A Blue Moon to End the Summer

The first drinks: Blue Moon martinis.

It was a Blue Moon tonight, the first since New Year's Eve, 2009, and the last until July of 2015. Neil Armstrong, who died last Saturday, was memorialized today in Ohio, his home state. There is no way it was a coincidence that this happened on a Blue Moon, let alone a full moon. Sarah and I did what we always do for this infrequent occasion (the Blue Moon, not the memorial service): we prepared some blue food and blue drinks, put on a quartet of CDs I made many years ago for a Blue Moon party we held together shortly after our relationship began, and settled in for the evening. We had blue pasta and chicken and I mixed us some Blue Moon martinis at first, then we switched to Blue Lagoon cocktails for the rest of the evening. The CDs are a wonderful collection of songs with either the word "Blue" or the word "Moon" in the title, heavily leaning toward the latter. There's "Harvest Moon", "Blue Moon of Kentucky", "Moondance", "Claire de Lune". The Waterboys are represented, as are Echo and the Bunnymen, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and King Harvest. I have, on one of the disks, something like 17 different versions of "Blue Moon" alone. I only get these CDs out on the occasion of a Blue Moon which keeps the compilation "fresh" for the most part.

Canada Day Hangover

The midway tonight at 8:30; these people do nothing fast

After all the sun and fun of Canada Day it was pretty hard to drag ourselves out of bed this morning, to be sure. But we had made a date with our friends Louise and Mike (the latter here on a very short visit from England) to have brunch with them at Flo's Diner in Yorkville. It was a special treat to be downtown early on a Holiday Monday because it seemed almost like a ghost town (Louise said she kept expecting to see zombies coming from around the corner). We got a great table outside under a huge umbrella and spent the better part of two hours with our wonderful friends. I'm really glad we were able to see them today, but let me tell you: it had to be a special occasion indeed to get us out of the apartment because we were absolutely zonked this morning.

Another "Pleasant Valley" Sunday (and Friday and Saturday, too!)

Relaxing on the porch with coffee and the Globe and Mail

Yesterday I wrote about the wonderful Art Fayre in Dunvegan over the weekend; now it's time to tell the story of the rest of our road trip to the Ottawa Valley. It began on Friday morning, around 11AM, when we had finally finished packing and Tim's bag (he cat-sit for us) had been picked up and delivered to our apartment. We fueled up at Timmy's first, then we had to make a stop in Leaside to pick up some fireworks for a Solstice party on Saturday night (at the request of Sarah's mom). We swung back down to our neighbourhood to pick up Tim and drove him up to an interview for Co-op placement for this fall (it went very well) and then we were finally on the open road, headed for the Hawkesbury region. We had more time than we needed so we decided to take a more scenic route than simply Highways 401-416-17 to get there. Part of our scenic route included a jog down to the St. Lawrence along the Thousand Islands Parkway.

The Late, Lamented Ontario Place

One of the "pods" suspended out over Lake Ontario
cc Flickr user: sookie

I miss Ontario Place. Weirdly, though, I don't know if I miss the actual, concrete and glass Ontario Place or the idea of it, the spot it holds in my heart.

The Forum in its early days
Toronto Star File Photo

I miss the concerts at the Forum, free with admission for many years. My folks took me to see the Toronto Symphony Orchestra perform the 1812 Overture more than once, with the cannons on the HMCS Haida (which used to be moored there) providing the percussion for the final movement. I miss the rotating stage which meant that, at some point during every concert, you would be positioned in the best seats in the house. I miss lying on a blanket on the grass of the surrounding hills, staring up at the stars while the sounds of Chuck Mangione or Spyro Gyra carried me away.

Happy Solstice!

Ready for the Solstice in Virginia Beach
credit:Lorraine Eaton | The Virginian-Pilot

At 7:09 PM EDT last night, summer "officially" began. If you live anywhere in Southern Ontario, however, you would be excused if you let out a little scoffing noise upon reading that information, for it has been almost unbearably hot in these parts for at least a few days. Tomorrow Sarah and I are heading for the Ottawa Valley to visit her mom and attend Art Fayre; it's been even hotter there than it has in Toronto. How hot is it? Well, I'll tell you: it's been so hot up that way that our friend Nat had to give her ducklings a watermelon to eat in order to help them stay cool.

Woozy Weekend

Vertigo!

Click on the picture for cool facts about vertigo!

