Sprained ankle

I was out of town last weekend and had an amazing time (I'll be posting about my trip in due course). It was so good that I managed to sprain my ankle. With all of the activities, sports and shenanigans that I've subjected myself to in my lifetime, I'm surprised that I haven't injured myself more often.
Anyway, the injury didn't happen at the best time as I couldn't hit the dance floor the next night with the same vigour that I would have liked (my foot was so swollen, it was spilling out of my shoes). Nonetheless, it didn't stop me from shoving my swollen ankle into my skates to enjoy the frozen Lake Louise and ski the big mountains that we lack in Ontario. Actually, it might have done my ankle some good being locked in rock solid boots for a little while.
Anyway, I'm recuperating and completely frustrated that I'm forced to stroll at a leisurely pace when I'm trying to catch up on all the work that's been piling up. This one was a pretty bad sprain and I hate to admit it, but maybe it will take a little bit longer to heal because I'm just that wee bit older than the last time I hurt myself. I definitely didn't bruise like this the last time. It's kind of entertaining to look down and see little sausages for toes.
I've been going to a Chinese herbal guy who's been putting that brown pooey gunk on it. I love the smell and it seems to be working its magic. The swelling has gone down and the bruising is not quite as impressive as it was before. It did match my dress quite wonderfully, although I did put makeup on the matching bruised knee to mask the damage.
I'm going to start strengthening exercises to get my ankle back in tip-top shape as soon as possible. There are a couple events coming up for which I want to be in top form.
I had originally posted some pictures of my ankle on here, as I thought they were quite impressive, but have since taken them off because I figured that I'm the only one who really cares about how cool injuries look. I have to remind myself that I'm a little weird.

Completely sucked in

I'm watching the current season (20!!!) of Survivor. I'm in the middle of watching last night's episode and the voting on the Villans' side. Holy toledo. People are impressive.
Please don't judge me, but this reality TV show is amazing! It really is the best of the best going head to head on the Villain side.

Time change

I could have used an extra hour of sleep last night. It was tough getting up this morning and I had commitments which prevented me from being able to turn off the alarm.
Of course, I remembered that I needed to switch the clocks last night before I went to bed. That lost hour sucked.
This morning, on the subway, two separate girls standing beside me didn't realize that the time had changed. One was from out of town, so I can sort of sympathize. The other, well, her excuse was that she lived by herself. She seemed to say something about half of her gadgets changing their time automatically, and so she had been a little confused. But then she asked me a seemingly honest question of "how are you supposed to know to change the time?"
Being someone who doesn't really read the paper, nor watch TV, I still had many sources that told me about the time change. I guess some people really live in a bubble.

Happy Pi Day!

Wishing everyone a wonderful day filled with pie and irrational behaviour.
I picked up a mini peach blueberry pie at the market yesterday, so I'll have that for dessert tonight. Yum.

New York (September 3rd - 7th, 2009)

This was my second trip to Manhattan. I was hoping that this city would be my Paris of my Swiss experience, but I don't seem to make the trip out as much as I would like. Anyway, this time around, I didn't need to do the uber-touristy sites, as I'd taken care of those on the first trip, so it allowed for more important things. Like cupcake eating.



Other than that, here are some of the sights and sounds that we took advantage of in the city:

No, we didn't stay at The Standard Hotel, but we did have lunch at the restaurant. It was quite nice, although we seemed to be tucked into a strange corner. It was quite busy and we had demanded to be sat on the patio. The decor of the place (restaurant and hotel) was really nice. Trendy. I should have expected as much being in the Meatpacking District. The whole area is wonderful. A place to spend more money then I can part with at this time in my life, but it's still wonderful.
Since the last time that I went, they opened up The High Line. It's like it was made for me. People watching, relaxing, soaking up the sun. In my crazy travel sessions, I walk so much that I always need to find somewhere to sit to let my feet and back recouperate. The High Line is the perfect place for this. Some of the chairs were on wheels. On the
railroad, you know? So you could turn the loungers into couches and such. Everything about this place is great. Even a stadium seating set up to watch cars if you're tired of watching people. We also spotted a celeb here, but of course it wasn't me that did the spotting and I'd actually admired his suit jacket before being told that he was someone famous. Shows how much I know.

