Birthday and Other Stuff

My 36th birthday came and passed, but since it had been a year since we had a gathering with friends at our place, Bill & I decided to have friends over for brunch the day before my birthday. As per our invitation, why not celebrate three dozen years with three dozen eggs. So we invited 14 people, 2 couldn't come. Out kitchen is pretty spacious and we wanted everyone to have a seat. We put 3 tables in the kitchen and were able to sit everyone down (14 of us with Bill & I). Mickey, our dog, didn't freak out too much, I think he had a bit of fun with everyone present. Brunch came along nicely, it's not a hard meal to prepare, we just had to coordinate things so everything was ready and warm at the same time, we asked everyone to arrive at 11 but we started getting the warm dishes ready at 10:15, food was ready by around 12... Next time we have to start things 1 hour earlier, makes me think of when I studied Industrial Engineering and process optimization diagrams. After brunch we played a few games, I got wonderful gifts and cards including a very cool t-shirt by Deadrobot & Sharkboy!

The following day, my birthday, Bill, Mom and I went out for dinner. We went to Red Lobster, and while it is NOT the classiest place around, the all you can eat shrimp festival was happening and I was craving for that so I ordered it (not the classiest thing one can order). I don't think I had ever eaten that much shrimp, but it was all very tasty and it hit the spot. Afterwards I put together all the gift certificates and money that I got for my birthday and went to BestBuy to get an Apple iPhone. I had been mulling about getting one for a little while, and even though the Palm Pre came out recently and I do think it is a neater phone than the iPhone, what tipped me in favour of the iPhone was its higher storage capacity (I got the 32GB) and the fact that it IS the better iPod of the two. Maybe the Pre, or whatever its successor is, will be for the next time, that is if Palm is still around then. I AM enjoying the iPhone and now need to carry only one thing in my pocket instead of my phone and iPod, both which are around 4 years old. I am also enjoying having Internet and email on the go, but I've developed a compulsion about wiping it clean every half hour, which I am sure will go away once the newness of it goes away too!

Which brings me to the last thing I wanted to talk about. I was uploading my iTunes library to the iPhone and I thought of "Yes" by the Pet Shop Boys... My favourite song on it now is "The Way It Used To Be". Just thought I'd let you know!

Quick Notes

Just a few quick notes:

1. Flickr is down.
2. I want an iPhone, but the geek in me wants a Palm Pre... Suggestions?
3. I got my limited edition, mine is numbered 57 of 3000, Saint Etienne CD, "Foxbase Beta", a remaster of their debut album, "Foxbase Alpha". I'm listening to it at work and I LOVE it.
   
4. The new black Wii looks really cool.
5. The Canon EOS 7D is going to be my next camera.

A Dog and Another Animal

We were down at The Beach walking the dog and we saw this dirty white dog wandering around. It squatted in the distance, took a dump and then walked away, no owner in sight to pick up the poop. We walked towards the road and saw this dishevelled woman standing and the dog was walking around her, she seemed to be preoccupied with something and didn't act as if the dog was hers. Then a car pulled up, almost hitting the pooch, and she got in it. The car drove a couple of metres and parked behind another car while the dog sniffed around. A couple of ladies walked up to the dog and asked us if the dog was lost because it looked upset and it had no tags, we said that we didn't know. Around the same time the same dishevelled woman got out of the car, after being in it for 2 minutes, walked towards the dog and said to the other two ladies that the dog was hers. The ladies told her that they thought it was lost. She proceeded to walk away coughing her lungs off, the dog obediently following her.
My take: Take care of your dog, get it tags, wash it, put it on a leash, and pick up its poop and stop dealing drugs you fat greasy haired welfare drug pusher!

Brazilian Day and other things

Oh Labour Day weekend... When we're kids it's the last day of summer vacation before having to go back to school, to me it's just another summer holiday, it does signal the end of summer though. We were fortunate to get great weather after a lame summer, weather speaking.

Before I get to the Brazil Day thing, an incident on Sunday left Bill and I speechless (well, not quite). We were going south on Main St and at Kingston Rd a lady with 2 kids in her car westbound on Kingston Rd decided to go through the red traffic light. The person who was turning left onto Kingston Rd almost got T-boned. The lady with the kids honks her horn, as if she is right for going through the red light at which time Bill, who is blocked from turning right on Kingston Rd yells "you're wrong lady". She, with her two kids in the car, gives him the finger and screams "FUCK YOU!!!". My jaw just dropped, on top of setting a bad example on how to drive she made a complete jerk of herself in front of her kids. Down on Kingston Rd we were beside her car and she rolled up her windows because we told her that she should be ashamed of herself for the way she was driving and for being a complete idiot in front of her kids.

On to Brazilian Day... There were actually 2 festivals this year to celebrate the Brazilian bit of Toronto's multicultural mosaic. Brazil Fest was on Sunday and I didn't go to that, it was at some remote park in Etobicoke and the only thing that I heard of it was that the lady that was running the sugar cane press machine (it looks like one of those old washers with the wringers) got her hand stuck in it and there was blood everywhere, poor thing. Brazilian Day was at Dundas Square, on Labour Day, which coincidentally was also the Brazilian Independence Day (September 7, 1822). I thought it would be a bit of a bust like many cultural festivals, I was expecting Toronto festival corn, samosas and hotdogs, nothing really Brazilian food wise. I also joked with friends who were with me at the Desi Fest that there were going to be Indian dancers with the Brazilian singers because at the Desi Fest there were so-called "Brazilian dancers" (as announced by the MC at the time) with the Indian singers.

The festival started at 2pm but we got to Dundas Square at 3pm and it was already packed. I've never seen that many Brazilians together in Toronto, Dundas Square was a sea of yellow and green soccer jerseys. When we moved to Canada 20 years ago there were only about 2,000 of us in the Toronto area, now that number is something like 20,000. I tried to go straight to the food, there were 2 main tents that I could see, one was selling Brazil's national dish feijoada and the other was selling a bunch of Brazilian finger food: pastel, coxinha, brigadeiro and other things. Bill and I lined up, I ended up ordering some feijoada and a couple of Guaranás and he stayed in line for the other stuff... 45 minutes he finally got to the front of the line. The food was good but not worth waiting in line for that long. Entertainment was so so, some band that covered various famous Brazilian songs (they were pretty good), Elba Ramalho (she's alright) and Carlinhos Brown (not my cup of tea). We didn't stick around much longer after eating and we came back home.

One last thing: I won the lottery! Well, not enough to quit my job, but enough to make me happy, I got $71.50, the most I've ever won in a lottery. I bought 5 more 649 tickets, hopefully the snow ball effect will apply, but I wouldn't count on that.

CNE

We had our fun as usual, cheap hotdogs and Super Dogs. Here are the pics: