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An unexpected delight at last night’s True Mountain Laurel gig at Trailside Music Hall was opening act Lia Pappas-Kemps. This is her song A Thousand Times Over, recorded from too far away; go find the real deal online for full fidelity. Her opening few songs were reserved, but as she got going she opened right up, and by the time she joined True Mountain Laurel on stage for her new single I Want It Easy, she was there.

The leaves on the sugar maple tree are starting to turn in earnest. Wednesday, September 30, 2026 at 11:30 am

I saw True Mountain Laurel at Trailside last night, and loved it. You should seek them out. The group is singer-songwriters Haley Blais and Sam Lynch, formidable talents in their own right, who turn out to have a synergy when they write music together and perform it: they’re witty, relaxed, talented players, and, despite a too-small-for-such-greatness crowd last night, they managed to weave a scene out of the evening. If you can’t see them live, find their debut album Angel So Bad.

Three interesting creative people interviewed by curious interviewers, each worth a listen:

The mobile app for GoodLife Fitness has charts for each day of the week showing how busy the gym is. I grabbed the charts for Charlottetown and animated them by way of understanding the flow from day to day, and the differences between weekends and weekdays.

I grew up in the small village of Carlisle, Ontario. While it’s not like I grew up on a remote farm, or in the wilderness, during the years before I was able to drive it felt like the ends of the Earth. Fortunately, by lucky happenstance, there was a Canada Coach Lines bus to Hamilton that stopped directly in front of our house on Progreston Road, twice a day, a lifeline to the pleasures of the city that my brothers and I took maximum advantage of.

You had me at “retro Balkan pop music night.” Thursday, September 24, 2026 at 10:34 am

Sending an email to myself with Siri. Thursday, September 24, 2026 at 7:47 am

I happened by a page that listed cashback rewards for a particular credit card the other day, and at the bottom I found this fine print: To earn the rate in each category, eligible purchases must be made with merchants assigned to that category. Categories are assigned based on merchant category codes (MCC) set by Mastercard. The payment networks assign each merchant to one MCC, even if they offer a variety of products and services.

Remember our backyard plum tree, the one felled by Hurricane Fiona? The remediation of the tree to vertical didn’t work out—we followed advice from our Siberian handyman that, untethered, it would find its way back; it didn’t.