Boys are confusing

I thought that I had finally met someone worthwhile in Halifax, but I very quickly discovered that I was wrong. Thankfully nothing had really happened and I wasn’t too heavily invested in this thing, so I got over it pretty fast. This new boy, lets call him ‘Sailor’ because he owns a boat, was someone I met last Friday night at a party. In all honestly, when I met him I didn’t think much of him because he acted like a bit of a doofus, thought he was much funnier than he was and was was leering at me. But, the drunker I got (and the more time I spent in his company) the more I liked him.

I ended up spending all night on his boat, because I was too drunk to leave, and the next morning we spent a few pleasant hours together. He seemed quite interested, and as I got in the cab to leave he asked me to email him when I got back from Finland (I was flying there later that day). Although in the cold light of day he was quite cute, and had a pretty tattoo, I still wasn’t convinced I was interested. So I told him I didn’t have his email address. “Facebook me,” Sailor called over his shoulder. “I don’t know your full name, I’ll never be able to find you,” I said, closing the taxi door. I impressed myself at how cool I was being. But then I wasn’t expecting to start liking him.

I get on the plane to Helsinki and look through the photos on my camera, and there were all these fantastic pictures of me and Sailor together. He looked very cute, and extremely happy with his arms wrapped around me, I was grinning ear to ear. I started to think that maybe I should cut the guy a break, perhaps he wasn’t such a doofus and just acted like one to cover up his loneliness or fears or whatever. He had said some lovely things to me that night….

At this point I started acting like a girl. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

So I find him on Facebook pretty easily, and we become friends. I see that he has posted that he had “The Best Weekend Ever” and smile. I see that another chick says “Thanks for a great night Sailor” the day after I saw him but I think, whatever, its okay, doesn’t mean he screwed her. We communicate back and forth and talk about getting together when I get home.

I get off the plane in Halifax and see that he’d messaged to ask when my flight got in because he might be able to see me there (he works at the airport so its not that big a deal), I message back to say I’ll just see him another day (I’d been flying all day and looked like shit, the last thing I wanted to do was see anyone). I walk through customs and there he is waiting for me. That’s showing an interest, right? I was impressed.

So, my ride had forgotten to pick me up so I was sat there for ages talking to Sailor, and it was fun, flirty and we talked about when we’d see each other again. I went home with a smile on my face thinking that I might have finally met someone cute in Halifax.

We emailed a couple of times that night, he said he was looking forward to hanging out and that he was off work on Thursday. Last night when I emailed to ask when we’d be getting together he totally brushed me off, said “I already have plans Thursday night, but if things change I’ll give you a holler”.

WTF?

Seriously, WTF?

After a day of questioning myself (was it because I looked like shit getting off the plane? Because I have a kid? Because there is another girl? Did I say something? Because I mentioned on my blog that I’d met someone?) and feeling like crap, I snapped back to reality. This guy is totally not worth my time. I didn’t think he was worth my time until I saw pictures of us looking happy, until I projected something that wasn’t there on to an entirely inappropriate person.

Sailor is hot, sure, but he is a 40 year old man living like a teenager, on his boat, getting drunk and high. Very fun, but that’s not my life. It might have been fifteen years ago (without the boat), but not now. I took him off my Facebook, because he isn’t a friend (my friends treat me better than that) and even if he suddenly regained interest there is no way I will ever go there again.

the un-date date

I am in Montreal for a couple of days, and being here has me wondering why it was that I moved to Halifax. There are hot men everywhere. Beautiful men that make eye-contact, smile at you and touch you gently on the arm with a ‘pardon’ if they bump in to you. I swear I haven’t stopped swooning since I arrived. Of course it helps that they all have sexy accents too. I am here for a job, I’m writing a story on ‘hippy Montreal’ for a women’s magazine, and I’m traveling with my daughter and a lovely friend, who is offering babysitting back-up, which allowed me to go for an evening out with a very handsome man.