Following all other tourists in the city, we went into the M&M World. So many candies and I didn't buy any. How impressive. Needed to save my money and cavities for cupcakes. This city is



a commercial, money-making machine. That's all I have to say.
Another tourist trap, the Toys"R"Us. There's a massive ferris wheel in the store. For some reason it seems a whole lot more impressive than the Fantasy Fair at the Woodbine Centre


New York's finest hard at work? Times Square is is a busy busy place, so maybe they were just waiting for something to go wrong. As we were wandering around the area, we stumbled upon a little girl who was in tears. She was lost. In fighting the crowds, she got separated from her older brother and of course, in an area like that, what's a little girl to do, but cry? Luckily, through the help of good samaritans, some luck and a cell phone number the two siblings were reunited.

I knew that getting tickets for the opera at the Met would be impossible, but a night under the stars watching opera on the big screen is a close second. I can't beleive how busy it was. Have something like this in Toronto, and I'm not sure that the turn out would be so big. That's one thing that I love about Manhattanites. They really seem to appreciate the arts. This picture doesn't even begin to show you how many people were there. I'm pretty sure that they said that there were ~1000 seats, and then there was the large group of people who enjoyed the show from the comfort of the concrete floor. My tush was numb be the end. But it was worth it.



Seems like food was a theme on this trip. Dylan's Candy Bar was impressive, yet I still didn't spend a penny there. So much candy.




Continuing on the food theme, we went to Serendipity 3 for dessert. We were already stuffed from lunch, but I HAD to go so, in we went. The portions were so large, and when there's good food in front of me, I just can't say no.
It's a problem. I got the famous Frrrozen Hot Chocolate, which
overflowed in the cup/bowl. Does anyone finish that thing on their own? I had a little bit of lactose overload at that place and felt ill afterwards. I would have liked to see the $1000 sundae in person, but no one ordered it while we were there. The place was packed and we only got a chance to sit down after putting our name on the list an hour earlier. We had planned to eat lunch there, but ended up using the hour wait to eat somewhere else down the street to return for dessert. It's a really
cute restaurant, but maybe more of a tourist trap than I like to admit. It's not so over-laden with tourists that celebrities will still go there, but I wonder what the break down of the demographics of patrons is. There are some famous celebrity patrons who call themselves regulars. I want to find a restaurant in Toronto that I can be a regular at. I'll work on it.


One part of the city that I haven't discovered much is Central Park. This time, I found the Alice in Wonderland statue, another popular tourist site and spent awhile there waiting for a perfect picture opportunity. It was more amusing to watch the interactions
and personalities of the different people who were there and their conflicting priorities. I need to go back again next time to get a better shot of the statue. I should look into the new movie that came out and find out if it's worth seeing.


Wandering the city, we stumbled upon a huge Brazilian celebration. The set up reminded me of Fete and I thought about getting food there, but it was a big too crazy and nothign really stood out to me. There were so many people on the street and vendors everywhere. I guess there's always something going on in Manhattan. I'm looking forward to the summer in Toronto when there are festivals every weekend.

Another food stop on our trip was at Jacques Torres. I was reaching my sweet quota by this point, so I only has one little square. The Love Bug was a "key lime ganache kissed with white chocolate". How cute. It was tasty (of course). I didn't get any cavities on this trip, but I wouldn't have been surprised if I did.

West Side Story

While in New York, we went to see West Side Story. We were deciding between Billy Elliot and this one, but after many failed attempts and waiting and long line ups to get tickets to Billy Elliot, we decided to enjoy at least something and quickly got tickets for West Side Story before it was too late. As the show was quite popular, we didn't have the best seats in the house, but it worked out in the end.
Sitting the last row of the balcony, we realized that the section was only 1/2 full and so we tried to fanagle with the ushers to sit in the lower sections if no one was going to show up. They weren't biting.
Partway through Dance at the Gym, there was some strange technical glitch and all of the performers left the stage in varying amounts of character. Before the ushers knew what we up, I bolted to a lower section. The disruption was so long that everyone else got the hint and moved forward much to the ushers dismay. I don't blame them for trying to do their job, but we theatre goers want a good view!
Anyway, the show was great, of course. West Side Story is one of my favorite musicals, so just watching them go through the motions was enough for me. We weren't the biggest fans of the performer who played Tony, but the rest of the leads were well done. Anita was great.
I was intrigued by the choice to sing I Feel Pretty in Spanish. I wonder what the rationale behind it was.
Anyway, a good show, and I'm looking forward to my next trip out!

