Hallow-EEK!

It sounds better than "Hallow-month."

The roommate and I have been pondering over Halloween ideas for this year. It's on a stupid day of the week (Thursday), her family is in town visiting for a week and I'm going out of town the weekend after to Montreal. So, for a while we thought our options were limited. We've just discovered that, not only are there a few decent options for the weekend prior to Halloween, we're probably (still need to buy tickets) going on a GHOST WALK around the Tdot. We found a Groupon for Tour Guys a company I've been known to promote and love in a previous life as a Hostel front desker, and I'm pretty excited, especially with a promise of "No gimmicks, no capes and lanterns, no b.s." and a tour name of "I ain't afraid of no ghost!"

On to the important stuff about Halloween, costumes! My roommate has been collecting bits for what we all think is a hilarious and awesome costume, a killer bee. Not just a bee costume, but a bee with weapons like knives, bullet belts, throwing stars and guns. Yep. Pretty awesome. For a little while I thought about doing Lady Gaga in the new Applause video, specifically the colour blur/explosion thing she has going on, but I wasn't sure how I was going to dress up the rest of me. After some perusing on the internet I saw this, amongst the other piles of sexy costumes.

I'm not crediting this image since the store sucks ass. Look back through some of my posts to work out which one, if you're that desperately in need of knowing.

At first I thought "meh, standard sexy Red Riding Hood," but it then reminded me of a shirt from Threadless that I own, and the ideas started to form.

"Red" by Anton Chigurh, which can be found on Threadless.

I need to have a wander over to some of the fabric stores and do some swatch shopping for the wolf. He's probably going to be a pain to make, but I've got the other two thirds of what I'd want this costume to be, so there's hope yet.

We shall see....

As a semi-related note, here's "Little Blue Riding Hood"by Grant Stephen Shepley, also on Threadless. You're welcome.

Summer is over in the Tdot.

Summer is not my favorite season for personal comfort, I'm the first to admit it. I hate the high heat and humidity we've been getting for the last few summers. I hate sunscreen but I have to wear it, or lots of clothing that make the previous issue a bigger problem. I hate sweating constantly from the heat, and I feel like I can't go out and about nearly as much outside since it's fucking hot all the time. I love some things about summer, cottaging, camping, swimming, and BBQing.

 A slightly bad cellphone picture of the BBQs in the pool area of our apartment.

And an even worse, fuzzier cellphone picture of some dead fish and a side of potatoes and red onion, mushrooms skewers.

BBQing was never strictly a summer activity in my family, we do it all year long. Our New Year's tradition is doing homemade burgers on the BBQ and getting Swiss Chalet fries. However, since I've moved into an apartment, I only have access to the BBQs in our pool area for a limited time during the year, roughly 5 months spread over summer.

 The results from the previous picture.

 That time, when we fished for our own fish in a Toronto swimming pool, caught a few of them and made them for dinner.

This is the last thing I'll probably BBQ this season, a fantastic recipe for Paneer and Red Pepper Skewers. It was a nice send off to the BBQing year. The recipe needs some tweaking, admittedly, chiefly I should have cut the paneer bigger and I think the addition of tomatoes may help retain some moisture. And this did not keep well in the fridge, that's for sure. The paneer was rock solid the next day. I salvaged it by reheating it in a small saucepan with some olive oil.

I love fall. The cooler air, less death-causing sun, and the ability to wear pants and not sweat to death make me a happy dude. But as the air cools and the sun goes down earlier, I will have a moment of reflection for the end of BBQ season.

August adventures recap

August was a month of mini-vacations. Normally I do this alone since my schedule is a bit wonky and I find seat sales at 2 am when it's a bit rude to call your friends and ask if they want to go to x. However, this time round, an old hostel buddy of mine has been in town and I was able to travel with someone else for a change. It's certainly different!

