More Weekend Stuff

Yesterday we decided to hunt down a Wal-Mart so I could pick up a hot plate to use with my new donabe. We found one on the subway line at the Dufferin Mall. Sure enough, they had hot plates for $12. Awesome.

There was a Winners in the mall so we headed over there too. John found some shirts, I found a pair of sunglasses and some much needed brown wedge sandals that I can wear to work. I have a ridiculous tan line on my feet that is evidence to the fact I haven't worn sandals all summer (I just didn't have a decent pair), so hopefully that's about to change. They were 75% off too. The Winners here isn't nearly as picked over as the ones in Halifax, there was all kinds of brand name stuff.

We had planned to head downtown to the Toronto After Dark film festival, but we had so much that we were carrying, we headed home first and dropped off our stuff. Then we headed back down to Bathurst Street W and bought our tickets for a film called Warlords that John wanted to see.

We had some time to kill before the film started and we hadn't really eaten all day, so we decided to track down a late brunch. We popped into a little bakery/cafe and ordered some eggs benny. The atmosphere was cute and summery, the waitress was friendly and attentive, and as John put it, the food we were served was probably the worst meal we've had since we've been in Toronto. The bread was stale, there were shells in the eggs, the ham was burnt and the iced tea was so terrible that I couldn't put my finger on exactly what they had done wrong. If I had to guess, I would say they left out the sugar and lemon and brewed the tea too weakly.

But we ate it anyway because we were hungry and we didn't really have time to find another place. I couldn't drink the tea though.

We headed back to the theatre. The film we were seeing was one of I think 14 being shown as part of a horror festival. The festival was held in a beautiful old movie theatre with only one screen (think of the Oxford). The seats were all on the same level, rather than raised up stadium seating as you got closer to the back. I had never seen a theatre laid out that way before. It sort of messed with my perception of which seats were too close to the screen and which ones were just right.

For being part of a horror festival, I suspect this was the least horrific of the movies being shown. It was a story of a group of bandits in 1800's China that became solidiers and formed a legendary army, starring Jet Li (but without any kung fu). We both enjoyed it.

We decided to walk part of the way home afterwards. We walked east down Bloor and then north up Yonge. We saw all kinds of things; parts of the U of T campus, the ROM, all of the expensive stores at Bloor & Bay like Tiffany, Cartier, Louis Vuitton, etc. Everything was closed of course since it was Sunday evening. All in all we walked the distance of about 6 subway stations and it took about 45 minutes. So that helped me get a better understanding of how big the downtown core is. Some day this will all be second nature to me.

I talked to Erin on the telephone when I got home, so that was nice. We heated up some of the barbecue pork buns from the market the day before and watched TV for the rest of the evening. It was a good weekend.


Today it is so hot that I was already breaking into a sweat by 10am.

Banana trees are pretty neat. At night they soak up the water in the soil around them. It travels through the leaves and in the morning, you can see little drips of water falling from the tips of the leaves. I realized today that my banana tree hasn't done this since we moved to Toronto despite the fact that I give it two cups of water every day. So I'm a little worried about it. I've decided to start giving it two cups twice daily to see if that helps. All of my plants are suffering in this heat though.

I knew it was only going to get worse so I decided that today was a good day to go check out the (air conditioned) library that is across the street from our building. It turns out it's actually quite nice! I stayed for a couple of hours going through their sewing books. I found several books from the Singer collection of sewing books that I wanted to check out, so I went and got a shiny new library card. I haven't had one of these since I was a kid.

I got back home and finished the skirt I was working on. Despite all of the challenges I had making it, it turned out awesome. The patterns match up better than I expected and it looks perfectly tailored. I'm really pleased with it. The only problem is that it is much, much to small for me. I didn't understand how I could be so off with my measurements so I've been looking at some different sizing guides and all I can figure is that sizes on patterns in no way reflect pant sizes. So I think that what would be a size 6 at the store is actually a size 12 or 14 on a sewing pattern. I'm not completely sure though, so if anyone can help me out with this, please feel free to comment!

Nonetheless, I'm still really proud of how it turned out and I learned a lot by making it. Hopefully next time I can make something that fits!

I think I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon doing housework so that things are tidy when John gets home. I think we're probably staying in tonight.