Voices From the Fire

Nov 19^th 2006

Archived in Life in Calgary

The bonfire was a bazillion times better than I ever expected -- probably because of the people that were there. Here are some of the more memorable moments from the evening...

• One of my favourite moments was when Jeff introduced himself to Rob. He said, "Hi, I'm "Jeff-Not-Your-Brother" and Rob without taking a breath quickly responded: "Hi, I'm Rob the Neighbour."

• During one of the many photo opportunities Jen B. grabbed my butt; and, I liked it. By the way, Jen is completely fabulous; she is now one of my most favourite on-line people and quite possibly one of my favourite off-line people too.

• There were three dogs at the event and Makenna spent most of her time chasing each one of them. At one point she found a stick and ran into the cabin and tried to get each dog to take the stick. Everyone in the cabin melted into a pool of soft butter while all saying, "awwwwww."

• Doug handing me a brown paper bag with a bottle and saying "here, have some sour puss." It was so "wanna buy a watch" it was fantastic.

• It was William's 30th birthday and to celebrate everyone gathered around a giant Marilyn Munroe cake and sang him happy birthday.

• Watching Heather and Jon pull out their camera. Their camera and lenses are unbelievable and every time they pull them out everyone within a 50KM radius gets major lens envy and says things like: "I so need to replace my camera," and "I'm going to get a new lenses tomorrow," and "I hate my camera." I expect that within a month we will see a difference in the quality of photos seen on blogs from Alberta.

• The bus ride. Normally it drags -- but sitting and chatting with everyone made the ride go way too fast. This is the one moment from the weekend that I want to liquefy and stick in a bottle so I can sip on it whenever I'm feeling down. I can't emphasize how much I love the bloggers who were on the bus and how amazing they are as people; I don't think I will ever be the same.

• People were constantly whispering "Come to Blogher" into my ear. There were so many whispers of such that I began to hear it on the wind and coming out of the fire. Even Chris said: "When are we leaving?" And, "Let's make it a family trip." I guess this means you all might be seeing me at Blogher next year.

You can see the car:

The wonderful Jen. (I can't remember who took this photo. I think it was Rob the Neighbour.)

The equally wonderful Regina. (I think Piers took this photo.) I contemplated stealing her toque all night. Though in retrospect it looks far better on her than it would ever look on me.

Janine and David. (Photo taken by Jon.)

The fire at the beginning.

The fireworks with an open aperture.

Rob and Kevin.

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reddirtroad said on Nov 19 2006
SO sorry I had to miss it. But you know. Shitty.

I hope everyone had lots of fun. Next time I'm there. For sure.

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oscar said on Nov 19 2006
woah!
looks like alot of fun!
Sucks i missed out..

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Regina Lynn said on Nov 20 2006
Totally a blast. Er, no pun. Thanks for having me!

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Dave LaFontaine said on Nov 20 2006
Nice shots - and your story made me wish we'd actually been almost on-time to get on the bus, so we could've sat in the back where all the Cool Kids apparently hung out.

I'll be posting audio and video from some of the sessions as soon as I can get it edited down. In the meantime, check out the shot that I got of the flames. It actually looks like a phoenix. I swearta Gawd, I din't photoshop even a pixel...

http://hardnewsinc.blogs.com/my_weblog/2006/11/phoenix_rising_.html

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