So here is a glimpse of how my life has been in the last few days…

Today I went to my friends house for a Quebecois jam. Although they were all beginner/intermediate players, I had a lot more fun. No egos! They were okay if I told them to repeat some parts that I wanted to learn, and they played slow enough so I could play along with the songs I didn’t know before. I’m not at the level yet where I can hear a song super fast and just play along like they do at the Vice Versa on Tuesdays.

I should also say here that I learned an important lesson that was not music related. At this cinq a sept jam, invitees were encouraged to bring something. The guests must have been horrified and not surprised that the English girl (me) was the cheap one to bring chips while everyone brought real French cuisine stuff, like brie cheese and bakery fresh bread. How embarassing! They didn’t even open my bag of chips, I think someone put it in a closet somewhere. Then, I had some nerve to eat a bit of their bread and brie cheese. And I even cleaned up the table after! I will know what to do next time. I was going to bring wine, but I thought there would have been a lot of that. Actually the truth is that there can never be enough alcohol. When I got to the party, there was barely anything left.

I had this strange dream two nights ago about being in France, not only was I at the Eiffel tower, I was also at the moulin rouge. Though it wasn’t quite the moulin rouge, it was a strange building called the moulin rouge, and when you went inside, there was a bike elevator, when you pedalled, it went up. It was a pretty bare elevator with no walls, so if you fell off the bike, you fell down in the building. It was a rush. I told the others who came in afterwards they were free to use it. And I spoke to a punk teenager who was sitting outside. When I woke up, I decided I would go to the south of France very soon for a holiday. I always wanted to go! And they have some cool traditional music that I was introduced to last summer by this super cool band called Xarnege.

I called my superintendant 5 times before she finally got her husband to install the lightbulbs in my room. It’s set up in a way that I am not able to do it with my bare hands. Glad I got that resolved, I was getting sick of living life in the dark. My quality of life went up a few notches. I should have complained more before. Oh and I should mention here that I got the environmentally friendly type bulbs. Luckily for me, they were on sale. Now I have to waste a day trying to find the environmentally friendly way to dispose of my old lightbulbs.

I’m practicing the songs for my next CD. I really am, but I work long hours, and I am taking these French classes twice a week, add in transportation time and it equals 1/2 – 1 hour of free time at home. During this time, I should really be eating, cleaning, and relaxing! But no! I play music! And I am writing this blog post because people have been visiting my blog and haven’t been seeing new content.

October has been a pretty big month for the news, with Gaddafi killed, the unfortunate passing away of Steve Jobs, 18 unsympathetic passerbies ignoring a dying toddler on a street in China, and of course, Occupy Wall Street going global.

I wish I could have participated more in Occupy Wall street, but I WAS WORKING, and I don’t have to camp in the cold to show my distaste for the current economic system. I could organize my own society! Maybe that’s a bit far fetched, but in the mean time, I could make smarter consumer choices, and inspire others to do the same. Keep the money within the 99%, and within the ethical folks in the 99%. I went to Occupy Montreal anyway, and gave away one of these excess cushions sitting around in my house to a camper. I figured they could use some extra padding during their sleep. But man, that place was such a slum. And it was raining! How do intellects with real concrete ideas for change protest? We can’t just shout on the streets until we get our ways, we need to be smart and make things change from the inside. The 99% lays the foundation for the 1%. So we can take some blame.