I met this man, lets call him Francois, on a press-trip a few years back when I was six-months pregnant and thought him the most charming man that I had ever met. When I walked in to a room he would stand, he opened doors for me, and was incredibly chivalrous. I was totally enamored with his behavior, and loved his flirtiness. Francois and I stayed in touch thanks to Facebook, and when I knew I was coming to Montreal, his hometown, I asked to meet for drinks because I knew he would show me a side of Montreal I couldn’t discover alone.

We had a really lovely time together. He was just a charming as I remembered, told me half-way in to out first beer that he had never found pregnant women attractive and then met me, “You were there with a big-belly, chubby, and very sexy” he said. I think the word “chubby” was meant as a compliment and took it as a lost in translation kind of thing, because obviously its not an entirely flattering word! Anyway, we drank more, he was fantastic company and I had the best night out that I’d had in ages. Here comes the catch.

Francois has a girlfriend. A beautiful, young girlfriend who he is madly in love with. So, our evening together was not a date, even though it felt a lot like one, especially at 1am with three beers and a couple of rum and cokes in my belly.

A picture Francois took on our un-date. Yes, I am flirting through the camera lens.

We both laughed at how much fun it was to be on such a date like un-date and I cursed the fact that I don’t meet men like Francois who are single. Francois is quite a catch, I think that his girlfriend must be a very lucky woman (and have the patience of a saint considering what a flirt he is!) Being the victim of infidelity made it easy to draw very clear boundaries and know precisely what this was, and the fact that we were able to completely frank about so many things made the evening feel very mature and responsible, and I never felt like it veered in to anything inappropriate despite the fact that under different circumstances, I would for sure be falling for this charming man.

It was a fun and perfect evening. All the best qualities of a really perfect first date, with none of the expectations. I was reminded of how fun it is just to flirt, and realize that I should try to do so more often, which probably means that I need to drag my lazy ass off my sofa and go out in Halifax more often. Perhaps in the future I’ll just target French-Canadian men though, fortunately there are a fair few here in Nova Scotia so it shouldn’t be that hard to find some.

Dealbreakers

I was downtown today with my daughter and decided on a whim to take her over to Dartmouth on the ferry, because that’s the kind of thing that two-year-olds get a kick out of. As we were waiting to board the ferry, this guy I went on a few dates with about six months ago comes over and says hello. I always feel a bit awkward at meeting up with men when I’m in mommy mode, but this guy (lets call him Danny) has a kid himself so I felt okay about it. Danny was cute, funny, charming and I had really liked him. When we started dating I could see myself being with him, but three dates in I realized that he didn’t have a job, lived with his parents and was really not over his ex. So, I ended things.

Chatting with Danny today, I found out that he now has a decent job, and although I didn’t know if he was out of his mom’s basement or over the ex, I presumed that at least one of those things might have happened since I saw him. Danny is a good looking guy – he is tall, blond, built and dresses well, so I couldn’t help thinking I might have made a mistake in finishing things. Anyway, despite the residual chemistry, but I said goodbye and took my daughter up on the deck to look at the water while he went to sit inside. For all of the fifteen minutes it took to get from Halifax to Dartmouth, I wondered whether I should say anything about going out again some time.

I didn’t get a chance, because he was gone by the time we got off the ferry, but as we walked past the liquor store out he came. We chatted again and he walked us to a nearby playground. It got awkward when he told me that he thought he ex was getting married today (RED FLAG RED FLAG!), but he seemed okayish about it. We both said that we should meet up sometime and then he left. I watched him walk away, lighting up a cigarette as he turned the corner, then I remembered what the ultimate dealbreaker had been.

It wasn’t that he smoked, although I hate smoking, it was that he told me he smoked in front of his eight-year-old kid because he didn’t want to hide anything from him. This repulsed me, because for one that meant he was exposing his son to second-hand smoke, but also that he was modeling a behavior that I thought was wrong. Now I’m not a super judgmental parent, truly I’m not, but that just struck me as so incredibly dumb that there was no way I could see the guy again.

