Geeky Cat Miusings

It is pretty nice to hike through High Park on Halloween night and get away from the crowds and mayhem of downtown. Some people were wearing masks as they walked their dogs while others were dressed as joggers and I was pretty convinced that they were joggers. Good job! They are shooting a TV series in the park and they set up a little cemetary for the scene:

It seems there were other mysterious forces in the park that night. Observe the glowing orb:

As if there weren’t enough scary creatures walking the streets of Toronto on Halloween night….

While waiting for the bus that night, I was approached by a man. He held out his hand and said to me, “I just got out of jail and all they gave me are these two tokens”. Well, are those the best opening lines for panhandling…maybe the words were used to gain sympathy for his plight, but I think a lot of people think this person may be a bit dangerous and willing to do not so nice things to get what he wants. Isn’t that usually the reason why people go to jail in the first place? Yes, frightning people with innuendo’s of potential danger can scare people into giving up their money.

I totally freaked out at the Haunted Adventure this weekend. Not because there were friars who cut people into 800 pieces, or corpses crawling out of coffins, but because I saw a young man dressed in clam diggers and flip flops. Flip Flops! That means no socks and scarcely any shoes to cover his feet. That night the temperature dipped down to about 5 degrees above zero. I was wearing hiking boots and socks and my feet were still freezing and this guy was wearing flip flops. The Haunted Adventure involves hours of outdoor fun, including a hay ride through the haunted farm, so I would really recommend wearing warm clothes.

My wallet was stolen on the TTC last week and I placed a call to the police to notify them so that they have a record of the incident. A police officer returned my call two hours later, when I was out at a house party. Since I was a party and a little noisy, I found a quiet room to discuss the incident. The constable asked me to list all the items in my wallet. So I did and when I mentioned that my work id was also in the wallet, the constable asked me what is my employee id. I said I did not know it off the top of my head but that I had it written down at home. She gave me heck for not knowing it! She said what person does not know their employee id. She went on about this for some time. I thought that was very rude of her to insist that a normal person memorizes their id number. Why do they always make victims feel even worse by the way police treat them?

The party was fun and someone read my palm and said I like to dabble in the arts. The hostess had a name book that claims people develop specific characteristics based on their names. The book claims that people (usually girls) named Diana tend be very shy in childhood but become more fun and outgoing as they get older and develop the ability to make fun of theirselves. Interesting.

The week was pretty busy ordering new cards and trying to get everything back in order. The combination of coughing a lot, carrying heavy bags, and stress has made my back very tense and sore. I went for massage therapy and only experienced minor relief. For various reasons I haven’t been feeling so good. But fortunately this weekend was fabulous! Here are a few thing I enjoyed:

I went for the first time to a Live from the MET screening at the movie theatre. It was great to see the opera singers close up and see the passion in their faces! I would highly recommend the experience to opera lovers.

The Black Rider is a great gothic musical playing at the Tarragon Theatre. It is a very interesting and dark collboration between Tom Waits, Robert Wilson and William S Burroughs. A young man makes a deal with the devil to woo a beautiful young woman, but as always the bargain proves too costly. The recurrent themes of impending death are very well complimented by gleeful black humor. A perfect show for the Halloween season.

Another perfect outing for the season is the ghost walk. I have taken several ghost walks this year: Hamilton, Niagara-on-the-lake, Halifax and Toronto. I joined the Genova Tours ghost walk yesterday and found it to be excellent. We went through the dark streets and walkways of Toronto learning about our interesting history, spiced up with stories of bloodshed and hauntings. You may have been downtown during the day but the buildings of downtown Toronto must be seen at night. They take on a diffent ambiance in the dark, especially the gorgeous gothic buildings at the University of Toronto. Seeing the mark of the ax on a door when a man tried to murder another was chilling enough, but to see the aforementioned man’s face in the form of a gargoyle…..

Some how I was able to still enjoy myself at Nuit Blanche after someone stole my wallet. I was still upset about it and thinking about it quite often but it was good to be out and doing something fun to keep me from ruminating about it every minute. The yummy pizza gave me the energy to walk around the city on that fairly chilly night. I came very close to trying the pizza with blueberries on top. I think I’ll go back to Magic Oven one day and give the blueberry pizza a try.

What was notable about Nuit Blanche was that everything looked better in the brochure. Much better. I’m not talking about little touch-ups to gloss over imperfections. The brochure photo promised that we would be able to walk through a wooded forest that was growing beneath a typical acoustic office ceiling, under the unwholesome glow of florescent lighting. In reality the ceiling was placed in an alley way and there was office refuse under the ceiling. Mounds of old computers and manila folders were littering the alley - deliberately set there to make the participant think about the work environment and the amount of trash generated there. What if we were forced to keep all our trash? Our work places and homes would be very crowded and we would be forced to reconsider our buying habits. Most of us couldn’t live with piles of things everywhere — though I have met a few people who could and do.

