Belleville and Montreal...

With desserts in containers-to-go and smiles on our faces, we headed out of Hamilton first to Toronto to drop Jennifer off and then to Belleville, where Lindsay's Mom lives. Lindsay and Yael propped their eyes open long enough to get us safetly there. We were all so tired when we arrived at the house that it took just about everything to get our butts into bed. Lindsay's Mom was such a sweetie and had put aside towels, chocolates and a cute keychain for all of us which I thought was so thoughtful of her! I was all concerned going to bed because of my recent snoring habits. I don't usually snore but being all congested on the road has made me a bit of one. Since Lindsay and I were sharing a bed, I certainly didn't want to keep her up all night with my snoring. That's always been one of my biggest fears - to be a snoring person. No one likes to sleep with someone who snores, that's for sure. My Oma and Aunt Marion both snore but I don't want it to be me! Guess next time I have someone special in my life who is sleeping with me, I'll have to ask them if this is something that I regularly do...I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I don't.

So the next morning, Yael and I did our bookkeeping. I have learned that us girls are both very good at that although talking about money naturally brings some tension into the equation. We also had to figure out what we were going to do for our hotel room showcase at the Montreal Folk Alliance conference. Lindsay is wonderfully creative and came up with the most perfect bookmark to advertise the event. It was bright bluish green with a yellow flower...simply gorgeous! If I had a scanner right now, I'd show it to you but I don't so just imagine the beauty of it. Jennifer Claveau had suggested to us that we do an open stage concept which fitted well with the whole Nostalgica theme. So we had it all figured out and by 3pm, we were out the door getting our thousands of errands done...We went to a new Value Village which was an absolute blast! Imagine the three of us going nuts around the store finding funky and sexy clothes. It was so much fun to play dressup for a day and we all got some really cool stuff. I got an awesome brown hat which is making for an awesome hat collection. Hats are so useful on the road when you don't have the time to spend doing your hair.

By the time we had left Value Village, we were running quite late. It was worth it though as we had so much fun! We got to Montreal by 11pm, just in time to drop off our stuff and party it up. Friday night was a lot of fun! Lenny from Nostalgica had met up with us and we were in full force promoting our Saturday show at the main hotel bar. There were so many people everywhere and it totally felt like one huge family. I met some really cool people that night and heard some amazing shows. I even ran into some musician friends from my U of Toronto Music days! It's always good to see other folks I studied music with still plugging away in the industry as a lot of the folks I went to school with are now in totally different occupations. Sad how that happens. Guess music's a tough one and a lot of folks give up before they get to see the benefits of continuing to live their dreams.

One of my fave bands to watch perform that night was the Bills. They were a blast - so much energy and a truly fun show. I also got to check out and play at some really fun hotel jam sessions. Funny how I hardly knew the names of who I was playing with! It's a small world so I'm sure we'll meet again and I'll get to learn their names. There were people from all over the world there and I kept thinking about how fortunate I was to be there. Music conferences are the best because finally, us crazy folks get to hang out with folks of our own kind! It doesn't happen that often so when it does, you gotta savour every moment of it!

Friday ended up being a very late night, with me heading back to the room by 5am with too much beer in the belly. Lindsay, Yael and I shared a king sized bed that night as the hotel had messed up on our sleeping arrangements. We were keeping our fingers crossed that by Saturday they would have a hotel room on the music floor...

More to come...

Love Rozalind