My poor diary that I've neglected since the summer! I've done a ton of stuff since then, what with clubbing, rock climbing, and other stuff.
But this week was one of the craziest ever, since I got started on a Wednesday. Wednesday was John K's birthday, so a group of fellow condo residents went to Pravda, a lounge at Wellington east of Yonge. It was a USSR themed bar, with lots of commie stars and Lenin portraits. We got bottle service and split 2 bottles of vodka between about a dozen people. Luckily the alcohol was accompanied by lots of authentic Russian food. To go with the vodka, there was black bread and pickles. There was smoked salmon, smoked mackerel, and herring with this weird white dill sauce. I didn't have a lot of the fish, because I don't think it goes well with alcohol. There were also these awesome pirogies, the likes of which I had never tried before. They weren't the normal supermarket pirogies, but the meat stuffed one tasted a lot like wonton.
The next day we went out to another bar for Mira's birthday. This was just down the street where the Singing Oyster used to be. It was called Cucina, and was a nice little place to hang out. Quiet and brightly lit, a contrast to the dim, barely able to see environment from the night before.
Tonight (Friday), we went bar hopping. Starting off at the Bier Market, where we spent the most time. There were a large variety of people, from young hot girls, to oldish cougars. However, the music was way too loud, as usual - though it was a live cover band that had some pretty amazing talent and range. We later checked out Fionn MacCool's but didn't like it too much even though there was also live music. We then checked out a small place called the Foundation Room, which had this Middle Eastern/Indian theme. We stayed there for about 10 songs before we finally ended up at the Reservoir Lounge.
I had been having pizza a lot in the last few days too. There was pizza on Thursday, then Domino's pizza at Andy's party at 7pm on Friday before we went out. Then we had more pizza at Reservoir Lounge. At least it was all really good quality pizza!
Whew - had a great action packed weekend. Cousin Winston had a BBQ on Saturday evening, and the food was very tasty as usual. I really liked the teriyaki salmon. Later that night I went to C-Lounge at Wellington between Spadina and Bathurst with Andy, Sacco, and met up with Suzanne and her friends (and relatives). The club was pretty good in that it had amazing decor. Strictly a summer bar, there was a long open room with large windows in back. The whole interior was filled with VIP booths. That's where they make the most money. The washrooms were horrid and the lineup for the women's washroom was hours long. Luckily the washrooms were not unisex, so the mens rooms had pretty fast turnover. It was still pretty gross though since there was liquid all over the floor. They tried to present themselves as upscale - there was a back massage booth on the mens side and a Lancome cosmetics booth on the womens side. None of the hot girls were in the club - they were all in the line for the washroom!
We had to line up at the entrance, but after waiting for 10 minutes, they told us all to move up away from the sidewalk, so we ended up at the front of a new line. Fortunately the bouncer let us in really quick. The rest of the group was at the back patio, but we found another lineup to get to the back. This line was much worse and took 20 minutes. The insane thing was that there were no washrooms in the patio area, so if you left to go pee, you would have to line up 20-30 minutes in the patio line again. The patio had a large but shallow pool for atmosphere and a whole bunch of potted palm trees. There was an extremely busy bar at the back, but to avoid fighting the crowd, there was a tiny little minibar at the side. That was very handy, though we had to avoid drinking too much so as to avoid having to go to the bathroom. There was no music on the patio, and again it was filled with 10 or more VIP booths.
At about 1:30, the girls couldn't hold in their bladders any longer so we left the bar and went to Chinatown for food. We went to Rol San for some simple Canadian style Chinese food. We had an adventure there too, as they tried to rip us off, charging us $125 instead of $92. Still, it was fun and I didn't get to bed until 4am.
The next day was Andy's birthday, so at 1:30 we went to Fran's diner (Sue, Mae, Bonnie, Andy and myself). Most of us ordered breakfast food - toast, pancakes, sausage, bacon, eggs. I ordered the 'Big Breakfast' and that was enough for the whole day. Afterwards, we went to Centennial Park Go-Karts and did 5 laps, followed by a try at the batting cages. The go karts weren't very fast, and I kept on getting bumped by some aggressive drivers in much faster black cars. Later, to finish up the evening, we went to see a movie - Ratatouille. It was a great movie and so much beyond expectations. I really recommend it!
Well, that was my busy weekend! Hope to have more of the same before the summer is out!
Oh Yeah!
Here are the ribs at the local pub - Jeremiah Bullfrog's near the corner of Simcoe and Queen. Wednesday is rib special and you get everything you see below for only $9.99. The ribs are a little salty, but otherwise are very tasty and well done. Definitely a great deal!