So, I’m glad I saw him sparking up that cigarette, because otherwise I would probably emailed him and suggested we meet, which would have just been a complete waste of time.

Dating and broke

As a self-employed single mom, money is tight. Actually, in this climate its fair to say that money is tight for everyone but I’m pretty much surfing the poverty line every day. I mean, I get by and my child is well looked after. The reasons that we are poor are that I bought a house and had to spend $12000 on a lawyer last year thanks to custody battle bullshit. But anyway, being broke is my reality right now, which is hard when dating.

On many levels, it is difficult to date when broke. Here’s what I need money for every time I date:

1) Babysitter. Before I’ve walked out my door I’ve spent $20 on childcare. If its a good date, that could be more like $50.

2) Haircut. Because although cutting my own bangs with kitchen scissors and sticky tape is fine for everyday mommy life, I do dream of presenting a more polished persona when meeting a man.

3) New tights/ stockings/ whatever. There is always one thing that my dream outfit needs in order to make me feel pretty.

4) Taxi fare home.

5) Money for beers/ dinner/ whatever. Of course I hope that my date might pick up the tab but you never know, so you need to be prepared. (For the record, I like it when men at least offer to pay, and not just because I am poor.)

Because of this, going on a date is never just an easy feat like it was in my carefree youth where (thanks to being a grunge girl) it was as simple as putting on some black eyeliner and strutting out the house looking carefully dishevelled, because I am supposed to look like a put-together woman in order to snare a man.

And now, because the date I am getting really excited for is in Vancouver (the traveling boy has returned to Canada and I am about to actually take our fling off-line and in to the real world!), I have that pesky plane ticket to cough up, and one for my child so that I can make this a combined custody visit for her and week of fun for mummy.

Dating is expensive, and unlike when you buy something tangible and know that you will be getting a certain value for that expenditure, you never quite know whether you’ll be getting any bang for your buck. Of course, not knowing what you will get and the hope that you will actually score something that money can’t buy is what makes this dating malarkey truly worthwhile.

Sleepovers. This Single Mom’s Guilty Secret?

Since my daughter was born, I have been incredibly discrete in my (failed) relationships. Only once has my daughter seen another man here when she woke up in the morning, and she never saw us in bed together or even holding hands. I am perhaps a little paranoid about this whole thing, but I do not want to be “one of those kinds of mothers” who imposes her “special friends” on her child, only to leave the little mite heartbroken and confused when things didn’t work out.

My bad mother paranoia even goes so far as to panic over going out too much or leaving my child with new babysitters. My weird tangent nightmares have me dressed as Ann Margaret singing “Do you think its alright, to leave the boy with Uncle Ernie”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_Qbidac8J8. I am trying to decide whether making my love affairs completely covert operations is going over-the-top or in fact the right thing to do.

The only man in my life that my daughter has ever met is the Brooklyn Boy. When the Brooklyn Boy came to see me the first time I made him stay in a hotel, and only came to see him when my daughter was either staying with her father or asleep. The second time, I let him stay in my house and for four days he was a part of our lives. It was lovely, he is a sweetheart (works with children and very good with them) and my girl adored him. When he left, she asked about him for weeks and now four months on seems to have forgotten all about it.

I am seriously attracted to the boy I’ve been chatting with in Bali, and when he comes back to Canada in three weeks, I want to go see him.

Problem is, as usual, I’m pretty broke, so there is little chance I can afford to fly to Vancouver (where he lives, where I just moved from last year, where I will never move back to). Going there would be ideal because the darling child can go stay with her daddy (which would make my ex very happy, as he hasn’t seen her since we were last there in January) and I can pretend to be a carefree single woman for a few days. However, stumping up for two return tickets to Vancouver for what will be a fling, seems a little daft when I should be insulating my house and paying down my credit card.

