Toronto Part 3

We celebrated my husband's birthday while we were on vacation, so we decided to make it a sort of "knights and castles" day.



We spent the day taking the excellent and efficient transit (I know, I keep saying that, but I can't help it) to Casa Loma, a "castle" built by a millionaire in the early 1900's. We had a great time looking at the decor and planning to do the same to our house. HAHHAHAHAHAHA! I almost believed we would. Not likely. Our house would have fit inside their stables.

Like every good castle, this one also came with its own ghost stories. There were none published, but while we were having a bite to eat in the cafeteria we struck up a conversation with some of the staff who were also dining, and they gave us their ghost stories. One saw a man walking downstairs toward her at 5:00 AM; when she turned to look at him, he was gone. Another person was alone in the place at 2:00 AM, closing it down, when he heard fast footsteps and felt something whoosh by him -- he was also alone. Another staff member couldn't print out the monthly schedule without the 6th printing as 666, even though the file on the computer only showed one 6. Another rearranged a display within a glass case, to which only SHE had the key, only to find it set back as it was before. She did this for 3 weeks before she finally gave up and told the ghost she would just leave it.

There was a very cool and creepy part; in the basement, there was a long tunnel going from the basement to the stables and the garage, underground the whole way. THAT was eerie. My son was especially creeped out, as one of the staff members told him the ghost hangs out in the tunnels during the day. :)

As with everywhere else in Toronto, the people in this place were utterly friendly, helpful and glad to talk to us. The customer service in this whole city was just outstanding, and the Casa Loma was no exception.



We returned to our awesome hotel, pictured above, to rest up for the evening.



We had booked reservations at a place called the Medieval Times, a live dinner theatre experience where there is a whole storyline of knights and a king and a princess and the whole bit; the knights actually joust on real, honest-to-God horses that are kept in stables in the building itself. There are also live falcons that fly around for a few minutes. Falcons!

Do click on the link to watch some video from their shows.

The pic above is the outside of the building. They have that whole building!

I had arranged for some of the birthday extras for my husband: a free photo with Princess Esperanza, a knighting by the king and a photo of same, a photo of the three of us in our seats, plus we got free programs and a free DVD of their show.

So, while these knights are jousting and competing and the whole sordid storyline of betrayal and murder plays out, "wenches" come around and plonk your dinner in front of you. Soup, bun, 1/2 a chicken!, ribs, chunks of potatoes, Pepsi, and a pastry. In keeping with the times, you are given no cutlery. That's right. Hands-on eating, baby.



(thanks to the traveller on Tripadvisor.com for the above photo -- mine didn't turn out so well)

I also had to laugh -- whenever I asked a question of the staff, they would answer, "Yes, my lady" or "No, my lady". They also put every guest in a paper crown according to their assigned seat. So here is a building of pasty tourists, reeking of sunscreen and bug spray, dressed in paper crowns, and you have to call them "My Lord" or "My Lady". You. Couldn't. PAY. Me. Enough.

The experience was a blast and I recommend it to anybody who might be in a city where it is featured.

I had previously covered two days in my blog posts, but I will have to break that tradition and just do one day this time. It's getting late.

'Night!

More Toronto

Sighhhhhh....

I'm still waxing poetic to myself about the Bata Shoe Museum in my last post. Writing about it brought it all back; I'm wishing I could return.

I remember how astounded I was to read on their site that their gift shop carried books about shoes. My two loves, all rolled into one. Think about that: Books. About shoes. As my daughter-in-law elect put it, "BOOKS! ABOUT!! SHOES!!!!!!!!! *squeal*" I remember wondering if any of these books about shoes would feature shoes with books on them... but the very thought made me faint, so I stopped thinking.

ANYWAY!

There is much more to see in Toronto than the Shoe Museum.



On the third day we utilized the excellent, efficient, clean transit system to get ourselves to the Ontario Science Centre. This was a trip entirely for the entertainment of our young son -- we have our own Science Centre in town and couldn't see how much better this one could be than our own.

The reviews I had read had cautioned the reader that the centre cannot be seen all in one day. As we walked up to it I thought, "Eh, it's no bigger than ours. We should be out of here in four hours or less."

Ahhhahahahaha! Famous last words!

