toronto DammitJanet crisp cold wind busy people with agendas chasing pigeons jumping over grates scottish man with a bag pipe so much to see i love this city 031207 ... no reason i'm tired of crisp and cold i'm tired of busy people with agendas i'm tired of a lot of it 050109 ... guitar_freak I'll be in Toronto this summer for awhile. Looking forward to it. Canada in general makes me happy. 050109 ... past back on saturday, a soccer game, then aimlessness, then a monday show, before heading home again! 090429 ... no reason is apparently having its coldest winter in 20 years 140302 ... unhinged as is milwaukee; i'm glad i skipped town 140302 ... no reason our joke of a mayor is going to be on the jimmy kimmel show tonight. because enabling his stupidity and treating him like a celebrity is the way to go. 140303 ... n o m i wish people would take his alcohol addiction seriously, i'm really quite tired of rob ford jokes and bashing 140303 ... n o m jimmy kimmel seems to love making fun of people 140303 ... n o m and speaking of toronto, i think it's interesting how many people across canada don't like toronto or have a negative opinion of it, regardless of who the mayor is. i googled it a bunch before, after i was questioned as to why i said i didn't really care much for the city or why i wouldn't want to live there 140303 ... no reason why don't you care much for the city or why wouldn't you want to live here? ;) people think we think we're the centre of the universe. well, canada's universe. 140303 ... e_o_i bleu blanc rouge Because it's fun to personify places, and some people characterize Toronto as simultaneously overbearing and dull, though it's hardly true. Although I shall uphold my side of the hockey rivalry and say that Montreal's team is currently better. 140303 ... e_o_i (Well, playing better hockey. I can't exactly speak for their morality or personal effectiveness. And I regard hockey sort of like wallpaper. It's there, but I only tend to look at it if I'm bored.) 140303 ... leif I'll see you in December. 151123 ... nr there are some good things and good people and i keep trying but it sets so many limits. 160302 ... nr i wonder if people find it to be a welcoming city 160725 ... nr turonno 210907 ... e_o_i He is there and I am here. I tried hanging out in Verdun, where he'd vacated, and doesn't feel the same. No one left to mock-epically sing "Fields of Verdun! and the battle has begun!" to. Singing over the phone isn't the same and his mother's phone is too quiet. An anglophone. Hush. A landline from here to there. A filament of light into sound or whatever's spun these days. 210908 ... unhinged sixth grade class trip back in the day when you only needed a birth certificate to go to canada...may have been my first truly big city 210909 ... nr as a teenager, my mom would caution us to be careful on Queen West after dark. we used to dance at the alternative-ish nights at the goth/new wave club Velvet Underground. used to to see friends play at the rock/punk/loud stuff/etc. venue Reverb. used to shop at the underground thrift shop Black Market. Velvet closed in 2015 and reopened under new management as a concert venue. Black Market closed in 2019 after 21 years in business. Reverb is now a CB2. 211013 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I was there for two hours today between two trains (I must be getting tired again because at first I wrote "two trees"). I was there for two hours today between many trees and tall buildings. The VIA station is on Front Street, so I walked on that road in the bright sun, past bank-dotted Bay where a few years ago I'd dragged my baggage from train to bus stop, and on to Berczy Park. If this is a Polish name, I suppose it's pronounced Berchy, but I'd like to think of it as Barkzy, because in it there's a delightfully ridiculous fountain where two rings of dog statues spout water upwards. The dogs in the inner ring are smaller - all pugs? At least one is. At the top, like a trophy, sits a large bone. Lounging on the lip of the vast water bowl is a lone cat. He's not participating in the water-spouting. He's doing his own thing. 220824 ... nr i never knew the name of that park; i only know it as the concrete-laden park near the flatiron building and the metro and the hothouse cafe and c'est what. but the dogs by the fountain are definite landmarks. and i like the little tables they've added. 220824 ... kerry i've been a couple of times but it was such a long time ago, and this is all i clearly remember: -burritos in some basement restaurant -seeing "the sound of music" performed live -an enormous breakfast spread at the slomans' house: fruit, bagels, lox, tomato slices, capers, and paper-thin slivers of purple onion we always flew in to buffalo, went through customs, and visited niagara falls on the way to helen and julian's house. i would like to go back. 220825 ... nr there are a lot of hate posts about it on reddit. how it's changed, how the rent is insane, how it's hard to find a family doctor, how all the fun is gone, how it has no character. it's all true to varying degrees but it makes the rebellious pockets even more attractive. 230228 ... nr orphan_black only started a decade ago, but there are so many differences i see in my city today than was captured on film. it makes me long for the day. 230228 ... nr something happens here to make nothing happen here, and everyone knows but no one can explain 231126 ... e_o_i David and I were here yesterday to go to the Royal Ontario Museum and a Japanese restaurant called Sushi Inn. In between, -U of T bookstore, in which I looked at two books about conlangs but didn't get either because they were for a course and I felt a student might miss them -a food truck from which I got a falafel wrap and David a chicken one -We sat and ate them in a university building whose name I forget, next to a bulletin board plastered with notices; David took notes about a conference concerning philosophy and AI -The museum - artifacts from Chinese dynasties, dinosaur bones, a giant tortoise skeleton, thirst, a search for a water fountain, the dawn of life and penis worms, biodiversity and a stuffed cedar waxwing like the one I saw live near my parents' house, a bat cave without real bats, an aquarium with real fish -A bookstore called BMV, seen once by me two years ago with Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach (bought), Collette's Claudine novels in English (David bought for me), Persepolis 2 (not bought because it had a tear in the jacket cover) -Sushi Inn, and I recommend the medium bento box: varied and relatively cheap, with everything tasty (to me) except for some halfhearted leaves of lettuce for a salad Then outside it was snowing, thick wet flakes. David watched it since he faced the window out onto the street. Out on the street, the going was not just snow-slushy but windy. At one point a building threw roof snowballs at us, or rather bits of snow slid off its roof. It felt perilous. My non-waterproof boots were soaked through and David's umbrella got ruined. "Maybe it's not really broken - I can check it," I said. Finally at Union Station, I surveyed the damage and he was right - the spokes had a hinge snap, a piece fly off somewhere. Oh yes, and then at Pickering station we had to take a taxi back to where David's staying now. The bus we would have taken stopped soon after 9 PM and the board didn't say where to get the late-night shuttlebus or even when it left. (Today I took the train back to Dorval and there's also wet snow on the ground, but my dad said none of the windy/icy storms landed here. The world seems backwards when bad weather hits Toronto but not Montreal.) 240113 ... e_o_i ...I didn't say what I had to eat that was really GOOD and that included the shrimp and crap tempura. There was also a slice of zucchini and then of sweet potato fried that way - the second was a delightful surprise, the taste and texture blending beautifully. Miso soup like the soul of a the storm-fog I photographed, but calmer; small jewels of sushi rolls; savory salmon teriyaki. 240113 ... e_o_i hates and loves typos I am so silly! Of course I mean crab tempura, not crap tempura!! This is up there with my student writing "Everyone has a perverted language" instead of "preferred language" (she must have hit a "v" and autocorrect did the rest, but I have only myself to blame). 240113 what's it to you? who go blather from