Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin Pie, the landlord (Kyoko's) cat.

I spent a few hours this afternoon taking pictures of the downstairs cat who had somehow managed to sneak upstairs. Probably occurred when I went downstairs to do laundry. Sneaky cat. While the allergy bag shed all over my pillow and bed I shot some macro photos of him.


Close up of the eye. Shot with a extension tube on my 70-300mm lens.


The cat's nose also shot with an extension tube and my 70-300mm lens


Using a shorter extension tube to see more of the face.


Just after Pumpkin's yawn.

Darryl the guinea pig

Kyoko, Eric, and Darryl chat in the kitchen

In my attempt to cook my super secret recipe of chicken with maple frosted flakes without the maple frosted flakes I realized that using "substitute" ingredients might be a bit dodgy. I needed a guinea pig. Darryl would be that guinea pig.

While the main goal is not to poison the subject but to test to see if the food is good. It's good to pick a victim... er test sampler that has modest taste expecations and zero or very low negative results. For example. You don't cook an experimental dish for someone you just started dating unless they've never eaten before or you don't want to see them again.

With Darryl he either eats the food or doesn't. There's no emotional attachment and you can always suggest going out to eat in a worse case scenario. Well I suppose the worse case scenario is that you suggest eating out after getting him to the hospital to get his stomach pumped at which point you may want to suggest take out so he can eat the next day. See what are friends for?

The chicken tasted okay. After seeing Darryl bite into the food and not keel over I figured it was okay to try some myself. It wasn't bad but the corn flakes were a little on the soggy side for my liking. Next time I'll have to take the lid off the casserole dish for the last few minutes of cooking. Did I say corn flakes? Yes, I used regular corn flakes instead of the maple frosted ones.

In other news, Today I booked my plane ticket to London. More on this in an upcoming blog entry.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave

Tangled wire

I spent the day wrapping out the set of ReGenesis. What does that mean? Basically pulling out cables and unravelling the rat's nest that they've become over a season of use. Pictured above is a small four wire mess that I pulled out of a 20 wire clump.

Later on I helped James take some non-working TVs from his garage to the dumpster. I ended up getting a big fat splinter in my right hand ring finger.


James moving a TV to the dump

Snow a plenty

Looking outside the front porch

I only had to go out for one thing today and that was to drop off photos to Simon. Looking outside it seemed rather bleak. Snow on the ground. Cold. Bleeah.

The Morning Install

Hilary at brunch

A bit bleary eyed from going to sleep late last night I woke up and dragged my butt out of bed to take a TTC subway over to Hilary's place to help reinstall her computer. I walked down the wrong street and couldn't find the place. I phoned her to get my bearings. It turned out she was just getting up and asked if I could pick her up a cup of coffee. Not a lot of coffee shops stick out in my head at Bloor and Christie. I found myself at the local Walnut cake place. Good choice. They had coffee and those tiny walnut shaped donuts (for lack of better description). I bought five of them and headed back to Hilary's place with a cup of the black liquid.

Installing windows, while a bit time consuming, went pretty much without a hitch. It was a good thing I brought my Windows98 CD so I could use FDISK to wipe the existing hard drive. It amazes me that I don't have an XP equivalent. I actually don't own an XP CD. The operating system was installed on my computer and all I have is a system restore CD made specific for my laptop.

While the computer chugged away, Hilary came up with the idea of getting some food. Ya gotta like the way these dames think. So off to Mars we went. I ordered a BLT with a breakfast egg, meat combo of some sort. I inhaled it pretty much. I don't remember what it looked like (aside from the above photo) but I do remember feeling pleasantly full but not to the extent where I felt like I had to waddle back out of the diner.


The tiny tomato juice can

Katarzyna

It was freezing cold this evening (-40 C with the wind chill). I went down to the beaches to meet up with Kasia at Paul's apartment. She wanted to get a photo of both of us for an ad space that informed people of our skill sets.

At one point she got the idea to squat on a radiator near a window. As she's a dancer she's pretty nimble. As for me, I felt like I was going to fall off the narrow thing. In the end Paul took the photo and that was that.

Did I mention that it was freezing?

It's 11am Let's Eat!!!

Breakfast of Champions!