A possible solution would be to invite Bali Boy (as he shall hence be known) here. I have known Bali Boy many years, he is close friends with a very good friend of mine and I think it could work. If I can shake off the guilt about having a life outside my child and allowing her to see that. If I do invite said boy, I still don’t want my daughter to see me being affectionate with him or anything else, and I guess this may be a little odd.

Oh I don’t know.

I am trying so bloody hard to be a fantastic mother, and the idea of doing anything at all to provide a less than healthy model for my little girl scares me.

Running in to Mr Superlover

The sun is shining in Halifax at last, people are out in their gardens and it seems that spring is actually here. So, I knew it was just a matter of time before I ran in to a mistake I made: the neighbor I was in lust with last summer, Nick. What we shared wasn’t even a fling, he was supposed to be a friend with benefits but the friendship never really happened and the benefits were of questionable quality.

Nick is beyond hot. Tall, muscular, smart and employed (doesn’t live with his mum either, bonus!), the first time I saw him up on scaffolding and bare-chested as he fixed up his house I swooned. He really is an absolutely beautiful specimen of mankind. We’d actually been fixed up by a mutual friend on Facebook when I first moved to Halifax last June, he’d pissed me off with some comment and I’d decided not to pursue him, but then I ran in to him two blocks away from my house, where he lived. Because he was so incredibly gorgeous, I invited him over for a beer.

We hooked up, it was nothing special but I put it down to the fact that it was our first time and thought it might get better. Nick came round and helped me fix some stuff in my house, he was a sweetheart, I looked after his dog one day and he asked if he could come round later. He did, we did, but the second time was pretty bad.  Then I had a date with the guy who called his mother a bitchwhore and I was feeling so crappy I invited Nick round to make it feel better. The hook-up was okay, still not that special but I felt a connection. (There I go again being a girl, of course I’d started to like him, especially compared to the rest of the losers I was meeting.) We got on really well and were talking about doing other stuff together, no way was there any relationship talk but I thought the friendship side was going to happen.

Then nothing. I’d run in to him outside his place, which I have to walk past to go ANYWHERE, including to take my kid to daycare, and we’d make small talk but I’d been given the brush off. I invited him over and felt like an idiot when he wasn’t interested. Then he contacted a friend on lavalife with some cheesy message about how big and strong he was and I wanted to gag. I got fed up of notices coming up on my Facebook feed from girls to him about how much they were looking forward to seeing him and so I unfriended him (not because I was jealous so much as I was starting to feel like the least liked member of his Facebook hareem). Nick loved himself, but had every right to I guess, he had so much going for him and obviously no problems attracting girls.

However, like I said, I have to walk past his house at least twice a day and I don’t want awkwardness so I asked for a ride to Home Depot one day (we are both renovating houses, one of the things we had in common) to clear the air and let him know we were cool. We went it was fine, but awkward. That was in September. I was genuinely sad that we couldn’t be friends. On Christmas Eve I emailed to say that I was hoping we could go for a beer sometime, he emailed back the next day to say sure, but he was in Mexico so he would call me when he got back. Of course he didn’t.

So, today as I dragged my daughter to the store in her wagon, wearing track pants and with no make-up on, there he was in his yard. I tried to walk by but he called me over and started making small-talk, I was polite but when he said he hadn’t seen me around I just had to leave. At least the first awkward encounter is over. And, I totally don’t find him as hot as my mind had built him up to be over the past five months. Maybe I’ll just have to cross the street before I get to his place from now on, and remember not to play so close to home next time.

Oh, and for light relief you might want to check out this video, cheesy but too true  http://bit.ly/M9wt6 One of my girlfriends sent it to me because she thought it rang true of some of my experiences!

He looked good on the dancefloor, but….

I ventured out on Saturday night to go to a club here in Halifax for the first time, the Paragon (which used to be the Marquee) where Skratch Bastid was playing. It was a fun night, Skratch Bastid played an incredible set and I danced for hours. There were lots of hot boys, and one in particular kept dancing near me and eventually we locked lips and made out. Thrilling! He was super cute, but it turned out he was only 26. He thought it was no big deal, and we kept hanging out together. I had an overwhelming urge to drop the ‘I have a kid’ bomb to save wasting my time, or his, and when I did he responded with interested questions. I liked him.

