The Perfect Birthday...

Hey, everyone!

Thank you for the e-mails, blog comments and b-day well-wishes! It's great to hear from everyone! I'm even getting cell reception, so I've gotten your phone messages. I've got some crazy roaming fees going on, but I'll try to call you all back as soon as I can. Think I'll just get an international calling card or something...

ANYhoo - For the record, I had an absolutely KICK ASS birthday yesterday. (Jane - thank you
for the earrings and card - very cool!!! And a nice surprise...) We had planned on starting recording at 10am... Ummm, riiiiggghhhttttt.... I'm going to attribute our slightly later start to our fabulous bon fire from the night before. Heh heh... We ate some breakfast and finally got started around noon. However, it's all good as we bascially have only to walk downstairs and we're good to go!

Author's Note: Woke up with several mosquito bites this morning... Gah! Making me crazy!

We thought 'Long Black Coat' would be a nice, mellow start to the day and off we went... Granted, we're only initially laying drum and bass tracks, but I was still thinking it would take a while to get that one, special track we were looking for. Uhhh, nope. Michelle is great and we have been able to record great tracks right out of the gate with virtually NO rehearsal! Therefore, we ended up with a really solid track after playing it 3 or so times! Hey - what the hell - let's record another one! (We were thinking we'd probably only have one track done by Monday... Instead, we had THREE!)

Anyway, we decided to give 'Home' a try... A funny thing about 'Home' is that it speeds up towards the end. Mix that with the fact that we can't see Carrie in the other room and things can get a bit wonky. However, nevermind those obstacles - we STILL got the song down in a couple of takes. Okay, and even though I ended one of the recordings on the WRONG NOTE, it all worked out. I don't know what happened - played the whole song fine - just decided to up and play the WRONG NOTE at the very end. What a goober... However, Darryl is a master of the editing process and he very quickly fixed my wonkiness. Awesome... AND - we had another track recorded!!! Three tracks in less than 24 hours... WOO! And we thought we'd only have one...

As Darryl also teaches recording technology at a school in Toronto, we ended our session earlier in the afternoon so he could get to class. And, since we hadn't been to see Toronto proper yet, we hitched a ride into town to hangout while he taught. Tracy offered to come along as our tour guide and into the city we went...

Toronto is a very large city. From what I've heard, the metro area has just over 3 million peeps in it. And that's just the city... It is very sprawling here - very wide open and never-ending. Canada truly has A LOT of room to move around... It was very cool to have someone else driving us into town. We didn't have to worry about taking a wrong turn and we were able to sit in the backseat and totally play the tourist game... Cool.

We dropped Darryl off at school and Tracy drove us further into the city. We stopped in the China Town area and got out to walk around. VERY cool area and very sprawling... Great shops, restaurants and pubs everywhere - very nice vibe. We even got to visit 'Lush' - one of my favorite stores in the WORLD! I think, however, there is finally a Lush store in the Seattle area - going to locate it when I get home... Anyway, Lush is a store that sells all manner of natural and organic body care products. They sell shampoo and soap that you could pretty much eat! Their products are amazing - you'll never want to leave the bath... ANYway - stocked up on a few things, decided that we were really hungry after smelling all the awesome soaps, etc. and decided to go find a pub somewhere. (Seriously - Lush stuff is so good, it makes you hungry! Crazy!)

Tracy took us to a cool pub called the 'Red Room.' It had a great vibe and we just hung out for a while. Ordered some beer, had some snacks and contemplated that the only other thing we had planned for the night was to go pick up Darryl and meet Michelle and her partner for Sushi! YES! What a kick ass day...

After hanging at the pub, we walked back to the car and went to go pick up Darryl. It was great driving around the streets of Toronto, by the way. It's got a very European vibe about it. Kind of felt like driving around London... All the pubs, all the shops, the great diversity of nationalities... Very cool. And the architecture is awesome. 'Lots of stone and brick, which I love... I love just driving around a new city and checking out the buildings... And locating the museums... Of which there are many! YAY! And they even have a SHOE museum! Not only am I a museum geek, but I'm also a shoe whore. True story... :)

So anyway, we picked up Darryl and he showed us around the studio where he teaches. Very
state of the art and swanky - cool to see all of the new equipment and whatnot. After checking everything out, we went to meet Michelle and her partner Margaret at a sushi place downtown.

For the record, I love sushi. I could eat it everyday. So there. This place also had a great vegetarian offering, so Carrie was good to go as well! We ordered a bunch of different kinds of sushi and sat back for a stomach expanding sushi adventure. Add in some lovely, warm saki and it just doesn't get much better. :) Happy freakin' birthday to me.

After dinner, we walked around the neighborhood a bit and Michelle and Margaret pointed out
some of the local sites. It was good to walk around as we were all very full...We hung out for a bit and decided that we were all pretty beat, so we headed back home. I'd say it was a very good end to a very good day... Just quietly sitting in the backseat of a car, watching the sights of a new city rolling by, hanging with Carrie and a couple of awesome new friends... Sigh...I can honestly say that this was one of the best birthday's of my life. I got to spend it recording music, WHILE on a lake, with one of my best friends and then I got to explore a very cool city and enjoy good drinks and food. Uhhh, it doesn't get much better... :)

And with that, I bid you adieu. We will be recording 'Let It Rain' and one other tune today... Should be fun!! Have a great day everyone and know that we're thinking of you!!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Dayna