Happy Birthday Mr. Stallan

Stuff like this makes me miss blogging, real bad.

Important notes: My birthday was two months ago, and – despite the resonant quality of my voice – I am not a Mr. 

The Art of Compromise

After an extremely long week at work I hopped on a late commuter train to spend a blissful weekend with my parents and our spoiled (but worth it) Pups.

Not surprisingly I was eagerly anticipating a frosty beer. Ok fine, on the train its luke cold at best. Regardless, beer was the reward at the end of a particularly dark tunnel.

As the Train Attendant (ummm… I’m not sure if that’s a thing) wheeled the cart towards me I prepared both my crispy ten dollar bill and my appetite to be whetted.

Turns out I was in for some disappointing news. Beer, as was requested, was sold out in all varieties. Let’s face it, if they had Coors Light left I’d still consider it sold out.

I sat and pouted for a bit but the lady eagerly offered me other options, to which I continued my pouting, until she landed on the magic backup option – brown liquor.

So here I sit, enjoying my Friday Compromise – a Scotch and Soda.

Happy Friday Everyone 🙂 and a belated Thanksgiving to my American friends.

And Now for Something Completely Different: Uplift!

I usually reserve my postings on this blog to either laugh, rant or just plain old review the events and situations that happen in my daily life.  While I’ll be the first to admit it is the epitome of a narcissistic venture to expect other people to be entertained by the happenings in my existence, I enjoy the experience of story telling nonetheless.

Outside of my seemingly vapid and purposeless ramblings, I do subscribe to charitable work and volunteering as a crucial part of my life and what makes me who I am.  I picked up the volunteerism bug from my Mother and have always enjoyed it as an aspect of my world, however small of a fraction it may be.  Some people, however, have an aspect of Charity, Volunteerism, Activism, Social change, just general ‘Do Good’ness or whatever you want to call it so deeply woven into the fabric of their lives that its one of the first things you notice about them.  My friend Nisha (sometimes referred to on here as Brown Squirrel) is one of those people, and its one of the many things I love about her.

Nisha and her Partner have just embarked on an exciting project that seeks to draw attention to issues throughout the globe and, more importantly, to introduce us to the Changemakers that are spending their lives trying to address those issues head on.  Instead of spending more time describing what an interesting and amazing little human my friend is, I implore you to take a few minutes of your day and visit her Kickstarter page where you can watch a short but engaging video that describes their project and their fundraising goals.

Uplift Kickstarter Fundraising Page

If this grabs your attention, please share with your Social Networks or throw some of your hard earned dollars their way!  If you happen to have $500 spare dollars, I can confirm that the Dinner Party or Skype chat will be hugely entertaining.

Goodluck to Nisha and the rest of the team at Uplift!

SisterFest: Almost Birthday Fail

Best laid plans, or not so much …

As my Sister’s 35th birthday was landing on Thanksgiving weekend, I planned well in advance for the two of us to have a night on the town together a la Cirque du Soleil! I actually ordered the tickets in July using Aeroplan points and arranged fancy pants VIP treatment. Needless to say we were both pretty excited.

Being that I’m an exceptional planner, it was not exactly expected when as we attempted to enter the Grand Chapiteau we were informed that our tickets weren’t for that evening – they were for the prior Friday. Fail! My jaw hit the floor and we shuffled over to the box office to see what, if anything, could be done.

Box office is maybe a generous term, considering that Cirque is a traveling show and all facilities are mobile. Thusly, we stood in front of a mobile ticket booth as I told my sob story. Thankfully the Customer service woman was helpful and determined that not only were my tickets not for the day I had purchased but they weren’t even in my name. Thanks Aeroplan, so glad I paid that extra fee so you would make my reservation for me. Bunch of jerks.

In the end Cirque issued us re-invitation tickets for another night, including the VIP addition! Extremely pleased with how helpful they were, minus a couple of points for it taking an entire hour and us standing outside in the rain during the process.

Thankfully Sister was manning the phone during this time and got us a reservation nearby at Gilead Wine bar, so libations and sustenance were not far off. Dinner was wonderful and we were able to salvage an otherwise awkwardly cancelled evening.

Entertainingly, our dinner was at a restaurant that sat directly across from some modern town homes that had giant glass windowed kitchens. Throughout dinner we were able to semi-creepily be amused by the goings-on in the various kitchens.

The most interesting events occurred in one particular unit where a handsome (from a distance, at least) man carefully made what I could only imagine to be the most delicious popcorn. He had one of those fancy popcorn makers with the red bottom and large glass top, which he placed in front of a large white bowl. Once the popcorn was popped, he slowly poured butter over the bowl and then added THREE further toppings – two shaken, one more poured. He then carefully tossed the ingredients in the bowl with two wooden spoons!

I was far too intrigued by the whole process, but the waiter stopped by and admitted that we weren’t the first guests to be mesmerized by the popcorn routine!


Despite the giant clusterfuck that our evening began as, we managed to have a great night out and had even more birthday goodness in the weekend – which is another story.

The Cost Of Bravery

Thanks to a cleanse I’m currently wrapping up I’ve been riddled with extra time and energy. Not to say that I normally sloth about (Au contraire, I’m usually a hub of activity), but I tend to zone out on week nights if I actually find myself at home.

Normally when I get home after work (if I go home and not out somewhere, that is) I spend my evening eating, relaxing and preparing for the next days activities. Last night, however, I had ants in my pants so I figured I’d put my energy to good use and clean our two common bathrooms. As they say, Idle hands are the devils playground.

