I feel so cheated.

After faithfully blogging for almost a year, I feel totally cheated by blogger. I was thinking of changing my blog template to better reflect my current situation (i.e. not in Ireland anymore), so I thought Blogger's new "upgrade" beta thing would help. Instead I found out it is absolutely terrible. Things take forever, Google advertises everywhere, the "customization" options SUCK, and worst of all, I CAN'T GO BACK.

I am sad.

This may be the second last post on this blog. I feel the next one may be advertising my new blog address with a different company!

New scientific research suggests God exists, and his middle name is Stan

On the suggestion of a hot internet chick whom I talk to on my webcam sometimes, I found the website of a cutting edge science research centre whose newest experiments can actually cause violent revelations about your deepest subconscious personality. Here are the results:

L	Light
U	Unusual
K	Kind
E	Earthy

Name / Username:

Name Acronym Generator
From Go-Quiz.com


I think that the accuracy of this consultation is remarkable, and astounding. What an incredible new technique. This may just save the world, bring about world peace, and turn Stephen Harper into a wild and crazy guy.

Oh Yeah

Hey everyone.

I hope you like my new profile photo. Alas, it isn't recent. I've officially spent FAR too much time on the computer today. So what do I decide to do? BLOG! My new job is pretty much souped-up data entry (with some maps and paper and pens and stuff) from 8:30-4:30. Today was quite laid back though, and since we were waiting around for some rental-truck oil changes I ended up spending most of the morning at Tim Horton's.

It was really interesting watching out the window (so we could see our oil change progress) and observing all of the traffic in the drive through. Tim Hortons is a machine. I don't know how they do it, I guess just by keeping things simple and consistent. I saw 3 near-accidents, 4 people I knew, and 1 tiny, TINY little middle-aged woman in a fur coat driving a monstrous Yukon. I can't believe she didn't get hung up on the guard rail!

I love the word "Guard". Whenever I type it, I always think "Goo-ard". It's like "Because", which I learned to spell by seeing it as "Becca-Use".

Cowboy hats are officially out, and wearing sweater-inspired jeans are officially in. Though I searched really hard, I couldn't find a photo. Just picture this: put a sweater on as pants, with your legs through the arms. Then sew up the neck/crotch, put a belt around the top, and you got it. I swear I saw these pants numerous times in Europe. They had the crotch at mid-thigh, were skin-tight below that, and baggy above. SOOOO ugly. Just wait, I'll be a huge fan by this time next year. I can see it now: "Come on, Nicole, they just look so good on you". I'm just sure that some designer put a sweater on their legs while drunk on Aftershock, and said "Look out, Eurotrash! Who has Versace's phone number?".

Mr. Luke

Hello,

I just got back from P.A. where I was doing archaeology presentations to Jeff's class. It was great. We had two classes of grade nines for a total of 4 hours, and I went through all sorts of powerpoint introduction stuff, passing around artifacts, slide shows of my trips and jobs, and we played a great computer game that Jeff found on the BBC website. It was so much fun. I forgot how little grade nines are. They're SO small! I'm sure they've shrunk since we were kids. Definitely. That's so likely.

The drive to and from P.A. seemed to take 5 minutes. We listened to Saskatoon bands, and on the way there I touched up my powerpoint presentation. I've always entertained the idea of being a prof or lecturer, and this was a great opportunity for me to try to put together some sort of presentation. I managed to pretty much completely avoid presentations in my university classes, not because I don't like them, just by chance.

Tomorrow I start my new job, and I'm excited.

Chris, if you read this stuff, I wanted to let you know that I had delivered 1 postcard to the mcpherson house, but will send the rest to Agar.

Take care!

Luke

Numero Uno

Hello all,

I'd like to dedicate this blog to a certain beautiful and incredible girl who, as of today, has been my girlfriend for a year. I can't believe she's put up with me so long! What a catch!
Thank you Nicole, for such a wonderful year.

Here's to more and more,

Luke

The Return of Mr. Awesome

Hello all,

Not to brag, but I am Mr. Awesome. Well, at least that's what I'm telling myself, because I landed a permanent job at an archaeology company here in town! "Yay!" for steady income, "alas!" for my innocence. I'm afraid it will be a serious paycut from last fall, but I'm willing to accept that for the time being. I'll have to go to the gym or something to maintain my impeccable manly figure, which I usually maintain by sitting on my couch and worrying about the Fjords record.

On a different note, I'll leave you with some of a vintage superman comic that seems odd by today's standards.