Considering we didn't get to bed until 7:30 in the morning, getting up at 11am was a bit nutty. But then the magic words of food were spoken and like magic I was out of bed before you could say "scrambled eggs and bacon".


The Plucker in Hamilton

We went to the Plucker, a bar also known in roller derby circles as Trevor's living room and a Hamilton establishment that I've become quite familiar with. It was here that we bumped into Renee and Lisa from the Hamilton Harlots who got the same idea and were eating breakfast.

I ordered a burger and to make it breakfasty poured some pancake syrup on it. It's a ritual that I've had since I went to the IHOP in Fort Wayne. Despite what some readers may think it actually tastes good and for the readers that stick their noses up at the idea, it doesn't matter I'll be eating hamburgers like this with or without your approval.


Melanie and Rebecca look at last night's photos


Renee and Lisa at the Plucker

Around 3:30pm Suzi, Steve, and Eric, the rest of last night's contingent who slept over at Mel's place showed up. We ordered more food. I ordered the new coconut shrimp. Since the last time I had the coconut shrimp they changed the recipe. I wasn't impressed. They had gotten rid of the coconut chunks and used coconut milk instead.

At 5pm I left to catch the GO bus back to Toronto.


Suzi lit by window light.


"Are you awake?"

The German Party

Me as Max Ernst (surrealist painter)

Melanie's boyfriend is going on tour to Germany to kick some butt... literally. He's a kick boxer. In order to help raise money and have fun along the way Mel conceived a party themed around all that's German. The colors of red, black, and gold were all over from the streamers on the wall to the Jello shooters.

I originally wanted to go as Albert Einstein mainly so I could reuse that old lab coat I have in my wardrobe. Unfortunately finding the Einstein wig proved to be too much work at auch short notice. Someone, I think it was Leanna, told me to put talcum powder in my hair and just make it look like I stuck my finger in an electrical socket. As my hair has been getting longer, I've been letting it grow, that seemed pretty easy as I'd just have to go to the party with bed head.

Talcum powder gets all over stuff though and what if it rained? As I didn't want to leave a trail of white dough where ever I went the talcum powder idea was nixed. I thought about dying my hair white but that idea was tossed when I thought of trying to explain my hair at the passport office or at customs.

Finally I thought I'd just go to the local party store and try to find something there. It's my Party, located on the Danforth came to mind. I went there and found a Andy Warhol type wig. It was perfect until I got home and found out Andy wasn't German. Turns out he was an American with a Hungarian background. It was then that I scoured the web and found Max Ernst. Then with some artist liberties (adding some artsy glasses), viola!


Suzi poses in the mirror.


Melanie as the GI Joe Baroness


Jackie as Beethoven


Jello shooters

Clothes off and dance.

At one point while engrossed in a conversation with someone, I went to look up and there were half naked girls dancing around. When did the party take this direction? We ended up staying until about 6:50, thinking we'd have breakfast as local restaurants started opening at 6:00, but by that point most of us were really tired so we ended up going home, or in my case, crashing on Melanie's newly bought fold out mattress in her living room. Which I would liek to say was quite comfortable.


The drink table

Chantel Vachon

Chantel Vachon

Another Bunny night at the Swimming Pool, tonight featuring the playmate Chantel Vachon. For those that aren't in the know every month, for the past few months, my friend Simon Mah has a free autograph session with some of the past playboy playmates he's photographed. It's a good chance to meet them one on one should that be your cup of tea in a drinking and eating environment.

As one of event photographers it's a good chance for me to get out and break the monotony of everyday life while keeping my photo taking skills sharp. I get to see a bunch of friends on a regular basis. The pretty girls? Well that's just a bonus.


Posing with a photo from a previous Simon Mah photo shoot


Busy signing autographs

Transit is for the birds

Because some pigeons are tired of flight...

This was weird. A few levels underground while waiting for a subway to get me home from doing a bit of grocery shopping this pigeon appeared in front of me. It seemed like it just jumped into my view. It walked toward me, paused, and walked back toward where it had landed. Then it turned almost like it was looking down the tracks for the incoming train. The bird froze in position like it was waiting.

Even after the subway car pulled up the bird stayed on the ground, even with all the people leaving the subway. It casually walked around people. It wasn't until some girl started screaming and running after it that it took flight.