Over six hours later we had only seen about 2/3 of the Centre. Most of the area was either underground or in back. Good God, this place was huge.



There was a floor with the planetarium and a whole ton of wickedly cool space exhibits, and two enormous play areas that had things like a water table, ball roller coasters, a play house with blocks, a big grocery store, and on and on and on. Another floor had a display about the technology and considerations in going to Mars, complete with weight simulators. There was a gigantic area where children could build things out of circuit boards and wires and stuff, or they could make shoes out of various materials, or they could make stop-go animation movies and publish them to the 'net. There was a floor entirely about communications and technology, a rainforest where you could even go on guided nature tours outside, and another floor dedicated to the human body, which we unfortunately missed entirely. My husband and I sat there, nearly dead, wondering how the hell we would summon up the energy to go anywhere else on this trip.

I found one thing that made me laugh, and it wasn't one of the displays. At the water table I saw the camp leaders of a variety of summer camps standing around as the children played in the water. One day camp was called the Lubavich Day Camp, comprised of orthodox Jewish people. The little boys wore yarmulkes, the women all wore skirts and the married pregnant ones had their heads covered. Another camp present was comprised of strict Muslim people; the little girls even had the head scarves (which normally they don't do until they get older, but with this one they started young). The adults of both camps were scrupulously avoiding each other. The children? They were all playing together and cooperating with their projects at the water table; I even took a picture of a little Muslim girl with a head scarf, building a dam in cooperation with a little boy with a yarmulke. (No, I won't post it; these are other people's kids.) This just cracked me up. Apparently they have forgotten how important it is to cling to religious and personal differences; instead they chose to play and cooperate.

I think we all need a de-aging machine. A lot of us could stand to be like that again.



Back to the awesome hotel to soak in the pool and get ready for the next day.

The next day, we were starting to plan for our trip to Niagara Falls and my husband had decided that going via Greyhound bus would be the best idea. So, our day consisted mainly of wandering around the city of Toronto for awhile, taking in the various neighbourhoods, and checking out the Greyhound station.

Toronto is a fabulous place in which to walk around. What a blast! Everything is so big, so clean, so cool.



This pic doesn't really do this area justice.

NOTE: None of the pics on here were taken by me. I haven't uploaded mine to my computer yet. Why? 'Cause I suck.

Anyway, this area is Yonge Street and Dundas Street intersection. Along Yonge street are all sorts of huge billboards, shops galore, and people, people, people. The area in this pic had a large stage set up when we were there, for the upcoming Just For Laughs festival. This is a comedy festival that goes on every year and it attracts very big names in comedy. We didn't see any, unfortunately.

We also sat in front of the City Hall area with the pool and fountain:



The buildings here are a real mix of old and new; instead of tearing down the heritage buildings like *some* cities I know, Toronto seems to have kept a great many of their old ones. The one in this pic is the old city hall -- very cool.

We also found the recording studio for MuchMusic, the Canadian version of MTV. This was a real surprise; the outside of the building didn't advertise its occupants at all. We stepped in and saw some filming going on, and a security guard suggested we leave, so we did. Somehow I thought the Canadian centre of rock TV would be somehow more grandiose.

We also wandered briefly into a Chapters store nearby -- Chapters is a huge Canadian bookstore chain -- where the building looked as though an enormous Rubik's Cube had smashed into it from space. I had been searching for the Rubik's Cube building that i had seen on the maps; my family thought it was a ruse to get them to accompany me into a bookstore. :)

I could write on and on about the streets of Toronto but I really can't capture the essence of it; you'll just have to see it yourself.

I will post more tomorrow about the trip.

Adios.

Toronto!

Earlier in the year my husband and I were thinking about summer vacation possibilities.

"Toronto," he said.

"Toronto?" I said.

"Toronto, Ontario. That's where we should go this summer," he said.

"Why Toronto?" I said.

"Why not Toronto?" he said.

While I never got a straight answer, we went ahead and planned a trip to Toronto, Ontario, the center of many things Canadian.

Of all the people I spoke to who had been there, very few had anything good to say. The few months between the deposits and the actual trip were filled with people saying, "Toronto. Why go there? It's dirty/polluted/too hot/full of rude people/crowded/full of weirdos." By the time we were ready to leave, I was truly dreading the trip.

