Pictures from the trip

 The nice Super 8 room with 2 beds and limited wifi

 CN tower at night

 Interesting box building

 Guys changing the advertising

 New advertising shows Bell

 Conference atrium

 Me in the atrium

Berry crunch bowl from the pickle barrell

conference

The wifi at the super 8 was super poor and I gave up.
I did fall asleep watching the CN tower. But then I woke up at 4am because Toronto is so bright that it looks like 6am apparently to my sleeping self. I closed the curtains and went back to sleep.
I got up in plenty of time and checked out their breakfast room at 7am. It was full of people so I grabbed a yogurt and ate it in my room.
We left the hotel and drove out of the interesting parking garage across town a bit to another more interesting and difficult to navigate parking garage.
We then walked to Ryerson. The room we started in was very bright and well designed. The keynote speaker had food poisoning so we had an alternate speaker.
My presentation went well and people asked a lot of questions.
The day was very good to get different perspectives.
After the day was over traffic was very busy so we decided to have dinner before driving.We went to the pickle barrell in the eaton Center. I had the berry crunch bowl. It was very good!
Then we drove on the DVP. At one point, a very aggressive driver pushed in front of us. Shortly thereafter, we saw him pulled over by the police. It seemed like instant karma!
The drive back was about 3.5 hours. We stopped at the Big Apple as there was construction and we needed a break.
I had lots to do at work today!

Toronto

I made it to Toronto for the conference but the internet here is pretty weak. I am sitting watching the CN tower change colours. Need to practice my presentation.

rainy morning

This morning started with rain. The birds seemed happy and singing in the trees. Kiwi was not barking. Maybe Kiwi doesn't like rain. But a nice morning. It had stopped raining by the time I went to work though I wore my raingear because of lack of trust.

I was planning on working on my presentation for the Symposium today but there were lots of emails, I was part of a group doing some software testing for a new program that is going to launch next week and we had a course meeting.

At lunch I went to Food Basics to get some groceries. I went by the market looking for fruits but it is not the season yet. I did run into Sarah and Paul and they had found a stall that sold gluten free treats so I may visit the stall when going to see Christine sometime.

We leave for Toronto tomorrow at 5:30pm. I need to pack in the morning.

solstice

I am enjoying the more light during the day. I get to wake up early as a large white puffball dog (named Kiwi) moved in a few doors down and has recently started barking at 6am. Kiwi never barked at all until last week so I'm not sure what is going on (Kiwi moved in a few months ago)

Today we had a party for John Hartt as he is moving out east for work and for family. Al told me that there would be lots of funny stories and asked me to write the closing prayer. Which I did.

Robert North was up first and he talked about the injustice of John having to leave. No funny stories.

Then I was up. We had a good laugh about that.

Who knew you could cook Feta?

It has been quite a week so far. You wouldn't think that the summer would be so exciting, but it is. Mostly work- timetable, exams, reports. Pretty much name anything that could go wrong and it likely did.

But my garden is doing ok- the peonies are coming out.

 One pot pork enchilada bowl with rice

 This next recipe surprised me- who knew that you could bake Feta and it taste so good? Baked Harissa Chickpeas.

Another funny surprise- Tabitha and I were having a serious conversation in the street and one of my students came up to ask for a selfie with us.

3 steaks

Today I slept in until 9am, which was odd for me and I had to really hustle to get to Rustle on time. I did get my laundry out though.
After Rustle I went to Metro as they had cheese on sale.
Then I made a meal of bread (fresh from Metro) and cheese and strawberries.
Before I went out for CR I made James a steak and fries.
After CR I had crackers and cheese and strawberries and James had 2 steaks. So James had a 3 steak day!

gummi bears

Today I started the day with shopping. I used my new backpack!

 I took on Loblaws and SDM. I got a fruit tray so that I could make James a fruit cup like Keith made on his trip to Brantford. At first I had it in a bowl but he claimed he needed it in a glass like Keith had. So I complied.

Keith has "real" fruit glasses but I had to make do with a hockey one.
I also found chocolate gummi bears (my current favorite chewy thing) on sale for 1/2 price.

Today, due to buying a large fruit tray I made today a fruit day for me. So mainly just eating fruit (with a side of ice cream!) so it won't go bad.

I pulled some weeds in the garden during a break in the rain. A bit of laundry got dried outside as well.

In the front yard a few weeks ago there was a fallen bird nest in the front yard. It seemed to be empty so I thought the young ones had left the nest and it fell out. Today it looked like part of a nest had fallen in the same place. When I went to clean up the nest this time I saw 3 little dead birds. I don't know if they fell because of poor nest building, a predator or the weather.

Travels

It has been a busy few weeks. The last few days I got to see my parents!

James looks like a giant in the picture but I think he is just sitting up more. Or he is a giant.

A swallow on a nest in Port Dalhousie from one of our walks

Oriental peonie

My pictures are so backlogged I don't know that I will catch up. Same with my writing. So maybe just today. I woke up at 5am. Got ready, spent some time in the back yard. A lot of burrs had grown up in the time I was away. My email was backlogged, though I got through it by the end of the day. Today for lunch we had the "Principals lunch". I had a burger (choice was burger or eggplant parm on a burger) and 2 slices of their raspberry cake. Then I went downtown and picked up my new backpack! Lots of work. The student emails were supposed to be functional but they are not yet. Hopefully they will run their process soon as we have a lot of information to get out. Final exams for J-section are next week so there was preparing for that. And the timetable posted to the computer system and I need to check that. Came home pretty late and cooked steak and a new thing of potatoes in the microwave (they were really good) and salad.

Also got some hedgehog dryer balls in the Book Depot and they noticeably decrease the dryer time. They are supposed to reduce static as well but I still noticed static. The reduction in dryer time is great though!