Friday

Great day today.

The weather, once again, is summer-like. I went out for a quick walk down Queen Street to get some AAA batteries for my Visor. During that four-block trip, the following happened:

• I ran into Sandi and Karin, whom I met at the March Kick Ass Karaoke. They were having lunch at the Rivoli’s patio and chatted with them for a while. Good fun.
• Played some music beside Johnathan and Michelle, who were having a slow panhandling day. It helped net them about ten bucks.
• One of the girls who works at HMV, where I went to buy the batteries, asked if (a) I could actually play the accordion and (b) if there was some off chance that I might happen to know any Radiohead songs. I haven’t memorized the lyrics to their more recent stuff, so I went with a number I could play in my sleep: Creep.

  “As you can see,” she said with a shocking wide grin to her co-workers and the end of the number, “I am paralyzed with joy!”

  Brining joy and merriment to the world is one of my primary goals in life. That and getting toasted. Nicely toasted.

• A block away from home, a woman hauling a lot of beer to an office party asked if I could give her some accordion lessons. She bought a Hohner accordion at a yard sale a year ago and has always wanted to play, but has no idea how. I made arrangements to drop by her office — she works at Bruce Mau’s design firm, just down the street from me.

(Check the Hohner link in the above paragraph. One of the tag lines on their accordion page says “the resurgence of the accordion”. More proof that this is the Millennium of the Accordion, folks.)

I’m also having a good time working on this programming contract, an “Are you depressed?” quiz that runs on Palm and Visor handhelds. I’m doing it in NS Basic and should have it nicely wrapped up for the end of the afternoon. Once again, I’ve got the door that leads from my room to the back deck open and the stereo playing some old school funk as I’m coding.

Big date tonight. Have to make myself all purty soon.

All in all, I’m having a great day. Much better than the guy below: