Tressa and I went to see David Gray a week ago, on may 18th at TCU Place. It was a very good to amazing show from one of the best singer songwriters around.

The opener was good as well - I can not remember his name at the moment - a singer songwriter type as well, with a single backing guitar player.

I do not know if the show was a sellout or not, but it seemed quite full. We had great seats - row C slightly to the right (sixth row with the orchestra seating).

Then it was Gray's turn to hit the stage and he did so with style - a white curtain silhouetting the rest of the band and David's distinctively infectious bobble-head-like sway.

David packed a wide variety of songs into his setlist (which I will try to list from memory later in this post) ranging from Shine off of his first album a century ends, to a new track called fix it from an album set to be released in fall 2010, apparently called foundling.

The only song that did not make the set that I was really hoping for was Kathleen off of 2009's Draw the Line, but one missed song is pretty good.

The highlights of the show for me was an extended version of nemesis with a long breakdown into possibly (I did not recognize it) a cover song with a pulsating disco ball/strobe light which was very trippy and just how great the entire band sounded on every song played. Tressa's favourite song was jackdaw.

here is my attempt to remember the setlist (please send any corrections to me)

1. fugitive
2. first chance
3. now and always
4. you're the world to me
5. jackdaw
6. sail away
7. ain't no love
8. nemesis
9. life in slow motion
10. shine
11. fix it
12. babylon
13. draw the line
14. be mine
15. --------------
16.    encore
17. --------------
18. this year's love
19. ?
20. please forgive me

I have been a lifelong Habs fan, ever since watching the 1989 Patrick Roy led team lose in the Cup final to the Calgary flames. 1992-93 was the one year that they of course won the Cup and it has been a long drought since then.

This season I admittingly did not catch as many regular season games as most years. I was disappointed when Saku Koivu signed with Anaheim. I liked some of their offseason pickups - notably Cammalleri and Gomez.

I have watched all of their playoff games and witnessed them improbably coming back down 3-1 against Washington. Now they are giving Crosby, Malkin and the rest of Pittsburgh fits.

At the beginning of the playoffs there were a few players that I did not really know much about - Moore, Pouliot, Darche. I also did not know how much of a wizard their young defensive prospect PK Subban is skating and manuevering with the puck. Josh Gorges ability as a defensive defensive has been exposed to me.

One thing special about this team is that they are a total team effort. They are usually outshot, badly, blocking even more shots and waiting for their chances. Jaroslav Halak has been exceptional.

What makes the Canadiens wins even more phenomenal is that they have done so without their best defensemen - Jaroslav Spacek and Andrei Markov. In their absense, Hal Gill has stepped up his play along with the aforementioned Subban and Gorges.

They may advance further and they may not, but there is something special about this team.

Tressa does not care about hockey per se, but gets behind Montreal to support me : ) She is funny watching hockey with, getting into the game and shouting things like "no, no, no! you get away from the net"

And if they do win it all, then myself, Robert, Vince, David, Danny, Darryl, Elaine, Stephen and many others will be partying like it is 1993

Robert's girlfriend Lisa gave birth to their first child, Piper Mikhal Aleksandra Danchilla at 11pm on April 24th. She is 6 pounds, 6 ounces and 15.5 inches long. Robert also says "she is ...1/4 Romanian 1/4 French 1/8 Scottish, 1/8 German, 1/8 Swedish, 1/8 English... 100% Canadien... has already brought good luck to Halak". Mother and child are both healthy. Congratulations!

Berlyn celebrated her second birthday (April 23rd) on April 24th. Her grandparents, auntie, 2/4 uncles and others were on hand. Despite being sick with chest congestion, she was lively and mostly in good spirits.

Tonight, April 28th, the Montreal Canadiens completed their comeback against the Washington Capitals, becoming the first 8th seed ever to beat a 1st seed after being down 3-1 in a best of seven series. The game tonight was ridiculous. Halak stopped around 40 shots and the Canadiens as a team blocked about 40. They play the Penguins in round 2 and will aim to frustrate Crosby and Malkin like they did Oveckin, Backstrom and Semin - who had forty regular season goals and none in the playoffs.

hello, hello. tressa and i are back from holiday in the mayan riviera. we stayed at barcelo beach resort which was very nice. the weather was sunny and about 30 degrees celsius the entire trip which was great.

we went on day tours of xcaret, a catamaran, xplor, party hopper pub crawl, and shopping in playa del carmen. the wedding of tressa's friends angie and brad was very nice along the beach and had a mariachi band play during the surf n'turf supper.

xcaret is a huge ecopark. we snorkelled, saw exotic plants and animals, bought a giant corona bottle (like 2L) and saw a spectacular two hour show about the history and culture of mexico. xplor is an adventure park where we went on 8 of 15 ziplines (tressa had never ziplined before and overcame some jitters - so yay for her!). we also got to drive an amphibious vehicle through a jungle trail which went over suspension bridges and down into dark, water filled caves. it was cool!

for the most part we did not buy souvenirs this time around. tressa did find two nice dresses and a dress shirt for me. on one of the first nights we went with half of the wedding group on the 'party hopper' tour. this went to three bars including 'senor frogs' and 'coco bongo' and was a lot of fun.

unfortunately, sometime between 1:15am an 1:30am when our group exited early back to the resort i lost my camera. we had some great, goofy shots at xcaret and the party hopper that are lost forever. for the duration of the trip, we bought a couple disposable cameras and some souvenir photos. we will also get pictures from other people's cameras (there were about thirty people altogether for the wedding) in the upcoming days, so not all was lost.

the wedding was very nice. i am sure tressa will discuss it in great detail on her blog http://www.tressakirstein.blogspot.com/

food was great. we went to four a la cartes - mexican, spanish, french and japanese. ocean was warm (salty of course), pool was refreshing. it was a good trip, but not completely relaxing - we packed in so many activities, because tressa had never been to mexico and wanted to see as much as she could. this was fine by me for the most part as anyone who knows me can contest that i need some help getting up most mornings, even in a tropical place. one of the days we did go to the resort spa and get massages, so that was nice. oh..we also got sea sick on a catamaran ride later that day...

after a not so fun twelve hour travel day yesterday (for whatever reason we had to fly cancun-toronto and then toronto-saskatoon), i was back to work today.

tressa has found out that her education internship is in saskatoon with a friend of hers, so that is good news! her first final is tomorrow morning. we are getting the counters in the condo replaced tomorrow, so that is good as well. and then we are off to tusq restaurant and then the symphony in the evening with nick, kendra and vince.

Low key St. Patty's 2010

Brady, the son of eeyore Tressa bought me for being together for one year, and I at the house warming.

Above right - some of the food at the house warming. We also got some very nice gifts - like a sexy spice set, cactus with yellow flowers and sticky needles, and spirits. Thank-you!

on saturday we had a "house warming" for our condo - though she has lived there for two years now. we ate, drank and played games with friends - it was good.

We have worked hard preparing for our vacation to mexico (16 hours to go!) and are packed and ready.

now we get a week of much needed tropical relaxation, fun and adventure.