Glenn Simmonds' retirement party was this evening, at a restaurant out in Vaughan. I was impressed by the turnout, including John Honderich, David Holland, John Cruickshank, Jagoda Pike, and quite a few retirees. The food was great, the speeches were okay (Al McArthur did a really good job as emcee). Glenn listed some of his mentors during his speech, of which I recognized only a couple names. I have heard lots of stories about the old days at the Star, so was surprised that I didn't know of so many people. They must have been the managers back when Glenn started in the early 70s.

Lloyd and Mina came up to Toronto for this past weekend. It was great to see them, as Heather and I haven't seen much of them since we met. They were here from Saturday to Monday, and most of the time focused on food. We went to Little India for lunch on Sunday, and had far too much to eat at Lahore Tikka. My Sunday Ultimate team had our championship game later that evening, and I was rather full for the game. (We won 19-10!) The four of us had planned to have dinner at Table 17 (they have BYOW with no corkage fee on Sundays), but we were still full from lunch, so instead went to B-side at Joy Bistro. We had enough of an appetite the next morning to try the eggs benedict at Leslieville Diner, but then didn't have room for lunch.

The weather finally got hot on the first day of summer while they were here. We turned on our air conditioner on June 19th, which is a record for me. It's the longest spring I can remember. Usually it goes from winter to spring for a week, and then straight into summer. I much prefer the cooler spring days.

The Ceili Cottage is almost open! I dropped in on Monday evening (their planned opening night). Talked to Patrick McMurray (the owner), and he said they were just waiting for some paperwork from the city (I guess affected by the strike). I haven't been there since so don't know if it's open yet.

One of my cousins in India (who I may have met when I was little, but don't remember) found this old picture of me and scanned and emailed it:



It looks to be from my First Communion. Check out the cool bow tie and the funky shoes!

Anyways I should get ready for bed.

I finally finished the flagstone yesterday. Good thing too, because I was just about getting tired of it. Here's a before and after from last year and now (from the office window):



I'm about to head out for our Ultimate game. Tonight's the semi-finals.

It was nice weather again this weekend so I was able to work a bit more on the backyard:



I need a couple more loads of flagstone to finish it. The last part is trickier to make all the flagstone fit.

On Saturday was Leslieville Stomp. A lot of stores had sidewalk sales, and there were a number of yard sales. I had forgotten about it, but I had made an appointment with a massage therapist at Advanced Therapeutics for my back, and so walked through the street sales on the way there and back.

The massage therapist was pretty good (I forget which one I had). I think my back problem was related to my legs being tight, especially my IT band. She showed me some stretches to help.

The massage place is right across the street from East End Garden Centre (who I'm surprised have a nice little website). We needed some more annuals for the potters on the front deck, so I bought a variety.

There's a whole bunch of places opening up east of Leslie St. There's another Irish bar opening soon, Ceili Cottage, by Patrick McMurray (owner of Starfish). There's a nice large front patio (right now just a vision), which he's stuck sea shells in the concrete.

Also saw that Pulp Kitchen is opening up in a new location, one of the three renovated spots where All Most Antiques used to be. They're just waiting for their license and then they'll be open.

Meating on Queen (a butcher) was barbecuing sausages, which smelled great so I bought one. It was amazing. Even Heather liked it! We went and bought a couple more today (although we had to barbecue them ourselves, as Stomp was just the one day).

I was at box seats for the Jays game on Friday, for a project we worked on. A couple weeks ago it was looking good, with the Jays in front and the game against Boston. However a nine game losing streak killed a bit of the excitement. Still it was a good time.

Well I should go get ready for my Ultimate game tonight. Hopefully it won't be too windy. It looks like the wind has died down a bit, it was pretty gusty earlier this afternoon.

I had big plans on Sunday to work on the patio and gardens, but tweaked a muscle in my back Sunday morning and have been stuck mostly to the couch since then. Too bad because it was a really nice day yesterday (20C, sunny) to work outside.

Under Heather's care, I felt good enough this evening to try for a short walk down Queen E to Logan. Saw a liquor application at 996 Queen St E (where the former Carlaw Carburations used to be). It's nice to see, as the stretch of Queen between Carlaw and Pape hasn't had the same level of gentrification as the rest of Leslieville. According to the application, it's a bar and lounge that will be called "What are you looking at?". Not my first choice for a name, but what do I know.

Then on the way back, we saw Te Aro, a new coffee shop that opened up (just east of Baby on the Hip) right under our noses! I didn't even see it under renovation! Te Aro has mostly good reviews on Chowhound and BlogTO. It's in an old garage; it's the type of conversion project that Heather and I would like to do one day to live in.

With my back out, we've been getting take-out from the local restaurants. Yesterday had dinner from Spring Rolls; and today had fish'n'chips from B&B for lunch (the guy has fish'n'chips down perfectly) and The Real Jerk for dinner. It's nice to have this amount of variety within walking distance.

