August 17th, 2011
Addenda
Addendum to Myths of the Full-Time Writer
Myth #5: If I’m free during the day, I’ll run all my errands during the quietest times in stores, banks, post offices, etc., and save tonnes of time. Nope. As it turns out, the stores and banks aren’t empty at 10am–they aren’t packed, but they are populated with another breed of people–people who are self-aware enough to know they are inefficient, annoying shoppers, and are trying to stay out of the way of the busy 9-to-5ers. These folks include people in wheelchairs and scooters (very hard to navigate in the narrow aisles of urban grocery stores, inevitably snagged on half-a-dozen things before they hit the dairy case); parents with small children (who are hard to navigate, period, and inevitably want to push their own strollers directly into the bread shelves and then stand in front of it, wailing); people who do not speak English but have a complicated transaction they need to request at the bank; shut-ins hoping for an in-depth conversation about current events with the bank teller; and people for whom simple tasks like remembering one’s PIN or selecting a yam are deeply unsettling and hard.
These people try to do us a favour by shopping at 10am, and I found that if I showed up at the grocery store also at 10am, I had to forbid myself from impatiently rolling my eyes at the lone parent completely outnumbered and overwhelmed by her children, who let them throw bananas on the floor because who could stop them. I didn’t cough aggressively at people who had *no idea* their credit cards had chips in them, and I never once glared (I don’t think) at someone who was simply standing in the middle of a crowded thoroughfare, blinking at the sky.
The daytime is for shoppers for whom efficiency is not the first priority, if indeed it’s even on the list of priorities. It’s wrong to bother those people when they try to avoid the crowded times, just like it would be wrong for them to show up at the post office at 5:30 and ask the pros and cons of bubble wrap vs. a padded envelope. You can run errands during the day if you want (I did, just to get out of the house), but it won’t save you much time.
Addendum to The Cohabitational Reading Challenge We both agree that *A Prayer for Owen Meany* falls off a bit in the second half, though I think, for a while at least, I was more dysphoric than Mark about the whole thing. I really love the high-school lit class discussions of *Tess of the D’Urbervilles* and *The Great Gatsby,* because I love a good close reading. But if you don’t, then those passages aren’t very well integrated and are too long–not good novel writing, even if good literary criticism. They exist mainly to unsubtly instruct the reader on how to read Irving’s own novel. Nick Carraway anyone? Ugh. I think Irving is a fine writer and deserving of respect, but no, not deserving of comparison with Fitzgerald. Yucky that he would suggest it, in my opinion.
In vaguely related news, I’ve ripped the cover partways off my copy, ensuring that Mark’s copy will be the one we keep. If you need a paperback of *Owen Meany* and don’t mind a ripped cover, I can get you one in about a week–for keepers!
April 8th, 2011
Rose-coloured reviews the North York Ikea on a Sunday Afternoon
Here at last, my post-move post:
So we moved on Thursday and Friday, and contrary to popular belief (mine) it was not a nightmare. Mainly due to awesome friends on day one, and awesome professional movers on the second, the move went off efficiently, quickly, and painlessly.
However, moves do drive home the horrors of capitalism, and the new apartment is completely engulfed with boxes of stuff, stuff of dubious necessity. Nevertheless, as every post-move euphoric does, we went out in search of more. More specifically, everyone goes to Ikea right after they move, and so did we.
I had wanted the cheap-o breakfast at the Ikea restaurant, but we were held hostage at home by the Bell guy until early afternoon (how sadly typical is that?) By the time we parked in the enormous upper deck of the North York Ikea parking lot, crossed the lot, took the elevator to the other lot, clammered along the sidewalk past the loading zone, and on into the store, we were ravenous and headed directly to the restaurant.
So, apparently, did everyone else in the universe. The place was huge, so not every table was taken, but it was a siege of people, a good 50% of them seeming to be little children going bananas. This was generally the theme of the afternoon–large familes, good-naturedly shepherding their absolutely ballistic offspring through a maze of ottomans and loveseats. I swear, I did not see very many people seriously considering the furniture; it appeared to simply be an excursion, like Disneyworld. I can’t say that I understand.
Except about the food: Ikea food is good, cheap, and plentiful, which I suppose makes it perfect for little ones. However, the long lines are less ideal. The fellow in front of us had adorable twin girls, about 3, who passed their ten minutes in line swinging from the cutlery dispenser, bapping each other on the head, shrieking for their mother (who was apparently elsewhere in the restaurant; wise woman), and yanking chocolate milks off the display. My favourite part was when the dad told one girl she was not allowed to have the milk, she simply let it fall to the floor.