Some people are saying there is no art in Nuit Blanche. If you are looking for paintings you should probably visit a gallery. This is art and it does generate some thought and it is fun. You need to think about what you see and share those thoughts. You can make fun of the art because that it part of the whole process - by making fun of it you learn more about the art, the concept, and yourself. Make sure you go with someone fun because Nuit Blanche is best shared.

The lines at coffee shops were very long making it difficult to get a good cup of coffee. It would be great if there could be coffee vendors on the street. I would also have bought a scarf if there were a street vendor selling them.

The funniest experience at Nuit Blanche for me was the trash can. Hoards of people were gathered on the sidewalk peering into an ordinary three receptacle bin. Inside the bin was dance music and coloured lights, reminiscent of a dance club.

The most thought provoking experience was the Waterfall at the Ontario Power Generation Building. A giant quilt made from recyclable plastic water bottles was suspended on the side of the building. It looked like a waterfall from afar but as you got close you realized that it was made of water bottles — they once had water inside of them. An interesting perspective on the state of today’s water and our usage the resource.

The scene keeps playing in my mind like a movie: what if I went to see the film at U of T instead of stopping to rent the DVD at the video store and then going home to watch it. Things would have been different - not only would my evening been different in terms of where, when, how, and with whom - but I would still have my wallet.

On Friday evening I was planning to go see Open Your Eyes with a group of people but, because of a long lasting cold, I felt the best thing to do was to go home and have an early night. I didn’t want to miss out on the movie so I called a video store to check if they had this 11 year old movie on hand, and they did. So I stopped at the video store to pick up the movie. That was the last time I saw my wallet. After picking up the video I resumed my trek home. It was fairly crowded on the Bloor subway and I did feel some pressure on my side, but I’m so used to having people brush against me that I did not bother to look. I should have. I just continued on my way thinking everything is cool. I didn’t notice anything was wrong until 24 hours later. I was getting ready to go to Nuit Blanche when I noticed that the zipper on my purse was open and my wallet was gone. I was all distressed. It was hard to believe. I was checking everywhere to see if it fell out but I knew if was stolen. I felt so bad. It is such an invasion of the self and a sense of loss - I absolutely hated the miserable turd that did this.

It is fortunate that the thief did not use my credit cards and I was able to cancel them in time. I will need to get new credit cards, debit card, and all kinds of identification cards. I would have preferred to just give the thief the money in my wallet rather than have to endure the inconvience of having to get new cards.

I know that this is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, but it is upsetting.

I keep thinking “what if” thoughts. What if I went to the movie downtown instead? What if I paid closer attention to the people surrounding me? What if I looked at the person when I felt brushing at my side?

Fortunately, I was still able to have a fun Saturday night. Of course, I kept thinking about what happened to my wallet, but it was a really nice evening.

I would really like to see my wallet and all the cards again. And I would absolutely love to see the photo I kept in my wallet of Pumpkin and Tammy sitting in a chair. It was taken some 12 years ago - before the digital camera. I don’t think I have a copy of it. It is irreplacable. Please return it to me!!!

Just a quick reminder to everyone that October is National Sarcastics Month. I wrote about it last year, so I won’t repeat myself.

Here are a few for you to power you up:

I’m so sorry about not writing my blog for more than a month but I find that time is very limited and so I have to choose what I can do and what I can’t.

Some quick highlights of the past month:

I have had a cough for more than two weeks and I can still feel a little tickle in my chest, but I am mending. I know that I will heal more quickly if I take proper care of myself and so I must restrict my late nights and try to get to bed at a decent hour, regardless of what excitement the night holds. Of course staying out late Saturday night is alright…

In September I went to Buffalo and visited the Albright Knox Art Gallery. The Op Art exhibit was beautiful! I was awed by the clever effects of Op art and would like to see more of it. Buffalo looked very nice too. Many people say it is an unimpressive city but I saw some beautiful houses there and would love to take some walking tours. I also had a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin D. Martin House Complex — an interesting house by an interesting man. But I would not want to live there. That is the beauty of travelling.

I had my first Russian sauna. It was very hot and hard to tolerate for long periods of time. As people lay on the benches they hit one another with bunches of dried branches and leaves from white birch in order to improve the circulation. When it is cold outside people run in the snow to cool off. Apparently this is great for the complexion but I would rather have a bad complexion than have to endure the cold.

Listening to Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglová at Massey Hall. They sang such beautiful songs and “Falling Slowly” just makes me dizzy.

I am the lucky recipient of some 30 pounds of gum. Long story. Come trick or treating at my house to get your share.

