Excessive

The Weight by Thrice contains some of the most powerful lyrics I think I've ever heard/read and talk to me in a way that only music could.

I wasn't going to write... yeah, it's 2:30am, I just got home from seeing Thrice in Toronto with Julie, Mel and Darren, I have a pretty bad headache, I was hungry, and I'm pretty tired, since I've been up since 6am... but after having a snack, and putting on the daily show... I didn't quite feel like I wanted to get in bed just yet, and then I was randomly reminded just how comforting it is to write even a few sentences. So I suppose... take this entry as a prologue for tomorrows, where I will go into more detail.

I woke up on time this morning, but this was mostly due to the fact that set a crazy loud alarm on my phone, and my phone was in another room, so I had no choice but to be startled awake and run out of the room to turn it off, thus ensuring I was up. I woke up at 6am, and had breakfast, standard toast and coffee. I packed up my crap, and listened to OK Computer as I took the buses to school.

Going in to school, I had thought there was a very important unit test in Math, worth 20% but as it turned out, it's next week, so it wasn't as a big deal. The other important thing for today was a short report I had to write for class, which we needed to hand in the hard copy today in class, so going to school wasn't optional today, I had to go to hand in this assignment. The other class I had was databases, which actually turned out okay, as it had been the first of his classes I've been to in three weeks (because he was out of the country for a conference). I got some work done on my case study, and generally enjoyed the classes today.

Calen, Mat and I (from now on referred to as "we" when in the context of school discussion. We went to Oasis for lunch after math, because we have an hour break between math and communications, and we're always starving. Oasis is a breakfast and lunch center for the school, run by students (I think) and there are three or four seperate sections within the area. One counter serves breakfast items, like an egg, bacon, toast kind of breakfast, another that offer stirfry, they also have pastas, and then a sandwhich counter where you can get custom made sandwiches. I decided to go with a sandwich, mainly because the line for breakfast was huuuuuge, like probably a thirty minute wait, and I had been having a strange craving for a nice sandwich, and wanted to see what kind of quality they offer.

I went with marble rye panini bread, toasted, with mozzerella, chicken, lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo and dijon. I had a couple complaints with the food... I guess it's worth mentioning them. First, I'll just start by saying that the bread was the exact marble rye we use at work, so I loved it... it's such good bread. Also, I've got no complaints with the cheese, tomato or onion... or mayo, so that was all good, and difficult to screw up. However, there were a few things that could've been made better... such as the meat itself. You can pick between ham, roast beef, turkey or chicken. When I see chicken written up on the board as an option, I picture either a nice, deli meat style chicken, or grilled chicken breasts, but no, they dropped this strangely colored chicken on my bread... it was chunked, almost like it came out of a can... it was pink and uhh..weird. It tasted okay I guess, but the fact that it was precooked, prechunked, strangely colored meat kind of put me off. My other complaints are... they used shredded iceburg lettuce, and I would've much preferred a nice couple thick pieces of green leaf lettuce instead. Also, when I asked for the dijon I was hoping it would just be grainy mustard, but it turned out to be some really spicy mustard, which kind of ruined a couple of my bites, but what are you gonna do. Overall I would say the sandwich was good, especially considering the speed and number of orders they deal with, but I feel like for the price they charge (a drink and my sandwich came to $9.75), they should use higher quality ingredients. I realize the chicken would be difficult to use real chicken breasts for, but I would either use deli meat, or make it a chicken salad if all I had were chunks of meat.

After school, we drove to Toys R Us again, but Mathew and I browsed Tiger Direct as Calen went to Toys R Us and bought a copy of Batman: Arkham City with his discount. After looking around a bunch, I decided to pick up a few things, mainly because I had wanted both items for quite a long time, but also because it feels like I never spend money, and it's nice to just buy something you don't 100% need, but would like, and not feel guilty about it. I walked away with an 8" electronic picture frame, and a laptop cooling pad (a device you place your laptop over top of and it circulates air around the bottom to help with cooling). It felt good to buy those things, and afterward, Calen drove me home.

Once home, I wasn't sure what time Julie was going to pick me up, or even what the overall plan was, so I just watched some episodes of Ze Frank's The Show, and had some food just because I wasn't sure if we'd be stopping. I ate some leftover Shepherds Pie and a bowl of chips... it did the trick. I played the first half hour of Batman: Arkham City, but didn't have time to really dive in to it and get excited, so I'll hopefully get another chance soon. I got a call letting me know that Mel and Darren would pick me up and go to Julies around 5:00pm. When we arrived at Julies, she got ready and I drank a tall boy, and off we went.

Julie drove there, and I sat in the front DJing my iPod, Mel and Darren sat in the back. It was fun to sit and listen to songs and talk... all that...the drive there was nice. It's funny driving in to Toronto because seeing that skyline, and the buildings, it really brings back a strange string of memories. It brings back memories of when I'd spend summer's in Toronto and we'd have our own neighborhoods, and variety stores... and I remember walking to different places, and a lot of it all looks strangely familiar, and in that sense it's really nice, it feels like coming home to a second home, but at the same time, it makes me feel pretty weird, as I have pretty vivid memories of running away to Toronto to spend time with Emily and that just brings up really weird feelings inside me, so yeah... all of this flashes through my head in about two seconds, and it's kind of a big wave of emotion... it's still neat though..

We parked at Food Basics which was about a block away from The Phoenix, and we walked the distance. We got in right away and while I didn't have ID, Julie just went in to the drinking area, met me on the other side of the metal barrier and handed me her 'bracelet' which I put on my wrist in the bathroom, which let me in to the drinking area as well! It worked out, and as we were walking in, the band before Thrice was just finishing up, so we took the time to check out potential places to stand and also got a round of beers for everyone. We tried up stairs but decided to come down to the main floor, and we found a somewhat decent place, and before we knew it, Thrice was coming on stage.

They were amazing, Dustin has one of the greatest voices ever heard, ever. It's just amazing... and the fact that he can produce these results live is mind blowing. While I know it's impossible for them to play every one of my favorite songs, I was hoping they would play Come All You Weary, but they didn't... and I suppose that's just because the slower nature of the song didn't fit in with some of the newer material they were more eager to play, and I can forgive that. They played Promises third, which is one of my favorite Thrice songs and my favorite song off the new album Major/Minor. They played tons of awesome songs, like.. The Weight... Shake The Earth... well, I'm not going to list them all, but it was amazing, and while sometimes my view was obstructed, I did get to see Dustin a lot, and holy shit... the show was amazing.

For the drive home, Julie started driving but around Hamilton, her eyes were bothering her, so we pulled off the highway and went to a gas station. I grabbed some water and a few fuzzy peaches to snack on as I hadn't really eaten much... at this point my headache was pretty fuckin bad, so I figured the water would be a safe bet. Darren drove the rest of the way, and Mel and Julie slept in the backseat. It was a pretty good drive... a few sketchy people on the highway, but we survived... got home around 1:30am, and i was pretty uncomfortable. I was sore from the drive, but also had an intense headache, and also felt kinda sick, but hungry too, and all this random bullshit.

I made some Mr. Noodles when I got home and then had a big bowl of buffalo and blue cheese chips, and now I'm finishing this up and I'll be going to sleep.

Tomorrow I've got school but I think I might just stay home, mainly because I know I'm going to be super tired, and also because I work, so I may take the morning to recover and have a nice lunch maybe... we'll see. That was my poor excuse for a summary of the day... I could've written more about Thrice, but... I think just... yeah, they are amazing, genius musicians.

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