The above sounds like I was super-irritated but I wasn’t; the dad was very sweetly doing his best to keep a handle on them (and he picked up the milk), and they weren’t really bad for 3-year-olds in a giangantic line. I was quite content to watch the show, and then scurry off to my own, quieter, table.
My dining companion and I had identical salmon dinners with a side crepe, and dalm cake for dessert, so I can only describe the one meal, but it was pretty amazing for cafeteria food. The salmon was a trifle firm and pink, and the stuffing, which could not be identified, was the same texture and flavour as the actual fish, but it was all very tasty. I had expected the sauce, bright yellow with bits of herbs in it, to be mustardy, but the dominant flavour was butter. Good, but very rich–I guess those Nordic peoples need to be well-insulated from the cold.
The vegetables were very fresh and crunchy, and nice bright colours, always a good sign. There were also these small white pucks of, I think, finely chopped cauliflower and brocolli, cemented together with vaguely cheesy mashed potatoes–again, tasty, not healthy.
We could not locate tea bags and the fountain pop was too syrupy even for me (shock!) but the dalm cake was amazing. I think it’s actually a torte, being gluten-free and built of layers of nut-crumbs, marzipan, and chocolate. Astounding.
Also, there was some furniture. Lots and lots of it, actually, and we dutifully followed the trail through the whole store, albeit rather quickly. I hadn’t been to Ikea in perhaps 3 years, and it seemed to me there was a lot more customizable stuff now–modular offices and bits of kitchens and other things that you would need to have professionally installed. This seemed a bit high-end for the Ikea I know and love.
The regular stuff was as shiny and bright and tempting as ever. I always want their very simple couches and loveseats covered in brightly coloured canvas. They are so charming and cheap, though I have no need of any such thing. They looked as lovely as ever this time, and I contemplated jamming one into the bathroom or something. Right at the end of the trip, Mark suggested we get a bench for the patio with stripy cushions, so that helped mitigate my desire for plush furniture…somewhat.
I also picked out a dresser, after *mucho* agony, because I had failed to measure depth of the space it is supposed to go in. There is not, in truth, a wide variety of dresser depths at Ikea, so eventually I just chose the thinnest one (Malm, 6 drawer), only to discover on the back of the tag that it is supposed to be *bolted to the wall* to prevent it falling over on me. Who does that? I would guess that many people buying Ikea furniture lack the energy, organization, drill, and landlord permission to do such a thing; was this warning a ruse to forstall insurance issues?
I asked a salesperson and she said of course I had to bolt it to the wall (with an “I am talking to a dumb person” face on); otherwise, if I opened multiple drawers at once, it would fall on me. I said, “What if I just open one drawer at time?” and she said that might be all right, but if I had babies, it would need to be bolted in. Babies open drawers now? How terrifying.
The best bit, as always, was the Marketplace down on the first floor. It was actually strangely hard to find the door–it was ill-marked–but then we found it and there it was in all its glory! Thousands of small inexpensive items that I might someday need! I might have gone into a buying frenzy if I weren’t so very tired; as it was we found hangers, a laundry hamper, a drainboard, and possibly something else that I forget, all of which needed to be lugged around for the rest of our stay in the store.
The marketplace was very crowded; this is where most of the actual shopping goes on, it seems. Here I actually did see people looking at merchandise, although the primary activities still seemed to be milling and yelling. It was pretty chaotic–I didn’t realize kitchenware was over until long after we were into plants, and I probably would’ve bought more stuff if I had found a cart earlier in the process. It was always kind of fun to be wandering around and see someone carrying the same thing I was–merchandise twins.
The self-serve warehouse was a nightmare. My bureau came in two separate boxes of parts. Box 2 was on top of the stack, but all the Box 1s were buried deep. Everything was extremely heavy, and at least 5 boxes had to be hauled into the aisle by my esteemed companion, while I hovered around, fretting (nothing like household goods to bring on the gender roles!) There was a brief consideration of reassembling the stack, but if the Ikea folks wanted things left tidy, they should have ordered them better.
