t be as close or intimate as the last couple times. I’m still SUPER happy though and I really don’t want to miss it. Hopefully by then I’ll even be able to show off the tattoo I want to get for this band… Who knows!?

Do you have a particular band or musician you would go see no matter what?!

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It’s Official…

February 20, 2011 Filed Under: Concerts, Music = Love, My Many Husbands, Post a Day 2011, Things That Make Me Happy Tagged With: , ,

On August 5th I’ll be turning back the clocks with two friends from work at the NKOTBSB concert! I managed to get some of the very last floor seats RIGHT BY THE CATWALK. I’m a little bit scared of what the crowd is going to be like around there, but I think the three of us are totally ready for it.

And I swear if Nick or Brian or Howie or AJ come close enough to me I may burst into tears. I mean, really, last time I saw BSB was two years ago and I became such a crazy little fan girl way up in the stadium, I don’t even want to KNOW what things are going to be like way down on the floor.

AUGUST FIFTH can’t come soon enough!

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Goodbye Parties and an overall awesome weekend

January 17, 2011 Filed Under: Cute Stuff, Everyday Stories, Funny Stuff, Post a Day 2011, Things That Make Me Happy, Work Tagged With:

Well, besides the fact that I’m beginning to feel the start of a small cold coming on, this past weekend has been tons and tons and TONS of fun.

After getting home from Toronto on Friday night, I went to work all day on Saturday and actually managed to make it through without complaining too much about my lack of sleep. I headed home right after and got ready for a night of crazy fun.

A friend from work is leaving (tomorrow!sadness!) until this summer to study abroad in England. I’m super happy for her and also incredibly jealous. I hope that next year or even the year after I’ll have the guts to do the same thing. Anyway, since she’s leaving for so long and had to quit work to go, it was only fitting that we throw her an awesome goodbye party.

It started off with a nice, somewhat intimate potluck dinner at her place with a bunch of the girls from work (and some of her friends too). Some of the ladies started to pre-drink and were HILARIOUS and pretty much drunk before we left for the bar at 10PM.

Me and Teddy- So incredibly jealous that she gets to study abroad!

After eating way too much food, we all packed into three cars and headed into the insane snowstorm and to the bar. There were already dozens of people there waiting for the guest of honor (is that the right term? anyway…) We literally just hung out by the bar and at this ginormous table all night. Literally until like 3AM. I was unfortunately too poor to join in on the drinking festivities but I did a lot of video camera-ing because my coworkers are damn funny drunks!

Oh, and we obviously just took like a million pictures.

Random picture that started with two people but we just added ourselves onto the end!

The two of us went on a crazy video-taking adventure! We were rather successful

Group picture of ladies of our works’ past and present. It’s so nice to see their lovely faces even when we don’t work together anymore!

Although there was a bit of drama that made the evening end on a bit of a weirder note, we still managed to have an amazing night, maybe one of our best bar-nights (and best turn outs) yet. That girls’ got a lot of good friends, let me tell you!

On Sunday I can’t even remember what I did, probably because I was so sleep deprived. I went to sleep at like 3:30AM and my crazy cat woke me up HOWLING to be fed at 7:30AM. Apparently it didn’t wake my mom up in the slightest, who also (for some reason) had her alarm going off on a SUNDAY MORNING, but I opened my door and fed my cat and turned off her alarm before realizing I just wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. So much for a lazy Sunday morning.

But in the evening I headed over to this really delicious restaurant called L’Academie for my staff Holiday Party. We always have ours in the middle of January when the holiday rush is over and we can close the store early, get together and just have a good time. It’s basically the managers’ way of saying Thank You for all the hard work we put in during the insanity that is November/December in retail.

I’ve literally never seen so many of us in one place at the same time. In all my years working there, there has never been such an amazing turn out at a staff party. We were easily 100 people, and we took up a good half of the restaurant. It was nice to eat and walk around and just talk to everybody together.

I ended up leaving early (like 10PM-ish) because I was just TOO tired. But It was a nice and relaxing way to end a really good weekend!

I don’t have any pictures from the staff party, but here’s one last FREAKING awesome picture from the bar the night before. All the girls tried to get in on a self-taken shot and it just makes me laugh every time I see it!

Did you have a good weekend? Do anything fun!?

