ironic in the morissette kinda way

So last night a surprising number of friends decided to join me in ringing in my most recent 365 day stretch on this planet with some Monday night shenanigans. Fortunately I had today off to recover, but several souls who were likely in as poor shape as I was this morning had to drag themselves to work today and I salute their dedication to the cause!

I was also introduced to a new shot I'd never heard of last night by a chum who works with a liquor distributor (shoulda been my first clue) called an "Ironic Tonic". He brought two clear shots to the the table and placed them in front of me announcing that one was gin, and the other tonic water. You chase the one with the other but you don't know which is which.

"Please let the first one be the gin", I thought as I knocked it down. Sure enough I found the gin first so I quickly drained the tonic water as my friend started laughing.

"The ironic part", he said, "is they were both gin. Happy birthday buddy".

Thanks, ass. :)

machine-do salmond kai

More Canadian than syrup!

I was pleasantly surprised this week to hear from my brother Terry that he's gotten himself settled here on the intertubes with a blog called Machindo (props for a damn fine name btw). He's spent the past few years working with some of the countries best chefs, cooking at five star resorts, and pulling a stint at each of the two most profitable restaurants in Canada. Now that he's settled himself in "Hollywood North" he's been getting back to his original passion in the entertainment business, working with a production company scouting interesting concepts for the big and small screens.

So surf on over if that sounds like your dish. Also my mother apparently bought herself a domain last week and is preparing to publish a personal showcase of her photography and articles from her adventures in journalism land. Barring any galleries involving my childhood bare ass (did ANYBODY dress me?) I'm pleased to see the fam adventuring into the digiwebs.

taking the lens cap off ...

My cousin David emailed the fam recently to announce his departure from the world of the slaggin it for a wage into the land of self employment. One of the directions he's opted to move in is to market his photography skills, starting with several collections of photos gathered during his travels. Most of my exposure to his photo albums has been family history related, so it was a nice change to get a look at some of his more artistic work ...

(a shot of Namibia from Davids Africa series)

I got to thinking that I'm pretty well stocked in the friends with cameras department, and more than a few of them get to some interesting locales. My buddy Matt spent a year in Tokyo with his girlfriend a while back, teaching English and learning to hate ducking. He's back in the Great White North as of last year and back at school but his pics still lurk in the tubes.

My friend Paul currently lives in Tokyo and also has some shots of the city as well as several collections of Japanese parks, mountains, and the obligatory pagoda shots over at his Flickr account. He also gets a fair bit of travel done in the course of his work and posts pics as time allows. His recent set of shots from Sydney show some interesting Eastern architectural influences there that I was completely unaware of.

On the local scene my friend Mike keeps a running tab of his photos of friends, trips, and of course Toronto at shadowfind.ca. He'll be doing some traveling in the spring and is looking into an underwater case for his cam so stay tuned for more goodness.

Also both my parents have amassed a decent collection of JPEGs in recent years, Mom having picked up a nice SLR to match her journalistic tendencies and Dad keeping his cameras handy while flying at some fairly exotic locales for a geophysical survey company. However since neither of them have embraced the magic of the interwebs I have no links to offer ... (hint hint!)