The Weekend Spoils

Toronto skyline from Broadview Ave. just south of the Danforth


My apartment carries a sweet smell of blossoming lilies.

I've picked up a couple of extra shifts this week at the Cheer's equivalent. That makes it three shifts this week. It's like a full-time job, said the very spoiled girl. Well, she does have to pay for her habit.

It was pretty slow last night. Weather indicator. Toronto got hit with what I hope to be the last of the damned snowstorms we'll see for the beginning of 2005. I'm tired of the cold. The snow was fun while it lasted. But I think unless you're truly prepared for it, say on a day off when you're donning your snowpants and down-filled parka combination with your Chewbacka boots on, heading out to enjoy a good trudge and take in the scenery. Unless there is time and occasion to stop, drop and roll into a Random Snow Angel Making Machine™, I don't think there's the same sort of appreciation. But that's just me.

Sunday nights at my new place of employ is home of the Sunday Supper Club. My boss, Kim, also acts as chef on these nights. There is a 3 course offering with some choice. The Cheer's equivalent is a known tapas bar, but for one night a week people come in for a meal and end up holding their stomachs, groaning from the amount ingested. And that's just the staff after our staff meal. The number one reason I am holding onto this job is because of the way they feed me there. Killer staff meals. 3 courses spread throughout the evening. With the added bonus of mistakes!

Occasionally someone in the kitchen will experiment with a different cutting technique or recipe where the floor staff are treated as guinea pigs. Willing little rodents, we. Whoops! That calamari was cut to resemble a freshly unsheathed penile appliance. Can't serve that. That's disgusting. But we'll happily eat it. Oh? It's on a bed of mango salad? With cilantro? I'll do my best to force it down.

One of the interesting things about this place is there are single people that feel comfortable enough to come in for dinner alone, though often have the saftey mechanism of a bit of reading material at close hand. Just in case. The just in case is if the staff is too busy to talk, or there is some guy sitting two stools away who owns a restaurant, so can't be bothered to cook, that has just picked up a fresh virus. Maybe he's hungry. More than likely not. He thinks it's a good idea to eat something, probably remembering his mother's advice of feed a fever; starve a cold, but every bit of protein presented in front of him is met with more than a wee bit of a noticeable lurch. The braised chicken was left untouched, save the casting of drumstick and thigh matter off to the side of the 12" plate. The polenta, my buddy Mike in the kitchen was convinced was lumpy (but wasn't), was devoured in its entirety. Easily digested.

What I noticed about this local restauranteur, a man whose reputation is that of the surly Frenchman, was A) though he has a very French name, he has a distinct English accent and B) he left behind a strange puddle which pooled beneath his stool which I noticed only after he'd left. Reminded of being 12 years old walking home from school avoiding those cracks to save my poor mother's back, I avoided this puddle like the plague. I'd imagined that some virulent disease would have crept up through the heavy soles of my shoes, attacking my central nervous system, turning my insides to viscous tar matter.

It could have happened.



I've reinvigorated a strange addiction: Scrabble. Now available online, baby. Because I'm on a Mac platform, it's not Scrabble™; it's X-Words Deluxe. You can play alone or with a fictious opponent. Right now Shakespeare is ruing the day I pressed accept this opponent. The Comrade vs. The Bard. Of the 10 games we've played thus far, I've kicked his onomatopoeic ass 9 times out of 10. I tell you, when I formed bandied and exalted, there was no shortage of self-congratulatory cheer over here at Love and Comraderie H.Q.

I started playing this game to help me take my mind off of the boyfriend. He'd misplaced his phone and was away from home so there was no real way of contact. Not when I wanted to talk to him, anyway. I hate that feeling of utter frustration. It feels panicky inside. Ah... I remember the days when my emotional level was just that: level.

Bard? Another match? Lovely.



I visited the outdoor organics grocer, the nice fellow who sold me brussel sprouts growing from the stemmed source. Incidentally they were the best brussel sprouts I'd ever tasted. I told him I photograph some of his produce. With his massive engorged hands, cracked from terminal frostbite, he gestured towards these:


Organic Baby Blue Oyster mushrooms

I can't bear to eat them yet.


A few days ago I did an incline hike up to the Danforth, our little Greek area that has some unique boutiques. I spent $50 on potted plants and cut flowers. The habit. It was interesting trying to balance my purchases on the streetcar ride home.

In addition to the staple lilies I tend to buy, I purchased some exemplery cut orchids, potted 10 hyacinth and these, which I've never seen before:


Oxalis regnellii, aka False Shamrock Triangularis, alias Wood Sorrel

When I was on the streetcar carrying my spoils, I'd noticed the expressions on some of the occupant's faces. The women all shared the same look. It looked like a mixture of sadness, jealousy and quiet, seething anger. I was carrying a massive, paper wrapped suggestion of romance. Cut flowers. We all hold it them same way: cupped by the base of the stems in one hand, blooms cradled in the crook of the arm. Just like Miss America. For as long as we carry them, even completely shrouded in paper, we feel like a beauty queen.

This beauty queen is now going to give The Bard a royal ass kicking!