hockey mania

my friend got this for me at a sample sale in our other home office in brampton. i love it. and the best part was that it only cost $2! and i got some oilers buttons too from the sale. when i brought the rug home, my roommates and i didn't know where to put it, so it sits in front of our tv for now. we each took a button and wore it to work.


matt - i got this red wings rug for you at the sale too! it's small, like the size of a doormat. consider it your first housewarming gift for the new house.




if the oilers end up playing buffalo in the finals, a bunch of us edmontonians in toronto are going to try and get tickets and go on a ROAD TRIP! woo hoo!

on a unrelated note, it's so effen hot in toronto right now. there are heat, humidity and smog alerts all at once, and today, with humidity, it felt like 43 degrees! and to make matters worse, the air conditioning in our building hasn't been turned on yet, so i'm trying not to move much or else i'll get too hot. i'm not going to survive another summer like this in toronto.

a good day all around

i had an exceptionally good day today.

wednesdays are run clinic days, so i went after missing 3 weeks in a row (i was in vancouver for one, and the other two i was still working so couldn't get away). i thought i'd be dying since i hadn't run in 3 weeks, but it wasn't too bad. we ran/walked 8 km today and we'll keep doing that for the next few weeks and work our way up to 10km. the 10km run i'm doing is july 1st! eek!

than after the run clinic, i went to the sunrise records on my way home to get some autographs. tom delonge, of the now defunct blink-182, has a new band called angels and airwaves. their CD came out yesterday, and they were giving out wristbands to the people who bought it at this store for the signing today. i was lucky enough to get a wristband, so i went to get my CD signed.

this is how my meeting with angels and airwaves went (i didn't know any of the other guys' names besides tom, i had to look it up on their website).....

first guy (ryan sinn) - lower right autograph
me: hi.
ryan: how are you?
me: good. (his pen starts running out) uh oh. (his pen starts working again). thanks.

second guy (atom willard) - lower left autograph
me: hi. how are you? good. you?
atom: hi. how are you? good. you?
(we basically said it at the same time)
atom: jinx, you owe me a coke.
me: ok.
atom: or a fanta.
me: fanta's pretty good.

third guy (david kennedy) - middle right autograph
me: hi. how are you?
david: good.
me: lefty. (as i point to him signing)
david: yeah i think it makes me more creative and smart.
me: i'm a lefty too.
(he reaches out to shake my hand - we had a lefty moment)

fourth guy (tom delonge) - top autograph
me: hi. how are you?
tom: good. thanks for coming out.
(my lefty connection with david took up too much time, tom had already signed my CD by the time i got to him. he basically just handed it back to me).

i'm a total geek. i can't believe i just typed out my lame conversations with the band. which kind of supports my next good thing that happened to me today.

i was at work and talking to my friends about my after work dilemma. i had my run clinic, which i was planning on going to, but i also had the wristband to get my CD signed. my dilemma was: do i go to the signing after the clinic, all sweating and stinky? it's not that i was going to be close to the band or hugging them or anything, but i don't want to smell bad either. so then at this point, my friend called me a geek and said i'm the female version of seth cohen. that's a great compliment, i think seth is cool.

and to top it all off, i got a promotion. i'm no longer a trainee! woo hoo!

like i said, good day all around.

year in review

i have officially been in toronto for a year now. time flies. here's my year in review...

i was lucky enough to find some great roommates. we get along so well, i attribute it to the fact we're all from edmonton and have similar personalities. none of us are particularly picky and are pretty laidback. we haven't had one fight or argument. when i found out i was moving to toronto, i thought i would want to live by myself, have my own apartment and do the whole grown up thing, but now i'm glad i have roommates. it's just nice to not come home to an empty house. that being said, when we all move out next year, i'll probably live by myself.

work is going quite well. my training program ends this month, which is sooner than the 18 months i originally signed up for. there's always good and bad things about work, but overall, i enjoy it.

i've said it before, the best part of living in toronto are all the concerts. so looking back at my past concert count entries, i've been to 12 concerts in the past year. one a month, that's decent, but i wish it was even higher. right now, i have tickets to 4 upcoming shows: arctic monkeys, lifehouse, red hot chili peppers, and an outdoor festival type thing with broken social scene, feist, and a few other groups i don't know.

had a few visitors in the past year, which is nice. my parents came with my grandma, and some of my closest friends. went to montreal for the first time, which was great. the bad part about living away from home is that i always have to use some of my vacation time to go back home, which is fine, but if i lived and worked in the same city as my family and friends, i could actually use vacation days for vacations. but i'd be living in a dream world if i thought that would ever happen.

cooking is still not my biggest strength. that's why sometimes i end up eating cereal for dinner.

i still hate the PST.

toronto is a cool city and it's fun to be living here now when i'm young, but i don't see myself living here forever. i always say i'm in toronto indefinitely, not permanently. i say this now, maybe i'll change my mind in the next 12 months i'm living here.

only in toronto....

can you stumble upon two free outdoor concerts...

