Post-Schna-ulations

As promised

Toronto stories, at last!
One of these days, I really will put pictures online so that I can post them here, but I'm lazy and currently have no computer at home. Add these two things together and you get no pictures.
Anyway, as promised, here are the highlights of our trip to Toronto:

FRIDAY: We went to the zoo. I love zoos. One could even argue that I have a mild to moderate obsession with zoos. To make the zoo experience that much more meaningful, this one had a moose.
We found a Nikon 7.1 mexapixel digital camera on the ground. I am proud that I figured out how to change the language to English (from Japanese) just by looking at all the little quasi-descript symbols in the menues. Sadly, the battery is now dead, as we have no cables to accompany this camera yet. :( However, this shall soon be remedied. I think that this camera probably cost more than we spent on our entire trip (*note* I do sympathize with the loser of said camera, but there was no way we were tracking her down to get it back to her).
We went to a club (the name eludes me) to watch some live bands play as part of a festival going on that weekend. Probably about 30 venues had live music from Thurs-Sunday, having 3-5 bands play each day. One of the bands, called "Kids These Days" was pretty awesome (we bought a cd).

SATURDAY: It was bloody miserable outside that day. Humid, hot, oppressive. That morning we went out for a breakfast buffet at the "Golden Griddle", a block or two from our hotel. Sitting in the window, eating our breakfast, I glance out to the street to see 5-6 middle aged (in their 40's or 50's, maybe) men riding their bicycles past the restaurant. After a few moments of observation (and one of hte guys standing up to pedal), I realize that they're all naked. Ah, the interesting sights you see in a city where public nudity is not illegal.
We went out later to the University of Toronto campus and walked around. After being out for several hours in the heat, we went a movie theater and saw the film "Palindromes", which was enjoyable (from the man who directed "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "Happiness").
That night we once again ventured out to see some live music, this time to a different bar. This place, called Rancho Relaxo, was pretty cool and the first band we saw was great. However, it was on the second floor with NO AC (and very few fans), and people crammed in nearly wall to wall. Needless to say, it was HOT. After an hour, when the second band came on and starting some hardcore sucking, we left, back to the AC of our hotel room.

SUNDAY: I can't remember. I know we went to the Royal Ontario Museum, which was fabulous. We walked around downtown a lot, ventured out to Queen Street, went into a few little shops - just explored. It was not as oppressive as Saturday, but still REALLY hot and humid out. Eventually we ended up back at our hotel with takeout pizza to watch Family Guy. As it was our last night and we had to be up early in the morning (Jon was flying home and I had to go set up for the conference), we stayed in and ordered a movie (a bad one I'm too embarassed to name, but it was perfect for our tired, brainless state of being at the time).

MONDAY: Conference stuff. I ended up killing time in the afternoon by going up in the CN Tower, getting lunch there, and reading for several hours before coming back down. That night I presented my poster for the first time, then headed back to the hotel with some takeout Sushi, which was AWESOME. Read a lot, relaxed, tried to de-stress for the poster presenting the next day (no one talked to me this night, but I knew I wouldn't be so lucky tuesday morning).

TUESDAY: Presented my poster in the morning, which went well. I spent some time in the afternoon perusing the other posters. Went back to the hotel and ran in the exercise room (which was unbearably hot). Took a shower and headed out to go to a baseball game ($2 tickets on Tuesday night at Rogers Center). Got home late and grabbed a slice of pizza.

WEDNESDAY: slept in late, went running, showered. Had excellent Sushi for lunch and then headed out to Castle Loma. If you're in Toronto, check it out - it's worth seeing. Sadly, I got there an hour before they closed, so I had to rush my visit a bit (though it's still doable in an hour). By this point in the week, I was ready to be home. Hanging out for three days by myself was enough. I went back with some Chinese food (yum!) and watched the baseball game, read a bit, and went to sleep. Left the next morning.

THE END.

(okay, so there weren't many exciting stories. The naked guys on the bikes, perhaps. Oh, and we saw some guy dressed as batman with an entourage of other guys where matching shirts. Their shirts had a picture of a cartoon guy who was REALLY WELL endowed. Yeah, that's about the best I can give you...sorry.)

posted by Schna @ 12:34 PM