So, where was I when it was yesterday? Ah yes, I was asleep on the plane, no, I was just waking up on the plane as we were landing in Buffalo.

I got off the plane, got my bag at baggage claim (somehow I knew that I'd walk by and my bag would be one of the first ones off and I'd just be able to grab it without stopping, just like in Chicago), and headed off in the direction of where I thought I remembered the city buses were.

And there they were! Right where I remembered. I looked at the bus names, and one of them, 24 Genessee, jumped out at me and I was pretty sure that was the one. Then, that bus pulled up, and I asked if it went past the Greyhound station, and it did, so I got on.

I have no idea how this stuck in my swiss-cheese brain a year later after only being in Buffalo and taking this bus once, but it was clear as water.

The bus took about an hour, I missed the 8.10a Greyhound by about 20 minutes, so I had to wait two hours for the 10.25a. I bought my round-trip ticket, and my choices to go back on Sunday were to get back at 3.30p, only an hour and a half before my flight, when there is also an hour-long bus trip to the airport, or to get back six and a half hours early. At first I thought that the latter was what I would have to do, but then I decided that there are lots of flights to Buffalo, and I am not spending my last day of vacation in Buffalo, NY, the most dreary city on the eastern seaboard, and this is coming from a person who has been to Trenton, NJ more than once.

The joys of the Buffalo Greyhound station are not so much many to behold. Once you have gone to the bathroom, you have pretty much exhausted them. That's not really true, there's a pinball machine and a Tetris machine, and you can get an ice cream sandwich, and there's a bunch of Christmas teddy bears going for 50% off in the gift shop, so it is in fact a garden of earthy delight. Maybe I could take the early bus on Sunday and spend all 6 1/2 hours right there!

I went into the snack shop and got a sausage biscuit and hash brown patty that was half as good and twice as expensive as McDonald's, then sat out in the lobby and desperately tried to stay awake until 10.25a. And time did not fly. My God, that is an understatement.

The worst bit was when 10.25a came and went without anyone actually being allowed onto the bus. People kept coming and going through the glass doors, only to be turned back into the Most Boring Bus Station on Earth.

I was barely keeping awake, when finally they let us onto the bus. Now, I know that the way it works is you sit down, they drive you for about five minutes, then you get off and you take all of your bags with you and you go through customs, so no need to get too comfortable, nor too attached to your seat.

I fell asleep immediately and woke up when we stopped at customs, but that took much longer than it should, so I think we didn't leave Buffalo until at least an hour late. Customs was pretty straightforward on the Canadian side, much more so than it will be going back to the States.

"Next."
(handing him my passport) "The extension is in the back."
"Where are you going?"
"Toronto."
Are you bringing anything in?
"No."
(waves me on)

I think I looked too sleepy and harmless to delay any longer than that, so I went back and sat on the bus. Everyone was seemingly also back, but we sat there for at least half an hour more. Clearly, someone was being checked muck more carefully than the rest of us.

Finally, two men came on board, an older, hippyish-looking white man, and a middle-aged black man from Montreal. The black man had been sitting across from me, so he headed for that seat again. Of course, I don't know if I was sitting in the exact same seat that I had been, I just approximated, because it didn't really matter.

Well, it mattered to this guy. Apparently, he had left his water and his chips at his seat, and he wanted to sit in his seat, and he pitched the most unholy fit. The bus driver made him sit down, but after we started moving, he got up again and was cursing to high heaven. He wanted his water! He wanted his chips! He wanted his seat! He wanted a kick in the pants, but nobody gave him one.

He was a black, male, French-Canadian Veruca Salt, he was.

Finally he sat in the back of the bus, but he didn't shut up for ages, yowling like a stuck pig who has learned the word "fuck".

Because we were running late, the driver skipped Niagara Falls, which was too bad, since I remember it being so heavenly beautiful to drive by last year. Niagara is the tackiest place on earth, really dreadful, but the pure beauty of the falls themselves is so incredibly strong, that no amount of man-made ticky-tacky surrounding it can lessen its incredible strength.

Without that to look forward to, I went back to sleep and woke up when we got to Toronto. I actually woke myself up with a little snore, and hope to hell that I wasn't snoring the whole time. I didn't notice anyone looking determinedly away from me, but you never know.

Got into the station, got my bearings, and started walking to Victoria University.

I remembered that it was close enough to walk, but not quite how far it was. And. It. Was. Hot. So mother hot, you have no idea. At one point, I stopped and rang the dorm and made certain that I was walking in the correct direction, because it was far too hot to have to go over the same ground twice.

"About how much farther is it?"
"I'm not certain."
"Maybe, five minutes?"
"Yeah, about that."

O, so totally not five minutes, it did not take. It was painfully, nightmarishly hot, it might have been worse than it was the day before in New York, which is hard to believe, but not only was it worse, but I had only had something under three hours of sleep spread out over eight hours and was dragging my luggage.

I thought that walk would never end, never never, just like I thought that I would spend my life waiting for the van the night before, I was fairly sure that now I would spend the rest of my life staggering down the street, trying not to faint from the heat, heading for a Charles Street that does not exist.

I was about ready to fall down in the street and wait for winter, but then, through my bleary eyes, a block away, shining like the sun, I saw the Bay Charles Towers. "Bay Charles!" I thought, "It must be on the corner of Bay and Charles! The promised land is in sight!" And, thank you Jesus, it was. I think it was at least half an hour's walk in 100° heat. I think I should have gotten a taxi.

So I went into the lobby of the dorm, the air-conditioned lobby. I practically fell to my knees and wept tears of blood. I couldn't check in for an hours, but I couldn't care less, that meant that I could sit in that lobby, that lovely lobby, and try to get my body temperature down to some sort of a reasonable level.

