The last time I was in Toronto was a year ago, which was before a few friending memes later in the year, so I didn't know a lot of you then. Given that, I'll include more context in this post than I usually would. ^_^
Given that, here's the short-ish version of how my life intersects with Toronto:
scruloose and I lived here from 2002 to 2004 (and I always know exactly how long it's been since we moved back to Halifax, because we got married in the month between leaving Toronto and moving into our first back-in-Halifax apartment). I loved living in Toronto. It broke my heart to leave, and I still miss living here, even though I have several close friendships at home that I wouldn't have now if we'd stayed.
scruloose, OTOH, loves our friends here and likes a lot about Toronto, but living here was not one of those things. Plus the smog in summer sucked for his lungs, and oddly, "I want to be able to breathe" is a powerful bargaining chip. We moved home.
Since then, I've come back between one and three times a year (two is by far the most usual), and he comes once, usually. When we're both here we stay with friends of my family, and the rest of the time I stay with
ginny_t. Either way, when I'm here, I stay on top of my online reading but fail to post much, and spend as much as time as possible being out with our Toronto friends and eating tasty Toronto food. It's always great. *^^*
Right now, I'm here for two and a half weeks (a week long than our usual May visit), and
scruloose will be here at the end of the week, so I'm currently with Ginny and then will migrate with
scruloose to our family friends' place. This weekend was the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and in two weeks it'll be Anime North.
That last bit means I've just spent three days going back and forth between spending time with friends and being at TCAF, hanging out with the handful of industry folks and manga bloggers who're in attendance. (With some overlap, since nearly all of our Toronto friends are geeks, which means a comics festival is right up their alley!)
It's been hectic and tiring, and I'm very glad I came. Probably the biggest thing was that the women behind
Chromatic Press had a party in celebration of TCAF being their first official event as a publisher, which was small enough to not be too overwhelming, and attended by some fantastic people. I got to meet Brigid Alverson of Manga Blog, who I know a bit from Twitter but had never met in person, and some fun & interesting people I'd had no prior contact with.
Since it was Chromatic Press, that meant getting to hang out with
liannesentar, who I adore, and Becca, her co-conspirator-in-many-things, who I don't know well but quite like. And. AND. It meant I got to meet Lillian Diaz-Przybyl, who I've probably known online since...2004 or so? I met her via
oyceter's flist, and she was nothing but awesome, and then after a year or two it dawned on me that she, you know, worked at Tokyopop and thus might be a good person to talk to about getting involved in the manga industry. (I'd like to think I'm usually faster on the uptake than that, but I wasn't exactly hanging around LJ looking for professional opportunities.)
Given that I've now been freelancing in the industry for nearly seven years, it's safe to say that meeting her online changed my life. Plus she's smart and funny and inspiring and all manner of good things, and now I've finally met her in person. *^^* I'm very, very pleased about this.
I could write more, but that's the very general update from here! Tomorrow, normal Toronto!visit activity resumes. And right now I have last week's episode of Elementary to catch up on. ^_^
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