electric relaxation

These are going to start adding up quickly. Maybe I should come up with better titles. Also, it makes more sense to just track both advantages and disadvantages in the same series so that’s what I’m doing.

• 24-hour/late-night stuff
  I just bought a ton of groceries at 11:45PM. I know I can do that in San Francisco if I live right next to a Safeway, but that’s like three places in the entire city, and they all kind of suck. Pizza-pizza, which I’m sure I’ll get sick of quick fast but for now is plain delicious, stays open until at least 1 or 2AM from what I can tell, and they are everywhere. This isn’t so much of a win for Toronto as it is a horrible, horrible fail for San Francisco, but it should still count.

• Tap water
  San Francisco is the clear winner. This one wasn’t a huge surprise. Toronto tap water isn’t disgusting like NYC, but it isn’t delicious and laced with LSD or whatever it is they put in the San Francisco stuff. Hey maybe that’s what my taxes are paying for – that’d be sweet. Anyway the Toronto tap water is bad enough that I suspect it’s why the coffee I made keeps tasting like shit. I bought some bottled water today to test this theory.
  
  
• The liquor situation
  This one is probably more complicated and will need to be revisited, since I think bars here maybe stay open later or something?Or at least 2AM last call means for real 2AM last call, not 1:30AM like in San Francisco? Anyway that’s not what I had in mind, I mean the whole LCBO thing. I’m not a big beer drinker but it’s annoying that I can’t just run downstairs and grab a six pack if friends are coming over to watch a basketball game for example. Also wine is more expensive for good stuff from what I can tell so far.
  
  
• Coffee and Coffee Shops
  There are surprisingly fewer coffee shops around compared to San Francisco – though Portland and Seattle are still playing in a whole different league.The ones that are around haven’t impressed so far; I’m going to go ahead and claim that Peet’s is decidedly better than Second Cup. I hate fucking Starbucks but I don’t seem to have a whole lot of options.

  Meanwhile, there are definitely a few frou-frou coffee houses with wifi kicking around but not like seven thousand billion of them like there are in the Mission. I couldn’t find a good one (i.e. not a Starbucks) in a three block radius of my house anyway. I know there’s one on Spadina but that’s far and it be cold.

Ok, I was going to do one about food since I had lunch with Ranjani at Nota Bene today, but I think I want to hold off on this one for a while. Anyway I’ll definitely split that one up (low, medium and hi-end) and it’s way too complicated and I’m starving so I’m gonna go eat some of my midnight groceries.

Seriously what is up with that shit?

I’m not going to count this as a flaw since that would be petty, but for real, I’m tempted to sign up for this stupid card just so that they won’t be wasting their time when they ask me at every checkout counter in Toronto.

Since a very explicit purpose behind my little adventure in Toronto is to figure out whether I would want to move back here permanently, it’s important for me to keep track of stuff that I dislike as well as the stuff I like. This will likely be the first in a series of posts.

I want to write these things down before they get purged from my memory during an all-dressed-chip binge or west-indian-food coma. They won’t be in any particular order (though perhaps I’ll go through and re-order them by importance once I’ve built up a comprehensive collection of complaints).

1. It’s fucking cold. No surprises there. Well actually, I forgot what it’s like to be so cold that you can’t just wear gloves, you have to wear the right kind of gloves or your fingers still freeze. And you can’t just where a warm wool hat, you need one that still fully wraps around the bottom of your ears when your hair has started to grow out. Also, it’s only December, and a relatively warm December at that.

2. Google Public Transit doesn’t work. Seriously, what the shit? In my mind’s little fantasy world, this city is supposed to be much better run than San Francisco. Unfortunately, the TTC is apparently pretty bureaucratic and heavy-handed (though this is just downright lazy).
   
3. Health Care. This one is actually suppoed to be better in Toronto obviously, but I’m putting it on here as a note to review and revise this one once I get around to having my follow-up appointment for last week’s fun Swine Flu adventure. But my recent experience with trying to pick a new PCP in San Francisco sucked balls. There’s no way it’s worse here. As I understand it, the surgery lines thing is mostly a stupid American myth. Actually, maybe it’s better in the US if you actually know doctors (and I know a few); if that’s true, I can always pull some elitist bullshit if I needed to at some point in the future – and go over to the States as necessary. After all, since our family already crossed that moral chasm back in 1995 with my mom’s health issues, so I figure I’m already tained.

