March 15–19, 2002 — Waiting to be caught

Friday through Tuesday went pretty well. Wednesday through Sunday are looking like they’ll be pretty decent, too, but I’d hate to jinx things, or to get too ahead of myself. So I’ll stick to the past for now.

Friday started off looking like it might go wrong: The show that Cuff the Duke were supposed to play in Kitchener was canceled because the venue closed its doors for good that morning. This was problematic for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that I was supposed to meet Kerry at the show and that she didn’t know it was canceled. And I didn’t have her phone number with me at Jeff’s house when he told me about the cancellation (and it was too late for me to go back home to get it).

So I stared at Jeff’s phone for awhile and eventually figured out her number by trying to remember the pattern made by dialing it on a touchtone phone. Three guesses later, we arranged to meet at her work that night, with me taking a bus instead of getting a drive.

I arrived several hours later. Kerry laughed at my twelve-day buildup of facial hair and told me that I would have to wait in the Second Cup next door while she closed the store. I asked her to pick up a copy of the ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead CD for me before I left to buy a hot chocolate (because she gets a discount and all).

I ended up spending a lot of time in that Second Cup before the end of the weekend, including almost five hours spent there while Kerry was doing inventory next door on Saturday night. Liam dropped in to say hi, but I had gone to buy a pen and missed him. I only bought one hot chocolate the entire time I was there. It was pretty ridiculous, all in all, and I’m sure the staff hated me in the same way I get annoyed at the smoothie bar when people sit around for hours at a time.

But I’m still very glad that I was able to visit even after losing my drive to Kitchener. Spending time with Kerry has yet to fail at improving my mood, and it mostly keeps me from computers (and thinking about computers) for days at a time. It all seems so alarmingly healthy that I’m sometimes not sure what to think.

Kerry’s residence, food plan, and university experience in general are a lot better than I remember mine being. Food plan especially. The shared bathrooms are a little weird (especially when shaving off a beard on an all-girls floor), but things could be a lot worse. As per last year.

I left on Sunday morning. We weren’t sure how long it would take to get to the bus station, and I ended up arriving forty-five minutes early. I took a bus to Toronto and went straight to work.

Work reminds me of high school sometimes. As much as I complained about high school, it was easy: I knew where I had to be during the day, and no one would tell me that I was wasting my life because I was going to high school, and everyone has to go to high school. I was doing the right thing, doing what had to be done.

While I don’t think I’m at the point where people will stop telling me I’m wasting my life, I at least know where I have to be sometimes. If I weren’t at work, I know I’d just be at home wasting my life away on the Internet, so I’m certainly not missing anything, and now I don’t have an ever-diminishing bank account to worry about.

Knowing that close to thirty hours of my week will be swallowed up by work (and by the trip to and from work) gives a slightly greater sense of urgency to the free time that I do have, too. Unlimited free time can be just as damaging as too much work if you start to take it for granted, something that I mostly did for my four or five months of nothing but free time.

I thought I was going somewhere with this, but I can’t really think of much else to add...

Anyway. After Sunday and Monday, I had the day off. The Death and Dismemberment Tour was arriving in Toronto on Tuesday night, and there weren’t many shows I’d anticipated as much as that one. The ticket said that Death Cab for Cutie would be playing first and that the Dismemberment Plan would be headlining, but Johnston told me that in other cities it had been the other way around. So I kept my fingers crossed.

We stopped for food on the way to the show and overheard someone say that Dismemberment Plan would be playing last. I was excited and relieved.

The show was sold out, and it was already pretty crowded when we arrived. We looked at merch, but it was overpriced and mostly disappointing, so we didn’t buy anything. (Apparently they’d had trouble getting it across the border again.)

Then Cex, the opening act (whose name sounds like “sex”), went on. I think the right audience would’ve loved him. But I’m not sure that we were the right audience. Still, he was much easier to stomach than what we sat through before the last Dismemberment Plan show, and he wasn’t without his moments.

Then Death Cab for Cutie. They played a partial cover of a Joy Division song, so they pretty much removed any chance of a completely bad review. I knew a lot more of the songs this time through, and they were at least as good as last time, but I just couldn’t see Dismemberment Plan opening for them, and I wasn’t really dying for another long, headlining set from them.

Dismemberment Plan, on the other hand, could’ve played substantially longer without hearing any complaints from me. They played an amazing set, and there were far more kids into it than I expected (based on the fairly small turnout at their last show in Toronto). Lots of underage kids, and lots of drunk people. Two guys were hurting people with their dancing (of sorts?), and they were eventually invited on stage to let their aggression out on each other. They were kicked out after that song, and Travis, the lead singer, told the wrestling duo not to believe anyone who says that girls don’t love their brand of homoeroticism: “Just ask Dashboard Confessional.” Good times.

Speaking of which, the underage kids taking swigs (did I just say that?) from a flask while going completely nuts to songs they’d never heard before seemed to be having the time of their lives. They annoyed the hell out of me in the process, but maybe I’m just annoyed by people having too much fun. What does it say, I wonder, when kids who’ve barely heard a band that I place amongst my favourites have a better time at the band’s concert than I do?

I arrived home after the show to find an email from Liam saying that I could expect a drive with him to Waterloo after the Converge show on Friday night, so it’s looking like it will be a good week.

Only two more sleeps.