I fell asleep again, of course. It was a very comfortable couch. It could have been a bed of nails on fire, though, and I still would have slept the sleep of the angels. An hour later I woke up, and tried to check in, but was asked to pay the whole bill right at the start.

I had stopped at an ATM during the walk from hell and got out $100, but needed $150 for the dorm, which I didn't have on my debit card, and they don't take Amex, so I had to back out into the day and find another bank machine and try to convince it to give me another $60. Thank heavens I had gotten cool and napped and rested my little feetsies, or I would have burst into tears at the thought.

I bought some water, too, and was tired enough that I had a real problem with the money. I mean, the two currencies that I know without having to think about it are American and British, so me being so tired and the Queen's head being on this money, meant that I started seeing British.

The Canadian quarter is the size of a new 10p, the Canadian dime is the size of a new 5p, and the Canadian nickel is the size of an old 5p. The loonies and twonies are very unique, no problem there, but I kept taking four quarters and thinking it was 40¢ instead of a dollar.

Anyway, I got back to the dorm, gave them their money, went to my room, and slept for four hours.

As I'm writing this, I'm watching the new DVD of The Usual Suspects, which I resented buying because I also have the old DVD of The Usual Suspects, and I'm watching the featurette, and all I can say is what the hell happened to Chazz Palminteri?

This movie was made eight years ago, and showing the actors then and now, Kevins Spacey and Pollack basically look exactly the same, Gabriel Byrne looks a little more ragged, but still handsome, Stephen Baldwin and Benicio del Toro were both extremely young when they did the movie, so their heads have gotten fatter with age, but Chazz Palminteri, who was huge and handsome just a few years ago, looks awful, like a little old man.

He is tiny and shrunken, and it looks like his bones have gotten smaller and his skin has stayed the same, just puddled around this smaller skeleton. He has aged twenty years in the last eight. He has to be sick, I mean really sick, cancer sick. He's wearing a little wool hat, like he's either trying to hide the fact that he's losing his hair, or he's keeping his head warm, because he is susceptible to illness.

It's quite shocking to see this man who was so vigorous and powerful just a minute ago, become Grandpa.

Anyway, back to the story.

I'm staying in a different building from last year. It is a whole different arrangement than before--last year was like a normal dorm situation, with a room on a long hallway of rooms and down the hall was a bathroom with four stalls and four showers and two tubs and so on.

This is much more like a little compound. There is a hallway, but only a few doors, and behind each door is a kitchen and a common room surrounded by seven bedrooms and three bathrooms, each with a toilet and combination shower/bath. Very homey!

I like it alot, though I did find out the drawback when I got up at 7.30a this morning and had to pee so badly that my back teeth were swimming, and all three bathrooms were filled with showering people. Showering! At 7.30a! While on vacation! Freaks. Other than that, though, I really like the setup.

The other really good thing about it is that it is air-conditioned. Not its own air-conditioning, but a vent leading out to the air-conditioning in the common room. It actually got kind of cold at one point, but there are two sets of air-conditioning with two sets of controls, one on each side of the room, and I can turn down the one that leaks into my room without making the common room too hot.

It's pretty sweet. I'll definitely request this building next time.

So I got up at 8.30p and went over to Yonge to grab some dinner and call Cameron.

I also thought I'd stop in at Lush, since I purposely brought no shampoo or conditioner or soap or anything, but unfortunately, they were closed. Closed! So filthy I would have to remain.

Not to mention pink-footed. When I dye my hair, you see, and I rinse it off, the dye runs onto my feet and I don't notice it until I look down the next day and exclaim over my bright pink feet. The funny thing, though, is that my sandal straps rubbed off the pink in stripes, so my feet actually look more sunburned than dyed.

Called Cameron, and we talked for simply ages. "How long before I have to put in more money?" "Never! You can talk all night on just a quarter." Now that is a civilized way to run a phone system.

She asked me what I wanted to do while I was in town, and I said go to museums, shop and see the Space Needle.

"You mean the CN Tower, it's the world's tallest free-standing structure!"
"I do?"
"The Space Needle's in Seattle."
"Well, it's needle-shaped and it points towards space, so I think that you missed out on naming it properly.

Amusingly, every time anyone mentions the CN Tower, usually to correct me after I called it the Space Needle for the hundredth time, they repeat the fact that it's the world's tallest free-standing structure. "That's the CN Tower. It's the world's tallest free-standing structure, you know!" It's like whenever I say my name to someone for the first time, I say, "Zuckert, that's Z as in zebra, U-C-K-E-R-T" and the zebra is actually part of my name at this point, the real name of the CN Tower includes its stats.

Anyway, I told Cameron that I was going to have dinner at McDonald's, and she, horrified, told me to eat at Toby's, which is on Yonge and Bloor. I went to Yonge and Bloor and could not find it, it totally was not there at all not even one little bit, so I went to Taco Bell.

Nothing like a little local cuisine whilst in a foreign country, huh?

I walked along the street for a little minute, watching the people. That's the most astonishing thing about Toronto, about Canada as a whole, is that there are all these people walking around and they look like us and they sound like us and you'd think that they are us, but you know what? They are not American! The whole country is filled with foreigners!

I know it sounds like I am being facetious, but I swear I'm not. There is no reason for them all not to be American, you know, except for the fact that they are not. It's like a little twist in my head.

Anyway, after Taco Bell, back to the room, watched Say Anything, back to sleep again, for the sixth time that day. And Day One of my vacation was over.

Today's horoscope:
News of expansion in the home arrives--a visit, plans to add on, a new child, pet, or other arrival.

One year ago today:
I believe very strongly in having a day off directly after having four days off.

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