in the midnight hour

hosting things is a lot of fun.

Last night I hosted my own good-bye / cristal's b-day bash. I purchased a 100 bucks of booze and mix, made a great dancing CD, advised the downstairs neighbours that they would not be able to sleep and prepared to party ... kinda ...

When the first people arrived ( Shane and a few of his friends ) at 10 o'clock I was just waking up from a nap and was stumbling out of my room wearing just my boxers. It was classic. Shane already equates me with the art set ( I am certainly far from any art set, but with him being in finance, anything not in finance is part of said set ) so he was probably a tad hesitant to bring his finance friends to an "art" party. And then they walked into an almost empty house, the only guest a half-naked, bleary-eyed man.

I love montreal for the late starts. I love that I could nap until 9:30 and be pretty confident that no one would arrive.

It was just Shane et al. and me and the roomies for another hour or so, so we talked about law school and MBAs and things of that nature. Just getting it out of our system.

And then the people arrived and it was fantastic. I got to DJ. I got to wear a suit and rollerskates. This morning was a tad rough.

Montreal is cooling down. The amazing heat only comes in spurts now and it gets dark early. Hibernation already? It is only late august .... you have to move like a hummingbird here to enjoy it. Move fast, see everything, consume entertainment like nourishing fat reserves, build up stories to dream about in the dark depths of winter. So cold, but remember how fun summer is? Survive winter for summer.

I listen to BBC dance music occasionally and one of their tag lines is "we're living for the weekend." They even have a weekend countdown timer on the website. Isn't that depressing? Poor britain. Poor brits. Maybe just poor "brits who like BBC radio 1."

The sneaking into ballet was great. It was free and in the park, but we arrived late and the stage was at capacity so they wouldn't let us in. So we snuck in. The best part, besides the ballet (which was contemporary - think stretchy jeans and thrusting as opposed to tutus and nutcrackers), were the people who saw and said "you realise that it is free?" and we replied that we knew and didn't elaborate. I assume they still think about us.

I got to see mr manes briefly in Montreal which was, as always, a great pleasure. Him and his girl are off to do great things in Burma and I am jealous and excited. They are going to do stuff in burma ... good stuff ... stuff I would be incredibly happy to do. And they are going to law school ... you see? See!!!

I was having a discussion with my boss about all the wrongs in the world ( he strongly disagrees with law school and is not afraid to tell me but he is going to introduce me to his environmental lawyer friends who love what they do (which is sue American companies that think they can use NAFTA to pollute Canada and Mexico)) and he started to tell me about a project he was interested in: providing nitrogen fixing rice to impoverished nations and this struck me as something I could get behind. Raising money to provide beneficial rice is immediate and needed. I am going to look into this. Anyone know more about this?

He also raised an interesting point about intense poverty being a trick to survival in a place where people want what you have and are not afraid to take it. This is Hobbes in action. I need to read Guns, Germs and Steel again.

Out of here on the 4th. Attempts to get to burning man have failed. There is no time and I still haven't been to the architecture museum here. God.