Ok I need to go do some work. But that’s a start.

P.S. There are a few interesting tidbits in this forum discussion on San Francisco versus Toronto which I might mine for further inspiration.

P.P.S. I should get Brian Li to start tracking these things since he just made the reverse move (Toronto to San Francisc0 just a few weeks ago).

I walked around my neighborhood in Toronto for about an hour this morning; basically I did a loop, heading up on Church St., across on Charles and back down on Yonge.

Yonge to Jarvis north of Queen is basically the gayborhood.

Finally, a couple of pics that should hopefully prove educational for my American friends used to what passes for diversity in the bush leagues:

Online ordering (!), free delivery of kati rolls. This place is only a few blocks from my house too so it ought to be quick. Just ordered some food; if it’s good this might replace Minako as my favorite on grubhub.

p.s. Thanks again Lisa for telling me about this web site and helping reduce the amount of pesky human interaction in my life.

I played physician’s assistant this weekend while Dustin replaced the radiator in my car with a new one I’d had delivered to his house. We also swapped out the old battery for a new one, since I basically killed it by letting the car sit without starting for four months.

Fortunately, it turns out that the radiator swap was way easier than I had originally anticipated. It took only a couple hours to complete, and we didn’t even really need to consult the service manual. I still don’t really get why folks online claim this is a five-plus hour job. Hopefully we didn’t skip over anything crucial. At any rate, the Z rides again, so I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

While we were at it, Dan replaced the brake pads in his car, aided by a modicum of encouragement and much heckling from the two of us. Photos here.

KRS-One’s “Sound of Da Police” over the DJ Unk “Walk It Out” instrumental.

iTunes had two versions of the instrumental, one’s got a few extra synthesized effects. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find the KRS accapella anywhere. Also, I need to speed up the Unk beat to +12% which means I have to use internal mode on the SL-1.

The art gallery on the second floor always has pretty cool exhibits.  They also have nice work up down all of the main hallways. People are friendly. Though I suspect it’s because I’m the best-dressed person in this airport. Yeah I said it, don’t forget it.

I got selected for extra screening for the first time since 9/11. It brought back such fond memories. I’m sure the security folks must have been confused about why I was smiling so much; it was because I’ve always wanted to know what goes down in the puff test machine, and now I do. The experience did not disappoint.

Update:
Forgot to mention what inspired me to write the post in the first place: there’s free WiFi here (you watch a fifteen second video ad and then you’re good to go), and plenty of tables and comfy chairs all over the place.

I ran the Bay to Breakers race this year. Dan and I signed up at the last minute so we were stuck in Corral E (walkers). This was the first race I’ve ever run (well at least since elementary school anyway), and the longest distance I’ve ever covered (sad, I know). So I was pretty nervous about it.

I didn’t sleep more than a couple of hours last night, both because of the jitters and also because it was way too hot in my room and I still haven’t brought my stupid air conditioner home; it’s just sitting there taking up a huge amount of space in my office. And of course on race day it was dumb hot.

Given those circumstances (actually I’ve got a bunch more excuses but they’re even more lame) as well as the fact that Dan, bless him, convinced me that I needed to run the entire race wearing strap-on butterfly wings and bobbing golf ball antennae, I was pretty happy with my finish. According to the RFID tag I had on my shoe, my final time was 1:11:25, for a pace of 9:35.

Of course, Dan deserves most of the credit, since he stuck with me and pretty much pulled me through the whole thing. He finally took off at around 6.5 miles and managed to smoke some non-costumed clown in a foot race to the finish.

On today’s lunchtime run with Dpheezy and your boy Ginzton, I ran up to Coit Tower (not actually up the tower, but up all the stairs from Embarcadero all the way to the base). It wasn’t easy, but it was easier than I expected. I think I actually find it easier to run up stairs versus long uphill slopes; Matt theorized that this was related to the fact that I run like a basketball player – lots of high-steppin’. Better than half-steppin’, I guess.