I did stuff other than TIFF screenings (see below) this past weekend. I spent some time walking around to random places with Matt and Adrienne and ended up buying a new memory card for my camera. One of my old ones recently corrupted itself at a most inoppourtune time so I decided to replace it with something decent. My previous purchase decision was aimed at spending the least amount of money possible. This time I paid more for what I hope will be long lasting quality. We shall see!

We also had lunch at the crépes place on Queen Street. Mmmmm...crépes.

On Sunday night Kim and I went to Toni's for her birthday party! She made us Aussie-burgers (regular burgers plus fried eggs, fried onions, bacon and beets) and also delicious pavlova. Then we played a new game Toni bought, Apples to Apples. Of course I was super-pro at it because of my previous experiences playing in Algonquin this summer.

My next blog-worthy event is coming this Thursday when I intend to make my own hummus. Excitement!

For the past week and a half the Toronto International Film Festival has been happening here (in Toronto, obviously). I went to three show this year and was reminded again how I should really go to more shows and not less. TIFF is awesome.

My first movie was Real Time which is a Canadian film about the last hour of the life of a compulsive gambler before he is ummm, whacked, for not paying his debts. The title is a reference to the fact that the movie runs in real time. Every minute you sit in the theatre is a minute in the movie and a minute closer to the main character's impending doom. This was not just a gimmick but actually served to control the mood of the movie. It is pretty light-hearted at the start with lots of jokes and funny stuff. But as it progresses and you realize time is running out, things stop being funny and start being pretty depressing. The mood and tone were perfectly managed and the result was an excellent movie.

My second movie, Vinyan was a collaborative horror film from France, the United Kingdom and Belgium. A white couple who lost their only child in the tsunami in Thailand set out to the jungles of Burma to search for their son after seeing a video of tsunami-orphaned children in the region. The children live on their own in a destroyed village and have clearly become feral. Personally, I find children terrifying so this movie definitely frightened me. The acting from the two leads seemed to be a bit dead, but I enjoyed the performance given by their untrustworthy guide (some sort of local gang lord). Also, the scenery and cinematography in the movie were gorgeous.

The final movie I saw was the Spanish slasher-comedy flick, Sexykiller. The movie follows the exploits of a female serial killer on a University campus in Spain. If it weren't for the gore this would be a straight up comedy, however the intensity of the viscera were enough to earn this movie a place in the horror-dominated Midnight Madness program. For me this movie was just plain fun. The female killer, Barbara, is so confident in her convictions about who should die that it's hard not to agree with her. The pacing is excellent, never a dull moment, and there are lots of amusing references to Hollywood classics and other pop culture stuff. Barbara frequently talks directly to the audience in the movie, addressing the camera with such authenticity that it often feels like she can see you. This feeling was further enhanced by the actress's attendance at the screening. Both her and the director talked before and after the movie and they looked like they were having at least as much fun as the audience. Such a great atmosphere!

Next year I'm going to try to go to five screenings. It's just so much fun!

It seems like there is an endless amount of dialogue in Toronto about what to do with the Gardiner and how to improve transit in the downtown core. Today I came across a new proposal that I hadn't seen before, the Toronto Waterfront Viaduct.

Instead of tearing down the Gardiner and then replacing it with something else, this proposal suggests building a suspended expressway above the existing rail lines. This is nice because it means the Gardiner can continue to be used while the new expressway is built. When the new road is complete the Gardiner can be torn down and Lakeshore can be revitalized with fewer lanes and pretty median flower boxes or something.

There would still be a massive highway in the core of the city, but it wouldn't be blocking anything that isn't already blocked by the railway. Furthermore, the proposal suggests that the expressway have two levels, one for traffic and light rail and another level below for pedestrians and bicycles. Thus it would be a useful corridor for anyone needing to travel through the city, regardless of preferred mode of transport.

I'm obviously not a city planner, or even an engineer, but the proposal claims the costs would be similar to any of the other serious proposals and has the added benefit of minimal disruption during the construction phase. If these statements are even halfway true then this is by far the best solution I've ever heard to the transportation problems affecting downtown.

Now someone just needs to come up with a plan to get all of the many and varied stakeholders to agree there is a problem and that something serious needs to be done. Then we'd be set.

I did a bunch of walking around today, down through the harbour and all around High Park. The goal was to take fun photos. Here are the results!

Stickers on a pillar supporting the Gardiner Expressway

Crumbling bits of the Canada Malting Co. buildings

Weird berries on a bush near the Island Airport ferry crossing

Dogs fighting at the far west side of the CityPlace construction area

The Bathurst Street bridge at Front Street

Bumble bees fighting over a flower in High Park

Bumble bee and flower in High Park

Stairs to nowhere in High Park

Berries on a vine in High Park

Dragonfly on a flower in High Park

On Saturday Kim and I went out to "The Beach" because we'd never been there before. A lot of people call it "The Beaches" but according to residents of the area that is incorrect. Meh, whatever.

