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Well, I am officially finished university (I hope). What a weird feeling. And tomorrow will be my first guilt-free-from-school day in a year and a half! Let the fun begin!!!!
Edit: Whoa! And I think this is like the 6th page in this thread where I've had the top post. Also weird. (Though I guess there *is* only about 8 of us posting in it...)
grrrrr. I just went on a bike ride that was supposed to last an hour. I end up going down to lakeshore (which we were supposed to do), and trying to go back up the Humber River. Somehow, we end up circling grenadier pond, and get all muddy, and just get home. And it's DARK! It was 3 HOURS!!!
But it was my fault...
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Edit: I was sick at 5:30am when I wrote this, but now I'm better so I'm still coming. (Don't worry, it's not contagious!) My, but the last 12 hours were more confusing than they should have been!
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they're still out on the town... but Sachi and I are home. We had a great time at the ROM, looking at 1125 million-year old eggs that look like beans. And confusasours. And ElJay in leather pants. (KIDDING!) I had a really great time meeting you guys, and I wish I was here tomorrow and the next day to see you again!
Dinner at the Brownstone was absolutly divine. Yum Yum. Polly had "pizza," Victoria had kebobs, twinky had a greek salad, EL had pasta, Brenton had pizza, and Sachi and I had salad.
<-- me sad I had to leave, but happy to have met you all.
Pictures are uploading at the moment.
And twinky, you are now officially my idol for being so good-natured through all the jokes that I aimed at you. And plus, you have a cool shirt. I liked Liza's as well.
Being real feels funny. I think I like it.
EDIT: I now have some alts... anyone want to guess? There is the obvious, but there are some others that will come out in due time.
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Well, I'm home now too. Thanks for a fun day, everyone! It was great to meet you all and I'm glad I made it. Hope the rest of the weekend is even more fun. I expect to hear stories!
Oh, and Des, I happened to meet up with and sit next to a philologist-in-training friend of mine on the bus home, and we figured that the Bambi might be related to the Italian bambino (child), so the whole name could mean "child-snatcher" and not be Disney-fied at all.
And yes, I have to agree that twinky *was* pretty good-natured, what with the whole pizza thing and all too...
Thanks for getting me back on the bus as well. Now, I'm off to sleep while you're all dancing your hearts out (ie. showing off your new skills, Teshi) or playing cards at the hotel, or whatever you're doing.
Happy rest of the weekend!
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Tick, Arthur et al, we're meeting at the Science Centre at Noon tomorrow, although I'm sure Twinky and ElJay will get in contact with you.
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I was funny, wasn't I? I mean, twinky was so embarrassed. It made me laugh. still does, actually. Feel that tingly felling in your stomach, Polly? That's me laughing.
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Everyone has now dispersed. Rei and ElJay left from Terminal 2 and I'm here on a lame internet terminal. I'll head over to Terminal 1 in a bit but I have all kinds of time so it's no big deal.
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it's all over... Anyone who has pics, put them up! I'm so excited to see all them.
And if anyone wants to do a little research, and figure out conclusivly if there is a different fork for cesear (I can't spell that!) salad, regular salad, and dinner, I am still curious.
EL, glad you're home okay How was Satuday, and Sunday, everyone? I was at my cottage yesterday and today (and it poured rain. I'm afriad Sachi now hinks that it always rains in Canada)
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We are home. Thomas and Mommy slept most of the way and are zonked out now also. Lots of fun had, pictures and more details tomorrow (later tonight maybe for the pictures, we've got a few fun ones).
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A huge mega-thanks again to EL for getting me to the airport... it turned out my flight was cancelled, but they got me on the 5:30 one instead that they were holding back because of the 7:30 cancellation. They stopped switching tickets for it while I was still standing at the counter getting my boarding pass printed, so that was incredible timing. Otherwise I would have been at the airport for another 4 or 5 hours.
I'll post more later... just wanted to let y'all know I made it. And had SUCH a wonderful time! So glad to meet all of you! You're fabulous!
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I'll have mine up in a few minutes. If anyone needs hosting, I've got an album set up for pictures.
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Well, what convenient timing to get home and check Hatrack. Hi everybody! How was the rest of the weekend?
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I must be really tired because I posted this in the wrong thread!
Anyway: Pictures. It's crude, but it works, except for the "next picture" option, and the video links. Eh.
Any complaints about spelling and grammar, muddled details, missed details, unintentional insults, terrible photography (it was terrible, no idea why!) and other such things will be dealt with in the morning.
Sorry about any html glitches etc. it's NOT my strong point!
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I'm glad you got pictures of the stuff we missed. I'm heading to bed, as soon as I put more clothes in to wash.
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yay for pictures! I'll try to get mine up early this week when I get my head in one place for the most part. But thanks to everyone, it was a spectacular weekend!
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Pod, I thought you took way more pics than that. Are the others redundant? Did they not turn out well? I don't imagine it's a hosting issue because you were saying that you've got massive amounts of bandwidth and storage, but on the off chance it is I have plenty of space at the moment and I never go near my site's bandwidth limits.
Miriya, I'm sorry we missed you. There just wasn't much time between when I realized you lived in Toronto (on the map thread) and when I left for the gathering (and thus went incommunicado). Next time we will give you more notice.
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Nice pictures, everyone! Teshi, your commentary is great. I had actually almost forgotten about the bird attack... So I guess I'm the only one who has to wait until they finish their film, and get it developed in the old-fashioned way, eh? I'll try to find someone with a scanner afterwards so I can post them. I only took a few anyway.
