A Counting School - Hardcore Chartered Accountancy

Going to Kitchener for food, fun, and sometimes audits

The summer of road trip adventures and weddings continues - a week ago sending ACS to a wedding in Waterloo, with a stop on the way at Kitchener's Golden Hearth Baking Company . I've been out there many times for audits, but this weekend had nothing to do with auditing anyone, unless witnessing people get married is a form of auditing. Damnit, this work nevers escapes me. Oh well, at least we make it fun. And delicious, as I explain below. Although the wedding was a fun way to fill up on said deliciousness, it only lasted one night, so I loaded up on some of the wonderful baked goods for Sunday by stopping there on the way. Read a little about them, courtesy of their own website : "They have been at it ever since. The bakery makes everything from scratch including the croissants. They use only the finest quality local and organic ingredients. They do not use preservatives or artificial ingredients. They bake the old fashioned way with butter, fresh milled flour, farm eggs...

Just returned from Metric's "Secret Show!"

That Metric show at the Great Hall was beyond amazing. The fancy deluxe edition of their new album Fantasies is now officially declared the Best Purchase Ever . Lead singer Emily Haines, rocking out. I'll keep myself from gushing on and on, but... wow. I'll just leave it at that for now. Photos will follow in the next day or so - my data transfer gear is sitting securely at work at the moment, and sleep won't come too soon - wow, it's only Thursday.

Go read this article about Metric's new album

Read the biography about Metric here on thesixtyone - there are some really interesting insights into the process behind the creation of the new album, Fantasies. When I was still a student journalist Metric was just getting started - and I the only reason I didn't try and set up an interview for my newspaper was because it just didn't seem right for some stupid reason to use that as a cheap excuse to meet the band - but I love the interview clips here, regardless of whether the site author got them from an actual interview or just from a press kit put out by the band. I've inserted some choice quotes with my commentary here: When you hand over your money for a concert ticket, what are you really paying for: some idea of the performer you've gleaned from gazing longingly at album covers and compulsively clicking YouTube videos, or the performer as they choose to express themselves on that given day? Is the consumer entitled to a certain expectation of the performance —...

If Sam Roberts is in town there's a good chance I'll lose my voice

Sam Roberts played the Music Hall on the Danforth last night - they're in town all week playing 4 Toronto shows, with fellow Montreal rockers the Stills opening for them. Sam Roberts and Metric are the two Canadian groups where I can recognize pretty much their entire repertoires, by virtue of owning all their albums and listening to them relatively obsessively. I've even managed to meet and interview Sam Roberts and the rest of the band in person in my student journalism days. These guys are awesome. If you haven't heard of Sam Roberts, I'll forgive you if you don't live in Canada. Here's an America-centric review of a 2-year-old Chicago show . It'll give you some decent background. I think I did a little more damage to my voice moments earlier by trying to sing along again to Detroit '67's music video . How can you NOT resist its enthusiastically joyous chorus? Watching the video you find some incredible dissonance in the dark subject matter Detroit...

Metric has a new album coming out - the first single rocks!

On the unusually long drive home from my client tonight - curse you Friday night volume - the silver lining to sitting forever in the car was the fact that I got to hear my favourite band's new single - Metric 's new single "Help Me I'm Alive". Bless you Lezzy McGuire for doing the awesome-fantastic. The moment I see this in stores I'm buying the album - I will blindly assume the rest of the album will be this awesome. I also have to get tickets for their show next month . Above: certainly not me. Someone had to take the picture The first single is transcendent. I had some more insightful analysis of the elegant ending, Emily Haines' strong vocals and the return to earlier 'classic' Metric instrumentation but I somehow lost that paragraph. Oops. No matter. I know I'm a horribly biased reviewer. I mean Metric's last album cover is on the wall behind me. They would have to endorse Palin as a wisened stateswoman and declare themselves Nickelback...

"The last thing I expected was to receive a cubic metre of toys at work"

A happy event I alluded to earlier has finally come to pass - people have started sending me things with the hope that I will give them some word of mouth attention. Having been a student journalist, I'm an exceedingly easy target, I must admit. My plan was that I wasn't going to write about it right away, but it's a slow night and I had fun playing with it already - which is a coded way of saying I'm a sucker for anything with a blinking blue light. What you see there is a portable iPod charger. Note the clever alignment which allows you to use the audio plug while charging. To design it any other way would, of course, be insane. My relationship with that piece of Mac hardware is a funny one. I got the iPod for free, and now I got my first ever accessory for it for free too. I think the accountant in me would've said, "but your cell phone can also play mp3s for you" is what kept me from ever actually buying the player. That, and the fact that it seems like...