Spring Is Coming

Yes, there’s been a lapse in my strict weekly blogging schedule; I’ve been working full time, as have Danny and Jess, and so there’s been less time to explore and thus less blogging material.

The Found Footage Festival came to Toronto on March 26th to celebrate it’s tenth birthday. Curated by Joe Pickett and Nick Pruher, the festival showcases a bizarre compilation of clips, sourced from dumpsters, thrift stores, garage sales and donations. The result is a funny, disturbing and strangely enjoyable couple of hours. The festival was hosted by The Royal Cinema, home to other abstract cinematic delights such as Our Robocop Remake, which we were lucky enough to see during our first week in the city.

I’ve done my best to sum up the festival with one clip that I found particularly informative and enlightening. There’s plenty more on the FFF website, here.

The weather has been on the up; yesterday and today the sun has been shining and we’ve seen temperatures of twenty two degrees! Spring is finally on the horizon, as is the prospect of getting out into the wild and seeing a bear! In the meantime, here’s a picture of a chipmunk I took in High Park; a massive green space just two subway stops from our apartment, which is also home to a fishing pond, wading pool and small zoo. What else could you ever want?

Elusive critter.

Speaking of critters, Jess and Danny are now in the realm of full time employment too; Jess is working for Morba, a high end interiors store in the Queen West neighbourhood, and Danny has taken on a second part-time job at Telegramme, which is just down the road on Ossington.

So now it’s about as real as it can get. We’ve got all the essential components that a conventional life requires: a job, house, decent set of tupperware, etc. With that in mind, we should now be able to relax and explore the city more thoroughly.

Eager to take advantage of the first bit of summer-like weather we’ve had, and my first day off work on my lonesome, I took a trip to Scarborough Bluffs on Friday.

About an hour and a half away, the Bluffs are a network of trails and a small park at the edge of a cliff the overlooks lake Ontario from it’s western shores. It is massive, and from that angle on an incredibly clear afternoon, there was nothing but water as far as my eyes could see.

Lake Ontario: About the same size as Wales and twice as exciting.

Last night we were invited to a loft party. The closest thing to a good old English rave that I’ve encountered in Canada thus far. Not that I particularly miss the dank abandoned warehouses and generator driven drum ‘n’ bass, but it’s the closest comparison I can draw - only it was full of friendlier folks, the music was predominantly disco and there was a slow cooker full of rice behind the bar.

I’m not complaining, just stating the differences. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get any photographs; although the attendees formed a very, very mixed bag.