Late yesterday afternoon I suddenly developed a wicked case of vertigo, pretty much out of nowhere. I figured it was something simple such as pinching a blood vessel in my neck or perhaps just not enough sleep, but then last night my joints were sore as well. I went to bed hoping everything would take care of itself, but really only 50% of it did. My joints don't hurt today but the vertigo is still there and now it's accompanied by a left eye that simply won't stop running. I'm guessing now that it's some kind of a cold virus or perhaps low-grade infection in either my ear canal or (more likely) Eustachian tube on the left side of my head. Since there's no pain involved I'm going to wait on this for a day or so to see if it goes away on its own; I'm loathe to take up a doctor's time unless I think it could be really serious.

An Evening with Friends Above the Crowds

Sliders, oysters, meatballs, martinis, bourbon, and so much more.

My birthday was a couple of weeks ago. My very longest-suffering friend, Kemp Watson, was born on May 30. To celebrate the double-birthday month, Michael Wright (the third Musketeer) invited us (along with Sarah) out last week for dinner and drinks at The Roof Lounge on the very top of the Park Hyatt Hotel in Yorkville. Kemp had to back out at the last minute, so we rescheduled for tonight. It was well worth the wait. Michael arrived a few moments ahead of Sarah and me and was able to score a table on the outside deck. It was a bit breezy and cool tonight, but they turned the outside heaters on and had the wind baffles up on the west side, so we were quite cozy all in all.

The view from our table

The Park Hyatt is located on the northwest corner of Avenue Road and Bloor in Toronto and is a very popular hotel for celebrities and professional sporting teams when they come to town. The lounge itself is very cramped, I find, and the rooftop patio is very much the same way, but with far less traffic flow, which makes all the difference. The service is outstanding as well, which makes for a very pleasant experience. This was the view from our table: there is a bit of a reflection in this picture as I had to take it through the glass baffle I mentioned earlier. In the immediate foreground, just beyond the ledge, you can see the very top of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal addition to the Royal Ontario Museum. A little to the right of centre is the newly-renovated Varsity Stadium, the original home to the Toronto Argonauts, host of a record 29 Grey Cups and the facility where I ran track in high school. In the far background is Lake Ontario.

Scotch Night

The Balvenie Signature, a 50th birthday gift

Last fall, when the most recent NHL regular season was still young, my friend Alex Lofthouse and his buddy Iain Stewart got into a discussion about their respective favourite hockey teams, the Senators (boo!!) for Alex and the Leafs (yay!!) for Iain. This was a public conversation (and by conversation, I mean the "your team sucks!" "oh yeah? says you!" kind) on a thread on Alex' Facebook timeline and it ended up in a bet. If the Leafs finished ahead of the Sens, Alex would buy Iain a scotch. If the unthinkable alternative situation occurred (the Sens were picked by many to finish last in the East this year), then Iain would buy Alex a scotch. Not one to miss a chance to have a free scotch, I asked to be included in this bet and was readily accepted. Of course, as we all know, the Leafs went on to the Cup finals and the Sens finished with the worst record ever.

And today is Opposite Day.

My Own "Field of Dreams"

"Field of Dreams" from our balcony

Sarah and I have lived in our current apartment for nearly 7 years, having moved here in October of 2005. There are days when it has its challenges from noise and other bad behaviour but the one thing we will never grow tired of is the view from here. We are 20 storeys up over Stan Wadlow Park and the only tall building around for a couple of kilometres, so we can see Lake Ontario and all the way across to Niagara Falls - on a clear day we can see the Skylon from our balcony.

Full Moon Rising

I'll admit it. I am a lunatic. Although I mean it in the late Latin, lunaticus form of the word. For as far back as I can remember I have been profoundly affected by the waxing of the full moon, each and every month. No, I don't grow grotesque quantities of hair and suffer from an overpowering urge to slaughter lambs but I am affected nonetheless. I can usually tell you that it's the night before a full moon without looking at a calendar simply by the otherwise unexplainable surge of adrenaline in my body and sudden uplifting of my spirit.

I used to wonder, when I first worked out the cause of this phenomenon within me, whether that was the reason I was so fascinated by the Apollo program when I was a young boy. Perhaps it was the other way around, too, but I find it difficult to imagine that such an effect on my psyche would be "man-made" and not sublimely natural. In any event, I hung on every bit of information I could get about every single moon launch NASA ever made and all I wanted to do as a young man was become an astronaut. I now think this was not because I wanted to go into space (although that was certainly part of it); rather, it was more likely that I craved an opportunity to walk on the moon. (This would likely also explain why I never really paid that much attention to the Shuttle Program.)