Glad the rest of the weekend was fun! True to my word, I thought about you all several times while sitting in the lab Saturday and Sunday and wondering what antics you were up to just then. Next time I'll come for the whole thing if I'm still around!
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Teshi, I look very odd in the one picture you have of me... Feel free to take any of my photos to add them to your album.
Hopefully this is an annual event! Excited for next year already! Eljay, you may want to book plane tickets now...
And, for the record, I got a few stares, as I randomly started laughing in class thinking about that whole night... I laugh just thinking about you guys.
For people who weren't there, here is a synposis of what happened on Friday:
ElJay and I set out from the Crowne Plaza to meet Teshi and Astaril downtown. After some confusion over which way was which, we got ourselves onto a bus going the wrong way, which took us to the wrong subway station. From the wrong subway station we were able to make our way to the right subway station. Unfortunately, from the right subway station I boldly led us off in the wrong direction. The net result was that we were 20 minutes late and arrived to find Astaril attempting to teach Teshi how to juggle. We found some food (at the most inept Tim Horton's ever), went through Union station, walked by the CN tower, and came back along the waterfront. We paused at a small stage on the waterfront to teach Teshi basic jive/swing dancing technique. She caught on to ElJay's lessons very quickly. Then we made our way to the appointed meeting place, with a quick detour into a Chapters. We saw two people looking like they were looking for people, and as it turned out they were Rei and EL. Very convenient. Then we stood around and chatted while waiting for Desdemona and Sachi to arrive -- this was when Teshi was nearly dive-pooped by an aggressive bird. We were a clump of six by this stage, so Des and Sachi spotted us easily when they emerged from the nearby subway station. After introductions, we set off to have dinner at the restaurant Teshi had kindly scoped out for us in advance (cf. restaurant discussion on page 11). The place was pretty neat -- simple, but fun décor.
One would think that procuring and consuming food, when one is seated in a restaurant, ought to be a relatively simple task. However, two factors conspired against me (everyone else had no problems): first, certain appetizers were half price if you also ordered a drink from the bar. The second factor was Astaril's veganness. She expressed an interest in having cheeseless, meatless pizza (that is to say, crust and tomato sauce), and in order to save her from paying full price, it was suggested that since I was already sipping my pint of tasty beer I could order this strange un-pizza on her behalf. I obliged, with the end result that 1) the waitress thought I was a very special boy, 2) the Greek salad that I ordered for myself did not appear, 3) everyone else thought this was uproariously funny, and 4) Astaril got her un-pizza, which she claims was quite tasty.
Thankfully, once the waitress realized her mistake, my salad arrived promptly. Rei was nice enough to offer me a slice of his very real, cheese-and-meat-laden pizza since he was unable to consume the entire dish. That was awfully nice of him and the pizza was very good. After dinner we made our way back to the Royal Ontario Museum to take in the flying dinosaur exhibit as planned. The exhibit was neat but sadly brief. Since general admission is free on Friday nights, though, we went upstairs to look at the normal Middle Eastern and ancient Egyptian exhibits. Des and Sachi had to leave shortly thereafter, so we said our goodbyes and the remaining six (Rei, EL, ElJay, Teshi, Astaril, me) escorted Astaril back to the bus terminal so she could catch the bus back to Kitchener-Waterloo. Further goodbyes ensued. Then, after some brief discussion, we headed for the Reservoir Lounge, a small venue I heard about on another forum. Sadly there was a cover, but everything else about the place was (IMO, at least) wonderful. We scored a great booth, too, as pictured in Teshi's photography. Shortly after we arrived, a live band got started up. The singer had a great gravelly growly voice and milked it for all it was worth. They didn't play anything really danceable, at least not initially, so we sat about talking and laughing and having tasty drinks while enjoying the band. After their break, they came back on stage and started into a few more danceable songs. ElJay challenged me to a dance and I assented. My memory of the jive figures I once knew has faded, but it was still a lot of fun. Apparently once we started with the spinning everyone else got off the dance floor (which was admittedly a little small to be doing those sorts of figures, but we didn't really care). ElJay is a good dancer, as Teshi had established in the afternoon.
By this point it was getting a bit late. Rei and EL needed to get to Union station to catch the GO train back to Burlington, so we left as a group. Then Teshi, ElJay and I went into the subway area of the station and caught trains going in opposite directions.
Somewhere in there we arranged to meet at the Science Centre at noon the next morning. I don't quite remember where… oh, right. The initial plan was to meet there at eleven, but by the time we got to Union station it was clear nobody would be interested in getting up that early, so we revised the plan.
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You were late? No, EL and Rei were early. We'd said between 5 and 5:30 PM, right? You and Sachi arrived before 5:30.
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That's a good summary, Raja, but you forgot to include the weeping, gnashing of teeth, and general flesh-rending that occured once it became clear that I was not giong to be there. Don't ruin this for me.
Sorry I didn't show, sounds like there was a good time had by all.
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I know! It's such a shame that I didn't pause for a bit to get a proper picture, but then ElJay wasn't exactly happy about having it taken so there wasn't very much time.
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And that is a very cool shirt twink is wearing in some of the shots (the black T Shirt).
The whole gathering sounds like it was a lot of fun. One of these days I'm going to have to make it to a con.
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It's hard to tell, but the shirt (with the zilla on the front) is actually navy blue. I only mention it to avoid confusion, since later on in the con I did in fact wear a black t-shirt.
BtL, you'll just have to come to the next one. You were certainly asked after.
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