The vacation could be summed in one large word:

FABULOUS!!!!

Toronto was absolutely wonderful. Awesome, clean, friendly, vibrant, interesting, fun... there are not enough words!

I cannot remember a day-by-day account of what we all did, so I'll type it as I remember it:

We arrived at our outstanding hotel, the Residence Inn Mariott Downtown. Due to our son's food allergies we really want a kitchen available to us in our hotel room, and each of these suites has just that. The hotel was clean, super quiet, very friendly, in a good part of town, and CHEAP! $ 199.00 a night for a one-bedroom suite!



Our first day we decided to take the subway to the Royal Ontario Museum. First of all, I was astounded to see the subway system clean, safe, well-lit, and so efficient that I'm *still* shaking my head. Holy cow. The transit system in my city is nothing even close to the model of efficiency that the Toronto system is.

Anyway, we got our first taste of how Toronto does things with this museum -- big, bigger and biggest. In the 7 hours that we were there, we still didn't see it all. There were several floors of exhibits covering anthropological matters, natural history, and the most amazing art exhibit I've ever seen. I originally wanted to go here to see the Darwin exhibit, but I was utterly enchanted with the Shanghai Kaleidoscope art exhibit -- it was a number of installations of visual arts, including video, textile, and photographic, that were all metaphorical of the massive changes taking place in Shanghai right now. My advice: Go to the gift shop FIRST, buy the book about this exhibit, read it fast, then go up and absorb it.

We dragged our aching feet back to the hotel, where we planned the events for the next day. They were to include the one feature I had been lusting to see:



THE BATA SHOE MUSEUM! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!

What can I say? With 4 floors of SHOES -- the origins of shoes, old shoes, new shoes, work shoes, theatrical shoes, celebrity shoes, art shoes, beaded shoes, metal shoes, wooden shoes, embroidered shoes, big shoes, teeny shoes (even Barbie shoes) -- quite frankly, I have found my spiritual home. Every shoe fanatic is required to attend this sumptuous display at least once in their lives. To top it all off, there was a tiny gift shop with gifts ALL ABOUT SHOES! Scarves with shoes, paper notepads with shoes, shoe-shaped luggage tags, purses with shoes, books about shoes, jewelry with shoes. I spent almost as much time in the gift shop as I did in the museum. Seriously. This is such an enriching place to those of us addicted to shoes.

The rest of my family spent their time at an enormous music store down the street called Sonic Boom, which was THEIR spiritual mecca. What, you think I'd bring a bunch of straight males into a shoe museum. Not.

Our trip didn't end in two days but this posting will have to end for tonight. I'll carry on about the trip tomorrow.

'Night!

My 25th Anniversary...

... of the time I discovered Twisted Sister, was marked by the most amazing day.

Some background: I had grown up on an island on the west coast of Canada, in a small town where anybody even slightly unique was singled out and beaten down by their peers. Fit in or get lost.

Well, I didn't fit in. I never did. To top it off, I was an ugly kid -- ugly, weird, socially inept. I hit some kind of jackpot, it seems.

My family and I were on vacation off the island in July of 1983; I was 14, the time when even perfect kids feel like their feet are too big and their teeth are too long. I had found a very cool metal magazine called Creem at a store and bought it; inside was an article about a band called Twisted Sister.

The picture was taken at an outdoor festival in England where they had played on stage with Motorhead. To this day, it was the most godawful picture of them that has ever been published.

They were bizarre. They were weird. And that name!

It was love at first sight.

I HAD to find out more about this band. I didn't even care what they sounded like. I HAD to see them, hear them, anything. They were my new folk heroes. Their stage dress thumbed the collective nose at everything trendy and cool at the time; New Wave was big and Duran Duran ruled the airwaves. These guys resembled a New Wave band the way a tank resembles a Pinto. I loved that.

Remember, these were the days before the internet. Top-loading VCR's were all the rage and most of us still had Hi-Fi stereos and party lines on the (dial) phone. Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet. (snicker) Finding information on anything obscure was tricky.

I took myself over to the nearest big city and scoured the head shops for metal stuff, and lo and behold, a Twisted Sister patch with a photo of them from their first album, Under the Blade. I wore it on my back pocket around school and REALLY got picked on -- "What the hell is that on yer ass?" "Can't you look normal for a change?" "You're such a loser! Why don't you wear something cool like ZZ Top?"