1. fall out boy - yonge and dundas square

i heard about this free show on the radio when i woke up, and i was shopping at eaton centre anyways, so i decided to check it out. i enjoy fall out boy's music, it's happy poppy punk.

that's the guitarist climbing on the structure for the last song. they only played about 5 or 6 songs, half an hour all together. can't really expect much for a free show.

fall out boy were playing a show in toronto that night with the all american rejects, who also played a set at this outdoor concert, but i didn't wait to watch them because i had to catch...

2. leonard cohen - indigo at bay and bloor

this is a picture of leonard cohen singing with ron sexsmith and the lead singer of the barenaked ladies (steven page?).

i'm not a fan of any of these people, but i have a friend who is a fan of leonard cohen, so i went to buy a signed copy of his new poetry book for her birthday, and stayed for the show.

plus, this indigo is kitty corner to where i live, so it wasn't exactly out of the way to check it out. i got a cool gift for a friend and got to check out a cool show.

i think this was a good day all around. today was definitely one of the coolest things that i've encountered living in toronto.

a little less wise missing 4 teeth

i got back from vancouver last night, and this morning i had my dentist appointment to get my wisdom teeth taken out. i hadn't really thought about it much until i was sitting in the waiting room. i think the nurse sensed my nonchalant demeanour about it and asked if i needed to be sedated before they put the IV in. i'm no fool, i took those pills. i laid down on the chair, said hi to the dentist, he put the IV in, and the next thing i know, i'm waking up at home in my bed. wow, that's strong stuff.

the dentist requires someone to pick you up after the surgery, but since everyone i know was working, i said i would walk home. the office is literally 2 blocks away from my house, but the nurse wasn't going to allow that, so i said taxi. in retrospect, in my half-dazed state, i'm pretty sure the nurse walked me home. i don't know if she offered, or i just started walking when i got downstairs to the street and she had no choice but to follow me. i will have to bring her flowers to thank her.

i also loaded up on liquid food. i have juice, ice cream, and cans of boost. not a huge pudding fan. but right now, over 12 hours after my surgery, i'm not swollen at all. i'm not quite sure if i can eat solid food yet, but i don't look like a chipmunk. bonus. my food intake today consisted of orange juice and ice cream.

my trip to vancouver was spectacular. it was like old times being with the gang, but we're all grown up (in age, not necessarily in maturity sometimes) and living in different cities. it's still nice to get together whenever we can though. we said we should make a pact to all go somewhere together every year, but not to one of the cities we live in. somewhere different. that would be fun. i didn't plan this trip very well because there were other people in vancouver that i didn't even get a chance to see, sorry guys.

this trip has also made me want to move to vancouver faster. i've said before that i want to eventually live in vancouver. i've never thought toronto would be my home forever, and i consider myself to be here indefinitely, not permanently. but who knows what will happen. maybe the only reason i have such fond memories of vancouver is because i've always had a good time with the people i go with. it might be different to live there. although i don't think it would be drastically different.

we played this PS2 game at a friend's house called karaoke revolution. it's basically dance dance revolution, but singing. and the game judges you on it. i'm not a good singer, but i love to sing in the car, etc. i love this game, i wish i knew someone who had it and loved playing it as much as my friend did. rose and matt - you guys should get this game. and ed - they make an xbox version. the game has really new songs too, not just oldies.

i'm so not tired right now, hence the late night posting. i guess sleeping for 8 hours in the middle of the day will do that to you.

blue mile? or whyte mile?

times like these, i wish i was back in edmonton! it would be so amazing to watch the oilers game in edmonton and be in the city when there's so much playoff action and buzz going around. once the leafs are out of the playoffs, hockey is dead in toronto. no one talks about it, the papers don't have stories about it, and the news talks about it briefly.

game 6 was horrible in the 1st 2 periods, but the 3rd was amazing! almost reminds me of the time edmonton beat dallas 4-3 in overtime after being down 3-0 in the third. i was at that game in edmonton. we had standing room tickets only, but took the seats of the people who were foolish enough to leave before the end of the game.

i love hockey, and i love the oilers even more.