7 posts tagged “bradlands ii”
King of Coxwell no longer, I'm now mostly settled at the my enormous new Bradlands on Greenwood. Only upon returning and getting all of my stuff into the place did I realize how fucking massive it is. I used to be all covetous of Jess' giant northwestern hipster lair, but darned if this place isn't almost as big (albeit underground). Full-sized fridge, 8-foot ceilings, and still under $600; I'm damn good at this real estate thing.
Of course, I've barely spent any time at the new place. After my first sleep there, I was back 'home' to Guelph for a much-deserved vacation. First up was a wonderful New Year's party down in Ayr with the HQ/Longhouse/Toko gang (apparently the latest social epicentre for that crowd is a downtown apartment christened "The Lion's Den," which is possibly the coolest place they've found yet), which was a much-needed dose of festive insanity. I don't think we've ever had such a fine spread of food at one of our shindigs, either: there were samosas, fancy cheeses, mushroom caps, an ungodly amount of shrimp, and even some awesome mojitos.
The next day saw me back in Guelph, making ratatouille with Rebecca before we made the balls-rattlingly frigid hike down to Kate's place for video games (let it be observed: I'm still the king of Mortal Kombat, but not so hot as a robot with guns) and liquor (things I wasn't expecting to enjoy: Coke and Fireball).
Now I'm back in Toronto, having one last stretch of full-time shifts before returning to class on Monday. Things have been stupidly busy at the store, but there have been enough laughs and cameo appearances from friends to sustain me.
Finally: I have a date on Tuesday? She works in insurance and is a brilliant photographer and is gorgeous and just generally has her shit together 1500% more than I do, but apparently she likes me? Fingers crossed, everybody.
Another silly roundup:
- Let it be known that Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is the best thing to happen to musicals in a long, long time. It's only up for free until midnight, so get your asses over there and watch it. On that note: am I the only one who sees an eerie resemblance between the squinty sneer of Neil Patrick Harris and that of Guelph's own firefightin' pyro-Neil?
- Apparently I live in Jack Layton's electoral riding. Neat! I'm kind of embarrassed that it took me this long to look up who my new Member of Parliament is.
- Cats! My neighbourhood has a lot of them. Apparently there's a crazy cat lady across the street, and she's less than vigilant about where her minions wind up. Thus, I always have a little herd of felines sitting on my lawn when I leave for work. None of them are tagged, so I've taken it upon myself to name a few. The most frequent visitors so far are Holyfield, the monstrously fat tabby who punches any other cats who get too close, and Landmine, the grey who hides on my staircase.
Oh hi, blog! It's been...two weeks. I'm getting sloppy. Then again, I'm just another voice in the susurrus of the city these days. Almost all of the fourteen days since the last post look something like this:
12:00pm: Wake up, shower, get dressed, consume fruit and rice
1:30pm: Hop on bike or subway, soar down the Danforth/Bloor Street to work
2:00pm: Start work
10:30pm: Finish work, hop on bike or subway
11:00pm: Arrive at home, have a snack, unwind with guitar/book/videogame/Internet/whatever
4:00am: Sleep
Aaaaaand repeat. It's an uneventful, content sort of autopilot; I wish there were a bit more going on, but as far as stati quo go, things could be a lot worse.
Notable exceptions to the rule of boredom include a pretty awesome Canada Day. I caught the fireworks down at Ashbridge's Bay, which is actually a lovely little spot. I had no idea how close I lived to such a nice beach. I probably still don't want to swim there, but hey.
Rebecca and her friend are coming to visit me next weekend. Surely I'll have some better stories by then.
(My Russian friend Marina tells me that Kasparov's joke after the smackdown was something like "I am glad to see that Putin and Medvedev are willing to raise their level of political discourse!")
Back in this hemisphere, I hit the Indigo first-aid kit for the first time this weekend. The cause? A customer's fingernail. I don't know what the hell is in the water here, but some woman at cash who took her bags from me in a rather abrupt manner managed to split my finger open from knuckle to knuckle in the process. There was blood everywhere, and my manager still doesn't believe my story. Let's blame it on the full moon, shall we?
Also: If you're going to live in Toronto, never google your own address. I found out all kinds of neat things, and I now know which of the area's kajillion Indian restaurants are worth my time, but I now also know that I live about half a block away from a suspected terrorist cell where they arrested a mail-bomber last year. Goddamn.
So I saw Iron Man a few nights ago. It wasn't the cinematic orgasm so many of my friends have made it out to be, but it was a pretty damn solid movie, certainly the best of the current epidemic of superhero flicks. Picking a troubled hedonist like Robert Downey Jr to play a troubled hedonist like Tony Stark was an inspired choice, and Jeff Bridges made a damn good evil tycoon. Even Gwyneth Paltrow, who normally bugs me on a level I can't even explain (this was true even before she married Chris Everything-That-Is-Wrong-With-Modern-Rock Martin), was a cute sidekick and convincing redhead.