On Saturday Heather needed a short break, so we had a little day trip down to see UofWaterloo, where I did my undergrad. Took a long cut down King St through downtown Kitchener and Waterloo. There's a lot of nice old industrial buildings that are undergoing loft conversions; the downtowns will look really nice in a few years. Tried to have lunch at the Bomb Shelter, (the campus pub where I spent a lot of time), but it wasn't open till 5pm. Instead went to McGinnis.

After lunch walked through the DC (Davis Centre) and MC (math & computer) building, showed Heather the C&D (coffee and donut lounge). By fluke saw the old pictures of the graduating classes on the wall near the C&D; searched around for the 1993 math/business class and found me, Roach, Kirk, Doaner, Alain, Mayra and Heaney. Didn't see Panko's pic. Outside, looked around for my tree. Every year, there's a tree planted for the graduating class. Found ours -- it's a big horse chestnut tree. I thought every year had a unique genus or species, but I guess not, as 1981 and 1994 are the same. Walked down to V2 (1st year residences, now called Ron Eydt). Looked at the campus a bit differently; I didn't really remember the stream that flows by the residence being as photogenic as it is. There's plenty of newer buildings on campus, which I've seen in the alumni magazine. The business parks around Phillip St are now all full of RIM buildings.

...

I've hooked up our Dell 1710 laser printer to the USB port on the Airport Extreme. Printing works great from my Mac; but I've been having trouble connecting to it from Heather's PC. I've tried using Windows Printer Setup, and Bonjour for Windows, but neither work. (Both ways allowed me to set up the printer. Print jobs spool somewhere, but where I have no idea). The next step is try to connect the printer to the USB port on the PC and print; and then re-try through the Airport Extreme.

Well I should get ready for bed. Hopefully my back will be okay enough for me to get into work tomorrow.

It's nearing the end of the May 2-4 weekend. The weather's been pretty good for working in the backyard, about 18C. There was a frost warning last night, good thing I didn't plant my annuals yet!



I finished a bit more of the flagstone in front of the deck (left side in the picture), and almost finished putting down flagstone all the way down the side of the house. One of the goals is to disconnect the downspout (it's in the corner in the top right of the pic), but I need to finish the flagstone first. The idea is to have the water run down the middle of the flagstone down the side of the house, and then between the walkway and the flagstone patio once past the deck. I'll have to see how effective it is when it rains the next time.

We had a bit of flooding last weekend. Hopefully disconnecting the downspout will fix that problem.

We've also had a few scout ants in the kitchen this past week. The ants were around the window in the kitchen, so we thought they might be coming in through the window frame somehow. I put up plastic sheeting over the window, and taped up the electric outlets (our kitchen is built over a crawl space and so I thought maybe the ants were coming up through the wiring). The combination fixed the problem (we haven't seen any ants since); now I need to remove the stuff one-by-one to see which part actually fixed the problem, and then fix it permanently.

I planted a maple tree (Acer rubrum) on Heather's birthday. There's big hundred-year-old tree in our neighbour's yard, that I think has maybe 5 - 10 years left to live. There's a number of 30 - 40 year old trees around our backyard neighbours; this little tree will hopefully fill out the space when the old tree dies. It fits perfectly according to the suggested distances from other trees, and it's quite far from the basement (as mentioned the kitchen's over a crawl space and not a basement).

We played Ultimate last night at Sunnybrook. It's nice to play on grass again; this was the first game of summer on grass. We've been playing outdoors in spring, but on turf at BMO Field and Downsview Park. It was a bit windy at the start of the game, but the wind died down towards the end. We have a pretty good team. We've played a couple of weaker teams (it's an intermediate league, we're at the upper end of intermediate), it will be interesting when we play a stronger team. We won 19-8 yesterday. Went out to Originals for some food after.

I've been on a points-scoring streak in hockey, I've got a point in each of our three games this season. We're playing quite well as a team.

Well we're about to have dinner. We may go out to Prohibition later on for a beer; it's a nice evening to go for a walk.

We just had out final game of spring Ultimate.  I'm out for a drink showing Bernice how I can update my blog from a BlackBerry.

On Friday Heather and I couldn't figure out what to make for dinner, so instead we walked down Queen E looking at menus for something that appealed to us. Saw that Pulp Kitchen is closed. There's a sign that a restaurant called Lady Marmalade is opening up soon.

We ended up at Prohibition, which was pretty busy (we even had to wait for a table!) The place is definitely growing on me. For the first time that I've been there, they weren't out of Sapporo on tap. (I think that's why I was iffy in the past -- I don't like any of the other beers they have). There's a nice atmosphere in the place. We passed by The Roy on the way over. There's something about The Roy that we couldn't put our finger on that we just didn't like. Maybe it was the bright lights or carpetting or lack of music. In any case, it looks like I've had a pub (Prohibition) all along and just didn't know it.

Well I'm off to make dinner. We're having t-bone steaks (on sale at Loblaws, only $5 per steak!) with grilled vegetables and baked potato. Mmmm.