Bloggin it up

NIN in MTL

Awesome Friday, took the day off from work to hit MTL early.

As it ended up, I was stuck in the morning, my parents were picking Jennie up at ~ 10-11PM, and Jennie needed a bathroom break before that.

This means I am going to be late to get to Palmer's for our 11:00 departure time. I talk to Palmer (was it MSN or the phone... ? I don't remember), he tells (luckily for me) that since we are bringing women along with us, that we will be delayed until noonish. Perfect.

At about this time I remember that I ordered that 1Gig SD card for my camera, so I would have plenty of space for pictures. I call up Nitro, and ask them if it has arrived yet (it was hitting them via UPS that day), unfortunately, nothing yet, but they promised to call me as soon as it got in. My hopes were suprisingly high that it would be there in time, despite the 1/2 hour left before I was supposed to hit Palmers.

So I keep looking for a bathroom helper, my brother was not available, my parents were willing to do it, but it was waaaay out of the way for them. Looking out the front window, I noticed my neighbor has both of his cars at home, I suspect that he and his wife must have taken Friday off too. Good Stuff.
So I call them on the phone and Paul gratiously agrees to give Jennie a bathroom break, and offers to walk her around the block as well, perfect..

So I finish getting ready only to realize (again) that I am going to be late, luckily it's only 10-15 min late not that bad.

As I pass by the queensway exit for Nitro I decide not to call them, if they haven't called, it probably isn't there yet. Oh well my 256M card will have to do. (Palmer lends me his 1G card when we get to his house, and I never use it)

I hit Palmer's a little late, parked behind his car, and walked up to the door.
*knock knock knock..... door bell....*
No one home... hmm, Palmer did mention Trish was picking him up... for some reason I assumed he would have his car with him... Trish must be driving.
I call Palmer's Cell phone, he tells me that they are just getting off the queensway, good timing.

After a LONG awaited tour of the Palmer residence. Palmer, Trish, Jennie and myself all pile into Palmer's car and head off to MTL.
The drive up was good, a couple of things to note.

- Some of David DeAngelo's views on women are funny, and up for debate.
- Palmer and myself getting a picture with the Hawkesbury sign

(this post is getting freaking long.... and we are not even in MTL yet.)

As we drive into MTL, I get a call on the cell phone... My memory card is in now. Oh well, it will have to wait until Monday.

We end up parking in Palmer's usual MTL parking lot and head off shopping around MTL.
Palmer decided to pick up a HUGE purple duck.
I got myself the brown pair of leather mittens from Simons from the picture.. I don't know where they are now hopefully in Palmer's car, or hiding somewhere around here somewhere.

Along the way 2 stores tell me "Pas de photo [something else in French]", so I turn the flash off, and make sure the rest of my photos in those two stores are inconspicuous.

As I am writing this I decide to take a look at Palmer's blog to see if he mentions the purple duck or not... I see Palmer has found my mittens...

We eat at a great smoked meat restaurant (I forget the name), and continue to shop.

I end up picking up a very cool looking strategy game, and a deck of "invisible" cards (I didn't name them), they are, unfortunately, just transparent.

At this time Palmer and myself are just about ready to head off to the NIN concert.
We call the girls and tell them we are taking off, and not to try and find us where we previously agreed to meet. And off we went. (hitting Palmer's car briefly to drop off our goods.)

We get into the NIN concert a little early to allow us enough time to drop off the camera if security has a problem with it. Luckily they don't care. They just say "blah blah your section might not like the flash" (Everyone was taking pictures)

The concert was AMAZING, although it did take awhile for the crowd to warm up. It wasn't until they played "hurt" (1/2 way through) that the crowd started getting really into the show.

I screamed out a few of the songs, I thought my voice was going to be hoarse after the concert (but it wasn't)

Palmer picked up an expensive NIN/MTL poster, for a souvenir, the first booth we went to did not have any, and was "100% convinced" that they were sold out of that poster through the whole stadium. Luckily the second place we went sold Palmer one of their many copies.

They had an amazing set, which was 1/2 of the show, A huge semi transparent screen was raised and lowered a few times during the show. It acted both as a projection screen, and to provide cool shadow effects when the band played behind it. And the light show was equally amazing.

After Palmer and myself took in the rest of the euphoric NIN concert, we headed back to the car. The show went a little later than expected, so we called the girls to see where they were, no answer.. so we waited in the car. The girls showed up 10-15 min later, as we were looking at the pictures I took from the concert, complaining about the horrible Antonio Banderas movie they saw (which also ran later than expected).

And we headed back home.

That was an awesome day Palmer, thanks for organizing.

posted by Matt @ 1:17 PM