A Good Time to Be Me

The last few days have been filled with a profusion of joyous events. Today in particular goes down as one of the top 250 days so far this year. I've had a hard time waking up recently and have been running a little late, which I hate. I guess it's one of my little quirks that I get antsy if I'm late for something. Another little quirk is I can only eat vegetables if they've been carved to resemble cast members from the seminal 1970s sitcom "Good Times". Anyway, I woke up early enough to get to class with about 45 minutes to spare.


I don't think I mentioned it before but I'm taking a course this week. This is another reason for my good mood. Every morning there is a breakfast laid out for us, there are free hot drinks (e.g., coffee, tea, mochachino) and cold drinks only cost a quarter. Cold drinks used to be free but some bastards would steal them so now they charge a quarter and give the money to charity. At break there is a snack provided. Today was hard-boiled eggs, cheese and crackers. Every afternoon we get ice cream and cookies.


Before I got to class some guy said, "free Globe & Mail sir?" why certainly Jeeves. The paper would have been enough but inside were all kinds of goodies, including; a pen, a Super C Emer'gen-C Vitamin and Mineral Supplement and a bag of microwave popcorn named Jay-Pop. My brother is named Jay so I told him I had the popcorn specially prepared for him. The cooking instructions are only in French so hopefully there will be no radioactive accidents. Please don't complain about my use of the word hopefully. I am aware of the controversy surrounding this word but after careful consideration, decided who really gives a rat's ass.

To top off the day it is the season premiere of The Office tonight. Perhaps tomorrow it will rain gumdrops.

Nothing Much

About four days ago I dropped off a prescription at the pharmacy and the pharmacist asked if I wanted to wait for it or come back later. I said I would come back later. She said she would probably have to place an order so early evening the next day should be fine. This made me wonder why she even asked if I would like to wait for it. Do some people actually wait overnight for a prescription. It's a nice Shoppers but I wouldn't want to sleep there.

On Sunday I went up to a friend of a friend's rented cottage. I don't care how tenuous the relationship is; if I get invited to a cottage, I'm going. If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad invites me to Osama bin Laden's cottage for a weekend my response is, "how far can a camel spit and is there a hammock?" Not only was the cottage spacious, comfortable and right on the water (as all cottages should be) the friend of a friend's husband is a professional chef so the eatin' was good.

One of the people at the cottage is an ocularist. This does not mean that he is a practitioner of the Black Arts but almost as cool. He makes artificial eyes. I asked if he felt like somebody was always watching him? His response was a forced smile followed by a move to the other side of the cottage. After that I thought asking what percentage of his clientele are pirates might force him to get in the kayak and paddle to the middle of the lake.

Monday I had a terrible morning. I woke up late so I decided to drive to work. There is construction in my neighbourhood so the roads are very busy. I tried to take a shortcut but ended up having to backtrack because the road I was trying to go to was closed. When I finally got to the parking garage I usually go to the entrance was teeming with cars. Thinking I knew better I tried a different entrance, it was closed and that's probably why all the cars were trying to get into the crowded entrance. I also came as close as I ever have to hitting someone with my car. As I was trying to get to the closed entrance a guy walked out from between two SUVs. I couldn't have been more than an inch from him. He stopped, I swerved, and catastrophe was averted. I looked at him through the rearview mirror to see if his head was implanted up his ass or he was wearing an American Idol shirt. Some sign that would explain his idiocy but I guess it's a mystery that will remain unsolved.

How Time Flies

Yes, it's been awhile. I was waiting until something interesting happened to me so I could write about it but based on past experience I'd be waiting a pretty damn long time. I know you're busy people and don't have time to waste checking here every 15 minutes to see if anything new has been posted, only to be disappointed, start crying, regain your composure, gather enough spiritual strength to check again and again be disappointed. It's a bitter circle. Bearing that in mind, and because a friend at work suggested it, I've added a mailing list to the page. You can sign up to the list and all new postings will be sent directly to your mailbox. It will certainly kill the traffic on this site but since AdSense has rejected me there's no money to be made anyway. The link is on the right side of the page, or if you like to read upside-down, the left side of the page.

I went to my photography class a couple of days ago. This is an excellent class, very informative, but I know that the more I'm exposed to some of these people, the more they are going to irk me. Artsy, for example, who looks like a chubby Peter Sellers, erased all of the pictures on her camera accidentally. I guess her finger slipped and hit all 5 commands in the proper sequence in order to manage this. Now if it happened to me, I would have tried to hide the fact that I was a complete ass-clown and carried on, she however; gasped, clapped her hands to her mouth, shook her head and then stared straight ahead, mouth agape in a look of utter shock and terror. Finally the teacher took notice and asked her what was wrong. When she told him he replied, "why were you playing with your camera when I was talking. That's your own fault." I love this man.

