Toronto
I caught a red-eye from Portland Wednesday night to arrive in Toronto via car from Buffalo via plane from Philadelphia. PHL-BUF was on a Dash-8. I hadn't been on one of those in years, and had forgotten just how insanely small they are. I arrived in PHL at 7 AM local; having just finished reading the Illuminatus! trilogy on the airplane and gotten little sleep, I was tired enough that, for a moment, I thought a sign pointing me to terminals "C THRU F" said "CTHULHU FHTAGN." At least, I assume it's because I was tired; maybe it's just that the Elder Gods have invaded my mind.fnord
Toronto is a wonderful city. It's bustling, diverse, stays up late and gets up early, is challenging but not terrible to drive around in*, and has been warm but not too hot so far. fanlain and hukuma get married later today! I've gotten to see them and a ton of other people I haven't seen in a while. There was a barbecue last night chez chocolatecoffee that was dubbed Toronto bab5; tons of people showed up. I ate great food, drank, and sat in the hot tub for much too long. It was quite probably the best BBQ ever.
I invited ioerror and sfllaw to crash the party, and they were made very welcome. ioerror said he was leaving the BBQ at 10 to go to a show. "What show?" said I. "The Legendary Pink Dots." HOLY SHIT. So he, sfllaw, enochsmiles, maradydd, janviere, and I headed to Lee's Palace and saw the fucking Legendary fucking Pink Dots. OMG. Edward Ka-Spel moaned and gibbered into a microphone and the Dutch saxophonist hammed it up for the audience and it was just awesome. After some picking up and dropping off of people and things at places, Simon and I went back to the party around 2, where it was still plenty populated, and socialized a little more before discovering that I did not, contrary to my belief, have a place to sleep at the Ryerson University residences, where many wedding guests are staying, that night after all. But chimerically and dag29580863 let me and sfllaw, who needed someplace to crash before catching an early train back to Montréal, sleep on the hide-a-bed in their room. Thank you so much, you two!
Today I am wearing my Cthulhu shirt, and it has received many appreciative comments. At noon we ("we" being some ever-shifting subset of the even larger wedding group) had lunch #1 at the Ryerson restaurant, then came lunch #2 a little later at a delicious Greek place, and then we regrouped at CN Tower. CN Tower was pretty cool. I've now been up as far as you can go on the tallest building in the world - 147 stories. I walked on the glass floor. One's sense of scale looking down from that high up is completely screwed up; it's a vertiginous experience. But it was a lovely day, and I had fun looking out over the city and the lake.
We met a little after 7 at the Madison Avenue Pub and proceeded to take over a large quantity of stools, chairs, drinks, and food. paisleychick and I lost at pool, first to eqe and zestyping, then to Sameer all by himself. Sad. Plans were made to go goth-clubbing Saturday night. I ended up at my home for the remainder of the weekend, the Courtyard by Marriott Downtown, around midnight, and here I am, using their wifi to blog from the lobby while bsittler and rebbyribs sleep in our room. Shortly I'll text around (nobody's using their cell due to roaming fees) to see if anyone's still interested in the late-night Tim Horton's run I proposed at dinner.
The wedding's in 16 hours. I'd better bring my camera for that, as I've neglected to bring it to anything that's happened so far. Mazel tov, fanlain and hukuma! Much love to you both.
*Due to a problem with my would-be Buffalo carpoolers' flight into BUF on Thursday that ended with their flying directly to Toronto instead, I had to take over auros's rental car reservation, and due to peculiarities of Budget's system, he can't take it back now. So I'm driving a minivan around Toronto for four days, and back to BUF on Sunday. Whee!
Toronto is a wonderful city. It's bustling, diverse, stays up late and gets up early, is challenging but not terrible to drive around in*, and has been warm but not too hot so far. fanlain and hukuma get married later today! I've gotten to see them and a ton of other people I haven't seen in a while. There was a barbecue last night chez chocolatecoffee that was dubbed Toronto bab5; tons of people showed up. I ate great food, drank, and sat in the hot tub for much too long. It was quite probably the best BBQ ever.
I invited ioerror and sfllaw to crash the party, and they were made very welcome. ioerror said he was leaving the BBQ at 10 to go to a show. "What show?" said I. "The Legendary Pink Dots." HOLY SHIT. So he, sfllaw, enochsmiles, maradydd, janviere, and I headed to Lee's Palace and saw the fucking Legendary fucking Pink Dots. OMG. Edward Ka-Spel moaned and gibbered into a microphone and the Dutch saxophonist hammed it up for the audience and it was just awesome. After some picking up and dropping off of people and things at places, Simon and I went back to the party around 2, where it was still plenty populated, and socialized a little more before discovering that I did not, contrary to my belief, have a place to sleep at the Ryerson University residences, where many wedding guests are staying, that night after all. But chimerically and dag29580863 let me and sfllaw, who needed someplace to crash before catching an early train back to Montréal, sleep on the hide-a-bed in their room. Thank you so much, you two!
Today I am wearing my Cthulhu shirt, and it has received many appreciative comments. At noon we ("we" being some ever-shifting subset of the even larger wedding group) had lunch #1 at the Ryerson restaurant, then came lunch #2 a little later at a delicious Greek place, and then we regrouped at CN Tower. CN Tower was pretty cool. I've now been up as far as you can go on the tallest building in the world - 147 stories. I walked on the glass floor. One's sense of scale looking down from that high up is completely screwed up; it's a vertiginous experience. But it was a lovely day, and I had fun looking out over the city and the lake.
We met a little after 7 at the Madison Avenue Pub and proceeded to take over a large quantity of stools, chairs, drinks, and food. paisleychick and I lost at pool, first to eqe and zestyping, then to Sameer all by himself. Sad. Plans were made to go goth-clubbing Saturday night. I ended up at my home for the remainder of the weekend, the Courtyard by Marriott Downtown, around midnight, and here I am, using their wifi to blog from the lobby while bsittler and rebbyribs sleep in our room. Shortly I'll text around (nobody's using their cell due to roaming fees) to see if anyone's still interested in the late-night Tim Horton's run I proposed at dinner.
The wedding's in 16 hours. I'd better bring my camera for that, as I've neglected to bring it to anything that's happened so far. Mazel tov, fanlain and hukuma! Much love to you both.
*Due to a problem with my would-be Buffalo carpoolers' flight into BUF on Thursday that ended with their flying directly to Toronto instead, I had to take over auros's rental car reservation, and due to peculiarities of Budget's system, he can't take it back now. So I'm driving a minivan around Toronto for four days, and back to BUF on Sunday. Whee!