I headed off to visit Toronto yesterday, and as always had a delicious time.
Firstly, I had to return some CDs to a friend because I'd borrowed them back in the early summer with the promise I'd have them back "sometime next week". Whoops. Also, I was meeting one of my very best friends, who I hadn't seen in approximately four years, so that was extremely exciting.
But perhaps most importantly, I was finally going to get to hang out with Oryx. (Of course, when I met her, she was Photogrrl. I can't lie - I want an Old Skool tag.
)
She and I have a friendship comprised pretty much entirely of near-misses, usually when I'm en route to roll with Dogslife and Ginny. There was that time at the Thai place that didn't seem to anticipate ever having to seat more than six patrons, and there was also that Mike Doughty show where she promised she'd show up and once again ditched me.
This time was still problematic, but at least we wrangled a bit of face-time, which is very nice. Our friendship has largely grown on this site and over MSN, but we go back, and she's good people. So I got on the highway about 2 hours later than I'd hoped, with the expected agenda being thai with Oryx, then off to return the CDs and hang for a few hours with my old school chum, and wrap it up with a fine sushi dinner with my other friend when she got off work. I left voice mail for Oryx saying that I was late out of the gates, but that I'd be in TO around 2, hoping that she'd be in the downtown area and we could get our thai on.
Unfortunately, I call her, and she says not only is she still at her place (which is fair enough), but that she has a kitchen emergency and it will be 45 minutes before she can get downtown. I worry about my plans a bit, but decide to roll with it, and proceed to go blow a ton of money at the HMV on Yonge, scoring some old De La Soul and Mantronix albums, as well as a Freeland CD I've wanted forever (if you geek like I geek and got the expanded edition of the Animatrix with the soundtrack, then you probably grooved like a mofo to "Big Wednesday", which is on the album I picked up, although at import prices. Yikes.) and Big Black's "Songs About Fucking".
Then I go back to wait in front of the restaurant, where I get accosted by the most completely realized "if you give me some money I'll go away" speech I've ever had. This cat comes up to me, and without making a ton of eye contact, mumbles his way through what had to be a five minute speech without pausing. What seperated this guy from the guys trying to get a few bucks on every other street corner is that his pitch was that he'd just done a 13-year stretch in the prison in Kingston, and if he couldn't find the means to get to Guelph that evening, he'd be considered in violation of his release and would go back to prison. But, he emphasized, he didn't want me to feel intimidated by that fact. I coughed up some change, but I couldn't help shake the sensation of having just been the victim of the most amicable mugging ever.
Nonetheless, when that transaction was over, I checked my cell phone again to find that I'd missed Oryx calling to say that she was only just leaving, and by this point in the afternoon, that placed her arrival downtown at 4:15. My dinner date was for 4:30, so we'd have time for only the most brief hello, and not the full lunch-slash-hangout for which we were aiming. I tried calling her back to say "maybe we should just try do it another time", but I missed her and didn't have her cell phone number, so I rescheduled dropping the CDs off, and went to hang in the Eaton Centre (Eaton's Centre?) until she'd arrive.
While there, I wound up stumbling across the Apple Store, which was interesting as I've been idly considering grabbing a Macbook in the future. However, I couldn't keep myself from giggling at the prices and pretentiousness of the place, and I didn't see anybody who looked like they could give me some serious information as to why I should switch from the tools I already know and use perfectly well to their offerings without coming off like this guy. Don't get me wrong, Apple could kill a man at twenty paces with aesthetics, and I really dig a couple of the cool things that I've seen friends do on their Macs. The ergonomics of the system seem delicious in ways that PCs seldom are. However, the store seemed like a place ill-suited to seperate fact from hype, and so once I saw the two-hundred-dollar leather Ipod Nano case, I figured I wasn't the target market and so I headed back through the mall and entertained myself with visions of zombies.
