the last few days, in a nutshell

This was going to be part of 'generic update #7 (Silver Dollar, bluegrass)', but I changed my mind.

Apart from 2 academically orientated posts (1 of which is still unfinished... gah!), I've slacked a bit with the blog in the last week. This post is just a basic summary of what's been going on (a fair amount of which has been somewhat quirky):

On the way home after Friday's lecture, I saw an old woman in St. George dressed as a strawberry. I wasn't proud, but everything she was wearing (shoes, socks, trousers, blouse, jumper and hat) were all BRIGHT red and it was hard not to laugh.

I'd a busy schedule for the day (lecture, home, Skype, tour, home, eat, TRANZAC), so it was practically inevitable things wouldn't go to plan. And although I wasn't convinced it was temporally possible to fit everything in, I didn't expect things to turn out quite the way they did:

The lecture finished early, giving me a head start. I rushed home, and took a "short cut" that ended up taking 20 minutes longer than it's longer contemporary. I was still ahead of myself, but some technical glitches with Skype put me unwantingly back on schedule. After a nice conversation with my Grandparent's and a rushed lunch, I headed Downtown, ahead of myself once again, to catch the ISXO Harbourfront tour.

As I prepared to cross the road to campus, however, an elderly man asked me to help him across the road. Taking him across the road turned into walking him across the campus, and a 5 minute walk ended up taking 40. I have no problem with this whatsoever, and I don't want it to sound like I do. I accepted that I wouldn't make the tour, and instead spoke to the old timer (Bill) about UofT, London, how things had changed since the olden days, and much else, before leaving him at the University College book sale.

It was an experience to say the least. My favourite part was walking (very slowly) past the Varsity Arena, whereupon a team practice was taking place. As some sort of motivation for the players, "Eye Of The Tiger" was being played at full volume through the Arena's PA System. The image in my head was of what me and Bill must have looked like to onlookers.

Here the day fell into disrepair. I ran to the ISXO and told the story of why I was late. It was greeted with awe, and I was praised for doing such a selfless act (a bit over-the-top, I think). They gave me a number to ring and request to join the tour late, but I decided against it on account of being starving. Instead I went home, ate, and missed Hugh's thing AGAIN.

Luckily though there was a party at Huron, to which I went instead.

The weekend wasn't hugely eventful, and it wasn't until Monday that I didn't anything of note outside the house. It was Ceara's birthday, and she'd planned a celebratory meal at an Italian Restaurant downtown. I arrived late again (I'm rubbish at being on time recently...), but they'd changed the dining plans while I was on my way anyway. Now we were headed to Sneaky Dee's, a restaurant that had been recommended to me by Laurie on arrival in Toronto.

Sneaky Dee's is a restaurant come concert venue, but we limited our activities to the restaurant section. The food is Mexican, and I had two enchiladas and a taco. All were delicious, though not spicy enough despite vigorous lashings of jalapeño sauce.

After the meal and post-meal conversation, we went outside and decided what (if anything) to do next. Some people left, but the bulk of us headed to the Red Room for some drinks. I really liked it in there, it felt sophisticated. There were bookshelves dotted about, the waiting staff wore cardigans, they had lamps lighting the place rather than overhead lights, and it was just a really nice atmosphere overall. We lowered the tone a bit by playing "who can skim the salt and pepper pots across the table and get them closest to a predetermined point" for a while.

That was fun.

After lots of beer had been consumed by the rest (I'd ran out of money), we headed home. It was late, I was tired, and it was time for bed.