- header picture courtesy of www.broadwaywestsidestory.com

McQueen Fall 2010

Wowsa. RIP.

On the inside looking out

The traffic going west on the Gardiner is dreadful, but drivers can look at the beautiful colours of the sunset and admire the calm of Lake Ontario.
I'm slowly making progress on a mammoth paper and although I haven't been outside, feeling the warm sun shine through the windows has been a close second.
I've gone through lots and lots of orange juice today and hopefully shock of excessive vitamin C will kill this cold once and for all.
If I can just get through the next 40 hours (and do everything that needs to get done in a satisfactory manner), I will be a whole lot happier.

On a roll

Third day of 10+ hours of sleep.
I had pulled myself away from my computer, ready to do some reading, and then physically couldn't keep my head up so flopped onto the bed.
Thankfully, after about an hour of sleeping, I realized that I probably wouldn't be moving anytime soon and managed to get up to take my contacts out.
This cold is ruining me.
I was only awake for 7 hours yesterday. Most people don't even get that much sleep in a night.
I think I'm in for a rough rest of the week.

Slept in again

I can't even put the blame on the Olmypics anymore. I had planned to go to today's edition of the free concert series at the Four Seasons Centre, but I couldn't get myself together in time.
Well, I guess, technically, I could rush over there right now, but I'm so apathetic that it's not going to happen.
I hate being sick.
I really hope 2 days of 10 hours of sleep each night are working to battle this cold.
I have too much to do.

Blame it on the birthday boy

Is it acceptable that I started my day rather late because the radio station my alarm clock is tuned into is playing Chopin all day? It was almost three hours that I lazed around before forcing myself to get up. Chopin is so wonderful.

Soon it's back to normal

I've only really been watching the figure skating events during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games, with a couple others thrown in for good measure.
In fact, I only clued into the fact that the Canadian Men won their gold medal because all of a sudden I heard yelling and cars honking from inside my condo. (I did instantly go online and watch the final minute of the game just to make sure I was in the look - thanks CTV online streaming.)
As I said in a previous post, I'm super impressed with CTV and their coverage of the games. Not having a TV, I was convinced that I'd miss out on everything, but it's been a wonderful experience.
In fact, I'm kind of bummed that it's over. I've enjoyed getting free Toronto Star newspapers and seeing Canadian spirit everywhere. The Olympics are a wonderful thing.
I even got choked up on a couple occasions. And I really hope that the winter Olympics come back to Canada again in my lifetime. The only problem is that I think we're running out of cities that can host it. There aren't too many mountains in our country. One can hope. And hopefully if they return, I will be able to go. Even if they don't come back, hopefully in the future, I'll be able to return to the Games. Just like a lot of other folks, I've been thinking about the different sports that I could take up and somehow hope that I have a gift and can manage to get to the Olympics. Sigh.
As per usual, I didn't buy any Canadian Olympic gear. I did buy a pair of those super selling mittens for a friend, and they were a lot easier to find than I had thought they'd be. There were a ton at the second location I went to, albeit, maybe I just got lucky because when I returned a couple days later, the stock was completely depleted.
I do regret not buying a Russian zip-up from Torino when I had the chance. It looks like the Russian Federation hasn't changed their design too much as I would have loved to have one of their pieces from these Games as well. Maybe in the future.
I'm obviously streaming the closing ceremonies right now, so it'll be another late night.
That's my only complaint about the Games this time around. Due to the time difference, it was possible to watch the events that I wanted live, but they made for very late nights, and I think my other commitments suffered because of it. I'm looking forward to getting back on a regular schedule because I haven't really been on one since December, and I'm about due.
Anyway, I'm not really concentrating on this post because I should get some dinner prepped so that I feel like at least I'm getting something accomplished while the ceremonies are going on. That's another bad thing. I've been spending more time in front of the computer with not necessarily anything to show for it.
Anyway, it's been fun. I still wish I could have been there, but what can you do. At least I had my internet and laptop.

Growth

I put mustard on my sandwich for lunch today. I liked it.
So, six years ago, when I made a conscious decision to force myself to eat this stuff that just tasted weird (I had the advantage that it way everywhere and on almost everything that I ate) in hopes that I would get used to the taste, little did I know how effective my actions would be.
Granted, I perhaps never liked mustard prior to my European adventure because I had only encountered the canary yellow French's variety. While abroad, I only had fancy mustards.
So what does that make me? A mustard snob?
Anyway, point is, perseverance pays off? It hasn't quite worked out so well with olives.