The class has a wide range of ages and knowledge levels. There is one couple who I'd put at around 90 years old who know a lot about images but nothing about computers or digital photography. I thought perhaps it would be better if they stuck with their cave drawings.

Only one person brought in prints to show the class. The photos were amazing. Really incredible images and a good variety of styles from grungy black and white to intense nature photos bursting with colour. He probably should have brought his stuff in during the last week because he set the bar pretty high. I thought maybe we start with some photos of my Dad passed out on the couch or Snake dressed up as a crossing guard for Halloween. A black and white shot of a little girl looking pensive amidst a cornfield that represents our need to listen to our children and eat more vegetables is really more of a last class kind of shot.

First Photography Class

I enrolled in a beginner photography class at Ryerson and last night was the first class. Ryerson isn't very far from where I work so I decided to walk. There was a line-up of people outside the Elgin Theatre and naturally I assumed they were waiting to see me although I had no idea how they found out my route. I forgot about the Toronto International Film Festival, which is what they were actually lined up for. It looked like the action was about to start so I hung around to do a little "star gazing". It's been a dream of mine that one day I'll run into Lucy Liu, our eyes will meet, she'll immediately recognize the potent combination of rugged manliness and a poet's soul that I possess, fall madly in love with me and we live happily ever after surfing in Hawaii. I didn't spot Lucy but I did manage to see Tommy Lee Jones. The unfortunate part is our eyes did meet and he made me his bitch for the night. Ok, that's not entirely true, I did see Tommy Lee Jones and possibly three other celebrities. People were taking pictures of them but I have no idea who they were. I mostly hung around just to irritate the film fest volunteers who kept screaming, "if you do not have a ticket you cannot stand here. You must either cross the street or continue walking. You cannot stand here." Umm, I'm pretty sure your film fest t-shirt and clipboard don't entitle you to any power whatsoever so put a lid on it.

I got to class about 20 minutes early and was the first one there so I had my choice of seat. The desks were crappy tablet arm designs. If you told me yesterday I would have to sit in a tablet arm desk I would have said who cares. That's because yesterday I had no idea what a tablet arm desk was but I looked it up and now know that they are the desks with a small piece of wood extending from one side that you're supposed to be able to balance your binder and textbook on and still have enough room to take accurate notes. If you're my size they also jab painfully into your stomach the entire time you're sitting in them. The classroom was hot and stank like a the locker room at Jenny Craig after a spirited game of tag. The class started filling up, the instructor handed out the agenda and started reviewing it. Something was terribly wrong. He was talking about black and white film, processing negatives, spending time in the dark room. He said we were kind of dinosaurs for wanting to learn about film photography. It slowly dawned on me that I was in the wrong room. I have an incredibly bad habit of remembering key details incorrectly. I once spent a frustrating 45 minutes looking for an address that I thought was 207 but was actually 210. I thought perhaps I was dyslexic but friends have assured me that I'm just an idiot.

I left the B/W film class and went back to the front door where there was a sign listing all the classes and rooms. I was lucky that there were only two photography classes in that building last night and even luckier that the other one was the one I registered for. The good news is that the real class is much bigger and have actual tables I can sit at instead of crappy half desks. The instructor is hilarious and had me laughing the whole class. There are a couple of numbnuts in the class though; there always are. One student said she didn't have a printer and wanted to know how she could show her portfolio if she couldn't print her pictures. Is this really that difficult? How about you buy a printer or print them at a friend's house or take them to a photo studio or upload them and have Shutterfly print them and mail them to you. I wonder if she even has a camera. The other yahoo was a woman with funky red hair, horn-rimmed glasses, lip piercings and tattoos to make her look super-artsy and oh so hip. Just her look was enough to irritate me but what really put me over the edge was that her pants kept riding down displaying a deep, dark, disgusting ass crack. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of callipygian women but if you're ass is the colour and consistency of rice pudding, try to keep it covered up.

Surprise Party

The past weekend was the Cabbagetown Festival. For a few years now Snake, her mom, dad, aunts and uncle have congregated at my place and then we go and explore the festival. I live in Cabbagetown so it works out well. A large part of the festival is the vendors in Riverdale park. What usually happens is mommy and the aunts will examine not only every stall, but 98% of the wares therein. After that is complete they decide which stalls to go back to. It's an incredibly time consuming process but at the end of it one of them, perhaps all three, will come away with a handmade, ornamental 18th century style shoe tree, or some such thing.

The timing of the festival coincides pretty closely with Auntie Monkey's birthday so we usually take her out to dinner after all the vendors have banned us from their stall screaming, "no I don't have it in mauve. You've seen everything I have already."