I went clothes shopping — I can’t believe that I haven’t been clothes shopping in a year. My wardrobe needs updating. Hello snazzy boots!

I went to the Polish, Ukrainian, Art, and Junction festivals. I was not terrifically enlightened by any of these, but they were nice outings and I had beer ice cream

What does one do if it is one week before the last long weekend of the summer and one desperately wants to make summer last longer? Take a day off and turn an ordinary weekend into a long weekend as well! That’s what I did this past weekend and it was wonderful.

On the first day of my long weekend I went to the McMichael Art Gallery to see sculpture by Joe Fafard. He is the artist who created The Pasture in the Toronto Dominion Tower…if you’ve ever seen it you will remember the life sized cows lazing about in the grass in the city. I loved the sculpture and spent a few hours enjoying it. There is a photo of me with one of his bulls. It was cool in the gallery and the bull was toasty warm from the sun’s rays so I couldn’t keep my paws off the bull.

The next day was an early wake up call for me because we were going to Prince Edward County and we were leaving early.

Our first stop was at the Lake on the Mountain which is a natural curiosity: it has a constant flow of clean, fresh water, with no apparent source…..and it is 60 metres above Lake Ontario!!! Mohawks offered gifts to its spirits and settlers thought it was bottomless. I was not courageous enough to dive in and see if it is actually bottomless. It is a perfect place for a picnic.

Next stop was the Macaulay Mountain Conservation Area where we enjoyed the Bird House City created by Doug Harnes. The houses were created by volunteers to look like historical buildings in the area. Apparently there is a McDonald’s drive through, but I didn’t see it. I also didn’t see a single bird in the bird house area, but it maybe it was just too hot at the time.

Check out more photographs of Prince Edward County.

Next we took a nature hike through the area. The terrain was very different from the Niagara region (the last hike I took). The hike was not as well organized as the Bruce Trail Club so the actual hiking part was too short. But fun none-the-less. And very muddy! Oh….and I heard many birds…and one cell phone.

Next we went on the Taste Trail - a delectable way to spend a day tasting all the local foods the region has to offer. The County Cider Company offers cider tastings to the thirsty traveller — and who doesn’t get thirsty when on the road — I had four samples of different types of apple cider including Iced Cider Wine — oh so good! The Fifth Town Artisan Cheese Company is a difficult place to leave because they keep serving tasty and unusual artisan cheeses such as nettle cheese. I would have loved to try cave-aged goat milk cheese. But that gives me a reason to go back. And then there is Slickers County Ice Cream, an ice cream lover’s dream come true. Pat and Marie create all natural artisan ice cream that is made fresh daily by hand in small batches. I had Campfire Creme - memory of marshmallows roasted over an open fire!

Picton is such a pretty town and filled with restaurants that sweetly call you to sample their offerings. We could not help ourselves from trying everything. But all good things must come to an end - we returned to Toronto sated and content.

What can you do if it is Sunday and it is hot and muggy and there could potentially be rain? Go to Glow-in-the-Dark mini putt of course! It is fun even when you’re as unskillful as I am. I am still totally amazed that I made a hole in one in one of the most difficult holes. My ball just hit the rocks in all the right places, bouncing back and forth until the ball found itself in its cozy hole! I am thinking that there must have been some Feng Shui influences that helped me score that hole. Maybe it was the 9th hole — since 9 is supposed to be my lucky Feng Shui number.

Sunday was also a day for feasting. The size of cake slices at Dufflet Pastries should be illegal! But the Lemon Parfait cake was so delicious! Next time I am going to share my slice instead of having a whole slice for myself. We compensated for the hefty dessert by going to the Healthy Vegetarian - hoping that some of their healthy veggie options will balance the effects of the lavish dessert we had earlier.

What a gorgeous day it was on Saturday! It was a perfect day to go to Parry Sound. It is a long trip up there so the first stop after securing boat tickets is at the Bay Street Cafe for a delicious lunch while gazing at the beautiful lakeshore and watching our boat arriving at the port.

Here I am on the Island Queen taking a cruise around Parry Island admiring the beautiful cottages on the rugged islands of Georgian Bay:

There are 30,000 islands but I only saw a small portion of them.

Parry Sound has Starbucks!!! Coffee break after tour.

And then down to Midland we go, listening to Tom Waits sing/talk in his rasping drawl.

The murals of Midland are one of Ontario’s largest and most beautiful outdoor galleries.

There are 34 murals in the downtown area. They are all within walking distance and beautiful to see.

See more photos from the day trip.

Two lovers sitting in a photo booth … an everyday scene? Not today because those two lovers were a pair of pigeons and they were in the Bathurst subway, one level down from the street level. It must be true love.