Good Monday morning! I hope everyone is feeling great today. It’s the start of a new week, and it looks like a refreshing one at that. Times continue to change for us with each passing week, providing new challenges and opportunities. The past week was beautiful, with lots of sun and heat and with many people still not working, we were given the opportunity to freshen up our homes and gardens. Judging by the lines at all the Canadian Tire stores and other garden centres, many of you took advantage of that. Hopefully some of the newly opened smaller local businesses also benefited from the increased demand for outdoor activities and yard work. We have to keep remembering the small businesses. If you can buy the same product from a locally owned store for only $1 more than Walmart, do it! It’s not going to make a significant difference to you, and will mean the world to a local small business.

Events This Week

I find I’ve strayed a little with my newsletters from the core of what I do. I’m an event promoter and blogger and even though there aren’t any in-person events to promote, there are so many things to do online virtually, with increasing events each week. This week, if you’re looking to keep busy, you have your choice of Yin Yoga, trivia nights, kickboxing, paint nights, a plant night, meditation, a kimchi workshop, family movie nights, or even learn to play the gong (if that’s something you’ve always dreamed about). This is just a sample of the many virtual events that you can do to keep busy. That doesn’t even cover the concerts!

Imagine a music festival was announced with: Goo Goo Dolls, Metallica, Sofi Tukker, Steve Aoki, The Arkells, Jessie Reyez, Third Eye Blind, Trixie Mattel, Adam Lambert, Dolly Parton, Everclear, Sophie B Hawkins, Buffy Sainte-Marie, David Guetta, and Ricky Martin….how much would you pay for that pass? How about free? All those amazing bands/artists can be seen this week virtually at no charge!

The links to all these events and more are on my Virtual Events Calendar which has over 80 events for this week alone!

New Music

Lady Gaga’s newest single and music video “Rain On Me” dropped last week. Featuring fellow pop star Ariana Grande, the single is the second off of Gaga’s upcoming new album Chromatica. This single follows the first song off the new album, “Stupid Love”, which released in late February.

#CanadaPerforms

The National Arts Centre is continuing its #CanadaPerforms program with a 2 year extension and partnership with Facebook.

“The new two-year partnership between the National Arts Centre and Facebook will see #CanadaPerforms become a national platform for artists wanting to experiment and  innovate with live-streamed performances, augmenting existing programming at the NAC. Digital platforms enable engagement, increase accessibility and foster cultural communities online from coast to coast to coast.”

You can read the full press release here: https://nac-cna.ca/en/media/newsrelease/26765

Summer is Cancelled

In case you didn’t hear, the province of Ontario has cancelled summer. At least that’s the spin that I’ve heard from many colleagues in the media world (yeah, I kinda consider myself media). Despite no large gatherings until the end of August, I wouldn’t quite say that summer is over. We can weather a festival-less summer here in Ottawa, we will just learn to appreciate everything else there is to do in our beautiful city. Measures are being put in pace for us to be able to physically-distance ourselves while still enjoying the outdoors. Pay attention to regular updates by the City of Ottawa and the NCC for new openings or expansions of already open concepts such as the parkways being shut down to vehicles to allow for more walkers, bikers and roller bladers…does anyone really still roller-blade anymore?

We’re not completely festival-less either…yet. Currently September still has Escapade, City Folk Festival, Beau’s Oktoberfest, and Comic-Con. Hopefully we’ll do what we need to do to make sure we don’t lose all our festivals this year.

BINGO!!

A month ago, I discovered an online BINGO game that is run through Furry Tales Cat Rescue. This event raised money to help out the rescue and provide much needed care for cats/kittens. The online BINGO game had almost $2,000 in prizes and was a different activity for an evening. It took about two hours and was pretty fun! Well, they’re doing it again this week so clear your calendar on Thursday night, buy a ticket and play along via Facebook Live starting at 7:30. The Facebook event link with all the details is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/610379506492361/

The Masked Singer

SPOILER ALERT!! As you know, I’ve been watching season three of this ridiculous show. I’m sorry to say that it’s over now for the season, and what a disappointing finish! Regardless, congratulations to “Night Angel” for winning it all even though “Turtle” was clearly a better entertainer and he deserved to win.

With The Voice also wrapping up last week, I’m almost out of crappy reality TV to watch now. Only one more week of the current 90 day fiancé off-shoot (Before the 90 days), and that will be done too….back to Netflix I guess.

We’ve got a fair bit of rain this week, so check back often for updated ideas on things to do to keep busy. Don’t forget to support local businesses when you can and let’s keep working towards getting back to the way it should be. Don’t be afraid of wearing masks, it could become our new normal. It’s important, particularly for those of us who speak moistly. 😊 (it’ll never get old)

**Photo from Fresh Daily Blog Post

Stay safe, and stay distanced!