Between April 26th and May 27th I was travelling so much that I only had 4 business days at home. This involved about 75 hours in planes and airports. It did have it's personal upsides as some good times were had, particularly the long weekend in NYC. Thankfully, that travel schedule is done and life can return to something a bit more sane. Yesterday turned out to be one of those great days at home.
It was a US holiday, but not for moi as I had the previous monday off. Which meant I had a whole day (!) without any meetings, interruptions, or stream of urgent/semi-urgent emails. I got to spend the work day on some WSDL 2.0 work that I've been tasked with. I'd almost forgotten what it was like to do a solid uninterrupted day of writing and thinking.
I signed up for a couple of ultimate teams and we play games in the evening. Because I was pretty much away for May, I have only made 2 of the 8 nights of ulty. Monday was a double header night for our team. It was soo much fun. Our team is really gelling and playing well. There's just nothing quite like playing a great sport with good folks on a wonderful night.
I noticed a distinct drop in my energy as the game progressed, commonly known as "fitness". I did the grouse grind a fair bit in April and a few weekends in May, which has kept my fitness up for the roughly hour long cardio. But by 9pm, 2 1/2 hours into ulti, I was simply knackered and feeling quite sore in various body parts. I'm not concerned as I'll definitely improve was the season continues. It was really good to have 2 solid games, and even better to have a full line of subs!
After a couple of great games and feeling nicely tired, a quick shower and then off to see Zero 7 at the Commodore. I've been into the electro-jazz, lounge, ambient, trip-hop, whatever you call it music for a few years. And these guys were great to see and listen to live. It was especially great sucking back a cold one listening to a wonderful band after having run around for a few hours. On a nice vancouver touch, they said that really enjoyed vancouver compared to some of their gigs the previous week. The previous week they were in Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, and Boulder. A good way to win over a crowd is to favourably compare Vancouver to TO. :-)
I really think that my approach to this music is the wave of the future. Specifically, have a large collection of music that mostly isn't paid for and then see the band live. The live performance is what they make their money on, not the cd/record sales. I found out about Zero 7 by downloading a bunch (25 gigs or so) of electro-jazz music and following recommendations from allmusic. It's all legal in Canada as the Canadian Supreme Court recently that uploading and downloading not for profit are legal. And particularly, the recording industry's concern about revenue does not sanction the invasion of privacy necessary to track down music sharers. In addition to downloading and sharing, I have also bought numerous (maybe 40-50?) CDs as well, but the bulk of my collection is from either downloading or sharing with friends and family. When I saw their concert announcement I jumped at the chance. And I've done this with other bands to, like Arab Strap and Gotan Project.
After two encores, they wrapped up at about 11:45, which got me back home at midnight. What a full and enjoyable day being back home.