This past weekend was one of the best weekends ever. The weather was just perfect, sunny and not unbearably hot. On Saturday, I played beach volleyball with some friends. On Sunday, we checked out the Luminato festival at Harbourfront Centre. The place was absolutely crowded, but was fun to hang around looking at all the people and just enjoying the weather. Afterwards, we went to a Yuk-Yuk's show, then to Jeremiah Bullfrog's - our nearest corner pub. They had great prices and great service, so I think I'll be a regular there from now on.
A timeless lesson on how consultants can make a difference for an organization…
Last week, we took some friends out to a new restaurant, and noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket. It seemed a little strange. When the busboy brought our water and utensils, I noticed he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket. Then I looked around saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets.
When the waiter came back to serve our soup I asked, “Why the spoon?”
“Well,” he explained, “the restaurants’ owners hired Andersen Consulting to revamp all our processes. After several months of analysis, they concluded that the spoon was the most frequently dropped utensil. It represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour. If our personnel are better prepared, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours per shift.”
As luck would have it, I dropped my spoon and he was able to replace it with his spare.
“I’ll get another spoon next time I go to the kitchen instead of making an extra trip to get it right now.”
I was impressed. I also noticed that there was a string hanging out of the waiter’s fly. Looking around, I noticed that all the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. So before he walked off, I asked the waiter, “Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?”
“Oh, certainly!” Then he lowered his voice. “Not everyone is so observant.”
That consulting firm I mentioned also found out that we can save time in the rest-room. By tying this string to the tip of ‘you know what’, we can pull it out without touching it and eliminate the need to wash our hands, shortening the time spent in the rest-room by 76.39 percent.”
“After you get it out, how do you put it back?”
“Well,” he whispered, “I don’t know about the others, but I use the spoon.”
From my new favourite blog - www.waiterrant.net
What time is it? It's Sushi Time! This is my favourite Japanese restaurant on Queen Street, and we go there all the time.
This is what Andy does when he gets home from work. He doesn't even take off his jacket or anything. He just turns on the TV to some sports channel, and then goes to sleep. Just like his dad. Why he needs a sports channel to go to sleep beats the heck out of me. And why he can't take off his jacket and go into bed to get some real sleep puzzles me too.
There's a company in Europe that sells cleaning products. They've named some of their products after computer OS's. Check out the cool/nerdy pictures of Linux, micro&soft, and mac oxi. I bet these cleaning products would come in handy if your computer has too many viruses!
Andy's friends Letitia and Lisa were down for the weekend, visiting from Ottawa. On Saturday, we went out for lunch at the Sunset Grill. This is kind of like a Golden Griddle or IHOP where they serve breakfast all day. On the way there, we were witness to a major underground fire at the Hudson's Bay Centre.
We first saw some smoke pouring out of the ground, and the sound of approaching fire engines.
Multiple fire engines converged on the scene as we walked nearer. Huge amounts of smoke was pillaring out of two vents in the sidewalk. They seem to be the sort of electrical system access vents that bums like to sleep on because they are warm.
The street quickly became obscured with smoke, though most of it was carried northwest by the wind.
We were smart enough to keep out of the way of the toxic fumes. We were always upwind from the smoke and didn't smell any of the deadly emissions.
There were lots of fire engines, and CityTV reporters were quick to get to the scene. The column of smoke rose several stories high before dissipating in the wind.
Once in a while, the bursts of smoke would get more intense, becoming more clearly defined.
After lunch, we went to the Eaton Centre, but noticed that the Bay was abandoned. All the patrons and staff were evacuated across the street and were hanging out in the Eaton Centre. We shopped around for a while, but then the whole mall was shut down due to a power outage. The electricians probably shut off the power to the whole block in order to finally get the fire under control.
Bonnie scored a free hotel room for the weekend at Blue Mountain, so we went there for a 3 day vacation. It was a gorgeous resort hotel. The room was really impressive, a full sized condo suite. You can see photos on my Facebook page. We went night skiing on Saturday - I fell down lots! We chilled out on Sunday and did pretty much nothing. We were planning on going tubing, but it was closed this year due to warm weather and lack of snow. So we just had dinner in the ski village.
We went morning skiing on Monday and it was a lot more fun. We had some fresh snow so the slopes were nice and fluffy. We went down what was supposed to be a blue, but there were moguls and it was really steep and icy! Suz, Mike and I had to sort of slide down slowly on our butts and try to get down partway. After it leveled out a bit, we were OK. We checked out some other blue slopes that were more manageable, and I did much better.
Sure was a fun trip! Thanks Bonnie for the hotel, thanks Mike for the drive, thanks Suzanne for scoring me a great snow jacket and pants for $50! And thanks Andy, Mae, and Sandy for the great company.