Take care,

Luke

Back from the Weyburn

Hey all,

I just got back from a little mini expedition to an incredible area of land near Weyburn. We were quadding around on the barren native prairie along seismic test lines, flagging archaeological sites to be avoided. MAN it was beautiful country. I sometimes couldn't wipe the grin off of my face due the fact that I couldn't see a road (or tree) at all. There were tons of rolling hills with tipi rings and stone cairns and bison effigies and creepy hillbilly farms all over them. We found stone-cairn drive lanes leading to a buffalo jump that stretched for kilometers, and at the top of the highest nearby hill, they met at a spirally stone alignment (all covered in technicolor lichen) from which you could see for MILES. It was awesome. Being away overseas sometimes made this province seem a bit boring, but the unbelievable feeling of walking in a massive, unspoiled, ancient landscape, coupled with the simply incredible scenery, really just wowed the hell out of me. Just as spectacular as Notre Dame in Paris, just as dignified as Buckingham palace, just as lush as the French countryside. Just me and the wind.

What a wonderful place we live in.

The Weyburn Inn, by comparison, was alright I guess :)

Luker

Digging for a record

Hey Ya,

I've been thinking non-stop about the new Fjords record. We've been working on it for almost two years now, and it is only recently starting to feel like it may be getting close to finished. We've done 3 (Count 'em, 1-2-3! ) remote recording sessions, one in a huge stone lakeside chalet at Camp Easter Seal (Manitou Lake), one at a friend's converted church near Martensville (now entitled Snake Road Hall) and one at the old Unitarian Centre chapel on Idylwyld. Also, we've been recording constantly out of our homes and at the fabled Back Room Studios, Saskatoon, SK.

The record started out as a full-out rocker, with ridiculously epic guitar solos (they put Cool My Desire to shame) and no shortage of pop hooks. Inexplicably, after a few more months of work, we realized the record had turned into a dark and sinister record, complete with haunting lap steel and a smattering of "six-feet-under" F-Words. Hmph. At the moment, it's somewhere in between. We have three rockers from the last recording session that step away from our previous stuff, and now it's a matter of marrying it all together harmoniously, possibly adding new (yet unwritten!) material, and cleaning up some grunt work left to do on the existing songs.

Phew! What a mess. Anyway, I just had to vent, and try to figure out where the hell I'm at with all that! To put it into context, here's some photos dating back far, far too long! After going through all of these, I realized how much they make us look like a bloated, spoiled band. I have to admit, the locations were all really ideal, and we put a lot of thought into finding good places to record. In the end, (well, the middle, anyway) I can really look back on this record as being a culmination of a whole bunch of incredible experiences, and I feel really lucky to have been able to be a part of it.

Now, we just have to get the damn thing right!

Enjoy,

Luke.

PS, I'd like to thank Kim Warner for some of the fancier photos.

Camp Easter Seal:





Snake Road Hall:






Unitarian Centre:



The Back Room:

True Tick and Tin

I've got all sorts of things to report:
-----------------------------

There's murmurs about a possible fjords show at Amigos in December, but we haven't confirmed yet, because we're not sure if we'll have time to get it together by then.

I've had that new Killers song "When You Were Young" stuck in my head for a couple of days. I tried to write another song yesterday, and ended up rewriting the Killers song for them by accident. But I did get another song finished that I've been working on the past month or so. Cool!

I got a job here in Saskatoon! Well, kind of. An archaeology company here called me back, and wants me to go down to the area around weyburn for 2-3 days next week to work on a project. I hope it goes really well. It will be good to make a bit of Christmas cash.

I'm going for tea with Ms. Lavergne tonight, I'm very excited to see her again. I'm sure we'll talk a bunch about Nicole. Nicole, don't worry, only good things of course.

Currently listening to: "Your Missus is a Nutter" by Goldie Looking Chain. Very funny. SERIOUS!

Chris, enjoy the crisp weather there, because it's ridiculously snowy here as of yesterday.

Well, I'm sure I had more, but there it goes. I've forgotten it. I'll talk to you all soon!

Luke

The Evil Eye!

