Earth Hour

I just read about this and I think it's a great idea! Especially in light of my last post. Here's the jist.

"On Saturday, March 29 at 8pm millions of people around the world will turn off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour - symbolizing the need to take action on climate change. "

"This Saturday 24 global cities will participate in Earth Hour at 8 p.m. Earth Hour is the highlight of a major campaign to encourage businesses, communities and individuals to take the simple steps needed to cut their emissions on an ongoing basis. It is about simple changes that will collectively make a difference – from businesses turning off their lights when their offices are empty, to households turning off appliances rather than leaving them on standby." link

To check out the web site here's the link. Below is a video from their site that gives a brief explanation about the whole thing. I know there's at least one of you who is not in total agreement with the whole climate change thing but I think we can all agree that we live a wasteful life in the West and need to be better stewards with what we have. That's the angle I take with all of this stuff. Whether Climate Change is for real or it's just a scare tactic designed to sell more things and make money, we still need to clamp down on our garbage, energy usage and much more.

Will you turn your lights off?

GL

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Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapse

For all of you climate change/global warming buffs, I know there are lots of you out there reading this blog, we've just lost an ice shelf the size of the city of Montreal! Is it because of global warming? Are we to blame? Or is the sun just burning brighter these days causing the oceans to warm up? Whatever the cause the oceans are getting warmer and we're losing glacial ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Below is a link to a video report from CBC.

http://www.cbc.ca/clips/mov/mcdiarmid-ice080326.mov

And some great photos here.

http://www.cbc.ca/photogallery/world/1131/

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Yucatan Deep and Other Finished Books

I've a finished a few books recently and I usually like to try and talk about them on here partly to keep track of what I've read in my life and also to let you know what I've been up to. I just finished my third book that I have not reported about on this blog yet. That one was Wild At Heart by John Eldredge. I started this one a while back but never finished it. I think God wanted me to wait until now to read the whole thing. More on that one in two posts. Before Wild At Heart I finished I Am America (and so can you) by Stephen Colbert. After that clip I posted of him I saw this book while in an airport and started reading it. I was cracking up so much I had to find it and read the whole thing. More on that next post.

Today's post is about a book called Yucatan Deep by Tom Morrisey. Maybe the description doesn't do it justice on the back cover because I've had this book on my shelf for a few years and have never read it. The book looked to be about scuba diving and I've just never had an interest in that so there it sat. It turns out Tom Morrisey has quite the ability to draw in the reader. Even on a topic I didn't think I was interested in.

The story is about a guy named Mike Bryant and his attempt to break the deep-diving record by diving in a Cenote in Mexico. Cenote's are those sink-hole like lakes that connect the surface to underground water bodies. They are typically found in the Yucatan Peninsula and tend to be quite deep. The one that Mike wants to dive would set a new record. He and a friend decide to give it a shot but it doesn't go so well and the Cenote named K'uxulch'en (Well of Sorrows) ends up living up to its name. What lies at the bottom of this Cenote though is what is really intriguing because there is a man who will stop at nothing to prevent Mike from taking another try at reaching the bottom.

The book is full of adventure and mystery, a little romance and some technical diving. I must say, I am now interested in trying out Scuba sometime. Not quite of the 300-500 feet in depth kind but it doesn't seem as scary or impossible now. If it's just snorkeling on steroids I think I would really love it!

Anyway, all that said, great characters, suspenseful, and a great story well told all equal to a really good book and one I would recommend.

GL

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Ouch

They waxed my eyebrows!! Seriously! Laid me down in a cozy room with some relaxing music, put some nice warm wax on parts of my eyebrows then ripped them off causing a brief moment of intense pain! Wow! It hurt right away but not nearly as much as I expected. But then, after a couple of seconds it started to hurt a whole lot more. Just when I think I’ve got it beat and I’m pretty tough in comes the serious pain to remind me how weak I really am.