I rounded the corner to see Oryx waiting in front of the restaurant, so I broke the bad news about the rest of my schedule, but we at least enjoyed a walk through the downtown where I met my other friend at her office. Then it was off to dinner at C'Est What?, although I gotta admit I found the steak fajitas lacking. We caught up and enjoyed the dynamic between us that lets us pick up exactly where we left off no matter how much time has elapsed since we last hung out. We got back to my car and I immediately had to question the wisdom of a coin-operated parking lot that let you rack up a $16.50 bill for an afternoon's parking and didn't take bills. Of course, if I hadn't have given that change to Mister Totally Not Intimidating, Honest, I actually would have had the coins to get out of the lot. Fortunately, the machine accepted credit cards, so I paid the ransom to get my car back and headed off into the Toronto night.
Finally, it was off to drop off those CDs and hang with the most talented guy I've ever met (and that's saying a lot). He works as a freelance composer in Toronto, and genius isn't a strong enough word. He's gonna own the universe one day. I finally begged and pleaded for him to make me a CD of a bunch of his tracks for me, which I have in the CD player as I type.
Then I was highway-bound once again, and I managed to encounter some particularly horrific traffic as I tried to get back on the Gardiner. There must have been some kind of big sporting or concert event that had just let down, and the Spadina exit onto the highway has this stupid two-lane merge situation where if the people in the right lane don't immediately merge left in the space of about ten feet, then they get dumped out on entirely the wrong road, and traffic was backed up for several lights as people tried to wedge in between one another.
My TO geography still isn't that good, so if somebody could recommend a better way of getting back on that highway and hopefully avoiding some of the downtown congestion in the process, that would be awesome.
Also, if you could explain why highway traffic in Oakville always has to slow to a crawl for absolutely no reason, with no visible accidents or construction, that's a mystery of the universe I'd like unravelled as well.
Oh, and I'm still looking for work. Promising interview last week... but I gotta say that the search has dragged on a lot longer than I'd like, and although I think the search is progressing as well as can be expected for somebody who is trying to maintain an arts career... I'd sure jump on anything that let me get back to a major centre (Toronto or London, I'm looking at you) that let me make my car payments and afford a decent apartment. As grateful as I am in retrospect for being out of my old situation that really was killing me, and as neat as it's been to have the luxury of the summer off, I'm pretty much ready to get back on the horse.
So that's what's been up with me.
Firstly, I had to return some CDs to a friend because I'd borrowed them back in the early summer with the promise I'd have them back "sometime next week". Whoops. Also, I was meeting one of my very best friends, who I hadn't seen in approximately four years, so that was extremely exciting.
But perhaps most importantly, I was finally going to get to hang out with Oryx. (Of course, when I met her, she was Photogrrl. I can't lie - I want an Old Skool tag.
) She and I have a friendship comprised pretty much entirely of near-misses, usually when I'm en route to roll with Dogslife and Ginny. There was that time at the Thai place that didn't seem to anticipate ever having to seat more than six patrons, and there was also that Mike Doughty show where she promised she'd show up and once again ditched me.
This time was still problematic, but at least we wrangled a bit of face-time, which is very nice. Our friendship has largely grown on this site and over MSN, but we go back, and she's good people. So I got on the highway about 2 hours later than I'd hoped, with the expected agenda being thai with Oryx, then off to return the CDs and hang for a few hours with my old school chum, and wrap it up with a fine sushi dinner with my other friend when she got off work. I left voice mail for Oryx saying that I was late out of the gates, but that I'd be in TO around 2, hoping that she'd be in the downtown area and we could get our thai on.
Unfortunately, I call her, and she says not only is she still at her place (which is fair enough), but that she has a kitchen emergency and it will be 45 minutes before she can get downtown. I worry about my plans a bit, but decide to roll with it, and proceed to go blow a ton of money at the HMV on Yonge, scoring some old De La Soul and Mantronix albums, as well as a Freeland CD I've wanted forever (if you geek like I geek and got the expanded edition of the Animatrix with the soundtrack, then you probably grooved like a mofo to "Big Wednesday", which is on the album I picked up, although at import prices. Yikes.) and Big Black's "Songs About Fucking".