Most of my life lately has been work. I've been pulling forty hours a week at the flagship, and I'm still in love with the place. I even have a German-speaking buddy on staff, which has been refreshing practice. Oddly enough, I also find that the stockbrokers and socialites actually have a more manageable sense of entitlement than the bitchy suburbanites we had at Guelph and Waterloo. Oh, Toronto, will you never cease to boggle my mind?
On the urban exploration front, I finally lost my Kensington virginity a few days ago. What a neat little neighbourhood! I went hat shopping, enjoyed the best burrito of my life and laughed at the crass service at Big Fat Burrito, and wound up demoing a doubleneck guitar for some of my fellow customers at the pawn shop. On the way home, I also popped by Yonge Street for some bargain-hunting and found an awesome alternate solution to my home electronics problem: why spend $40 on a cable to connect my laptop to my TV for movies when I can buy a $45 used Playstation 2, play movies on it, and be able to play some games? That's a victory, I think.
So I've been in the City of Toronto for one week. Goddamn, I love this town.
- The downtown Indigo store I'm working at is pretty much perfect. The scale of the thing is taking some getting used to (two floors, each bigger than the Guelph store, and sales volume in May like what we did at the height of December), but the staff are all hilarious and awesome, and the managers seem really cool. The interesting bit is that it's the "flagship" store of the chain, meaning that the CEO is a frequent visitor and we get all kinds of crazy-huge events. My very first shift included an hour and a half of security detail for professional neoconservative grumpypants Mark Steyn (good Lord, is that man ever a blowhard. When I had to tell a heckler to quiet down, I did so with apologies because I agreed with his jeers). Apparently this is the Indigo where the rich and famous shop, so I'm sure I'll have many more celebrity stories in the months to come (current tally: two MuchMusic hosts and a guy who I think was on Due South).
- I love the TTC. I live about ten kilometres from the bookstore, but thanks to the almighty 22A bus and the subway (Coxwell Station is really too giggle-inducing a name. At least three people have said something to the effect of "HAHA, BONER" when I've tried to explain my locale), it only takes me ten minutes to get there.
- I have friends in town! I got back in touch with Erika, a former coworker from my Chapters Waterloo days, and she dragged me out to the Golden Griffon on Runnymede, an adorable pub with the most incredible burger menu I've ever seen (8 possible meats, 35 possible topping combos. The mind boggles). The two of us and four of her friends got rather shitfaced while we reminisced, and walking her home caused me to miss the last subway, so I got to have my first experience traversing the entire city of Toronto via the 24-hour streetcars. I highly recommend this approach.
- The local No Frills (300m from my door! YES!) has the most incredible selection of Indian things. I love my neighbourhood.
- I ran into Gooch on the subway on Thursday night! What the hell are the odds?
- My one beef so far has been the difficulty getting Bell to hook up my damn Internet. It was supposed to be done by Friday, but now they're sending one of their lackeys down next Thursday to poke around in my walls. This means that all of my Internet usage over the past week has been mooched wireless in public libraries and coffee shops. It's a good opportunity for urban exploration, mind you. Beaches Public Library is a lovely restored fossil of a thing, all red paint and black wood, Coxwell-Ashdale is much more suburban and bland, and the big Toronto Reference Library downtown is an epic, sprawling thing. This post comes to you from a Coffee Time on the Danforth (thankfully a nicer one than my old oh-shit-I-missed-the-bus haunt at Bay and Dundas).
- I have the next two days off? Wow. Now accepting suggestions for places to explore.
So I nabbed the apartment. For whatever reason, I won the references war, and I now have a gorgeous little basement lair on the Gerrard streetcar line, in the heart of Little India.
Here's a number that hurts my head: by the end of this month, I'll have burned over $100 on Greyhound tickets to and from Toronto by the time all of this shit is sorted out. Friday ought to be the last trip; I've got a date with the landlord to sign the lease and cheques, and a transfer interview at the Indigo in the Eaton Centre.
Speaking of spending, I picked up the new Muse live DVD yesterday. What a friggin' entertaining show. I can't believe how much of a disparity in popularity they have between Europe and North America. Here, they play dive nightclubs and airport hangars, whereas this DVD had them doing a ridiculously fancy arena show at New Wembley. Then again, some of those poor kids in the back were half a kilometre from the band. I'll stick to my sketchy club shows.
Also: pappadums can be bought dried in the grocery store, and they come to life with just a little hot oil? Why was I not infomed? Homemade Indian food just got that much better. Yummy.
