Skipped breakfast again yesterday morning. Sleep is good.

I was meeting Cameron and Rick McGinnis for lunch (wait, have I been doing all of these entries without linking Cameron? I think so, but here it is. I spent the entire vacation giving her the hairy eyeball about not writing for over a year, so hopefully she will start again soon!), anyway, it was a two Canadian lunch near the Art Galley of Ontario.

We met right outside the AGO. Rick was waiting, and I almost missed him since I was looking for a man with a goatee and there was a man with a full beard in front of me. "I thought you had a goatee?" "I do, it's right here!" "But what about all of the beard around it?" "O, that's just not shaving!"

I decided to let him have his little fantasy. I, for instance, have a really skinny body, but I surround myself with this layer of fat so that it won't get scratched. I think I'm quoting Sarah, but since took down her archives, I don't know for certain.

We went to an outdoor restaurant and had Italian food and talked nonstop. Rick is totally cool, I wish I lived nearby him, and Cameron too, of course. Though hey, there are plenty of people who live in New York that I never see, maybe it's better to visit.

He is a 70 year old crotchety Jewish man trapped in the body of a Catholic Canadian in his late 30s.

We visited an annoyed cat, then went to the Gallery. Rick wasn't going to come, but Cameron and I were so engaging and interesting and stuff that he was unable to tear himself away from our sides. Or something like that.

I was dying to see the Surrealist exhibit. On the poster it says "Dali Magritte Man Ray Duchamp", and though I don't particularly care for Man Ray, the other three are my in my top four artists (Van Gogh belongs in there somewhere), and it was great.

I saw basically one Magritte, but there were plenty of Dalis and Duchamps. I am mad about Duchamp, he is my choice for the one person I would go back in time to meet if I could. He must have been really fun to be around, though maybe it's one of those things that was better in retrospect than to actually sit through, like Andy Kaufman reading "The Great Gatsby".

I bought a Club Dada t-shirt and two notebooks and a pencil at the giftshop, so I was happy.

It was a really amazing museum, excuse me, gallery. I'm sorry, as far as I am concerned, a gallery is tiny and sells art and a museum is big and shows art, so this was totally a museum, even if Canadians insist that I am mistaken.

Rick ditched us after a while and Cameron and I trooped through the rest of the galseum (that's the best I can do). I could eat it up with a spoon.

We left after a bit and started with the walking and the shopping. All is good with the walking and the shopping.

We stopped at another bookstore, where I got a bunch of bath stuff on sale--even at a bookstore I cannot stay away from the bath stuff. I also got a brush and soap dish made out of hard Lucite with plastic goldfish floating inside. And by floating, I mean floating! In water! How could anyone pass that up?

And there was a Lush, so I decided to do the major Lushness, and I got all of my shampoos, a few bars of soap, a gold glittery bath melt, and a Canadian bath bomb filled with confetti and a little paper flag and all kinds of stuff. The kind of bath bomb where you get out of the bath dirtier than when you got in!

We also stopped at this dear little church with this lovely garden behind it. I took lots of pictures with my regular camera, and with the digital really only shot the sweetest grey cat in the world.

I realize that this is the most photo-intensive entry on the plant earth, but the next thing that happened was we were walking down the street when we came upon the Balloon Man. And all was lost.

Cameron was the one who wanted to stop, because she used to be a busker and is extremely supportive towards street performers. This guy was amazing, and no-one was looking at him. He was complaining about how when he's in Europe, he could barely beat away the crowds that would surround him, but that Canadians make rotten audiences. But we started the audience, and a nice crowd gathered for him.

He made a butterfly...

And a snake...

He had a really good patter, and made some really astonishing things out of balloons. Those snake eyes, above, were sold rubber, and he made them out of balloons by blowing them up and then pushing them in and tearing them off, and I couldn't figure out how he ended up with something that could bounce on the sidewalk without busting the blown up balloon!

Then we went off to Starbucks, first stopping in a graffiti and chain-filled vacant lot and taking some art pictures.

At the Starbucks, though, something terrible happened. I was drinking my regular hot chocolate, which I like just fine, but not enough to patronize Starbucks on a regular basis, when a woman came around with a tray of little cups.

"Would you like to try a chai crème frappuccino?"
(me to Cameron) "What's chai?"
"It's a kind of spicy tea. But don't think of it as tea, think of it as just a beverage!"

I took one because hey, there was a nice hunk of whipped cream on the top, and if nothing else I could scrape that off and eat it very happily. So I took a sip. And the top of my head about came off. I have never tasted anything so delicious in all of my born days--it's sweet and cinnamony and slushy, it's like a cinnamon milkshake. I literally started shaking, I loved it so much.

I have been taken over by Starbucks, me, the last holdout. All will be assimilated! I want another one. Right now. A big one. No, bigger. I want to live inside a chai crème frappuccino. Do they stop serving them in the winter? Do they think that people don't want iced drinks but for in summer? O God, what will I do?

It's July. I'm worrying about what will happen five months from now. I'm in deep shit. Deep chai crème frappuccino. Yum, deeper...

Then it was time to go home, and we were able to take a streetcar. Streetcars are so cute! Rick said that the city is trying to get rid of them again so there would be more room for cars. Poo on cars, why would anyone want to get rid of such a cute form of public transportation! It may not be entirely practical, but a practical city is a dull city.

It actually ended in a subway station, and that was where Cameron and I parted. It was so great to see her, and so great of her to take so much time over three days to take me places and show me things. And since she was doing it not out of a sense of obligation, but out of a deep love for her city, that made it even more fun.

Start updating again, Cameron, and come to Journalcon!!

Before going home, I had to stop at the drugstore, because I was on my period and didn't have any of the necessary accoutrements. While I was there, I thought I'd also buy the candy that I need to take home with me, the Crunchie bars, the Dairy Milk, a couple of other candy bars that looked pretty good, and when I got up to the cashier, I realized what I had.

I was buying a package of maxi pads and $13 worth of chocolate. I was a walking stereotype.

And Day Four of my vacation was over. And today I go home.

Today's horoscope:
You bring a new twist to a traditional amusement. Open to experimentation, you add spice and fun to a familiar pastime.

One year ago today:
Monty's new trick is hypnotism.

* Yesterday / Index / This Month / Tomorrow *

E-Mail

Graphics by the independent Saundra!

This page was written by hand. My hand. Only pussies use HTML editors.
Last Updated Mon 22 July 14:15:09 2002