Bats!

The bat cave at the ROM is soon to be up and running again for the public. It's one of the major attractions at the museum and I remember enjoying going through the space as a child. Every group I take through the museum wants to visit it, and I love watching their reactions as they walk through the mock-up of the Jamaican cave.
Anyway, it's been a long time in the works, but they finally renovated the space and I'm impressed how quickly it got completed.
I haven't had the chance to walk through it yet, but I will be next week, for sure.
The ROM has declared March to be Bat Month to pump up the opening and hopefully draw more visitors to the museum. It's not-so-coincidentally planned so that March Break falls during the celebrations.

A sign?

Rykiel everywhere!
I was hoping to get a striped sweater from Rykiel's capsule collection for H&M, but when I finally showed up today, of course all of the good stuff was already gone.
Wandering The Room, it was clear that they were pushing the brand as well. Lots of accessories.
I was a little dismayed that The Room wasn't overflowing with PS1's. Actually, I was a little scared that they were all sold out, but there were still a couple specimens to drool over.
Do I regret not buying that voluminous Rykiel coat in 2008? No, I loved it, but I'm sure that I will find another lovely coat in the future when I'm ready to splurge.
Oh yeah, there are fashion shows going on all over the world right now. I didn't bother watching the live streams online, but in some of the pictures that I've seen, I've got to say that I love, love, love the Burberry Prorsum collection. Am I surprised? No.

Fashion is weird

Look at this bag from the Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2010 collection. It's a garbage bag. Okay, it's probably some sort of industrial strength vinyl thingy, but essentially it's a garbage bag with some hardware and a partially leather strap attached to it. Look, it even has a drawstring to tie up your stuff. Is this some sort of tongue-in-cheek effort to say that ladies have a bunch of junk in their bags? For ~$2000, I'd rather swath my 'junk' in something a little more demure. Styling this bag as a simple rectangular silhouette does make it look a bit cleaner, but just imagine the garbage ties pulled up and cinched in and, well, sitting like a bag of garbage on her hip.
Although, I have to admit that I hope it shows up in the Yorkville boutique. I want to see this bag in person.
Also, if I had a gazillion dollars, I would probably enjoy getting some outrageous bags too. Okay LV, you win this round.

- picture courtesy of vogue.com

Sad-face

How much do I miss skating right now?
Are you sure I shouldn't go back to it next year?
I can do it, really I can.
I'm sad. Very very sad. (This is probably why it's best that I'm watching the Games by myself. So I can wallow in self-pity.)

Tweet, tweet!

I feel like Twitter would have come in handy while watching live events like the Olympics. Especially when I'm watching them alone by starting at a little 3.5x6inch video feed on my Macbook.
Actually, I don't know. I do like my alone time. And Twitter sometimes makes me want to barf. Just like Facebook. (yes, I'm a hypocrite because I have an account)

Amelia?

Why does Liz Manley keep saying Amelia instead of Amelie?
Also, it's Saint-Saens, not Saint-Jean.
Otherwise, she's not too bad a commentator.

Olympics

They're happening. And I'm not there. I'm kind of sad.
Not having a TV, I thought that I would miss out on the whole thing, but this past weekend, I had the luxury of being at an event where they set up a hospitality room for us Olympic junkies. And then the whole weekend, we were pampered with leather couches and a TV hooked up just for us. Definitely not the regular treatment.
The opening ceremonies were wonderful. The only part that I had reservations about was the lighting of the torch. It had nothing to do with the malfunction with one of the arms, but I guess the rumor of the avatar of Terry Fox made me expect something pretty amazing.
Anyway, upon returning back to the city, I was worried that I'd be back in my non-TV bubble, but CTV is doing such a bang up job.
I've been able to watch complete events live and then go back and watch other events that I missed. Every so often the feed will freeze, but no major problems. I'm terribly impressed. So I can watch the events live with commentary, or later on with no talking. I'm glad that they show the entire event, right from the first skater to the last. Okay, it's just skating that I really care about. I'll watch highlights of the other events, but I guess I really only need to watch the skating events live. For us hard-core fans, they even have the detailed protocols for each of the skaters. So impressive.
Well done, CTV, well done.
I really hope that the Olympics will return to Canada again in my lifetime and I hope that I will have enough money lying around to go. I also hope that a miracle will happen and I'll be able to participate in the games as more than just a spectator.