So, he and his roomie were having a little party after the club closed and my posse of six decided we’d go. More beer? For sure! I fully took advantage of the fact that my neighbor who was babysitting said to stay out a late as I wanted, although I was feeling a little guilty every time I saw a clock. I held hands with the boy in the cab on the way home and everything was going well, until we got to his place.

We walked in to his sparsely furnished bachelor pit and I realized that his lifestyle was so far from mine that nothing was ever going to happen between us. We’re talking a framed picture of dogs playing poker (I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be ironic, but maybe not) above a thrift-store sofa, and very little else in the room. The floor was bare tiles. There were four garbage bags full of empty beer-cans on the balcony. It was like student digs, but he wasn’t a student. It wasn’t just his place that was shocking; once in the cold harsh light of his apartment, the appeal of him had worn off.

I sat there for half an hour, but I just wanted to get home to bed. Suddenly I felt too wasted to even pretend to be interested in the drunken conversations going on, and I was feeling REALLY guilty about my neighbor there waiting for me to get home (who I assumed was asleep, but it was 3am now, what if she wasn’t?)

I made for the door. The boy got up and asked if we could exchange numbers. I said with as much sincerity as I could muster, “Sure, give me your number and I’ll call you,” and he asked if we could go out next Saturday. I said yes, then I felt really guilty, but there was no way I could cope with seeing him again (but being in Halifax I believe the likelihood of this happening is pretty much 90% going to happen). I wrote his number on my hand and went downstairs to wait for a cab in the lobby. Horror of horrors, I was waiting an hour for a cab, and didn’t make it home until 4.30 am. It was the latest I’ve been up in years and years.

Once home, I had a bath and sat there scrubbing his number off the back of my hand. In my drunken state I started thinking that I missed my ex-husband. But then I remembered seeing him recently and that ridiculous “Dumb and Dumber” haircut he has now, and it made me smile, and I realized that no matter how lonely I feel, or how much I want a man in my life, I don’t want my ex-husband any more than I want the interior design challenged 26 year-old. Better off alone than in another crummy relationship.

Introducing little old me

Considering how I’m about to share the intricate details of my life with you good people, I suppose I had better introduce myself. I’m a single momma living in Halifax and swimming through the murky waters of single life here. Halifax has a bit of a reputation for sucking as a place to meet other singles, but I’m not about to give up hope as I only moved here last June and I had a lot of fun in the summer (followed by a massive drought in the winter save a brief fling with my Brooklyn boy toy in early December). Lets see, what else? I’m 32, originally from London (England, not Ontario) and have lived on three continents. My kid is aged two and unbelievably awesome, I get to travel lots for my job and do all kinds of interesting stuff in the name of research for stories for Click and elsewhere.

Since getting divorced two years ago, I’ve had a lot of fun but not met anyone special. (At least not special as in the good meaning of that word.) I’ve dated a clutch of weirdos, including a guy that believed he had been abducted by aliens, several men in their thirties that still live with their mom, one that called his mother a “Bitchwhore” and one that was so incredibly negative I left the date feeling downright depressed.

Not that I was the perfect date I’m sure. One brunch date I actually broke down in tears when the poor unsuspecting guy asked whether I got on okay with my baby’s father. Its taken me some time to stop wearing my broken heart on my sleeve, but nowadays I’m not broken hearted and just bloody grateful not to be married to someone I really never had very much in common with. So here I am, honest as the day is long and ready to share my adventures with the blogosphere. Am I scared? You betcha! But I promise to share the highs and the lows in the hope you’ll stick around for the ride.

Ï

An eye for the swag

Sunday June 15, Toronto, Holiday Inn. Last night was the last night of North by Northeast, and this time I was determined not to stress about seeing certain bands. So naturally I stressed about seeing certain bands. However, the good news is that I saw most of what I wanted to see, although I missed Tel Aviv band Monotonics. More on that later, if I remember to get to it. 