First stop, Washington DC for a few days. Never been, was awesome. I got to see one of my best buds from my Masters program, who's working in DC, actually in the field, unlike the rest of us. She made sure we had a great taste of the food and drink culture in DC and I can't thank her enough for it. I brought her some maple syrup to be stereotypically Canadian about it though, so that's a start. We hit up a few museums while we were there, one of my favorites now being the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, specifically the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Centre. Le holy crap this was an awesome way to start the trip! he Udvar-Hazy is the second location of the Air and Space museum, located out by the Dulles International airport, so we went straight there from our flight into DC. Despite the horrendously early hour, totally worth it.

 A part of the Enola Gay. Google that, you're in for an interesting read.

 The Canadarm!

 We spent an alarming amount of time making penis jokes about the monument. Yep, we're mature.

Two days after I got back from DC myself and a few friends ran up north to the cottage! This is known as the weekend of doing nothing but dock reading, swimming, campfires and cooking. I'm struggling to think of other things we did for that few days...

 It may not be paradise to most, but you can see it from there.

About a week after that myself and the hostel buddy went to Ottawa for a few days! I have soft spot for Ottawa, despite its many, many faults, since it's one of my home towns. It was fun to be super dorky about knowing Canadian history and showing off occasionally to my hostel bud (he's Australian), and we got to enjoy some time with some of his old friends that now call the city home.

 ATTACK OF THE GIANT SPIDER!

Our government buildings can be surprisingly pretty sometimes.

Now that I'm broke again, there should be more cooking and DIY postings soon. Can't afford to do much else after these few adventures.

Ottawa T minus 11 hours

Much like two weeks ago, it's past midnight, and I'm putting the last of my stuff into a suitcase so I can get up in a few hours. This time, it's a little later in the day, on a train and to Ottawa, a city I used to live outside of and have been back to many, many times throughout my life. I'm not sure I could live there again, despite the jobs that keep coming up there, but spending a few days there every now and again is always nice, no matter what time of year it is.

From the back of the parliament buildings looking out towards the Museum of Civilization in Hull.

I'm looking forward to going to the National Gallery for an exhibition they've got going on right now where I can fully dork out on Canadian photographic history. Early Exploration Photographs in Canada has been in partnership with Library and Archives Canada and focuses on 19th century exploration photographs taken by four individual photographers and one group of explorers.One of said photographers, a man working for William Notman named Benjamin Baltzley has just had a book written about him by a fellow Photo Historical Society executive.

I also just love train travel. Via rail tempts me with sales fairly regularly and I am slowly racking up points for free travel. Some day I'll head out the other way to complete the cross country train ride and head to Halifax.

Washington DC in T minus 8 hours....

It's just about midnight and I'll be getting up in about 5 hours to get on a plane to go to Washington DC  for a few days. My buddy is asleep on my couch so we can catch a taxi into the airport together and save some money. I love my city, but it's nice to leave it every now and again.

I probably won't get to much on this list, since we're aiming for galleries and museums almost exclusively, but Apartment Therapy has a Design Lovers guide to the city that makes for good reading.

Apropos of nothing, I found an interesting article about smoked salmon in Alaska on Apartment Therapy recently.

Catch you soon for some possible regular programming.

Out on the water..

July has been quite the month. I've gotten a part-time job on the weekends, which started purely as sales but may turn into collections management, and a volunteer gig I've been doing for ages has suddenly turned into a paid project. An old hostel friend of mine has been in town for a bit now, so we've been having several adventures as a result, including a recent jaunt to the Toronto Islands and a tall ship cruise around the harbour. I've got some great pictures from that harbour cruise, but they're going to wait until another post when I talk about that adventure and resulting project.

For the time being, I will post these pictures from the Islands. My friend had his birthday picnic out there, and it provided for a great view of the city.

I've got some adventures lined up for the rest of the summer, and August is looking packed. I'm headed to Washington D.C., Ottawa and the cottage! I have every intention of blogging them all, and some other bits in between, but for the time being, another Toronto Foodist adventure! Fancy Franks of downtown participated in International Hot Dog day and gave away free hot dogs!

Free hot dog!

 

I hadn't eaten anything that day when I had the freebie, so I ended up buying another hot dog from Fancy Franks, the Fancy 90210. Holy crap that was a good hotdog... avocado, tomatoes, and bacon. They weren't stingy either, it was one filling hot dog.