I would’ve liked to go to the As-Is department (I’ve found some good stuff there) but the cart was so heavy we could barely pilot it, and the crowd at the checkout lines was sort of blocking the way. While waiting in line I went to the pop machine and returned, went to the bathroom and returned, and then Mark went off to the hysterical blur of the food market and bought some Ikea cookies for a dear friend with a gift for assembling furniture (and some for us–I’d never had them before and it turns out they are fantastic!!) When Mark was returning with the cookies, I finally reached the very bored and unhappy cashier, who grimly rang us out and we were free to go.
The trek back was shorter–the exit is closer to the upper parking deck than the entrance, and after a lot of Jenga-ing the boxes into the car, we were on our way.
As this is a review of the *experience* of the Ikea store, I won’t dwell on the furniture, and anyway, most of it is still disassembled. The laundry hamper is doing just fine, but I guess standards for a laundry hamper are low–probably a cardboard box would’ve sufficed, really. The drainboard was a dismal bust, as it does not fit in the sink and is constantly flipping sideways. But it did only cost $3. The cookies are almost gone. But the memory of the happy chaos at Ikea will live forever.
December 21st, 2010
Rose-coloured reviews the Eaton’s Centre
If they found themselves alone without plans in the late afternoon on the Saturday before Christmas, perhaps most people would not have wandered–lonely as a cloud–to the Toronto Eaton’s Centre. I have heard much about the crush and crassness of malls in general and Eaton’s Centre in particular.
The thing about me: I love malls far more than people who actual attempt to buy things in them on a regular basis. Starting with my rural, driver’s-license-less youth, I have rarely had the holy trio of the time, access, and money to shop in malls as often as I would like. Even when I was broke, I was still content to “recreationally shop”–ie., wander around and look at stuff, try things on, maybe eat in the food court. At that point, I called Eaton’s Centre “The Museum of Nice Stuff.”
Currently, what I lack is time–shopping is completely non-recreational, limited mainly to groceries. When I really need something mallish, like a gift or a specific item of clothing, it usual turns into a frantic 30-minute slalom through 3 stores, after which I have to get somewhere else immediately–ie., no fun.
So, since I was without plans last Saturday, wander to the mall is exactly what I did. It was nice because I am pretty much done shopping for gifts and didn’t really need anything at all–pure recreational shop, except some gum and pop supplies to consume as I strolled. I was actually really excited for the bustling crowds, and they did not disappoint on the bustle front, though it really was not as crowded as I expected. I was worried for our economy. But then I heard on the radio this morning that 100 000 people will pass through that mall…ok, I forget if it was in a day of Christmas shopping or a season of it, but whatever, they sounded pleased with the number, so I figure it’s a lot.
I definitely didn’t feel wringer-washed and paranoid, they way I sometimes do in really crazy crowds. It was just a nice semi-crowded mall. In fact, I don’t even know if things would’ve felt as crowded as they did if the Eaton’s Centre hadn’t been *under construction* during the busiest retail season of the year. What’s up with that? They had tried to disguise all the big half-built kiosks and random other plywood boxes by covering them in gift wrap and festive signs identifying what store they were in front of, but it still seemed a bit sloppy and awkward to me.
But who cares? I got a free dark chocolate Ferrero Roche at the Ferrero Roche tree, which was very pretty and odd. And then, and THEN, there was the Swarkovski Crystal tree, which was there last year and which I love very much. It’s so sparkly and so tall and lit from below somehow I’m not sure how. And maybe they do this all the time and I just never knew, but it seem totally magically that as I was walking towards the tree, they turned on the snow. As I walked closer, I kept trying to figure out how they were doing it, but I didn’t really care because it looks so incredible to have a) snow indoors and b) snow coming down over those lights facing up, to create a wild shadow effect. Finally, a lady with a hijab standing beside me (there as a bit of a press up close) put out her hand to grab a “snowflake” and showed it to me–a tiny clump of soap bubbles. We were both charmed.
That was pretty much the highlight. I went into a few stores, but of course didn’t get tempted to try anything on. The jewellery, high-priced cookeware, and Apple products were my favourites (oh, MacBook Air–now I see!) Eventually, I got lonely in the crowd–the cliche is true! And the other cliche, about social mall shopping being the domain of silly teenage girls, wildly untrue. Everyone was shopping in couples and groups–not just teenagers, everyone. The few people I saw on their own were on cell phones (one middle aged, jovial-looking gentleman was listing a series of chores, one of which was, “And you’ll mix the martinis.”)