Anyway, we started the afternoon at the Drake Hotel on the outdoor patio. For some reason Wingy things every party is a barbecue so he assured myself and Kim H. that there would be food at this party, which was being held by Vice Magazine. As you would expect from a party held by that hipster rag, the patio was populated with tattooed, bearded dudes and stylish ladies. We were there under the aegis of Carling A., who as much as I begged never did get me a beer. It wasn’t a barbecue and there was very little food, but Wingy and I circulated like the pros we are–talking to three Swedish sisters, the dude who heads up the Polaris Music Prize (a big deal in Canuckland music circles), and a few old pals from Vancouver. Despite Carling’s reluctance, we managed to keep scoring enough drink tickets to keep us buzzed. 

Fortunately, Rancho Relaxo was serving up some vittles upstairs, where we saw Tiger and Me, an Australian man-woman duo who performed pretty cool torch lounge pop ballads. Then Wingy’s eye was attracted to a bright blue Whole Foods bag everyone outside the El Mocambo seemed to be clutching so we went in to investigate and were immediately handed a bag o’ swag. This convinced us to stay for the band, a seven-piece Norwegian outfit whose name I can’t pronounce or quite remember, but which I will add later (yeah, right). They were jumpy, energetic and fun as hell, and reminded me a little of Little Creatures-era Talking Heads. Rebekah Higgs from Halifax rocked out at the Horseshoe, and 6 Day Riot, a folk pop group from the U.K., was excellent at the Cameron House. At the Bovine Sex Club we caught the tail-end of the set by Koogaphone, another U.K. group but with a harder, hard-rock/punk edge and fronted by Julie, the girl we shared a cab ride with the previous night. We hightailed it over to Sneaky Dee’s for one of the reputed highlights of the festival, the Monotonics, but it got so crowded and claustrophobic our party bailed one by one–first Wingy left to get pizza, then Kim went home, and finally I went outside. Wingy, a friend from Vancouver now living here and I made it to the Red Kross show at Lee’s Palace, though I’d said I wouldn’t return to that sweatbox. But I did! Then I got mad at Wingy for some reason but now we’re friends again, at least until he pays the hotel bill. 

Wingmen reunited

Sat. June 14, Toronto, North by Northeast Music Festival: Two days into the four-day music marathon known as NxNE. A northern cousin to the South by Southwest similar event in Austin. For this one, Wing-y and I have put aside our differences long enough to room together at the Holiday Inn on King, centre of the conference. All you have to do is walk out into the hotel and you could be schmoozing with a SxSW organizer or a famous British radio DJ. I just got back from the fitness centre, where Bob Harris was on a stationary bike. Apparently, he’s a big deal British DJ.

But you want to know about girls, not 60-year-old British radio DJs working up a sweat. Well, there are lots of them around the conference, from the volunteers to the managers to the label execs to the musicians. At the kickoff party Wednesday night, Wingy and I met three girls from some short film distribution company called Ouat; Brady, Sophia, and Doreese. Brady is a husky-voice rocker chick, Sophia a tall blond, Doreese [sp.?] dark-haired and a little zaftig. We were all on the bus heading towards the kick-off party at the Palais Royale. There, Wingy rubbed shoulders with comedian Dave Foley (Newsradio, Kids in the Hall).

Thursday, our first full day here, we had lunch with the illustrious Carling, who once worked with Wingy and is now living with her boyfriend, some dude with Vice Magazine. She took us to an excellent Italian restaurant and we sat on the patio, a relief from the incessant rain of Vancouver, and then showed us the beer store. Thursday night was the usual music conference mad rush to see everything, beginning with the famous EMI rooftop party. As I was on the list and Wingy was not, I was truly hoping this was the moment where the infamous Wingy luck would fail. He was frantic at the prospect of being turned away and having to pass all the music industry types lined up behind us. But, true to form, the yellow-shirted security guards let him in.

