Categories
It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Feeling human again

Monday’s and yesterday’s sleep deprivation-fest ended with a standby

flight on the “red-eye” from Calgary to Toronto and an arrival time of

7:45 a.m.. Since The Redhead didn’t have to fly back from Boston until

about 7 p.m., I dropped her off at my house to catch some sleep while I

went off to work.

Then drop The Redhead off at the airport (always a sad thing).

Then back to work.

Then over to the hospital to visit Dad, who’s stable and resting in the ICU (long story).

Then over to my sister’s house for dinner.

Then home, where I got a call from The Redhead to tell me that she’d made it home safely.

Then fourteen hours of blissful sleep.

I’m no longer functioning on caffeine, willpower and autopilot and I’m

feeling pretty sharp again. Regular blogging will resume later today.

In the meantime, here’s some reading:

A Saddam Hussein impersonator comes out of his spider hole and back into business. Jerry Haleva, who played Saddam in Hot Shots (the first movie and part deux), Mafia!, The First 20 Million is the Hardest and The Big Lebowski, went into retirement last year at the start of Gulf Wars II: Clone of the Attack. Now that Hussein’s been captured, he’s decided that it’s appropriate for him to resume his most unusual hobby.

A snippet from the article:

But

now that Saddam is in the custody of the United States Army and is

awaiting trial for war crimes, Haleva feels ready to resume making fun

of the Iraqi dictator. “I have to be fairly selective on what I can do,

because of my real job,” he said. “But if the right opportunity comes

along and I have time for it, I’m always interested.”

The only thing that may stand in his way is Saddam’s scraggly new

beard. “Clearly, we have different grooming habits now,” Haleva

remarked.

Burbs vs. downtown. The

National Post is running a series of articles that “examines the

eternal struggle within all of us: the choice between the monster

suburban home with plentiful parking or the modest plot in the city

with the coffee shop around the corner.”

As you may know, I’m renting a

modest plot in the city with a number of coffee shops (and bubble tea

shops, for that matter) around the corner, and I respect the decision

of folks like my sister, who lives in the near ‘burbs with a large back

yard, which is great for her kids. I’m a creature of both downtown (most days) and

the suburbs (weekly visit with Mom, Dad, sis, bro-in-law and nephews) and have always had a fascination with cities and suburbs,

and this series of articles has piqued my interest.

Here’s the first article, Get me outta here!, and here’s today’s, Where everybody doesn’t know your name. I’ll probably throw in my own two cents later.

Have a good day, everybody!

Categories
It Happened to Me

Back at last!

At long last, and twenty-four hours later than I intended, I am back from beautiful (and incredibly cold Canmore, Alberta. My quick reviews:

  • The wedding: Amazing. Ashley and Turner put on a great ceremony and reception, and they’re such an amazing couple.
  • The Redhead: An excellent travelling companion and wedding date.
  • WestJet: One helluva of a great airline.
  • The Drake Inn: A nice motel with a great restaurant.
  • Banff Airport Taxi: May they spend seven eternities burning in seething pain in the 9th level of Hell.

More later!

It’s good to be back!

Categories
It Happened to Me

Happy New Year!

Happy 2004!

The Redhead, with whom I spent the stroke of midnight in a quiet and dark corner of The Dance Cave, fly off to Calgary this afternoon, followed by a shuttle bus trip to the town of Canmore, where we’ll be attending Ashley Bristowe’s and Christ Turner’s wedding.

Regular blogging will resume Monday. Have a good time, everyone!

Categories
It Happened to Me

This is just too cute!

My sister Eileen has no idea where her two-year old son Aidan learned the answer to the question “What comes after ‘dot’?” (62K QuickTime movie)

Categories
It Happened to Me

Sometimes it turns around

Richard at Just a Gwai Lo linked to my earlier entry about what makes a date a date and linked to an entry in the blog Oblivio which the author goes on a date only to discover that it isn’t a date.

Sometimes the opposite happens, and I offer this story as proof.

(I’ve also been told by a number of people that my Worst Date Ever stories have given them hope. If hope can spring from a train wreck, this story should inspire you to pick up the phone/fire up the instant messenger software and ask that guy or girl out.)


The scene: A cold clear night in November 1992 at Cafe Max, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Our protagonist is easing quite nicely into his second year in his second incarnation as an undergrad at Crazy Go Nuts University.

