I was climbing last night as usual and I happened to leave at the same time as one of the co-op students who was also climbing that night. At the same corner as the gym is an establishment known as "Jilly's." I've never been there but I believe it is a "gentleman's club" of some sort.

Anyway, I normally wait for a streetcar down the road a bit, but since the co-op was also taking the streetcar I waited with him at the stop in front of this "Jilly's." We were chatting and a young woman came out and joined us in the bus shelter. She asked if we would mind if she had a smoke in the shelter because it was cold out and she "had less clothes than the average bear" on under her fairly short jacket.

Well, I can't say I approve of cigarettes, but I'm generally non-confrontational so I said that would be fine. The co-op and I continued to have a pleasant conversation for a minute and then I noticed that she was in fact smoking a joint and not a cigarette. Then she asked if we'd heard about the accident just up the road. We used this opportunity to exit the shelter and see if this accident meant there would be no streetcars for a while. And at this point we also decided to wait at the next stop down the road.

Not that I have a problem with strippers or marijuana, it was just a damn weird situation and was compounded by the fact that I was with someone I only slightly knew. If I were with a close friend we could have communicated silently and been amused or whatever, and if I were with someone I didn't know at all I could have just done my own thing. But being with an acquaintance who I would have to see again in the near future, yeah, that threw me off.

On a related note, all of the big pictures on the side of Jilly's were boarded over that night, so maybe the rumours of it closing down are true. I wouldn't be surprised at all. Queen and Broadview is prime for condo developments. My climbing gym is going to be torn down in a year and a half for a condo in fact. Unfortunately the people who run the gym only rent the building so they had no control when the owner was given a dump truck full of money for the land. They do intend to move the gym to a new location however, so I hope that works out. It really is the best gym in Toronto in my opinion.

One final thing for the night. One of the random blogs I read, Dooce, just won four awards at the 2008 Bloggies, which I guess is the equivalent of the Oscars or something. It was also ranked number five in a list of the world's 50 most powerful blogs. Craziness. I like reading it because it's amusing and well written. Plus the author posts some really good photos of her dogs and the world around her. The blog is famous because the author was fired from her job back in 2002 for blogging about work. In fact, the name of the blog has been verbed, to mean getting fired for blogging (ie. being dooced). The situation turned out OK for her though, as the blog apparently makes the author enough money in advertising to provide a middle-class life for herself and her family in Utah. Hmm...maybe I should throw up a few Google ads here.

Staying at work until 9pm when you arrived at 9am is less than awesome.

Not too much is going on right now, I feel like I'm just biding my time until winter decides to go away. I did do my taxes last night though. But they weren't that exciting because I only get like $200 back. My RRSP is deducted directly from my pay cheque so I pas less tax all year long. Which is better I guess but it's still fun to get a big lump sum in the Spring.

I also signed up for the Zipcar service here in Toronto after a coworker shared an awesome deal with me (no application fees and a lower yearly fee, contact me for details if you're interested). I still might not use it that much but at least it isn't costing much to try it. I plan on making an Ikea/Costco trip as soon as I can.

Wing night tonight almost failed spectacularly. I was organising it because Jen had to study and it tends to fail when I organise. Tonight I suggested Le Papillon, a french-ish restaurant on Church street. I went there once a year or so ago and really enjoyed the tourtière, but apparently everyone else thinks the place is horrible. Each response to the wing night email was more negative than the last. It really put me in a foul mood. Anyway, I ended up just meeting Patrick, Chris, Matt and Toni and we went for food at the Queen Mother on Queen street west. It was really good, but I still have a hankering for some tourtière. After food we went back to Chris's to play Star Munchkin and watch the snow storm (with extra thunder and lightning). And now I'm in a less bad mood.

Can't let February 29th go by without a post!

This weekend was an unexpected long weekend as we in Ontario celebrate "Family Day," a new holiday invented by the provincial government. I didn't really spend time with family, but it was still a nice break.