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Toronto, the details

January 16, 2011 Filed Under: Concerts, Music = Love, Post a Day 2011, Things That Make Me Happy Tagged With: ,

Toronto is definitely like a second home to me. I’ve been there so many times in the last two years I can almost figure my way around downtown the way I can back home. (Literally, I’m so awful with direction I could get around about the same way in both cities)

Anyway, on Thursday Jenia & I took the 8AM double-decker (bus of awesomeness) to Toronto for the Josh Groban show. We agreed that we’ve become so used to the long bus ride it’s actually quite enjoyable (especially during the day) because it gives us a great excuse to catch up on reading and music-listening for 6 hours without feeling bad about not doing homework or whatever else.

We got to TO around 2-2:30 and headed straight for the hotel to drop off our stuff and head out to our favorite ABSOLUTE FAVORITE part of the trip besides the actual concert: shopping at the downtown Forever 21. Love.

Our bags exploded in our hotel room 2 minutes after we got there. We feel at home quickly, what can I say?

After spending too much money, we came right back to the hotel to get dressed for the show that night & then head out to dinner. Another one of my favorite things to do in Toronto is eat at the Hard Rock Cafe- the one in Montreal closed down… and besides being DELICIOUS (and too expensive, but whatever!) it’s so much fun to see what part of music history you’ll be sitting next to when you go.

We had to take pictures once we were ready to head out!

This was our ‘We’re going to see Josh!’ faces… (I stole that caption from Jenia. It was so true)

After eating more than we should before a big show, we took the eternal taxi ride to the venue and waited in the longest line of my life to get inside for the show. We had pre-assigned seats but we were still nervous and just wanted to be seated. We were SO. CLOSE. to the stage. Luckily or maybe unluckily for us, the first five rows were apparently all the die hard Josh fans. We were sitting in between a crazy older woman who wanted to get his attention at all costs, and the freaking glow-stick community of Toronto. I have no idea what they were trying to accomplish but it was very strange.

But then Josh came on stage and oh my goodness, wow.

Josh entertaining the crowd with one of his many antics. What a hilarious guy!

The show was so fun and different from the usual because this was part of his intimate shows. There was maybe a thousand people and he basically said it was all up to us what we wanted to do. He spent atleast half the time just answering questions and talking with fans and making jokes. It’s so nice to see such a huge artist in the industry taking time to do that. The highlight was probably when he started calling people on stage to sit with him on his couches & he brought up this guy who’s dream was to sing with him. He chose the song ‘You Raise Me Up’ and Josh handed him the microphone, took his hand and told him to amaze his audience. He actually sounded like a little JGro. It was so darn cute!

As I’ve mentioned about 100 times now, he really is an amazing performer & I’m so SO happy I went with Jenia to see him. He’s been her idol for about 6 years now and I’m really glad she introduced me to his stuff. That’s the great thing about having best friends with the same taste in music as you. You’re guaranteed to love whatever new music they show you, and then you go and have these amazing experiences.

The next day, we took some time to sleep in and relax in the hotel until 11:30am or so. When we were ready to go, we headed to Eggspectation for the most delicious breakfast EVER, wow. Then we went to do more shopping, because what else would we do in Toronto but spend far too much money?! I spent too much, of course. Afterwards we met up with a friend from TO for a couple hours to shop and then grab a bite to eat. He’s also obsessed with taking lots of photos, so that’s just what we did, in the middle of Tim Horton’s.

We had staring contests… Lots of them.

Finally around 4:30 we got our stuff together and made the long (LONGEST EVER) trip home. I finally got in bed at 1AM and had to wake up bright and early for work… But it was all worth it. I can’t wait to go back- April, perhaps? The Rocket Summer is touring and the two of us and maybe our third half will get to join this time!!

On the double decker bus home…. We drove the bus! Not actually, but we were front row at the top by the massive window. Best seat in the house!

**All photos belong to Jenia because I still don’t have a camera. Thanks for letting me steal your pictures!**
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Surprise!!

January 6, 2011 Filed Under: Cute Stuff, Friends, Girls' Nights, Post a Day 2011, Things That Make Me Happy Tagged With:

Last night, one of my best friends (who moved to Jasper at the beginning of October) surprised the hell out of our group of friends by flying home and showing up to our dinner. She walked into the restaurant and we literally SCREAMED and jumped on her and all started crying.

Then we all sat down to eat & it was like she had never left- except we all know that she has to go back to her new home in just a few days. Surprise visits are the greatest, but saying goodbye a second time might be even harder then the first.

You never realize just how easy it is to call a friend and hang out whenever you want. It’s when they’re half a country away that you realize just how hard things can be. But last night and for a few more days the 5 of us are reunited and it’s just the greatest feeling. <3

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