December 13–14, 2001 — A lesson in stamp recycling

I stayed up late on Wednesday night. It’s hard to fall asleep at a reasonable time, but it’s rather easy to sleep late into the afternoon. If my body really wanted to be awake during the day, it wouldn’t take so much effort, as I see it.

Anyway. I finished reading All Families are Psychotic and the three-part Lucifer series of comic books that Elaine lent me. All Families are Psychotic was a great book through to the end, and the Lucifer comics were better than I’d expected them to be.

Then I lay awake for awhile.

Amy figured it would be safe to call at a little after 1:00 pm and that no one would be woken up by her call. Rather optimistic of her, really. It was probably good that I was woken up before I could repeat the day before and sleep until the sun had almost set, so no complaints.

She dropped by later in the afternoon and we talked about the joys (or the lack thereof) of Christmas shopping. I still haven’t started. She seems to be doing fairly well, though: Most of her gifts have already been wrapped by now.

After Amy left, I went to check the mail. Amy called when I arrived home, and, after having a peanut butter sandwich for dinner, I joined Johnston at Jeff and Amy’s house.

Jeff said that the Cuff The Duke demos had sold well in Ottawa, hastily designed packaging and all. Johnston gave a lengthy demonstration of his gift wrapping skills and we took some records down from the walls to listen to. Jeff said that I could borrow his old bass after Christmas, so it looks like I’ll be able to dedicate my life to the pointless pursuit of learning to play as many Joy Division bass lines as I possibly can.

One of Amy’s reasons for visiting earlier in the day had been to pick up a couple of pin sets from me. And when I went to check the mail after she had left, I found that Gillian had sent me a Christmas card and a cheque for $4.00, saying that she’d like both sets. (The stamp on the envelope that her card arrived in hadn’t been canceled, so I cut it off and taped it to a new envelope to send back to her. It’s their own fault, as I see it, so it’s a fairly guilt-free endeavor. Now I just have to hope the letter doesn’t get stopped in transit...)

Then, upon arriving home from Jeff and Amy’s house, several of Andrew’s friends from school were visiting and were keen on buying some pins of their own. So it was a thrilling day, to say the least. In the excitement of it all, I forgot to give Jamie a dollar in change, but hopefully he’ll forgive me.

Andrew thought he heard our landlord shuffling around below us, and, fearing a lecture, he started everyone on his or her way out.

Amy had suggested that I change my Makeoutclub profile to an Elizabethan sonnet, so I tried writing one about streetcars, Shakespearean rhyme scheme and all. I’m stuck on the final rhyming couplet. I’m sure I’ll think of something eventually...

I spent Friday afternoon killing time until the Jimmy Eat World show. I accomplished very little.

I met Johnston on the Spadina subway platform. It was snowing quite a bit, shattering my hopes for a green Christmas. We transferred to a streetcar and were in line trying to sell Andrew’s ticket twenty minutes later.

With people paying upwards of $70 for tickets online, we figured we wouldn’t have a problem selling Andrew’s ticket. But the snow seemed to keep everyone without tickets away, and the scalpers were selling for $20–$25 and buying for $5. We’d actually given up on selling the ticket at all, but the moment before I had my ticket ripped, I saw the girl in front of me find out that she wasn’t on the guest list after all, so I sold her Andrew’s ticket for $15 since it was all she had.

The crowd at the show made me feel both tall and old. (And since I’m 5’8” and barely twenty years old, I think that does say something.) There was a lot of senseless pushing, even when there wasn’t any music and during slower songs. Silly.

Moneen were alright, I guess. Before I saw them with the Weakerthans in Guelph, I expected them to be a different sort of band, one that didn’t play slow songs and that was harder-sounding in general. So maybe I’m still not used to them.

Jimmy Eat World played a good set. Lots of variety. The people yelling out song titles were a bit odd, I found, in requesting slow songs that I never really found to stand out all that much or in requesting songs by words in the chorus and not by their title. Strange.

I was mostly hoping that they’d at least play “Blister,” so I came away happy. The last three songs were the definite highlight of the night: “Blister,” “The Middle,” and “Sweetness.”

There was no encore and we made it out in plenty of time to take the subway home, even after spending the better part of an hour waiting for our coats.

And then I went to sleep. More or less.