Friday night my brother came to stay with us as he missed his connecting bus to visit his girlfriend in Belleville. Something happened (not sure what yet) that made it so that his bus left Waterloo two hours late. Of course he still had to stand outside for those two hours because it's Greyhound and they're not very good at telling the people standing in line in the cold what's going on. Ahh...memories. So Anthony stayed on our couch and we had some Pizza for supper. We also watched four episodes of "Flight of the Conchords" which is truly an amazing show.

Kim has an exam for a course for work coming up so I spent the rest of the weekend doing things that took me away from the apartment so she could study. Saturday I went on a big shopping trip for things that I've wanted to get for a while. I picked up a knife block with knives, new running shoes and shorts for the gym, season three of The Office on DVD, a bunch of books, some new batteries for my key fob, and finally, a Playstation 2! The PS2 I managed to get used from EB for only $40! It seems to work great so far and it even came with the network adapter! Not sure what to do with the network adapter but in any case I can now play Guitar Hero again! Yay!

Saturday night Kim and I joined Toni and Patrick and Adrienne at Matt's place for pizza and cake. The cake was a super tasty chocolate truffle cake from Dufflet on Queen West and was really really good. I got to talk to Patrick and Toni a bunch about fun camera stuff and even got to try out the wireless flash feature on their new Nikon D300. It's pretty cool what you can do with a proper flash and it made me rethink my original disdain for all things flash (I prefer the light of the scene, not artificial light). It turns out I just need to spend more money on better stuff. Haha. Anyway, after supper Toni and I went down to Chris's place to play Star Munchkin with him and Justin. It was very "Chez Geek" like and quite amusing.

Sunday I went climbing in the afternoon after watching a bunch of the Office with Kim in the morning. It was a good outing, and I did a fun climb where I was trying to emulate being shorter by never reaching more than three inches above my head. It made the climb much harder and really forced me to use better technique. When I got home Kim and I made some yummy pork chops with cream of broccoli soup and vegetables and rice. Then we watched a lot more of the Office; we're almost done season three!

Today I met up with Adrienne and we went to the Autoshow at the convention centre. I've never been before and it was pretty good. I'm not really thinking of ever buying a car so I was mostly interested in all the super fancy things but I did enjoy sitting in a Mini Cooper. If I were to buy a car I would want a small one, but most of the small ones I've sat in are very uncomfortable for me. The Mini wasn't cramped at all though so that was pretty cool.

Valentine's rose

Mercedes something or other

New Dodge Viper

Ooooh, it's a red car

Totally a southern belle car

A blue and white car!

That car has a trunk, awesome!

Lamborghini lineup

Lamborghini Countach 25th anniversary edition

Lamborghini Diablo

Lamborghini concept car

Maserati...nice

Ferrari

Mazda concept car...runs on Ethanol!

This weekend was pretty lazy, I played some Mario Galaxy, read a bunch of my book and watched almost all of the first two seasons of the Office with Kim. Good times! We also made some really good chili (with a loaf of sourdough from the market) for supper on Saturday and I made some healthy Muesli stuff to eat for breakfast. It's oats with a bunch of different dried fruits and vegetables. Thanks Mrs. Jutan for the recipe!

Muesli...mmm healthy

Chili with shredded cheese and sour cream!

I went to see Cloverfield with Kim tonight after a quick supper of Butter Chicken roti from Gandhi Roti (mmm...roti). Anyway the movie was pretty good, obviously no deep meaningful content, but definitely one of the best monster movies I've ever seen. I read some critic say that this was what the late-90s remake of Godzilla should have been, and I think that was a very apt description.

It's all shot first person sort of Blair Witch Project style, but with a better quality camera. It's pretty shaky which can be disorienting and unpleasant at times, but I found that I eventually got used to it.

Whenever I see a movie about some sort of disaster and it's effects on large cities I think about how bad it is to be in a large city when anything out of the ordinary happens. There's basically no way to get out of the city and there are so many extra bad things that can happen (like buildings falling over when giant monsters fall into them). Anyway, I comfort myself knowing that Toronto wouldn't be a very interesting place for monsters or other disasters to come visit, so I'm probably OK here.

