I have just returned from a blurry weekend in Toronto, CA. I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats.
Friday: Ashley and Turner's Engagement Party
Friday evening saw the meeting of old friends to celebrate the engagement of Ashley and Turner. The event has hosted by the lovely folks of the Monarch Tavern on Clinton.
The Bascom Sisters (Jenn and Janel); beauty++
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Ainsley and Greg |
It had been far too long since I last saw Ashley and Turner and it was nice to catch up. Both looked incredibly happy, as did many of the familiar faces I saw that night including Adam, Ainsley, Annabelle, Anne, Deans, Janel, Jenn, and, of course, Joey.
Jenn, Ainsley, Ashley, and Turner
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"Geeks on Film" a la Duran Duran (Myself & Joey) |
It was great to catch up with Joey once again. The last time I saw him was last Christmas when I was in Canada visiting the family. He informed me that he has recently joined Tucows. (Congats, Joey!) Judging by his comments about the job, it sounds like he'll be working on some pretty cool projects, which I'm sure we'll hear about sometime in the near future. Not surprisingly, we spent most of the time chatting about all varieties of technology including .NET and Java. It's nice to know that Joey is a fellow affectionato of C# and the .NET Framework. As an aside, I find Joey immensely in-tune with the world at large - particularly, his views on media and culture. He also has a very good sense of humor that resonates profoundly with me. Nothing epitomizes this better than hearing him state that his favorite line from RoboCop is Clarence Boddicker's classic one-liner: "Bitches, leave." Amen, brother. Too funny.
Joey weaves his magic on Jenn |
Anne and Ashley |
Unbeknownst to everyone (including myself), a piper was secretly hired by my Mom for God-knows-what-reason other than to add a little quirk to the night's festivities. (I must take my hat off to Mom for her ironclad resolve against following the status quo.) Being several times our senior, Mr. Piper's (I never got his name) repertoire consisted of songs few of us had ever heard before (many of which I would speculate are very big on the Scottish 1890s hit parade). Fortunately, Joey was on-hand with his accordion to fill the void. Aye, play us yer fine rendition of Avril Lavene's "Sk8er Boi" would yee now, gov?!
Saturday: Shirtspotting and Gregorie
Saturday presented a challenge: After consuming one too many pops during the engagement party, I was convinced to parade around town to shop with Ainsley, Ashley, and Turner. Although my brain had a nice time hanging out with the family, my stomach felt otherwise. Surely, I now measure age by my ability to recover from a hangover. I'm convinced that age is directly proportional to the delta representing the time between sipping your first beverage and feeling "normal" (i.e. I can no longer locate my kidneys by internal discomfort alone). One might represent this through a three-dimensional graph, depicting recovery time along the x-axis, age - starting at a legal limit, of course - along the y-axis, and amount of alcohol consumed along the z-axis. But alas, I digress.
Throughout the day, I kept looking for casual shirts to buy but couldn't find any worth spending my money on. Something's wrong with fashion when most of them look like they were strung together by Helen Keller on crack. "No, I'm not interested in a light blue nylon shirt - that's three sizes too small, by the way - with the number, '88' stitched bizarrely on the upper left breast." *SIGH*
By the way, I highly recommend the scrolls at Kalendar Cafe & Bistro. They're very good at settling the stomach when nursing a hangover.
The highlight of the day was seeing my good friend, Greg who was currently in town visiting friends. Greg has been studying medicine in Melbourne, AU for the past 18 months - kicking ass and taking names (academically-speaking) Down Under. Way to go, Greg!
Sunday: Cancellations a Go-Go and Kickass Karaoke
Pounding the pavement avec Annabelle et Greg |
The Adorable Couple (Ashley and Turner) |
After surviving breakfast at Mars Restaurant, our group set out to do some more shopping. However, given the events of the past 48 hours, we were all feeling a little pooped. Ultimately, we decided to chill out on the patio until people's buses/flights were scheduled to depart.
With goodbyes and well wishes said, it was off to YYZ to catch my flight back to ORD. Unfortunately, my flight was cancelled due to bad weather in Chicago. (Apparently, a number of twisters were spotted last night.) And so with that, it was back to Toronto to hang with the crew for one last hoorah. As it turned out, I was lucky enough to attend Kickass Karaoke and hear Joey's excellent rendition of "Takin' Care of Business" de la BTO, .NET style! (I would like to get the MP3 sometime, Joey.) Turner also received honors for his fantastic interpretation of "Loser" by Beck - in the time of chimpanzees I was a schrunky. ;-)
"If you ever get annoyed look at me I'm self-employed" |
"I love to program .NET all day..." |
I will be posting all incriminating photos at the following URL later tonight: http://photos.yahoo.com/johnbristowe/.
5:43:59 AM 
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