The Bell Orchestre put on a good show last night….

...but tonight Amadou and Mariam absolutely rocked the house. If you’ve never heard them you need to look them up. I have their CD (autographed) if you want to borrow it. They were fantastic. During the show, I had flashbacks to Bluesfest 2 years ago, when I first came into contact with Mr. Airplane Man. Both acts left me feeling high as a kite and totally awestruck.

This weekend was pretty great. Friday I got a haircut and went on a reasonably good date. Yesterday was the kick off to a week of “semi-vacation.” While I have quite a bit of work and business to take care of, I don’t have to go to work until Friday morning. The sucky part is that I work Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. I took the Saturday evening shift for a girl in my class as an act of good will. It was the last thing I wanted to do, as I am essentially going to miss the best night of Bluesfest, but the girl was in a real pinch on account of her sister’s wedding in the Bahamas. I believe in karma, so I really had no choice but to bail her out on this one.

Anyway, yesterday’s highlight was a moderate shoe emergency which took place on Bank Street. It was very hot yesterday afternoon, but I had made up my mind to walk downtown to meet up with some friends. Until last week, I had the most wonderful pair of pink flip flops. I think I paid five bucks for them at Winners at the start of last summer. They had been up and down a huge mountain in france (about 40 times), they’d been to Mexico (where they logged many more kilometers) and they’d traveled the mean streets of O-town - a lot.

I guess it was to be expected that these wonder sandals would have an endpoint, and that came earlier this week when the thong finally gave way and popped out of the hole in the centre – for good. I did what any grateful owner would do, I thanked them for all of the foot joy they had brought and made arrangements for them to spend the next few decades relaxing in a landfill somewhere.

So needless to say, I needed to break in a new pair of thongs, and I had a crappy yellow pair lying around my house. I put them on and began the long journey to downtown. About 30 minutes from my home, completely without warning, my right flip flop exploded off of my foot and broke into 2 pieces.

You can no doubt appreciate my predicament. There I was, far from home, in the searing heat, with no shoes. I called Pesto and K-cat and asked for a bail out. They pledged to come at once on their bikes. Meanwhile, I continued to walk down the street, stepping lightly, avoiding glass shards and burning the soles of my feet with each step I took. Yeah, people were staring, but I chose to believe it was because I looked particularly hot in my white linen pants!

I stopped at every possible store. No one had any shoes. Even the Running Room did not have anything appropriate. Finally, I stumbled into a popular shoe store where a kind and gentle man allowed me to wash my black feet in the bathroom, helped me find some new sandals, and even cut me a deal on the price. Pesto and K-cat arrived shortly thereafter. It was a disastrous mishap which ended in a testament to the goodness of people. Also, I now have a nice new pair of, more reliable, tan-coloured flip flops. And I’m positive the gigantic heat blisters will be gone from the soles of my feet within a month, two max.

.....i have removed a part of this post because i just didn't feel good about it. it's not that i think what i wrote could or would ever get back to the person in question, i just don't feel good about the level of detail provided. it's one thing to spill your own guts and wear your heart on your sleeve. it's another to violate someone else's confidence, even if no identifiers are provided. so, i apologise for my temporarily poor judgement on that one....

I'll leave it at this as it was the gist of my story: God, if I ever complain about being single again, punch me out.

That's all I've got right now. I tried to download a picture of Amadou and Mariam, but could not get Blogger to co-operate. Sorry.

xo tabby