I found their new album, You Can't Stop Rock And Roll, shortly thereafter. Once I heard it, I was hooked forever.

I loved Twisted all through every phase of their success. Their anthems, their look, everything about them resonated with us oddball kids who felt very alone. Sometimes their music was all that kept me going.

(I won't get into my childhood on a public blog. Suffice to say the first 30 years of my childhood sucked. Bad.)

I loved them even after they'd broken up in the late '80's. I loved them all through the '90's. I wished dearly they would reunite.

In 1998 we had gotten our first computer and I was able to find a bit of info here and there about the various members of Twisted Sister! Yay! I had the idea to do a webpage for Eddie Ojeda, one of the guitarists for the band. I had seen quite a few people asking about him on message boards, wondering what he was up to, and his current webpage was not updating very often.

So, I emailed him through his page to see how he would feel about me doing a page for him.

He emailed me back (and I almost dropped dead when I saw his name in my Inbox) and said Sure, why not?

Next step: I ran to the computer store to buy a book on HTML. What do I know about webpages? I couldn't even arrange my inbox into folders. (still can't...)

I taught myself HTML, did the page, talked to him on the phone frequently even though I was trying so hard not to make an ass of myself that I really probably did.

After a couple of years I had to let the page go; I had returned back to school, it was getting increasingly hard to get a hold of him, and my server went tits-up. The time that it would take to reload everything onto another server was time I didn't have, so I had to let it go.

Fast forward to July 2005, and Twisted Sister had since reunited and was coming to a city north of me. O.M.G. Of course I made plans to go.

And, I had emailed Eddie again, thanking him for coming to my province so the fans here could see them.

He emailed me back, saying he would get me backstage! I WAS GOING TO MEET TWISTED SISTER!!!!

I did meet them that day, but this blog is getting long, and I can't find the digital photos of that day, so I'll save it for another time. This post is supposed to be about their most recent concert. In short, I said to my husband after the meeting, "I can dig a hole in the ground and live there for the rest of my life. There's nothing else in the world that I want!"

Fast forward again to July 13, 2008, and Twisted Sister was coming to my very own city! Eddie emailed me his cell phone number and told me to call him when we got there and he'd get us backstage.

Boy, was I a bundle of nerves. Again.



After talking with Eddie for awhile he had to zip into the trailer to get something, so I talked to Mark "The Animal" Mendoza for awhile. What a cool guy! Very funny, very friendly, easy to talk to. In this pic he was crouching down so he didn't look like such a monster next to me.



There's Eddie, out of the trailer and posing with us. He is awesome. He's very kind and gracious, which sounds a bit over the top, but there it is. He really is nice. And that hair! That is all his own hair. I asked, and he showed me.



Up here we have a pic of me and Eddie with A.J. Pero, the talented drummer. We talked tattoos for awhile -- another funny, easy-to-talk to person.

I only saw the other guitarist, J.J. French, very briefly, and didn't get a pic with him this time. The singer Dee Snider doesn't like to meet with people before the show so I didn't see him either. However, they did all sign my jacket when Eddie took it around for autographs.

They are all wonderful to talk to and they really put me at ease. Their appreciation for their fans is clear in the way they treat them, and in their amazing performances. Even though they usually perform for tens of thousands of fans, they gave the same high-energy show to the tiny 700 of us at the nightclub that night. Tiny stage, tiny (but packed) crowd, and the show went on full bore.

My husband and I were right against the stage, front and center. I am not exaggerating when I say that Dee's hair hit me in the face several times -- I could have played "Name that Shampoo". The guitarists often did their solos right in front of us. They were within arms reach for the whole show. Wow.

Plus, my enormous strong husband kept all the moshers off me and I got to enjoy the show unmolested. Well, except for the drunk who told me I reminded him of the mother from the Brady Bunch. But I've heard worse.



This is a shot of Eddie and Jay Jay, and











This is a shot of Dee. I have more, but Blogger only let me upload these five. And it took half the night.

So to Twisted Sister: You have no idea what you do for people through your music. So many people have been influenced by you, so many people have been made to feel as though they matter, because of you. The mania that you inspire at your shows is due to the gratitude that people feel toward you. And the kindness that you showed to me will always be remembered.