It was very festive–I don’t know if it was the spirit of giving that inspired all of those people into the mall, but it was nice to see them all together enjoying themselves. And people were enjoying themselves, despite the ugly construction and crass commercialism and the fact that there is a whole kiosk for “skins,” whatever that means. It was a smiley crowd at the mall, and I was happy to see it. But I really should have manufactured an errand or a goal of some kind; I didn’t really fit in as the sole Eaton’s Centre flanneur, and after less than an hour, me and my Fresca were on our way home.
August 18th, 2010
Awesomeness
I thought I pulled a muscle in my neck, but it seems to be more or less all right now.
I thought there were no more TCBYs (This Country’s Best Yoghurt) outlets in Toronto outside of movie theatre snack counters (and the above website says same) but then I found one, on Yonge just North of Isabella, on the west side. It was very exciting (and as tasty as I remember. All the yoghurt tastes like coconut, which as far as I am concerned is a bonus!)
The TCBY (yes, this is a completely separate bullet point) is inside a coffeeshop (though clearly marked from the outside). While there, I saw a man order a large chocolate-vanilla swirl from the frozen-yoghurt side, and a carrot muffin from the coffee shop side. Passing him later, I saw that he had smashed up the muffin and PUT IT IN THE BOWL. It was like ad-hoc ice-cream and cake. Genius.
Amy’s helpful guide to Retail Etiquette for Dummies (even if you are not a dummy, this is still entertaining, in a squirmy, “People sure can be jerks” way).
This awesome video that Zach Wells posted of a toddler reciting a poem from memory, and doing a darn good job of it, too!
Also on the subject of small children, an acquaintance and her husband have gone overseas to adopt a baby, and yesterday they got her! I guess I shouldn’t share their personal blog URL, but I have to tell you, people experiencing that level of happiness is pretty mindblowing.
April 26th, 2010
Rose-coloured reviews 4lbs of strawberries for $5 at Metro
I consider a good price for a one-pound (454 gram) clamshell of California strawberries to be $2.99–higher in the dead of winter. So when I saw two 907 gram clamshells for $5 at Metro, I was awed (I believe you could also replace one of the boxes with a honeydew melon, but I don’t own knives sharp enough to cut honeydew rind, so I stayed away from that).
My grocery-shopping escort declined a box, claiming he could not eat 2 pounds of strawberries before they went off. I scoffed at this, but quailed at the prospect of 4 pounds, so I just got the one. As it turned out, they still charged me the sale price even though I didn’t buy the sale amount (this is one of Metro’s usual, and nicer, policies)–so my 907 grams cost $2.50. Score!
Unlike much sale-priced produce, my berries aren’t underripe. They are nice and dark and, for imported berries, fairly soft. That’s still not *very* soft–Cali berries always have a bizarro crunch factor that is completely absent in lovely delicate local berries. But the local berries won’t be ready for, minimum, another month, and one of the stranger aspects of globalization is the taste it creates for out-of-season fruits. I want berries *always*, not just the six weeks you can pick them in southern Ontario. So Cali berries it is.
These are, I think, the best of their kind I’ve seen. They are nice and sweet (most of them, anyway) and very few off berries (just one in the box so far, and even that was likely edible). I am very impressed. And what’s more, it was not my box–I looked at the others stacked up and the Yonge & College Metro (can’t vouch for any others) and they looked uniformly dark red and healthy. Yum.
Running into this sale was fortitous for a Sunday when I skipped lunch in favour of a poetry vending machine launch and wound up eating a giant burrito at 4pm, because a big fistful of berries plus cereal made a really great supper around 8 that evening. Life is good…but I can’t wait for Ontario berries.
RR
December 12th, 2009
A passion for narrative can make you a jerk
Well, me, anyway.
I saw an ad for Kraft Dinner Szechuan a few months back and, as appalling is that sounded, I wanted to try it so as to verify the appallingness for myself.
Then I forgot all about it–it’s not like I’m going to spend money on this stuff or anything–and then today I saw they were giving away free samples of KDS at Metro. Yes! The girl at the little sample-table was talking to someone else when I approached. I waited patiently, but when she turned to me she looked aghast.
“May I try some too, please?”
She tried to thrust the whole container at me, realized her error, forked a tiny bit into a bowl, could not free the fork from the noodles because her hands were shaking violently, and finally handed it over, eyes wide and wet.
