May long weekend was a quiet but nice one, ending with the explosive new Star Trek movie. But first, Lucas and I experienced the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus on Saturday after breakfast with friends Tom and Jamie, and then took an hour long rollerblade through the Eau Claire area and Prince’s Island Park. What did we see at the Jack Singer Concert Hall? Not your typical orchestral performance, to be sure. We attended Video Games Live 2.0 (Calgary’s second year doing it), where the music of video games came alive via the orchestra and chorus. They played a lot of great classic game soundtrack pieces along with some newer stuff, with some little surprise bits thrown in. It was incredible!

I got my first MP3 player this weekend, too. It’s not technically my very first, as I had a small one that I could put maybe 30-40 songs on that ran on AA batteries and was a piece of crap, but it’s my first REAL mp3 player. I wanted something simple: music playback (of course), and video playback. I ended up with a Zune, even though it’s a Microsoft product, but in the end it had all of the specs I wanted (at least 8gb, video, music, radio, etc.) at a price that didn’t break the bank. Lucas got a new mp3 player while we were at it, too; we’ve decided that getting each other mp3 players would be an early anniversary present since our anniversary is next month. But don’t tell my mom because she hates that we give gifts early! We can’t help it sometimes; we get too excited when we have a good gift to give and often we give them to each other early. Oh well. I’m happy with our purchases and now I can carry knitting technique snippets with me wherever I go along with all of my music. I’m still fiddling with getting my mp3 tags written properly so that things show up on the player properly, but so far so good.

Lucas and I train into downtown and home together each day and the little extra time we get to spend together is very nice. And while I generally enjoy public transit, having my favorite music and knitting at hand on the half hour ride each way has made it all that much better. Having Lucas to snuggle up against, music and knitting at my fingertips, uninterrupted for an entire half hour each way every day? I almost forget that there are others around us. Which is something I wish I had last week, as on the way home from work on Friday we experienced yet another Loud-Phone-Talker. She was sitting directly across from us and early on in the ride she pulled out her cell phone to call her ‘friend’ Becky. She called Becky to cancel their plans for the evening, as Loud-Talking-Girl had apparently “forgotten about these other plans she had when she was at work.”  It sounded like the lamest excuse to cancel plans ever, if you ask me. The best part? She wasted maybe 3 seconds after hanging up with Becky to call another friend and ask HER to get together that night instead. What a jerk! Loud-Talking-Girl kept going on and on and on about, like, omigosh, some of the absolute silliest things. Which wouldn’t be such a big deal, except she was talking SO LOUDLY to her friend on the phone that the entire train car had no choice but to hear every word. Sorry, but I doubt the entire train wanted to know about how you split your pants at work today. Or “the coolest” new t-shirt you bought at the mall that says “I heart boys who recycle” on it, made from 100% organic cotton. What you talk about is and should stay your business (and the person you’re on the phone with) only. Don’t be *that* person on the train. I started having visions of myself snatching the phone out of her hands and throwing it out the window to quiet her down, which made me giggle and I had to turn and suppress my giggles into Lucas’ shoulder so that Loud-Talking-Girl wouldn’t think I was laughing along with her as she reacted with deafening guffaws to her friend’s every quip.

I mean, if you have a cell phone conversation on the train, realize you’re in very closed, close quarters and so your conversation isn’t exactly private. I find it annoying when loud-talkers blatantly force the rest of us to listen to certain things that seem very weird to be sharing with the general public, such as talking in a petty way about another person or sharing details of their last medical exam on the phone. We don’t want to know about those strange growths, and talking in such a way about another person makes you look catty. Or high-schoolish, especially how some conversations come across to those who have no choice but to be subjected to your drama.

Oh well, just another rant. Cell phones seem to be at the heart of my latest two issues, this being one of them, and the second being people who talk on their cell phones while driving. But that’s a rant for another time. Thank goodness for the new mp3 player, though, because I’ll be able to tune out people like Loud-Talking-Girl very easily now. The morning and afternoon commute will be that much more pleasant :)

Oh, and I also cannot discuss May Long without mentioning that I went and saw the new Star Trek movie last night. Wow, was it ever awesome! I was so stubborn about being a Star Wars only fan for so long, but after seeing the trailer for the new Star Trek movie a few months back, I gave in and watched the original Star Trek series of movies 1-6 (we skipped 5 as we didn’t have it and I was told it sucked anyway) in preparation. I really enjoyed the new movie, and my admission of that here I guess means I’m no longer a secret Star Trek fan. Now that it’s all out in the open, don’t get too disappointed, Star Wars fans… there’s enough love to go around <3