Thank you.

(I'd also like to add a plug to Etsy shop Grenade for making the cool skully clutch I'm, er, clutching.)

What an ordeal!

I have been trying my hand at needlefelting for awhile now, and have been working on an especially awesome piece. My Etsy friends have been eager to see it.

Soooo... I decided I'd better learn how to a) upload photos from the camera to the computer, and b) from the computer to a blog. This is ME we're talking about. Good luck.

First I did the easy part: I took photos of the little fella. Oops, the battery in the camera is dead. Where is the battery charger?

I spent over an hour tearing the house apart, looking for the battery charger. If you could see this place you would understand. Finally I called my son to see if his store sold them without the cameras, and while I was talking to him, THERE IT IS! Sitting right there on top of the microwave!

So, the battery finally charged, I start to take the pics. Hmmm, that one is too dark. This one is a bad angle. THAT one is too dark! Why is it so hard to get a good pic??

Now I really have even HIGHER regard for my Etsy friends who can take a decent picture!

After much fiddling about, reading the instruction books, plugging things in, opening files, etc., I finally got them uploaded to my computer. EUREKA!

The pics are still not great -- I need to stage them better -- but for the time being, I'd like to introduce you to:





JERRELL, the Needlefelted Axolotl!

This little fellow was inspired by Cindy Jerrell at Black Cat Graphix on Etsy, who emailed me one day with the funniest rant about my awesome avatar (an axolotl!), and how much she loves him, and how I could corner the plushie market with those things if I made them. The wording of the convo tickled me so much, it inspired me to make this little fellow.



He is 10 inches from snout to tail tip and has wire in his legs and head-thingys.

I needle-felted his face last, and was I ever nervous. What if I wrecked him?? What if his lovely body had a hideous face? And sure enough, when his face was first begun, it looked bad alright. Somehow I saved it. :) See, he looks just like my smiley!





As I learn to take better photos I will show them off, plus any new stuff I do. For now, here he is! Yay for me!

A Sweet Story

My mother is the most amazing person you could meet. She is kind, loving, very funny and quirky, really on the ball and the best grandma in the world. If I post a pic of her she'd kill me, so I'll be nice and keep her pic under wraps. :) She really is beautiful but she's as photogenic as I am, which is not very. You don't see any pics of *me* on these blogs, do you? :D

So, my 70-year-old mother was at a potluck dinner with the other seniors at her adult-only condo complex. She had been given two paper placemats instead of one, so she decided to fold a boat.

Someone saw her, and decided to fold an airplane. Soon several of the seniors were folding airplanes.

Then, one gentleman came forward who was the airplane-folding PRO, and he taught everyone some tricks about folding airplanes.

Soon the entire place was alive with seniors throwing airplanes at each other! Even the people in wheelchairs were getting some good air on their planes.

When this had gone on for quite awhile the airplanes started to get bent, so everyone began crumpling them up and chucking the balls at each other like snowballs!

The condo supervisor walked by my mom's table with a huge grin and said, "You really started something!"

Everyone left there feeling ten years younger. :)

The Sky Is Falling!

Well, maybe not the sky, but apparently people's flush-mount dome lights are crashing down all over the place. My blog entry before the previous one detailed our own experience of our light fixture crashing to the floor in our kitchen.

Today we spent most of the day going to various lighting shops to replace the fixture. The lady at our final destination had the same thing happen to her recently! She works with builders and designers every day and apparently there was a manufacturer whose lights were installed in many, many homes 8 - 12 years ago, and this manufacturer's lights have been crashing down from the ceilings of various homes in recent months!

I don't understand why this hasn't been made known to the public. I will be talking to this lady again when I pick up our fixture on Monday and I will ask her if there is any intention of warning the public. Apparently these fixtures are also mounted in foyers and hallways, some of which have ceilings 2 stories or higher. If someone is under one of those... I can't even think about it.

If you have a flush-mount dome fixture -- they are mounted directly onto the ceiling rather than dangling for any length -- take a ladder and have a good look at it. Carefully take off the glass and inspect the nut holding the base onto the ceiling. Not your husband, the hardware! Silly. If it seems at all flimsy, buy new hardware.

I'll keep everyone posted on this.