“Thank you.”
“Oh, you’re very welcome,” she said, only a slight quaver.
I went off with my sample, but she called me back to offer, and explain, a coupon booklet. Except she couldn’t turn the pages easily, her hands were shaking so badly. When I thanked her, again she seemed incredibly touched.
I’ve been thinking about her ever since, wondering what tragedy or incident prompted all this, and how she would do for the rest of the day and after. Bad news? A near-miss car accident? An irate or violent sampler? Surely, it would have to be something big; the story wouldn’t be as good if she were simply wildly nervous about giving out samples at Metro.
Clearly, I’m an asshole, because I was sort of hoping for the worst-case scenarios in the name of a good story!! Why wasn’t I hoping from the beginning that she was just a very edgy kid, and she’d grow into her role and in time get a better one? I’m hoping that *now*, but I had to roll through all these other fun catastrophes first. I suck. And, come to think of it, why *wouldn’t* the coming-into-her-own of a Metro sample-distributor be a good story? A story is only as weak as its writer.
And the KDS is more abominable than you could ever imagine–you have to try this!!
RR
October 24th, 2009
Break
If you count the week as Saturday to Friday, I attended four literary events this week, and spent a similar number of evenings up after midnight. I also did some work, two readings, saw a bunch of awesome people and took some fair-to-middling pictures. And now am so very very tired.
And now, though of course have blogged *The New Quarterly*’s fall launch for you despite any exhaustion, I have a delightful break, because Alex James, who provided the musical accompaniment to the evening, is also a profession blogger, and has a wonderful (and flattering!) post about the event. Hooray! It really was a terribly fun night, with so many friendly writers and delicious food only one jack-knifed tractor-trailer (my publisher, Dan Wells spent only five or so hours on the highway to be there and bring us books!)
So that’s it–I can concentrate on small, easy, non-exhausting tasks for the rest of the weekend–Hallowe’en shopping at Zellers, getting the DVD player to work long enough to play the last two episodes of season one of Slings and Arrows (the first tv show in a long time that I’ve been willing to argue with the DVD player for), maybe a nap in there somewhere.
Weekends are nice, and I hope you enjoy yours! Seeya Monday!
RR
August 28th, 2009
Rose-coloured Reviews T&T Supermarket
I was tired and overstimulated from an afternoon gathering featuring no fewer than 7 children under 3, but when my friend Z asked if I would mind stopping at a Chinese supermarket in Markham, I felt my energy returning.
Markham contains Chinatown North for Toronto, and Chinatown North contains wonders of new (to me) restaurants, groceries, and other things that I know nothing about that are not contained in the older, bigger, wonderful but different Toronto Chinatown south. And carless me does not get to go to Markham very often–this would only be my third trip, which is why I don’t know much about what’s on offer there.
I had never, for example, heard of our destination, T&T Supermarket, even though it apparently has some TTC-able branches, and is wonderful. WONDERFUL.
It’s a grocery store–big parking lot, buggies, checkout lanes, etc. But it’s also a market–various stands of prepared foods, pushing crowds and entire families shopping together, and the free samples are distributed far and wide by cheerful hawkers who yell at you (well, me) to come over to try some soy milk/dumplings/fried scallops. I was excited about the prepared food section because it reminded of Japan, with all the cute complete cheap dinners in plastic boxes. I think it was a pan-Asian market even though it was in a Chinese area, too, because I recognized some salmon teryaki and those triangular nori-wrapped rice cakes I forget the name of. Yum, everything.
Too bad I didn’t really need any of that stuff and was full of cake, but even the stuff I wasn’t buying was fun to look at: Chinese baked goods, aka, manna; giant rice-cakes that *popped* out of a rice-cake making machine (tragically, the picture didn’t turn out); kimchee in tetra paks, and all kinds of vegetables I don’t know how to cook with:
This would be intrepid M, with duriands. The sign, if you can’t read it, says, “Handle duriands carefully to avoid injury.”
Since I didn’t need so many things and was feeling somewhat restrained for once (could be all the cake), I didn’t buy much. But the Chinese eggplants I bought were excellent in stirfry, the lettuce was…well, standard lettuce, that apples were huge and tasty (though I dropped one on the floor and it got all bruised…we can’t really blame the apple, can we?); the dried mushrooms I haven’t tried yet and the sweet potato candy that I ripped into in the parking lot was…odd. But I eventually found someone who did like them to give the rest of the package to (I have another, unopened package–coming soon to a household near you!)
