Sunday was a pleasantly uneventful day of hanging out with old friends. These are the kind of friends that don't require constant conversation or any kind of ceremony. We can just kick back with some junk snacks and the TV, and we're good to go for hours.
We were summoned together for the 37th birthday of an old friend of mine. Let's call him Chuck. He was my first serious boyfriend in high school, back when he was tall, blond, and 17, and I was a naive, over-emotional 15. I had been a geek/outcast in middle school, so I can't tell you how excited I was to have a handsome, older boyfriend. It was a super-intense first-puppy-love affair.
Funny how, after all the teenage drama, we managed to stay friends. I eventually married one of his friends, and when I got divorced, Chuck drove my stuff to my new place in a rented van. Of all the friends I had in high school, including the girls, he's the only one I still hang out with.
Ken and I regularly spend time with Chuck, his wife, and their 8-month-old son. They're our best couple-friends. Zach, the creator of Oonis , is Chuck's younger brother, and also a good friend. In fact, they really feel more like family than friends, I've known them so long.
I always come home from these gatherings feeling blessed.
Showing posts with label Zach. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zach. Show all posts
Monday, March 17, 2008
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Snowy Saturday
7:30 am: Wake up. Huh, what do you know? It's snowing.
10:30 am: Go meet my friend Zach for brunch. Wow, it's really coming down.
I walk to the subway station through ankle-deep snow. It's pretty, so white and quiet. There are hardly any cars on the streets. I enjoy the tingling cold of snowflakes on my face.
11:00 ish (OK, so I was a little late) to 1:20 ish: Brunch with Zach at the Pickle Barrel.
Just so you know, Zach is awesome. We've been friends since high school. In my tenth grade yearbook, he glowers at the camera from behind a curtain of hair. He signed it: "When I rule the world, I won't enslave you."
Zach made these guys for me many years ago. They are: Red Squid, Oonis, and Sammy the Snake. Oonis has a hole in the top of his head and so doubles as a pen holder.
Yes, Ken is cool with us being friends. He trusts me. The value and rarity of this kind of trust is not lost on me.
You'd think that at a restaurant called "The Pickle Barrel", you'd find the best quality pickles available. It may only be a garnish by the side of the plate, but it's also their corporate emblem. Zach and I agreed that in fact, these were the WORST pickles we'd ever had. They tasted like they'd been bottled in flavourless oil, instead of brine. Slimey and tasteless. Feh!
2:00 ish: Meet Ken at the bookstore. Take the subway downtown to the Eaton Centre Mall. It's still snowing, but I don't care much because I've been indoors since I got on the subway at 10:45 am. I love malls that are attached to subway stations.
2:30 to 4:00 ish: Bum around the mall. At one point, we ventured outside, but the wind threw such a flurry of cold, wet snow into our faces that we turned around and went right back in.
4:00 pm: Take the escalators up 8 floors in The Bay department store to the Cityview Cafe.
This is a quiet cafeteria with enormous plate-glass windows that look down onto the historical building that used to be City Hall. You can also see Queen St. (a main thoroughfare) and the skating rink at Nathan Philips square.
We chose a plastic-wrapped slice of pumpkin pie to share, and sat by the plate-glass windows, watching snow pour down heavily from an undifferentiable sky. A few brave souls were skating, although the snow must have been pretty thick on the ice. We watched traffic creep along. Tourists stopped to take photos of each other in front of Old City Hall. A pack of skinny teenagers waiting for the streetcar tried to have a snowball fight, but the snow was as packable as dry flour. They threw handfuls of it at each other, and it just blew away on the wind.
5:00 pm: Take the escalators down 8 floors. Bum around the mall some more.
6:00 pm: Take the subway to Yonge and Bloor. The shoe store I wanted to look around in was "Closed Due to Extreme Weather. Sorry for the Inconvenience." We went to Ginger for dinner.
Ginger is a Vietnamese, cafeteria-style restaurant. We sat at a table for two pushed up against a wall papered with a mural of a tropical beach. As we ate, the wind picked up outside and snow blew in a furious dance outside the windows. Whenever the front door opened, the wind gusted in so aggressively that it blew snow right onto my dinner plate, as I shivered under the image of a paper palm tree on a sunny beach.
