"Now I can eat my fruity flakes!"

I have just come back from Canada's best and most exciting city, Toronto. Aside from the great atmosphere on the streets, the best thing I noticed was the Metro Subway; it was clean, safe, sparsely populated and extremely useful. This is the exact opposition of how you would describe Ottawa's public transit with the buses.

The occasion was a vist to my friend Josh, who actually surprised me with the location of his house. I didn't know he lived in an urban downtown setting. His house was just off Eglinton West. It made for a short walk to the subway station. We had a ball together and did many things: eating, wathing our flicks, seeing the raptors, seeing live comedy, walking around, playing sports, old nintendo even. We ate like bastards and drank cream soda until it was coming out of our ears. I left Thursday and came back Sunday. I am not yet sold on the train. For the price, I was disappointed that the train was delayed 30 minutes on the way back Sunday. I wouldn't have minded so much perhaps, except for the fact that I missed my 3:30 departure single-handedly due to the Santa Claus Parade which paralyzed a good section of the downtown core.

I would say that I have lots of picture - and rest assured I took some - but they will likely not be appearing on my Shutterfly account. I have realized how annoying and time-consuming this whole storing picture thing is. I have a bunch of pics to upload, and I have to decide between facebook and Shutterfly. I wish I could do both at once, but it's not the same thing. Facebook seems to be winning the struggle for my picture albums.

Everything else is the same. I am running out of time to do some things though. Priorities include investing, charity, job search or not, entertaining at my condo/organizing all my stuff/painting the kitchen cabinets.
Ah well. Bye internet users.

Shop-a-holic

I could star in a new tv series, entitled "How to Build a wardrobe from scratch." If the camera followed me around, this is what people would see:

-You show up at a large indoor shopping mall at 2 pm.
-You stay until 9 pm
-You make friends with the retail people
-You don't eat or drink anything during this 7 hour shift
-Unlike the people working retail, you have not sat down for these past 7 hours.

That was me this past Saturday. I went beserk and blew about 600 easy. I completely revamped my starting line-up however. I have a solid 1-2-3 pant rotation and the bullpen (shirt) is versatile. There is no designated closer (an A-1 shirt) so it will be bullpen by committee doing the saves. That night I came home and rifled up some chicken burgers at 10 pm. I had to call Mark to see what the deal was with the soggy chicken burgers. The obvious solution: just cook them longer! I passed out pretty good between a replay of HNIC and the movie Speed in french. I slept in the next morning and hung around the apartment, recovering from my extravaganza. Then I took off to Basics and then to FB and Jonesies, who had us all over for dinner and football. While I took a slight interest in the football - I can't remember who played off-hand -- it was francoisies Ribs that captivated my attention and my appetite. Good work frasco! I followed that by 2 or 3 kit-kats (who counts anyway) and then apparently did a beer walk to clean up some spilt tea. Ella was particularly cute and good, while Simone was fussy that evening. I never used the word fussy until recently. It will exit my vocab I figure soon, and then re-surface when my juniors are running around.

I should mention that my shopping was really facilitated by Omar (actually there were two Omars but that is another story) he was so helpful at the Men's department. He was the next best thing to having a woman's opinion. I was so pleased with his dedication to service, that on monday when I re-visited Bayshore Shopping Centre -- and ran into him again -- I wrote up a nice long story about how great he had been to me on the customer feedback forms. Conveniently enough, his supervisor happened to be walking the floors that moment and he instructed me to give it to her. I happily obliged! I think I made her day when I presented her with the comments. She lit up like an x-mas tree. I just hope it pays off and that guy goes straight to the top. He definitely deserves recognition for his good work.

I think I am done with Bayshore for now. I will re-evaluate what I have and need. One thing about A-train, when he goes out shopping, he goes big. I told Mark I was ready to drop some serious coin - and I did just that. My proudest purchases are a sweet parka, and some shoes.

I also did another good thing on Sunday. I actually completed a survey over the phone that took 15 min for York University Health Sciences dept. I figure if anything else, I've built up some good karma from my actions of the past few days.

Tip of the month...or maybe the year: If you find your hair sorta heavy and clogged, add to your favourite conditioner a teaspoon (vary amount with length of hair) of baking soda. Apply, wait a minute, then rigoursly scrub hair and sculp for a couple minutes. Wait another minute for it to settle. Then wash out with cold water. It is supposed to remove build-up from shampoos, conditioners, and gels or mousses. I def noticed a diff. I figure it could be effective for no more than a month though.

Wed seems to be amateur improv night down (held in a community centre) on Somerset. I think I'll be taking the #2 there.