Anyway, after that was through I had some nice red spots around my eyes for a while then it was off to get the hair styled for the big photo shoot. The styling and photo shoot really is one of the many good perks we get doing this job. Someone chooses clothes for us and then tells us how to do our hair and make ourselves look good. Then we pathetically dress and style our hair the same until the next photo shoot which often takes up to 2 years. It’s a mini version of What Not To Wear I guess.

I’ll fill you in on how it all goes.

GL

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Winter Ending With A Bang

Some of you may have already seen this video of my son Jonah and wife Sherri and sister Tracy on my Facebook page but I thought I'd post it here too. We got walloped with snow this weekend as you can see from my previous post. The snow eventually stopped around midnight with a total of 37cm-40cm (14-15inches). It's already started melting but it's not going to disappear too quickly! Enjoy.

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Even more snow!!

I know everyone is experiencing this stuff pretty bad right now in eastern North America. Ours started yesterday at 2:00pm. Right now it's 4:00pm and it hasn't stopped! The forecast says it won't stop till 10:00pm so we have another 6 hours of the pretty white stuff to come! I love it. And yes, I did mostly just post this to outdo Normal Rockstar. Actually my parents walked 5 miles outside today!! True Canadians they are.

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Winter and Daylight Saving Time

I can't count how many times I've seen that "Storm Watch" bar across the top of my local forecast web site this winter. It's been unbelievable. Someone told me yesterday that we've had more snow this year than the last three combined! Not sure if it's true but I would not be surprised. Don't get me wrong, if it's going to be cold I prefer to have the storms I'm just surprised at how many we've had. However, Spring IS coming. And with that in mind . . .



Daylight Saving Time is just about here. (That is no typo, it is "Saving" not "SavingS") I don't know about you but this two weeks earlier bit is looking to be pretty great around here. It'll be nice to complete supper and still have some daylight left. So don't forget, the official clock change time is Sunday March 9th at 2AM!

GL

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New Bass

Gear geek alert. Proceed with caution.

Well I finally did it. It was a couple of weeks ago but it's never too late to talk about new gear! I finally went out and bought myself a new bass and man am I pleased. I'm actually a bit surprised too! I've been wanting to pick up a second bass so I can leave one at home while I travel. Then I'm avoiding the hassles at the airport with my "technically oversized" bass flight case as well as the pain of carrying one around with me and trying to squeeze it into overhead bins. Although since we've been recording the last couple of months I have been doing those exact things!!

Anyway, what I have been looking for is a Fender Jazz bass which is pretty much the standard really when it comes to basses. That and the Fender Precision. I had my mind set on a reissue 1960's Fender Jazz but I couldn't bring myself to spend that much money on a bass, or save long enough to have that much money. I don't like to own instruments that I feel like I have to be sooo careful with, otherwise I wouldn't want anyone else to touch it. That 's just not cool.

So I decided to look through the basses online yet again and found something I thought I should go to a store and try. Well I did and I bought it. It's a Geddy Lee signature Fender Jazz. I've always been hesitant about the Jazz basses because I thought that they just didn't look good. I've since changed my tune and learned to appreciate them but I really dug this one because of the black inlays on the neck. Plus Geddy Lee is Canadian (singer and bassist for Rush), his initials are GL just like mine, the price was right, it was all meant to be. And since I've had it and recorded a bunch of our newest songs with it I am quite pleased with my purchase. Plus as you can see below, it looks pretty dang good on me! (photo MarySue Strong)

So there you go. My story on the new bass. I don't expect you'll see me playing it too often live unless we are in Ontario or if I just feel like changing it up a bit and dealing with the airport crap. This is my keep at home and practice bass, and recording bass too I guess.

With all that said I hate to leave out my friend for the last 4 years my Warwick FNA Jazzman. Yes let's review a picture or two of this beauty shall we? This one will always sound great and it will always be somewhat special to me as it was my first real good sounding bass.

Man this picture is more beautiful than I realized. Nice work by whoever took the photo on getting that beautiful Mac in the foreground. John Mays was this you?? You do have an eye for such things.


Anyway, I guess I should get back to learning YYZ now.

GL

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