Monthly Archives: September 2005

I’ve had an eventful day today. This morning was possibly the most stressful day that I’ve had since, I don’t know, Saturday. I was tasked with babysitting my little, baby niece for a whole three hours! A three hour period that might require me to do things that I’d rather not do.

Thankfully, I was blessed. There was no shitting and she was an angel for the whole time. Dora the Explorer seemed to provide ample entertainment for an hour of that and we also had a nice time in the park. She enjoyed her time on the swings, although the lazy cow wouldn’t push me in return.

The afternoon saw me take a nice long walk downtown. It was a lovely day – very sunny and rather warm for the end of September. I trotted off down there in my shorts (commando!) and took a few pics along the way, especially of the impressive CN Tower (allegedly still the world’s tallest building).

Actually, I’ve just been Googling. Apparently, the CN Tower really is the current “World’s Tallest Building and Free-Standing Structure” according to the Guinness Book of records. Wikipedia backs this up. I could have sworn that something taller had been build since 1976 but apparently not, or rather any taller structures are either not free-standing or even buildings.

Anyway, I took a few snaps along the way. Here’s a couple. The first is an image of the CN Tower (I’m a bit of a fan):

The second is a nice image of a theatre in downtown Toronto that has a lovely backdrop of large buildings:

I’ve uploaded more in the Gallery, and I’ll be adding to it throughout my holiday

I’ve been out for a few beers with my sis and I have a nice little buzz going. Not too much mind – we weren’t out long enough for that – but we’ve had a nice time. It’s always good to catch up with family over beer, and my sis is always good company.

We ended up in the beaches area of Toronto in a bar called Stoney’s, where she drank Stella and I tasted some of the local brew – a nice red beer from Labatts called Mick’s Red. I don;’t think it’ll win any awards or anything but it went down very well indeed. I could have gone for the Leffe but as gorgeous as it is I do tend to fall over a lot after drinking that. Plus I like to taste the local stuff wherever I go.

Anyway, some beer was had and a pizza slice eaten on the walk home. A good evening.

Today has seen us head off for the beach. It’s been a lovely, sunny day and as it’s still quite warm we could have headed down there and gone for a bit of a swim. We didn’t do that, but we enjoyed the sunshine anyway.

The highlight of our trip was the throwing of rocks into Lake Ontario (I apologise if there’s any resultant flooding as a consequence of our testing of archimedes principle) and the throwing away of the shite kite.

I’ve taken loads of pictures, some of which I’ll upload into the gallery soon. In the meantime here’s a nice image of the state-of-the-art lifeguard equipment that they have at the beach:

I’ve had a quieter day today here in lovely Toronto, but entertaining nonetheless.

We’ve been shopping where I got a bargain watch – 33% off a Casio jobbie then a further mystery 50% off for no fathomable reason that I could see. The woman at the counter in The Bay seemed to suggest that I was getting that extra money off because I was a visitor to the country, but why they would do that I have no idea. Not that I’m complaining. I now have a $119 watch for less than $50 cdn!

It has a stopwatch so that I can tell how interminably slow I am when I go for my irregular runs. This is important for me to gauge how unfit I am, rather than just guess at it. I suspect I have a way to go in that respect.

I also learned today that I may end up with the responsibility of looking after my youngest niece for three hours or so on Wednesday. My sister works voluntarily in the local school, where my eldest niece also goes to preschool. This means that either J goes to visit her local, friendly child-carer or Uncle Davey has to worry about shitty nappies. Naturally I’m not too enamoured with finding out what horrors await me should J decide to have a huge dump in her nappy but I’m almost prepared to take the risk.

I’ve also practised my trumpet today, the pocket trumpet that I’ve brought with me so that I can keep my lip in and practice the test piece that we’re going to play at Lemmington. I’m sure my sister’s neighbours appreciated my little serenade.

One photo for the diary. The weather hasn’t been too great so far but some sun is promised soon. Here is a picture I took yesterday of Toronto City Hall:

I’ve arrived in the lovely city of Toronto in one piece. The flight over, with My Travel, was nice and comfortable although I refused to buy the headphones (two pound fifty – robbing bastards! – can’t figure out how to get a bloody pound sign up on this keyboard) so I read, and finished Ben Elton’s excellent book Past Mortem instead. Other than that, it was a good flight.

I attempted to stay up latish last night so I didn’t suffer too greatly from jetlag, and I managed to stay awake until 9pm when I reallu had to get to bed. I slept like the dead and got up ten hours later once the kids had roused themselves from their slumber. Noisy buggers.

I’d had plenty of sleep though, so I feel pretty good today. This morning say me go out for a buffet breakfast with my brother-in-law Phil and one of his mates. For $10.99 I stuffed my face with a combination of sausage, bacon (those odd crispy strip type bacon that they seem to favour over here), chicken (roasted!), eggs, beans, those little potato square things, some shredded potato stuff, tomatoes and pancakes. I followed that with some fruit (might as well have eaten something healthy) then yoghurt, a bran muffin and some banana cake. Plus as much coffee as they could pour into my cup. I’m so going there again – Golden Griddle breakfast buffet rocks my socks.

Then this afternoon we’ve been to some book event down town. There were all sorts of stalls there, some annoying Canadian children’s TV presenter doing a show with puppets (from TVO channel), lots of public readings and some semi-famous authors signing books and chatting with people. It was rather interesting and we managed to get some Christmas presents sorted out for the kids – might as well save on the postage across from the UK.

Tonight might involve some beer and maybe a curry. I’ve taken plenty of pictures today so I’ll put some up later on.