Toaster Day

Sadie's Diner counter

I stopped off at Sadie's diner (located at 504 Adelaide) to drop off some pictures for Al (the owner) from the opening. He and his brother were working the kinks out of using the cash register when I got there. I took a few pictures, dropped off a few picture CDs and left.


The front window

On my way home I decided to go to the depressing Gerrard square mall to shop for a toaster and bumped into Trinh, a person I haven't seen in ages. While walking between Home Depot and Zellers we talked about who we've seen from high school, what we've been up to, and what my toaster mission specs were.

For all the years I lived on my own I've never owned a toaster. The closest thing is my sandwich maker, basically a waffle iron for heating sandwiches or making those crazy apple pies with apple sauce and two slices of wonder bread or the mini pizza pockets. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

It's kind of odd that a person that likes toasted bagels so much wouldn't have a toaster until now but I guess it's just that I've never thought about it before. There was always a camera thingy to buy or maybe a DVD. I never knew toasters were so cheap. It wasn't until visiting London that I noticed you could buy a Toaster from Sainbury's for under seven pounds.

At Home Depot the least expensive toaster was $15.95. It took up the least room, which is ideal for me as I have a small amount of counter space, but at the same time had large enough bread openings to toast bagels. It even had a bagel mode that could be set using a flimsy plastic lever. I looked at the Betty Crocker device a bit more closely and noticed that, for the most part, it was all made of plastic.

The cheap plastic housing spurred me on to check the other models. Some where aluminum, others looked like other forms of metal. They all had plastic bottoms. I ended up going back to Zellers, dragging Trinh with me, and picking up the hamilton beach toaster. It too, was made with a plastic bottom but it had a crumb tray. Although a little bit bigger because it was oval shaped instead of rectangular and twice the price at $39.95 I still went with it.

After the shopping spree on my toaster I ended up going to Trinh's place which is conveniently located pretty close to the mall. Once there I found out that she and Lenny have two kids. Both are still in their "cute" and "I want to share everything with that stranger with the camera" stage.


Playing with scissors


Lenny feeds the kid


Trinh in the kitchen

After the short visit at Trinh's it was off to home to drop off the Toaster and pick up batteries to go back to the west end to the launch of the Opium Lounge. It's just a name, they don't actually sell Opium (for all those europeans that might be reading this thinking that Toronto is a cool drug using city like Amsterdam - sorry it's not).


Emmanuel and Lisa at the Opium Lounge

The Opium lounge is sandwiched between two other clubs on Richmond. Unfortunately the front of the lounge looks like a big wall with curtains. It ended up that we along with maybe four others not including the owners showed up.


The music was too loud to really have any conversation so we eventually left for food. Emmanuel and I ended up at Swatow, the usual late night eatery. I was starving and ordered 111A (Shrimp and Lobster on rice), the Singapore noodles, a small bowl of chicken corn soup, and a side order of pan fried dumplings. Emmaunel in contrast ate a very small bit. We left after I ordered a beef stew on rice to go.