Hilltop Hoods, Calgary February 13th

The 2010 streak of just plain awesome to the level of fun squared continues... before going to Australia, I was notified the Hilltop Hoods were playing Calgary a week after I got back just one week before I left (if that makes sense)... figured this would be a great way to round out the Australian introduction of 2010. I forgot to pick up the tickets from ticketmaster until a Friday afternoon email reminder from their automailer program. Long story short, switched them from downtown pickup to pickup at the event as their business is crap in terms of service hours (10-2pm downtown). Best part of this is we had our names at the door, in the short line, sans paper tickets.

This little hulabaloo was observed in our open office with great excitement about the concert... and I appreciated the interest to help get the tickets used relatively last minute. As it turns out a coworker and his girlfriend are joining me, plus one of the girls I work with. Since it's "kind of" valentines day, we went out for dinner before. The anonymous waitress' natural pairing assumption aside, we figured it'd just be more simple saying my stand-in valentine for Tori is a Finnish derived, Canuck loving dude named Troy (Tron) rather than the single 23 year old who just started working with us a month or so ago. In another remarkable instance of "small world", she knows (admires!) Tori, and Tori knows her reciprocally... Tori let me know when you've got your guess (side note: when I called to make the reservation, the hostess who answered the phone was Tori). We even looked at your 10:41 PM email from China wishing a happy v-day simultaneously... which in an exercise of peculiar romance, I figured was the second most amazing fact of tonight. The most amazing was that DJ'ing/MC'ing is an actual profession... holy cow is my daily routine massively different - it's hard to grasp.

The concert was an awesome package of sheer fun: 50% activity at lactate threshold, 50% at the bar or lounge. Since I'm using numbers: the attendees were 50% Calgarian, 50% Australian, and by way of mathematical competency, I assert that equates to 100% pure fun. The Gateway at SAIT was a great host. Our lounge chaise mates were 4 Aussie girls who live in Fernie, who bonded with Troy's girlfriend with high-fives after an awkward conversation regarding a liquor shot with an off coulor name inclusive of names of organs I don't posses (a circumstance of "evening making" humor). They asked how old we were... and the rest of the "we" in the group averages to 24, so I mentioned that and said that was a partial average. When I said my age it was met with pause... I haven't yet determined if that was "holy cow you look worn out" or "that ain't bad for your age". I was conscious of being 31 at a college bar concert with amazingly young looking people and an amazingly inexpensive feeling bar... but also realized it's hard to hide it that Tori and I recently started seeing the wrinkles in each others' eyes (things of beauty, if one counts the years of us together as a thing of beauty, which I definitely do), and I'll prefer to live oblivious rather than finding the answer to the above from an outside perspective.

My vertical wasn't what it used to be, but a few Red Bulls and testing my jumping ability "with the people in the front row": all night foreshadows that tomorrow may feel a little sluggish regarding bike ride arrival time and performance on the road.