Saturday, An Adventure in Bicycle Overload

What a lovely weekend of sun and outdoorsiness. Saturday I spent the whole morning lollygagging about, then decided to punch my winter-induced agoraphobia in the face by taking Mlle. Bicyclette out of the shed and dusting her off. Zut alors! She had two flat tires. So, I walked her up to the Canadian Tire, and proceeded to buy NOT ONLY a new bicycle pump, but also a 48″ level, a heat gun, and a can of outdoor paint. Then, I teetered over to Home Outfitters with my already cumbersome load of household goods and bought 4 jumbo bath towels and 8 large canvas-lined wicker baskets for the bathroom. Overburdened to the point of absurdity, Mlle. B and I struggled home. She shouldered most of the load, but it was me doing all the pushing and the guiding and the balancing, so it took quite a while to get all that stuff home. Cars are for pussies!

Debbie Travis: Dull and In Person

Sunday JVL and I went to the National Home Show to see home stuff and Debbie Travis. It was a good excuse to leave the house, and we got to walk through some nice gardens with lots of Japanese stone arrangements, and look at appliances and gigantic barbecues and what have you, but I don’t think I’d rush out to do it again.

Debbie Travis live and in person is all well and good, but I guess what I really wanted was to see her wielding a paint roller and mitre saw, and have her instantly transform and redecorate the stage into a cozy den right before our eyes. Instead, she talked at length into a badly equalized and deafeningly-amplified microphone about her new paint line. Not interesting.

Wandering Roncesvalles and Committing Cheese Suicide

After the show, Justin and I embarked on a really long walk, from Exhibition Station allllll the way up to Dundas West and Dufferin. I have decided I love the uber-Polish Roncesvalles Village.

It was a lovely sunny day, and we stopped by Dan’s house for a sit on the porch and sipped a beer and admired his new tattoos. Then, a leisurely stroll along Bloor West led us to Max’s Gourmet Market, where I proceeded to commit lactard suicide and bought FIVE different kinds of cheese, including 3 different sheep cheeses, which JVL and I will sample either tonight after he gets home from his basketball game with Glenda, or tomorrow.

Ukrainians eat Italian, Dutch eat Spanish

We had no luck finding a restaurant, since Lemon Meringue and Yumi Sushi were closed, and we didn’t feel like pasta (apparently Ukrainians LOVE Italian food – who knew?) so we hopped back on to the subway with our handy 2-for-1 Day Pass and went to Royal York.

A small Spanish restaurant offered tapas, which JVL had never tried before, so we decided to give it a shot. Tapas are small appetizer-sized portions of food that are usually ordered in great quantities to create a meal of infinite variety. A massive sampler plate, basically. We had something from almost every species of the animal kingdom (JVL remarked that the meal reminded him of Noah’s Ark, if Noah had despaired of the rain ever ending and decided to have an on-deck barbecue).

Seat-fiends and Baby-cues

After dinner we took the Jane bus home, to see if it was any less shitty than the Keele bus (FYI, it’s not – Jane bus people are seat-stealing fiends and I loathe them) and then rearranged furniture in the bedroom and re-worked the shelves and got a surprise visit from Justin’s aunt Monica and uncle Jim who brought ANOTHER piece of baby furniture over. The dresser that accompanies the crib.

Jesus, people, I get it! Reproduce and fill the earth with my fruit and what have you. I’ll procreate when I’m damned good and ready and not a moment before, thank you. Unless Justin swaps my Evra patch for a cunningly designed band-aid, that is. 🙂