Also, all the little samples I tried were awesome, except the soy milk (I don’t like soy milk, but it’s so healthy that I keep trying). And the prices were super cheap and if you were more ambitious and organized like my shopping companion Z, you could get the makings of some truly fantastic food. And no one gave me a hard time for bouncing off people in the aisles, or clogging the produce section taking pictures, or not knowing which line to stand in. It was a friendly happy place full of delicious.
I later heard this place has been bought by Metro a chain that had a little cred in Quebec, but quickly spent it all in Ontario and now just annoys me (crunchy bitter raspberries the other day!!) So that can’t be good. I’m going to try to find the local one before all the awesome falls apart.
And if we’re lost together
RR
June 4th, 2009
Be nice to cashiers!!
Well, it’s another happening night at the Rose-coloured ranch. I’ve been down on the floor sorting manuscript pages for the last while, and after getting dismayed by the slipshod sweeping job I do, I decided what I needed was write a blog post about the latest upsetting trend at the grocery store.
On Monday, a new Toronto law kicked in, requiring stores to charge 5 cents for each single-use bag they distribute. Not, perhaps, the most thrilling news ever to have hit the streets, but I assumed that if even I knew about it, everyone did (being as I spend my evenings on my living room floor, covered in paper and dust, not watching or reading the news).
But apparently, the people of Toronto don’t *all* know, and when the cashier at their local grocery/drug/clothing/porn shop informs them of the charge, some don’t take it too well. I have witnessed a couple meltdowns in the three short days the law has been in effect; apparently, the most logical interpretation in some people’s minds is that cashiers are lying about the nickel charge in order to…steal? Piss customers off? Make their own already hard jobs that much harder? I really don’t know what is going on in these furious consumers’ minds.
I haven’t worked in customer service for nearly two years, but I still remember viscerally the bottom-of-the-belly fear I felt when I realized that the person I was serving was angry with me. As far as I am concerned, unless your customer service personnel has been sexist/racist/homophobic, anger is never an acceptable emotion in that context. Frustration, irritation, desire to speak with a manager; fine. I did, at various points, suck at various jobs, and I can see why many many people were a little snarky with me. But anger is a somewhat crazy thing to bring to the checkout line, and to see people lashing out at squirming teenagers and exhausted ladies in smocks makes me so sad.
So…have you seen the 5-cent meltdown yet? What did you do? I can’t imagine it would help for me to raise my paw and say, “It is a real law, you know.” Or, like, “That woman make $10 an hour, flat, not commission off her bag sales, therefore she has no reason to lie to you.” Or…what? In my days in service, I was always comforted by raised eyebrows and smiles from other customers following a confrontation, so that’s all I’ve offered so far. But if this nickel thing is going to be a major tipping point in stores citywide, perhaps I should formulate a better response.
Thoughts…?
Do you know your enemy?
RR
April 27th, 2009
This weekend
This weekend feels like it’s been going on for weeks, and there’s still two hours left! There was hot sun and mild sun, thunder-and-lightning rain and gentle plink-plink rain. There was a giant chocolate cake, an eggplant curry, several chocolate cookies and a lot of salsa. There were a lot of really cool people and one really long walk on which I obtained a tiny sunburn and a mop! There was also not much in the way of sleep, which might account for the seeming spaciousness of time.
There was a road trip to the new McNally Robinson in Don Mills, a place I’d encourage you all to visit. The store is, while not perfect, is a lovely lovely shop filled with natural light and realistic-looking trees, and books! Not yet quite so many book as you’d think in this big shiny space, but I’d imagine more are on the way and the selection is already pretty good. I would urge you to make the long trip to Don Mills even if that’s not your usual ‘hood just to see this place and buy a book or two. The reason I want to press you to do that is because I asked the cashier if there would soon be lots of more convenient McNally Robinson’s in the heart of Toronto, and her response was that head office will see how *this* branch does before deciding. So if you want more diversity of bookstores in our city, vote with your wallet and your metro pass (the #25 from Pape station will take you there), and head northeast!
I learned two new games this weekend and have already forgotten the rules to both, and I also enjoyed without understanding the movie Duplicity (if you saw it and understood, please email me!) This weekend was, as my students say, obviously pretty bomb.
Because the drugs never work
RR