This was a friendly date. I’d asked to kiss her after the Hallowe’en party, but she had to politely decline. She had a boyfriend who went to another university and wanted to maintain the relationship despite the fact that he was all the way over there, I was right here, and probably smarter, more charming, better-looking and Crazy Go Nuts University’s best damn DJ, ever. In spite of this, she’d agreed to go out on a getting-to-know-you kind of dinner outing.

I paid for everything and expected nothing but pleasant conversation and a goodbye hug at her door at the end of the evening, which makes me either an old-fashioned gentleman, a complete sucker, or possibly both. I decided to take a pragmatic view of the whole affair:

  • A non-date with a pretty girl is better than an evening at home watching Star Trek:The Next Generation
  • If I impress her, perhaps she can introduce me to her friends (deVilla maxim #12: Cute girls have cute friends)
  • A non-date is still a good practice run for the “real thing”, where one can sharpen one’s skill without risk. Kind of like the holodeck from the aforementioned Star Trek:The Next Generation, at least when the safety protocols are working.

Things were going quite well. The “your back story first, then mine” conversation flowed freely with no uncomfortable silences and the food was excellent. If this were a real date, I thought, this would be the best date I’ve ever had..

After dinner, we took a nice long walk through Kingston’s quiet but quaint streets back to campus, where we descended into the basement pub known as Alfie’s to catch the Rheostatics show. We sat near the back, drinking in each performance and saving any conversation for lulls between numbers.

A few numbers into the first set, she leaned in and whispered into my ear: “I thought I should tell you that I’ve changed my mind. This isn’t a platonic date.”

It took a couple of seconds for this to register, and when it did, it was like a Bruce Lee kick to the head. In a good way, that is, if such a thing is possible.

Well, I’ll have to invite her to my birthday party, I thought, followed by Wait…birthday…what time is it?

I looked at my watch. 12:03 a.m.. November 5th.

“Hey,” I said. “I just turned twenty-five.”

“Happy birthday.”

She leaned in, and we had our first kiss.

Sometimes it turns around.

Categories
It Happened to Me

Suddenly, all those body-cavity searches I’ve been getting at the airport make sense

My two-year-old nephew Aidan is a genius at identifying the various engines and train cars from the television show Thomas the Tank Engine, but sometimes misidentifies people from their photographs. Recently, he saw a picture of financial bigwig Sherry Cooper (Executive Vice President of the BMO Financial Group and Chief Economist for BMO Nesbitt Burns) and exclaimed “Yoya!”. “Yoya” is the way he pronounces “Lola”, which is the Filipino word for “Grandma”. Ms. Cooper and Mom look nothing alike, but they have very similar hairdos.

Last week, Aidan’s nanny Marvie was reading the paper when he walked up to her, pointed to a picture and yelled “Joey!”. Thanks to the accordion, my appearance in the paper is hardly an unexpected event. Marvie turned over the paper, expecting to see a photo of me playing the accordion at a club or on the street but instead saw a photo of Uday Hussein.

Yeesh.

Photo: Uday Hussein.

I think he automatically associates facial hair with me. Of any family members in Canada, immediate and extended, only Dad and I are capable of growing a decent beard, and Dad prefers to keep clean-shaven.

For the record, I have never assisted an Iraqi dictator, I have never tortured any Iraqis, and I look like this:

Photo: Joey deVilla.

Categories
It Happened to Me

In love and war, it’s the declaration that counts

On the evening of Christmas Day, after my sister and brother-in-law had taken their kids home and I’d finished helping Mom clean up the dining room and kitchen, I left my parents’ house in the ‘burbs and returned downtown to attend a gathering at Deenster’s and Chris’ place. Among the attendees was my friend (and former OpenCola coworker) Kate, and I was telling her about The Redhead’s upcoming visit.

Me: The night she visits, we’re going to Kalendar and then go catch a movie.

Kate: Which one?

Me: I think we’ll go see Big Fish. We’re both interested in seeing it, and it looks promising.

Kate: Tim Burton’s usually a pretty good bet. Dinner and a movie, wow!

Me: Maybe even a cocktail at Lobby afterwards. At any rate, it’ll be a proper date. Even though nobody seems to actually date anymore, I’m still a big fan. I remember reading an article about how “hanging out” or “hooking up” has replaced dating, but I like dating better.

Kate: So do I.

Rich: So what makes a date a date, say rather than going out with a bunch of friends?

Kate: You have to call it a date.

Me: Yeah, I think you actually have to say “I would like to go out with you on a date.”

Rich: So it’s the declaration that makes it a date?

Kate: Yes. It’s like the military. You have to declare a war, otherwise it’s just a police action.