Touring the rough and tough, divey drinking holes of Canada can be a grueling experience, especially for the warm hearted, kitten saving, guacamole and tomato sandwich eating, Neil Young loving Kat Burns! The Whitby native moved to Toronto 2 years ago as a thriving musician and print artist and is now about to embark on a Southern Ontario sprawl in support of her new handmade sunny-day-under-a-tree-with-nothing-to-do, e.p. For The Birds, which was released in May, and is available at www.thebluehouse.org. An East Coast tour is in the works for the fall but until that happens the songstress would like to keep busy designing and printing album covers and miscellaneous merch for fellow musicians. To prep her for the long and arduous journey of melting hearts nation wide, we sat down one fine afternoon for some survival training with a game of'¦ "Dreamhouse"'¦ where your dreams can be achieved and shattered within a matter of seconds'¦ where fantasy is reality and reality is 2-D.

Here's how you play:
A large piece of paper is divided into 2. Each player gets a different colour pen/marker (kat=black, me=red)
Each player on either side of the page gets 3 minutes to design her ideal living space/fortress. The players then take turns (no longer than 2 minutes) to either deconstruct the opponent's living space or add to/repair their own habitat. The game ends when the page is full or when the players lose interest.

Game highlights include:
- Padlocked Jack in the Box.
- Becoming a Real Boy.
- Cleaning Kat's cussin' mouth out with soap.
- Having big, jolly women crush you under their rumpus.
- Being allergic to books
- Woodchoppered Dutch book becomes a swarm of mini Dutch books a la Fantasia.
- The knee to elbow "YES!" action

By Maria Bui