Anyway it was nice, lots of fun shops with chocolate and other foods and of course long stretches of beach. Unfortunately the E. Coli count was at 398 where acceptable levels are below 100. There were still some people swimming though.

We got ice cream from one of the random stores and the shopkeeper was nice but a bit strange. He seemed to want to keep giving things to his customers. I'm all for free stuff but this was excessive and felt desperate. First a single scoop cone turned out to actually be two gigantic scoops. Then he put two cookies, two chocolate covered pretzels and a huge chunk of dark chocolate into the top scoop. It made for a very precarious treat. While juggling my wallet and the ice cream to pay the man proceeded to give a bag of no-name M&M's to add to the insanity. It was too much! I really only wanted a little bit of ice cream and nothing else.

On Sunday we went to Matt's house for supper with him and Adrienne and Chris. They made yummy curry with rice and I brought samosas and Rice Krispie squares with candied peanuts. I made both the candied peanuts and the squares myself! Check out the recipe! They turned out really well and taste even better today.

After supper we played games with Chris and then I borrowed The Watchmen (widely considered to be the definitive graphic novel) from Adrienne and read that. It was pretty cool and made me want to both see the new movie coming out and maybe check out some other graphic novels too!

My main accomplishment for today was to discover and subsequently purchase a jar of "Green & Black's Organic Hazelnut Chocolate spread." Yes, now I have fancy Nutella. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm sure it will be delicious.

Tonight for wing night we went to House on Parliament for yummy pub-style food. I'm making a quick post here just to say that it was super yummy! They had standard pub fare like burgers, fish and chips, and sandwiches. But they also really good salads and proper entrées. I had a pulled pork sandwich that came on a baguette with onions and apple. Mmm....

I updated the RSS feed for my site so that it doesn't suck quite so much. Now instead of just the title, it also includes content for each post. So, those using Google Reader or other RSS thingers will get nicer, more informative junk from my feed.

Is my title obscure? Probably a little.

The moon was doing stuff with the clouds tonight so I took a couple pictures. I also took a picture of a random flower in the living room and then heavily post-processed the image. And, as a bonus, I'm posting a photo I took of the old Malting Company buildings early this past Spring.

The moon and the clouds

The moon and the clouds

A yellow flower with black and white background

Canada Malting Company buildings, random stairway

When I was little my family would always get delicious poppy seed buns and random European foods from Denninger's in Hamilton. It was always super yummy, but I haven't had food from there in a very long time.

So today Kim and I got a Zipcar and made the drive out to the Denninger's location on the mountain. I've never actually been to Denninger's myself, someone in my family always just picked stuff up and brought it home. So this was a fun new experience for me. The store was awesome and full of constant deliciousness including lots of free samples. There were so many random fun things too, and we spent a really long time just looking at stuff and trying to figure out what it was. One thing that made me laugh were the shrink wrapped frozen soups. They froze soup into a solid block and wrapped it in plastic. Weird.

Any way we got some fun stuff like currywurst mix, spaetzle, sausages, and chicken curry pot pies! I love chicken pot pie and curry is obviously awesome so I can't see how combining them can go wrong. We also got cheese, local blueberries, and lots of yummy chocolate based product. For lunch I had pork schnitzel on a bun with sauerkraut and onions and curry ketchup. Oooh, I also had a small chocolate milk form Hewitt's dairy! Hewitt's is a really awesome place that is based in Hagersville, the town my mom grew up in. They make delicious ice cream and milk based products. Mmmmm.

Denninger's was an exciting place to visit. But, the journey was equally entertaining because our Zipcar wasn't any ordinary Zipcar, it was a Toyota Prius! This was cool because the Prius is much cheaper to rent due to it's reduced gas consumption. The other way we could have gone to Hamilton was to take the GO Train, but that would actually have cost more than renting the Prius for four hours! Plus it takes longer by GO and I was worried about the perishable food getting home intact. We had a bit of traffic on the way there, but it was smooth sailing on the way back and we made it in about half an hour.

The Prius is pretty interesting to drive. Instead of turning a key to start it, you press a big button and it turns on. When you are driving, if you stop for more than a second it turns off the engine (starts instantly when you touch the gas). And it has a big LCD screen that constantly monitors your gas consumption and battery usage. It was a really fun car! Also, we drove over 150km, but as far as I could tell we used no gas at all. The gas gauge didn't budge. Good times!

We made the Beef and Broccoli tonight and it turned out great! I forgot to take a picture in my hurry to eat it though, so you'll just have to imagine how it looked.