This Blog Brought to You By the Class, "G"

Get your babies off the road and stay indoors: I am now an official, fully licensed driver. Yes, friends, I finally have my G class license.



I am also pleased to report that I took the G test on the above standard car. This means that the test was harder - they actually deduct marks for things like coasting out of gear, and for revving/lugging the gears. Cumulatively, these errors can add up to enough bad mojo to result in an F on your permanent record. Thus, this also means I am even more shiny and special than usual.

The license aquisition process took a tad bit longer for me than for most since for years, I never had an automobile to practice on. Observe:

Me: Can I borrow the car? I have to practice my driving.
Parent: No.
Me: Why not? Are you going somewhere?
Parent: Well, no...
Me: Well, why can't I borrow the car, then?
Parent: But what if I have to go somewhere? If you have the car, I'll be stranded.
Me: But we live less than 2 blocks from the subway. And I have a cell phone. How will you be stranded?
Parent: The subway?!?! I can't ride the subway.
Me: So, you're not letting me borrow the car not because you need it but because there is a minute possibility you may need it if an exceptional circumstance arises in the next hour or so that requires you to travel via car and in which all the cell phone networks simultaneously go down and you can't reach me and tell me to come home?
Parent: I'm glad you understand.

And so on and so forth.

In any case, now I can do exciting things like rent cars and drink (a bit) and then drive... not that I'm going to do either of those things, but a girl likes to have options.

Invasion of the Law Friends

Since virtually everyone I know has seen fit to leaveslashabandon me at the same time (California, England, Germany, Southhampton, Poland, somewhere up north) my law friends have converged on Toronto to rescue me from my own crapulence (ie: reading R. v. Wholesale Travel Group Inc. all day...)

Last Saturday my good buddy Tanya came to town. After a brief jaunt around the Annex, where I bought The Red Evlises ' "I Wanna See You Bellydance" CD, (click HERE to listen to the title track - AWESOME!!!), we met up with Martha and risked possible parasitic infection at our favourite $5.99 sushi lunch place, recently reopened after a fire. (What catches fire at a sushi restaurant???) Please enjoy my jaunty "pugs not drugs" t-shirt, which a certain US Marshal may remember from such security stops as The Great Laptop Fiasco of May 23. Free advice: novelty t-shirts do not give one any street cred with security peeps at US airports, even if they espouse wholesome, anti-narcotic messages.

It was especially good seeing Tanya not only because she rocks but because I could give her her long overdue birthday gift, this fabulous mug, designed by the internationally pugnacious designer, Just Joey:

Here is a close-up. Small type: Happy berfday, Auntie Tanya! I like ham but I love you! Love, Joey (and Mom, too).

The (short) back story on the mug is that a certain person, let's call her Tania, overestimated her Jell-o shooter tolerance on a certain Irish beer-drinking holiday. I had told Tania that Joey didn't like beer (mainly because he threw up on the futon after having some.) Tania, in her altered state, thought that was an extraorindary coincidence since she didn't like beer, either. Imagine the odds! However, both her and Joey liked sausages and had been eating them off the pizza we had ordered. Thus, the little ditty on the mug was sung for the first time. It has since been oft-repeated.

Joey came up with the mug concept all on his own (although I think he was a little too pleased about the full-frontal aspect of the design) and did all his own photoshopping. Although the keyboard is now clogged with fur and pug snot, it was worth it for Auntie Tanya.

After lunch, we hit The Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation. This is a little-known art gallery in Toronto on King West that has some very unusual, and eclectic, exhibits. There was some Nazi zeppelin china (creepy), a pair of Gucci shoes, a collection of mother goose items, and some very bizarre sculptures, such as "ovaries" below:

Overall, a very cool experience and only $4. It is good to be a tourist in your own city, I should do it more often. Afterwards, we met up with Tanya's cousin at Czehoski and had a drink before I had to go.

Today, Kate and company came to visit! I don't have any pictures of Kate's visit (Mr. Camera is in Germany) but I have an exciting confirmation for the Ottawa portion of my blog readership: I finally met the elusive Thanos, Kate's boyfriend. Yes, people. In. The. Flesh. Now, Kate is awesome but before this visual sighting, there had been significant "talk", shall we say, among the law gals regarding the supposed existence (or lack thereof) of Thanos:

Kate: "Thanos is coming up this weekend."
Me: "Oh, good, I'll get to meet him. Finally"
Kate: a few days later. "Yeah, Thanos can't make it this weekend."

Lather, rinse, and repeat about 5 times and you have the basis for a little nugget of doubt. But, at the risk of disappointing Robert Stack, this visual sighting confirms Thanos' existence beyond a reasonable doubt, and that is a very high, official, law-talkin', standard of proof so therefore it must be true.

Kate, Thanos, Kate's friend Mel and I had a great lunch at Lone Star before she headed back to Mel's.

All in all, an excellent two weekends with two very wicked law buds.

Rocky Returns

And like so many poorly-crafted Sylvester Stallone movies, so goes my life: Rocky is back.

You may remember Rocky from such surgeries as this past Christmas' $2000 knee-blow out.

For anyone who doesn't know, Rocky is our golden retriever. After the aforementioned holiday season knee explosion, Rocky was sent away to convalesce at a family friend's house in Hamilton in which there are no stairs.

His extended stay was also sort of like fat-camp for him since it enabled him to lose an obscene fifty pounds. Yes, he was a fat dog but it wasn’t totally his (or our) fault. His roundness was largely due to a hypo-thyroid problem. Now, I’m no vet but I also suspect that his girth may have been influenced by a certain grandma feeding him hungry man TV dinners... riiiiiiight...

Joey and Rock have not quite bonded yet but they do enjoy mild snuggling, barking at the idiotic wiener dog down the street, and meeting at the trough, below:

Of course, because nothing is easy in life, it's not all sunshine and lollipops. Certain among us (below) are less than thrilled about the Rock's return.

However, the fur isn’t flying and no one has lost an eye so we’re chalking this one up in the win column so far.