summer yet sizzles

silly students, thinking the seasons revolve around them!! there's a whole (well, mostly whole) month of summer left ya know. 21st, equinox, all that stuff? and yet people talking like summer's over... well it ain't, i say. and man, what a gorgeous summer weekend this was! wow.

saturday i hung out with my visiting friend ken - mellow, a few drinks, some brunch, lotsa chit chat. highlight of the day was perusing a box of crappy, dusty cd's outside one of the antique shops and finding "Boogazm" by the Look People - a cd i have been semi-dilligently hunting down since it was stolen from me 7 years ago. small-time canadian funk band; i could not have been happier. a fellow chatting with the antique owner became curious by my glee and concured that (although he didn't know the band, he knew the lead guy) it was indeed a killer catch, and how could he have missed it? nyah nyah.

sunday i woke up at 5:30 am!!! it was very weird seeing the sunrise from the other side of the coin, shall we say. i volunteered all damned day at the dragon boat festival and what a great day it was! the morning was a little on the ho-hum side, but in the afternoon i got moved to "held start" duty. if you've never seen a dragon boat race (i hadn't, hence my desire to volunteer: after years of contemplating and flaking on the event, i figured this was the only way i would actually go) a dragon boat is, like, a long thin canoe that sits up to 20 rowers, a person sitting at the front facing them with a big drum between hir legs, roaring them on and someone standing behing them, steering them, often also roaring them on. at the start line, they have their ornate tails held until the start gun sounds: and they're off!

so i spent the afternoon enjoying the sun and breeze, bobbing away on this little dinghy/raft thing, laying back to drink it in or sitting up to hold pretty boats. and the occasional giggle with a yummy oarsperson. it was lovely, lovely, lovely. oh, and a moment of excitement too! the races were "paused" while we waited for a cruiser to emerge from its den in the marina to the big blue lake. it decided to head up sort of the middle of the track, right up my lane. i shouted over to the fella on the dinghy to my right "wow, it's kind of intimidating!" being charged by this big fucking yacht. and it kept charging. 30 feet. 20 feet. 10 feet! holy fuck, should i like.. jump? what the..? i sat there ready to plunge into the lake as it charged, charged toward me. at the last minute it angled to my left, oh so narrowly missing my raft (i could have reached out to touch it, oh for a set of keys just then) and scooting along. the organizers yelled "you trying to kill somebody!??" as the boaters laughed away but i gotta tell you, i had to laugh too. i didn't know them big boats could manoeuvre so delicately, precisely and tightly. very impressive indeed. even if they are fucking burnout yuppies who get their jollies out of frightening volunteers. (rolling my eyes)

and voila, here we are on a beautiful monday morning. as you can tell, an extraordinarily busy day... well anyway, i wasn't feeling clever enough for anything vaguely poetic, so hopefully the standard-style journal entry will sate you.