6:30 ish: Time to get going. Outside it's snowing so hard that I laugh in disbelief. There are so few cars on the road that it feels more like 4:00 am on a weekday than Saturday night at the heart of the city.
7:00 ish: Walk home from the subway through calf-deep snow. The wind won't let up, and it's blowing a constant stream of cold, wet snow in my face. I am so over the snow by now. I am not enjoying the sensation, no sir, not one bit. Not the stinging of snowflakes landing directly on my eyeballs, nor the cold melt-water that's trickling down my neck.
10:15 pm: Draft a blog post about my day in the snow. It's STILL freakin' snowing!!
10:30 am: Go meet my friend Zach for brunch. Wow, it's really coming down.
I walk to the subway station through ankle-deep snow. It's pretty, so white and quiet. There are hardly any cars on the streets. I enjoy the tingling cold of snowflakes on my face.
11:00 ish (OK, so I was a little late) to 1:20 ish: Brunch with Zach at the Pickle Barrel.
Just so you know, Zach is awesome. We've been friends since high school. In my tenth grade yearbook, he glowers at the camera from behind a curtain of hair. He signed it: "When I rule the world, I won't enslave you."
Zach made these guys for me many years ago. They are: Red Squid, Oonis, and Sammy the Snake. Oonis has a hole in the top of his head and so doubles as a pen holder.
Yes, Ken is cool with us being friends. He trusts me. The value and rarity of this kind of trust is not lost on me.
You'd think that at a restaurant called "The Pickle Barrel", you'd find the best quality pickles available. It may only be a garnish by the side of the plate, but it's also their corporate emblem. Zach and I agreed that in fact, these were the WORST pickles we'd ever had. They tasted like they'd been bottled in flavourless oil, instead of brine. Slimey and tasteless. Feh!
2:00 ish: Meet Ken at the bookstore. Take the subway downtown to the Eaton Centre Mall. It's still snowing, but I don't care much because I've been indoors since I got on the subway at 10:45 am. I love malls that are attached to subway stations.
2:30 to 4:00 ish: Bum around the mall. At one point, we ventured outside, but the wind threw such a flurry of cold, wet snow into our faces that we turned around and went right back in.
4:00 pm: Take the escalators up 8 floors in The Bay department store to the Cityview Cafe.
This is a quiet cafeteria with enormous plate-glass windows that look down onto the historical building that used to be City Hall. You can also see Queen St. (a main thoroughfare) and the skating rink at Nathan Philips square.
We chose a plastic-wrapped slice of pumpkin pie to share, and sat by the plate-glass windows, watching snow pour down heavily from an undifferentiable sky. A few brave souls were skating, although the snow must have been pretty thick on the ice. We watched traffic creep along. Tourists stopped to take photos of each other in front of Old City Hall. A pack of skinny teenagers waiting for the streetcar tried to have a snowball fight, but the snow was as packable as dry flour. They threw handfuls of it at each other, and it just blew away on the wind.
5:00 pm: Take the escalators down 8 floors. Bum around the mall some more.
6:00 pm: Take the subway to Yonge and Bloor. The shoe store I wanted to look around in was "Closed Due to Extreme Weather. Sorry for the Inconvenience." We went to Ginger for dinner.
Ginger is a Vietnamese, cafeteria-style restaurant. We sat at a table for two pushed up against a wall papered with a mural of a tropical beach. As we ate, the wind picked up outside and snow blew in a furious dance outside the windows. Whenever the front door opened, the wind gusted in so aggressively that it blew snow right onto my dinner plate, as I shivered under the image of a paper palm tree on a sunny beach.
6:30 ish: Time to get going. Outside it's snowing so hard that I laugh in disbelief. There are so few cars on the road that it feels more like 4:00 am on a weekday than Saturday night at the heart of the city.
7:00 ish: Walk home from the subway through calf-deep snow. The wind won't let up, and it's blowing a constant stream of cold, wet snow in my face. I am so over the snow by now. I am not enjoying the sensation, no sir, not one bit. Not the stinging of snowflakes landing directly on my eyeballs, nor the cold melt-water that's trickling down my neck.
10:15 pm: Draft a blog post about my day in the snow. It's STILL freakin' snowing!!
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