Last Friday Matt and Toni hosted a surprise birthday party for Patrick at Matt's house and it went really well. Everyone even managed to keep it a surprise. We had sushi and pizza and all kinds of other snacks and drinks and I think maybe thirty people showed up.

Saturday night I played Chris's new version of Ticket to Ride with him and Patrick and Toni. Board games are fun, but I never get to play any of the ones they have enough times to get any good at them. They always seem to have new ones.

Anyway, Sunday was climbing in the morning (which was excellent) and then I played Super Mario Galaxy with Kim for like 6 hours or something. The game is primarily one player, but a second can help with some small things as the main player moves throughout the level. Anyway Kim started a game while I was climbing and she seems to be a bit addicted now. It's pretty amusing.

Sunday night Kim and I went to the gym for some proper exercise and that went pretty well. We met Chris there and he showed me a couple stretches and things which is good because I'm pretty incompetent.

The rest of my Montreal trip was pretty good, although there wasn't much to report on. I spent most of the time working and the rest out with co-workers for supper and drinks. The hotel was really nice, and the flight back was as nice as the flight in. I really didn't get to see Montreal though, so that was too bad.

Rob is off to Australia for a year so we had a couple going away events for him this weekend. On Friday Kim and I met him with Patrick to go to the Old Mill Inn for a Winterlicious meal. It was a really nice restaurant and the food was great. Last night was the official going away party for Rob at a bar in Queen West. I think he managed to pull in about 50 people which was pretty impressive. We had a great time having drinks and food, chatting and play pool. I'm going to miss Rob so I'm glad there was a good opportunity to see him a bunch before he's off.

Today we cleaned a bunch and relaxed, and I played with Patrick's camera some more. Now that things are unpacked and clean I even took some pictures of the apartment for the blog. Tonight we're having supper with Matt and probably watch the new James Bond movie on his fancy new TV.

Kitchen and Dining Room

Kitchen

Bathroom

Bedroom

Den 1

Den 2

Living Room 1

Living Room 2

Living Room 3

View from balcony 1

View from balcony 2

View from balcony 3

View from balcony 4

View from balcony 5

View from balcony 6

View from balcony 7

Coffee table clutter

I'm in Montreal now! Specifically in my hotel room connected to sweet sweet free Internet. Having a laptop is a good thing.

I'm really impressed with my whole travel experience this evening. I took Porter Airlines from the Toronto island airport. In total it took three hours to get from my apartment in Toronto to my hotel room in Montreal. That's pretty damn good I think. Plus it was definitely the best flying experience I've ever had. I went to Union station and got on the free shuttle to the ferry dock. At the ferry dock there was a special Porter lounge where I was able to check in while I waited for the ferry. After the 90 second long ferry ride I was directly connected to the terminal where I was able to sit and relax for half an hour in comfy chairs with cookies and a cup of tea.

The flight wasn't very full so I had my seat to myself and was able to read a bunch of my book while eating yummy fancy "root vegetable" chips (potato, carrot, taro, turnip, etc) and drinking free drinks. The plane was a fancy new plane that is super quiet and efficient and so on. Apparently it's more efficient and environmentally friendly per-passenger to fly this plane to Montreal than to take a bus or car. So that's fun too (as an aside, the train is still the efficiency winner for mass transit). The pilot talked to me a bit before I left and he mentioned that it's also really powerful and fun to fly. All the staff seemed really friendly and happy so it was a really good experience.

I left the plane and walked to pick up my checked bag, and as I arrived at baggage claim my bag popped out and I was able to pick it up and keep going without even stopping. I grabbed a taxi and although the guy drove like a crazy-person I arrived here in one piece and in amazing time.

I just checked and standard fare to Montreal by train is equal to standard fare by Porter (about $250). So if I'm ever going to Montreal by my own money I would seriously consider Porter just for how easy it all was. I really didn't feel like travelling tonight, so I'm glad it was so easy.