Does anyone else feel uncomfortable walking into the Clothes Cafe? It seems whenever I go in there, the people working there look at me with pure disbelief, like some smelly bum off the street just shuffled in to soil their ill-fitting $80 Major Damage sweaters. It seems like the place is just there so they can hang out and feel cool. Does anyone actually shop there at all? Do they provide any service to you? WHENEVER I go there, I get the feeling that because my jeans aren't down around my ass, I'm not toting a snowboard, and I'm not wearing a sideways hat, I'm not actually supposed to be there. I have to start any conversation, even if I'm the only one there, and the whole visit is invariably filled with a heavy awkwardness. It's a relief to leave! The owners used to come into Siesta when I worked there, and seemed quite nice. I don't know why, but I get a bad vibe at this store. Even at Six-Forty, their store next door (that sells last season's UK fashions, I will immaturely point out) I get the feeling that the counterperson wishes there was a cot behind the desk. I'm pretty sure that whenever I've been there, I'm the only customer, and well, I think I know why.

I'm off to SEARS!

XOXO? Nah, Little Penguin

Ça Va?

We were tasting some wines today that my brother is thinking of using for his wedding. We tried an interestingly packaged XOXO Canadian wine, but it was pretty bad. Little Penguin, however, from Australia, was really good. Jesse's been through a LOT of wine for this purpose over the last while, and had already pretty much decided on Little Penguin. I think he just likes to keep testing it because it's so tasty!

There was a $1400 bottle of Remy Martin at the liquor store. That's just ridiculous. For whom? Who would pay that? Maybe for an 8L novelty bottle, or something, but not for a 26! It reminds me of the huge perfume bottles we saw on the Marche Des Elysees (sp?) in Paris. If they weren't big cubes, you'd mistake them for booze! You'd have to REALLY like that CK Obsession or Chanel No. 5 to buy a litre of the stuff (for 2000 euros or something!). I think it would be a funny prank to put a big bottle of Oscar de la Renta in a liquor cabinet at a raucous party and see how much of it gets polished off. Hm, maybe that's what Yoko Ono meant.



We had our first Fjords band practice last night in A LONG TIME. We are scheduled to play for an hour or so at the wedding, so we have to get our asses in gear. I updated the Fjords site the NIGHT I got home, because I want people to know that we didn't break up, and that we really are still around. Apparently when I first left people would say to Jeff: "I'm excited to see you play again when Luke gets back", then it progressed to "Is Luke coming back soon? When will you play more shows?", then lately it has been "I'm sorry to hear you guys broke up". That can't be good. The practice went quite well considering how long it has been. We were rusty, that's for sure, and we're so used to the newest recordings that live stuff sounds crappy in comparison, but I'm confident we'll be in full world-domination form by Christmas time (sorry, no X-mas album in the works).

The Riders just scored a touchdown upstairs-my whole house cheered! Congrats, Riders, I hope you beat those damn Stamps.

I signed up at the Yard for an open stage in 2 weeks. Come one come all.
Take Care.

Luke

Safely Home

Well, Here I am. Back in Saskatoon. I made it! It was wonderful coming home and sleeping in my bed, seeing my parents again, and just being home.

The flight from Heathrow was pretty good. I went with Chris to Victoria Station in London where he was catching a bus to Paris, and then I headed back to the Underground and caught it to Heathrow. Once checked in, (the nice air canada lady waived my oversized baggage fee with a smile and put me on an earlier flight!) I wandered around the Duty Free shops trying to convince myself to buy some rare scotch or something, and just couldn't do it! Once I was on a plane, things go to a blur. I had an middle row aisle seat with no one next to me, so it was like first class without the price! I was able to sprawl out, and really make myself comfortable. Still, flights are invariably long and boring. The food was very good. I had tomatoey chicken and a glass of red. Luckily, I also had an interesting book to help me on the way: Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything". A great read. I know all about so many things now, or at least know where to look them up!

So, after clearing customs at Pearson, what did I do, you ask? Well... one of the things I missed a lot about Canada was the Appletons' rum. Apparently this is a problem for lots of people, because the first thing they have outside of the customs area is an "appleton's stop". It was hilarious. A little mini rum bar. Welcome to Canada! Needless to say, I indulged. It cost 7 dollars, 8 with a banana.

At Pearson, I randomly ran into Rada, a nice woman from work here in Saskatoon, and spent the layover chatting with her about our trips. She was coming back from her native Croatia, where she had been visiting her sick father. It was nice to see a familliar face, but it was too bad about the sad circumstances. She bought me a coffee and a doughnut at Tim Hortons. Nicest laday you'll ever meet.

I more or less stumbled off of the tiny plane at Saskatoon and booted it over to the gate to see my parents, and there they were. It was wonderful. Now I'm home, and I think I'll walk down to broadway today to check out the Scene. Also I need some new shoes.

Take care everyone. Despite the end of this trip, you can still read my random rantings on this blog. I won't stop the bloggin'.

Luke