I set about cleaning with my Perfect Housewife gloves on and my trusty cleaning products at the ready. All went without incident on the main floor so I made my way to the basement to finish up.

While reaching for the toilet brush, I noticed a bit of a spiders web and a few minutes later saw the tenant crawling up the wall. Armed with a protective glove, I thought I’d man up and handle the situation myself – instead of just repeatedly bugging one of my roommates to kill it for me.

Glove on. Kleenex balled up. I am ready.

I squash the intruder and quickly go to drop the Kleenex in thee toilet but Sacrebleu! the glove was wet and the Kleenex was stuck to it! Sheer panic ran through my body as I frantically tried to separate the hopefully dead spider from my gloved hand.

I finally free myself from my (dead) tormentor and take a moment to catch my breath.

Bravery is exhausting.

Gallery 501

I feel like such an Artiste!

I joined some colleagues this evening at an event called “Paint Nite” – which is, well, pretty self explanatory.

You choose which night you are going to go based on the painting you’d like to end up with. We chose the Toronto skyline, and I sincerely doubted it’s Easy rating.


The instructor guides you through the evening in a relatively easy to follow step-by-step manner. Easy to follow ended for me when any variety of creativity was involved. Making randomly shaped buildings proved especially taxing. The instructions for our painting included lots of reflections in the water and highlights on the buildings from the sunset – that seemed entirely too difficult so I finished with my wonky CN tower.

Et Voila! My strange looking Toronto on its 501 Streetcar Gallery Tour through the heart of the city.


If I end up keeping it, I’m pretending a little kid did it.

Goodbye Sweet Girl

Our family recently lot one of its most treasured members, Tilley – our Sixteen year old Ginger Wired Haired Fox Terrier. I specify Ginger because her breed is normally Tri-coloured, but she was specifically bred to only be ginger and white . She was definitely a little bit inbred because of it, but in the sweetest sense.

I’ve struggled to post anything about her. There is a bit of a story about how she left us, but I’d prefer to talk about what she meant to us.

It’s pretty heartbreaking, but also thankfully not tragic. Tilley was an amazing pet to me and the rest of my family for half of my life. She really was the sweetest little girl and had a very gentle demeanor, especially around children. She also liked to hump anything that moved and poop on anything that didn’t. Our little girl had a long and happy life, and even outlived two of her Airedale companions. In the last few years she had finally been acting old and was getting rickety – including being mostly deaf and blind. But she still wagged her tail and loved any form of attention. It was a life well lived.

As a happy coincidence, her last day with the family included an overnight stay out on the river in a boat (which she loved) and a great day full of hikes and love. I think she decided that was about as good as it gets and left us with her tail wagging into the sunset.

Truly the most heartbreaking part is seeing how much her buddy Jasper misses her. He just seems at a loss with out his friend – and we all are.

So long old girl, hope you find lots of inappropriate places to poop wherever you are 🙂

None Shall Pass

Nothing beats a giant commuting clusterfuck on a Wednesday morning!

While bobbling along on the streetcar this morning, I noticed that the traffic seemed a bit heavy. Shortly after that thought, the streetcar driver came on the horn to first ask everyone near a window to ensure theirs was open and secondly – which really should have been firstly – that something was blocking the road ahead. He then added that if we were in any kind of hurry he would suggest getting off and walking.

Not an awesome sign.

I get off the streetcar and see a chain of other stranded streetcars waiting ahead of me – definitely a sign to try a new route. As I pass through Leslieville and approach the train bridge near Degrassi street (yes, that Degrassi) I see a Fire truck clearly blocking the road.

This set up is clearly blocking the actual issue, and I can’t help but start laughing when I see what the actual problem is. Some silly truck piled high with some metal structures clearly didn’t quite fit. Kudos to the driver for almost making it before his cargo started to fall off.

Sorry for the crap photo, I was laughing and surrounded by uniformed police and firemen – so I was clearly distracted

So here I am, finally on another streetcar route and only lost about 20 minutes, and gained a pile of humid morning sweat. I should have just got to the gym this morning!

Goodbye Old Friend

You’ve been a loyal travel companion and trusty safekeeper of all of my important things – and now you’re not so ceremoniously strapped up and full of Clamato, on likely your last voyage.


No not Mikey, my neon pink Lululemon bowler! I’ve had this bag for about seven years and it has literally been all over the globe with me. It has also sheltered my belongings on countless trips to the gym, and even more weekend voyages. I have traveled more with this bag than with any other person or belonging – fact.

Sadly though the handles started to fray and shed all over me while I carried it, and generally appeared to be on it’s last legs. So when we needed a last minute bag to bring 5 jugs of Clamato to our Cesar weary friend in Amsterdam – I volunteered my bag for the trip of a lifetime.

So long, old friend, it’s been an epic ride

Euro Nails

I take my nail care fairly seriously – especially on vacation. While I normally aim for obnoxiously loud neons, I do sometime prefer a more muted shade.

Enter my new theory for European Vacation Nails:

Most vacations I go with the brighter the better (ie this post), but for my recent trip to Ireland I went with a combo of medium grey with a few gold shimmer accent nails – because glitter is fun. The manicure lasted for way longer than normal and just seemed the perfect match for our road tripping adventures.

That brings us to today, and my next trip – Amsterdam and Istanbul. This trip seemed like the perfect occasion to go with my grey gold combo!

See Neighbour? I do wear grey polish!

At the airport about to fly (at the front of the bus, ahem) off to Europe. For the third time this year, yay me!! Im other news, I’m a spoiled little brat.