A foxy brunette in a red polka-dotted dress caught my attention. She was with some goateed dude but that didn’t stop me from turning to her in the burger lineup. Turned out she’s Sky Sweetnam, a singer who had a minor hit a couple years ago. She sang a few bars–something about “Billy Shakespeare.” There were probably some other minor celebrities there but none that I recognized, though I did run to an old friend, Tatiana, now a yoga instructor in Ottawa. Oddly enough, her name had come up earlier in the day for the first time in a long time because she’d added Wingy as a friend on Facebook. Wingy, who spends most of his free time on his iPhone, email, or Facebook, suddenly rent the air with the question, “Do you know Tatiana N*****?” And I did.

Our first music stop of the night was the Rivoli on Queen Street W. for Smothered in Hugs, a PEI band named after a Guided by Voices song, Small Sins at the Horseshoe with their hit “Stay” (a pop song about fidelity, of all things), and then back to the Rivoli for Mardeen from Halifax and finally Two Hours Traffic, a fine power-pop unit also from the East Coast. At some point in all this we got to talking to a couple of ladies sitting at the bar away from the music. One was an Aeroplan employee and just as I was trying to figure out a way to extricate us from a boring conversation Wingy came over with a couple of chairs for he and I. Good timing.

I know this is rambling but I’m on vacation so you’re just going to have to deal with it. Later I’ll put up some pictures and cut the more extraneous stuff which will probably make this post one of the shortest ever. Also I just have to say I am halfway through Then We Came to the End by Joshua Farris and it’s one of the funniest novels I’ve ever read.

Anyway, back to NxNE. Yesterday was Friday, and we decided to try and see Fred, an Irish band which was playing outside behind Eaton Centre. We’d met their managers, Sheena (Ireland) and Jen (Memphis), who had insisted we come out. We gave it the old college try, even taking a cab, but I brought us to the wrong stage so we missed the set. However, Wingy did emerge from the nearby H & M with two hats, two bathing suits, and six pairs of socks.

None of which he was wearing (well, maybe the socks) when we met up w/ my Lavalife editor Kim (yep, believe it or not, someone edits this stuff) for the Manitoba party at the Drake Hotel. Being from that province myself I wasn’t going to miss out on this one, which featured perogies, cabbage rolls, and other fine Winnipeg-type Ukrainian food (I’m half Ukrainian, you know). Much hobnobbing went on, and though Kim had entered with a lowly wristband she emerged with a priority pass and a super pass. Wingy thinks 20-year-old Hill (short for Hillary, who plays in a band called Drowning Girl) is going to get us into the MuchMusic Video Awards party tonight. We’ll see about that.

Oh yeah, also ran into Vancouver singers Adaline (Shawna) and Nat Jay yesterday at one of the panels in the hotel. The race was on after 5 minutes of chatter from the panelists to see who could leave the room first, them or us, due to pressing, more important appointments.

God, this is long-winded. I’m gonna jump ahead here to the Dakota Tavern where, around 11, we saw Priya Thomas, whose last album I really liked but tonight was doing a more low-key thing with just a bassist, guitar player and a bass drum, which she played along with guitar and vocals. There, we met a couple of Brits from a band called Koogaphone, Julie and the manager, and they ended up sharing a cab with us to the Horseshoe. I thought Julie and I were hitting it off but once at the venue she gave me the cold shoulder so nuts to her. I had bigger fish to fry anyway, although I lost track of one of those fish, Liz, a Liv Tyler-esque brunette I’d met earlier at the Horseshoe, and a member of the Edmonton band the Summerlad. Too bad but that’s the way these things go. Well I did end up seeing Swervedriver, a reunited British guitar-rock band from the ’90s, at Lee’s Palace, which had been the evening’s ultimate goal. However, the venue was a sweatbox and I was tried from the day’s drinking and schmoozing, so it was hard to enjoy. Who knows what today will bring… probably another trip to H&M.