This year I was unable to attend either the festival or the dinner. My aunt was having a surprise party for my uncle's 50th birthday and then my dad wanted to take my brother and I out to dinner. My job for the party was to bring my uncle to my aunt's place at 2:30pm. I said I'd pick him up around 1:45pm as I had some errands to run in his neighbourhood. I was running late because even though I wasn't going to the festival Snake and family were still using my place as a base. When Snake arrived she wanted to play chess. I never pass up an opportunity to demonstrate my dazzling intellectual ability by beating a six year old at a game so I agreed. I'll be honest and say that I lost the game but in my defense she did get help from her mommy and aunt, also her little sister Rooster ate my rook and two pawns so that put me at a disadvantage.

We tried to call my uncle to let him know that we were running late but he doesn't have a landline, only a cellphone and it wasn't on. Cellphones are great for reaching people anywhere anytime, the trick is, they have to be on. "Can you hear me now? No . . .how about turning your damn phone on." We did manage to get to my aunt's right on time. The surprise worked well and it was good to see a lot of my relatives who I rarely get to see. My great aunt is almost 95 and still very active and quite sharp. She ends every story with "of course, he's dead now."

"Do you remember Walter Hefferlump? He played the organ at the church. Had a wooden leg and a dog named Skippy. His wife used to churn her own butter. Contracted the measles when he was seven. Tattoo of a hula dancer on his right arm. Wore brown pants once. Wonderful man . . . of course, he's dead now."

Baseball & Birthdays

Yesterday was the last baseball game of the season for Snake. Normally I find baseball interminably boring. When it's played by six year olds though it turns into an entertaining sport. The kids batting swing at the ball like they're trying to swat flies. When a ball is actually hit, and it's not hit directly into the ground, not one child will run after it until it has come to a complete stop. All the kids will then run to the ball, one will jump on it and throw it somewhere, not necessarily where it is supposed to go, but somewhere. The reason the kids don't try to get the ball as soon as it is hit is because at that point they have no idea that the ball was hit. The girl on first base was spinning around, the boy on second was making funny faces at one of the girls on the other team, the boy on third base was sitting down and drawing pictures in the gravel. The outfielders weren't even aware that they were playing. Quite a fun morning.

After the game we had lunch and then I went shopping for my uncle who turned 50 last Tuesday. He wanted a tie that reflected his personality, something with a tattoo design or spiderman pattern. Really? How about something with stripes? That would make my job a lot easier.

Friday Night Fish & Chips

I took a cab to work on Friday. I don't usually take cabs because they are ridiculously expensive and I'm trying to do more stupid exercise lately. By the way, I can see why not everybody exercises, it's really hard. In the humid weather we've been having lately I sweat so much on my walk home from work that small children must stay at least a half kilometre behind me for for fear that they will be washed away by the river of perspiration. But I digress, back to the cab ride. The driver started singing:

Sunny days
Oh, sunny, sunny, sunny days
Ain't nothin' better in the world, you know
Than lyin' in the sun with your radio

He seemed perturbed that I didn't join in. The rest of the ride was silent until we neared the building and I said "It will be left on Scott" to which he replied, "I know" which I thought was hilarious. How could you possibly know?

It was a great day at work, namely because it was a free casual day, so I got to wear my lederhosen and crop top, and we got off an hour early because some people are moving desks.

For dinner I went to Olde York Fish & Chips on Laird. Best fish and chips in the city in my opinion although I shouldn't be advertising because the place is already crowded enough. I went with my two Vancouver travel buddies because we had to settle the bill from Vancouver and possibly settle a score. Actually we had no score to settle but it sounded ominous so I thought I'd throw that in. The fish and chips shop is particularly crowded on Fridays because Catholics have a ridiculous custom of abstaining from meat on Friday. From what I can gather Catholics don't eat meat on Friday because Jesus was crucified on Friday and by not eating meat they are performing a sacrifice to atone for their sins that week. Seems like a good trade-off.
"Mom, I killed the dog."
"Well, you can forget about Taco Friday young man."

Labour Day Weekend

I guess you can add "lazy" to "fat and cranky". It's been a few days since I've posted. Haven't really done much since then. Didn't think anyone would be interested in reading how many puzzles I completed at jigzone.com (just in case anybody is though, it's lots, and I always beat the average time). I went to the Ukrainian Zabava down at Harbourfront. I know you're thinking how did I possibly get in. That's the hottest ticket in town. Well I know a guy who knows a guy who does a pretty good Schmenge brother impersonation and when you're with a Schmenge brother at a Ukraine festival the world is your oyster.

Nothing overly eventful happened at the festival except I had to listen to Snake lecture me on my dietary habits and lack of exercise. "French fries are bad for you. Tim Hortons sells bad food. You eat too many doughnuts. French fries have too much oil. Oil is bad for you. What do you do for exercise? I ride my bike to school and back everyday and my dad does it twice as much, what do you do for exercise?"

Aren't you six? Ease up there kid. After giving it some thought though I realized she's right. It's not the first time a six year old has had to sit me down and straighten me out. This week I started walking home from work. It's about a 40 minute walk (8 minutes if I don't take any breaks).