Home From Toronto Again

We're back from yet another trip to Toronto. The Wedding went well, I was hung over for it after a day of drinking on a patio with John and Kim and a couple others. It was a great day, too great, Kate had to buy Gravol to make sure we were at peak performance for the wedding which thankfully wasn't until 5pm.

One of our Friday cohorts gave me his son's shoes. Seems the boy is 16 and wasn't into the dress shoes his father purchased for him. I remember such times very well and since I'm still of that nature a little bit I don't have good shoes. I have conservative shoes but nothing that anyone would actually enjoy looking at. It's odd to think people would enjoy looking at shoes but they do for some reason. So I happily took this pair and wore them to the wedding. I love the concept of passing things along, too often do things sit and rust, or are forgotten or just become smelly when we could give them to someone else. I don't just mean old clothes for the poor, or a can of pumpkin seeds for a food drive. I mean shoes that are perfectly good but you know you won't wear them, or video games that you haven't played in a year, or a microwave that's been replaced with a toaster oven. I was given a bike by a friend, then my dad said I could have his bike which was a little better and what was he going to do with it? So suddenly I had two bikes, people sell them all the time but they both had been given to me so I gave the first bike away myself, to a friend of a friend. I don't expect anything back for giving the guy a bike but then two years later I get a great pair of shoes. I would have got the shoes even if I had sold the bike but this way it feels better.

The wedding was at the Botanical Gardens in Toronto, not the one near Church St but a completely different one I had never heard of up at Lawrence and Leslie. Of course it rained a bit so I think we were forced indoors for the ceremony. We still managed to get outside and check out the gardens a bit during the reception. We even saw a little raccoon but I was too slow on the draw to take a picture of it.

It was good to see the guys again and after a late night we had an early train. We were pretty organized for it, we forgot my toiletries bag but I keep a spare set of all that stuff because I forget it a lot, and we forgot Kate's phone charger. I think we did pretty well. We loaded up on food and club soda, we got to the train boarding area with five minutes to spare. I pull the tickets out hand it to the ticket checker and suddenly it seems one of the tickets is missing. It's about 300 bucks to get a last minute ticket and we had 5 minutes. I frantically searched through my bag where the tickets had been all weekend. Nothing. I blamed the guy on our way out for taking the wrong ticket, extremely unlikely but I had to blame someone other than myself. With time winding down and me turning my thoughts to which bags I would take on the bus and which ones I would send with Kate on the train I suddenly remembered my back pocket. I think Kate was just about to reach her peak panic level when I said 'unless' and pulled the ticket out of my back pocket. The relief was very enjoyable, there are few emotions as satisfying as relief. If someone is going to find out you did something wrong, it's best to just say it right away. Kate I broke your favorite wine glass.

Just kidding about the wine glass. Sunday we met up with Dave who is visiting from Toronto, he put together the poetry gig. Both he and Kate were great as usual. There were two others, one I hadn't seen before, they were both fun to listen to as well. At one point in Kate's set she decided to ask the crowd if they would rather hear a poem about baseball or one that would embarrass me. After a chorus of cheers for the embarrassing poem my meek 'baseball' was met only with laughed and I was forced to endure an embarrassing poem. I've heard it before but usually I'm anonymous, or at least I pretend to be, this time there was no hiding but thankfully I was in the back corner of the room and it was pretty dark. A good night all around, and another late one but we did manage to have our first steamies ever.

Hot dogs (steamies) are all the rage in Montreal. I don't know how often I'll get them but we do live close to a number of hot dog places, yes a number I was surprised too. I has the bacon et formage avec moutard. It was bacontastic. Kate had a couple all dressed which I wasn't as happy with. After seeing friends at the wedding, hearing funny and sad poems and keeping my eyes dry the entire weekend it was three strips of bacon and as much melted cheese that they could squeeze into the dog that finally melted my heart, also there was beer with the hot dog so that didn't help.

Wednesday is St. John Baptiste day. There's a parade and a party at Parc Maisoneuve. We've got the day off so we're going to fully immerse ourselves in Quebec culture. I'm sure we'll have plenty of stories to tell from it.