Then I go back to wait in front of the restaurant, where I get accosted by the most completely realized "if you give me some money I'll go away" speech I've ever had. This cat comes up to me, and without making a ton of eye contact, mumbles his way through what had to be a five minute speech without pausing. What seperated this guy from the guys trying to get a few bucks on every other street corner is that his pitch was that he'd just done a 13-year stretch in the prison in Kingston, and if he couldn't find the means to get to Guelph that evening, he'd be considered in violation of his release and would go back to prison. But, he emphasized, he didn't want me to feel intimidated by that fact. I coughed up some change, but I couldn't help shake the sensation of having just been the victim of the most amicable mugging ever.
Nonetheless, when that transaction was over, I checked my cell phone again to find that I'd missed Oryx calling to say that she was only just leaving, and by this point in the afternoon, that placed her arrival downtown at 4:15. My dinner date was for 4:30, so we'd have time for only the most brief hello, and not the full lunch-slash-hangout for which we were aiming. I tried calling her back to say "maybe we should just try do it another time", but I missed her and didn't have her cell phone number, so I rescheduled dropping the CDs off, and went to hang in the Eaton Centre (Eaton's Centre?) until she'd arrive.
While there, I wound up stumbling across the Apple Store, which was interesting as I've been idly considering grabbing a Macbook in the future. However, I couldn't keep myself from giggling at the prices and pretentiousness of the place, and I didn't see anybody who looked like they could give me some serious information as to why I should switch from the tools I already know and use perfectly well to their offerings without coming off like this guy. Don't get me wrong, Apple could kill a man at twenty paces with aesthetics, and I really dig a couple of the cool things that I've seen friends do on their Macs. The ergonomics of the system seem delicious in ways that PCs seldom are. However, the store seemed like a place ill-suited to seperate fact from hype, and so once I saw the two-hundred-dollar leather Ipod Nano case, I figured I wasn't the target market and so I headed back through the mall and entertained myself with visions of zombies.
I rounded the corner to see Oryx waiting in front of the restaurant, so I broke the bad news about the rest of my schedule, but we at least enjoyed a walk through the downtown where I met my other friend at her office. Then it was off to dinner at C'Est What?, although I gotta admit I found the steak fajitas lacking. We caught up and enjoyed the dynamic between us that lets us pick up exactly where we left off no matter how much time has elapsed since we last hung out. We got back to my car and I immediately had to question the wisdom of a coin-operated parking lot that let you rack up a $16.50 bill for an afternoon's parking and didn't take bills. Of course, if I hadn't have given that change to Mister Totally Not Intimidating, Honest, I actually would have had the coins to get out of the lot. Fortunately, the machine accepted credit cards, so I paid the ransom to get my car back and headed off into the Toronto night.
Finally, it was off to drop off those CDs and hang with the most talented guy I've ever met (and that's saying a lot). He works as a freelance composer in Toronto, and genius isn't a strong enough word. He's gonna own the universe one day. I finally begged and pleaded for him to make me a CD of a bunch of his tracks for me, which I have in the CD player as I type.
Then I was highway-bound once again, and I managed to encounter some particularly horrific traffic as I tried to get back on the Gardiner. There must have been some kind of big sporting or concert event that had just let down, and the Spadina exit onto the highway has this stupid two-lane merge situation where if the people in the right lane don't immediately merge left in the space of about ten feet, then they get dumped out on entirely the wrong road, and traffic was backed up for several lights as people tried to wedge in between one another.
My TO geography still isn't that good, so if somebody could recommend a better way of getting back on that highway and hopefully avoiding some of the downtown congestion in the process, that would be awesome.
Also, if you could explain why highway traffic in Oakville always has to slow to a crawl for absolutely no reason, with no visible accidents or construction, that's a mystery of the universe I'd like unravelled as well.
Oh, and I'm still looking for work. Promising interview last week... but I gotta say that the search has dragged on a lot longer than I'd like, and although I think the search is progressing as well as can be expected for somebody who is trying to maintain an arts career... I'd sure jump on anything that let me get back to a major centre (Toronto or London, I'm looking at you) that let me make my car payments and afford a decent apartment. As grateful as I am in retrospect for being out of my old situation that really was killing me, and as neat as it's been to have the luxury of the summer off, I'm pretty much ready to get back on the horse.
So that's what's been up with me.
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