I recently rediscovered a favourite musician from the '70s - Joan Armatrading. Great voice and style. India Irie kind of reminds me of her but Joan's voice is more muscular, slightly less elegant. Fantastic writer/performer though. It took me an hour to get home from my appointment downtown - one solid hour on the Gardner/QEW on Saturday afternoon in the rain and I didn't stress (much) because I was listing to J.A. So a crazy coincidence is, I just went to her website to create the link above and in the photo she has the exact same guitar as me. Anyway, that doesn't mean anything it was just one of those weird things. Check her out if you get the chance. Definitely some of her stuff is dated but for the most part her style has stood the test of time. You can listen to one of my favourites here, "Love and Affection. Be sure to let it play out. The intro is a little too pop love-songie for me but the rhythm and mood changes as it goes along. One thing I realized in listening to this cut again - Michael Bolton really killed clarinet appreciation for the world
If you see Eve this week be sure to say "Happy Birthday"! A few of us surprised her at their apartment on Friday. She thought she had planned a party for herself on Saturday but Katy had already set things up. Chrissy baked a cake and we had Liz Loek's signature snack - red pepper jelly with cheddar cheese. It was great to get together with a few of our friends and to meet some of Eve's non-paddling friends. It was especially nice to see Jackie and Blake and Chrissy, just home from winning a boat-load of gold medals at Pan Ams!
As mentioned, I spent Saturday afternoon downtown - spa day and some shopping on Bloor Street. I bought lots of stuff in Capezio - Steve Madden CFM leather boots and brown suede pumps as well as these really fun Sam Edelman pumps (but in black). Seriously, I don't have the bank account for this kind of extravagance all of the time but I'm suddenly very happy again and if occasional retail therapy supports that then I'm good with it! Anyway, the sales clerk must have been so excited about the commission she was getting, she sent me home with one Steve Madden pump, right foot size 8 and another right foot size 6 - display shoe. Argh! No problem though. I called and they're shipping a brand new pair to Sherway for me.
Good luck to Kyle and the guys; Tamas, Peter, Larry, Boog and Shro - they're on their way to Hawaii for the 41 mile, open ocean Molokai Hoe , October 8th.