Tracy's Birthday

Toronto's old city hall clock tower.

After a late dim sum, I wandered around downtown a bit do to some shopping. Mainly replacing clothing with holes. Pants, socks, shirts, that sort of thing. While crossing the street between the Eaton centre and the Bay I noticed some weird ass lighting on the old city hall building and the life insurance building further down the road. It reminded me of a fantasy matte painting. Buildings were being showered with golden light from multiple angles. Ray beams of light breaking through little pockets of holes in clouds hitting various buildings and street items. It's sort of the thing you'd see after you kill all the monsters while playing Diablo (video game) or the hand of God come down and gave you the all's clear or thumbs up. A gift from above to remember a special event or day.

Which brings me to Tracy's birthday. A special day indeed. A cheerful person,packed with loads of cuteness and if that weren't enough she's really nice. I got home from shopping around 8:00pm and left at 9:40ish to go to her party with Al. In the hour and forty minutes I managed to track down a picture of Mr.T off the internet, roto out the background, put a new one in, added a cartoon bubble that said "I pity the fool that doesn't wish Tracy a Happy Birthday", print it out (this would be her birthday card), did a search for images in my database, deal with my DVD not working on my database computer so I had to hand find them on my other slower computer, rotate them, scale them, print them out, stick magnet backs on them, cut the pictures to fit, after searching for my metel ruler and Xacto knife (these would be part of her gift), and take a shower.

For some reason it would have all been a lot easier had I downloaded the image before. It took about 40 minutes just finding the image and photo manipulate it. One day I'll have to invest in high speed. Needless to say things were pretty nutty during this period. Al called saying he was at the end of my driveway just as I put the last magnet on the gift box. Good timing.

In the end everything went well. Tracy loved the present. There was a good turn out. I got to see a bunch of friends I haven't seen in a while and I got to dance with Tracy. I didn't get home until about 3:30. I would have made it home earlier but walked to Yonge street before boarding a streetcar. Not bad for an evening after a half week of being bedridden.

I'd be sick every week for that kind of payoff.