The many years of lazy weekends as a student are now just a fading memory as I plunge into the ever-more-hectic reality of adulthood. Yesterday I spent the morning with , cleaning the accumulated decade’s worth of dirt off of the balcony and behind the appliances in the kitchen at my rental unit, a job which after almost 4 solid hours of work is still not complete. There’s still a depressing amount of furniture which needs to be removed, but we’re making progress.
After that, I did a Bloor-only nod to Free Comic Book Day, and despite the pouring rain managed to get to join me for a stroll in the soaking wet. I partook of the free Hellboy and indy comics on display at Labyrinth, then he and I moseyed along to the Beguiling where I had a nice chat with Peter about French comics and briefly saw Cassidy and the ever-growing, ever-adorable Momo (who was sporting a pretty sweet set of wellies on her tiny feet). Edward chastised me for looking at the latest Guarnido in hardcover, then softened the blow by sending me home with a new Neil Gaiman hardcover that I’d never seen before.
We then went for brunch at Insomnia, I suffered a massive asthma attack, phoned Aly to keep myself from passing out, then decided that given the lack of oxygen all I could handle for that afternoon was Disney. I stopped in at Bay Street Video, had a nice conversation with the cashier (would it be so wrong to apply for a part-time job at Bay Street Video?) then took home Enchanted, which was warmly recommended to me by several people, including my friend Phil Westoby who is generally speaking a Disney-hater.
I watched it, and although the scene with the dancing cockroaches was amusing, I just can’t get into films where there’s a partner “swap”. I didn’t like it in ‘You’ve Got Mail’ and I didn’t like it in this film either. I don’t care if she ended up with Prince Charming; if I were the girl Patrick Dempsey was about to propose to, who he then dumped in 2 days for Giselle, I’d be pissed. That’s the patented Disney twist, I guess: all happy endings, and no litigation.
Today I face the young urbanite problem of too many commitments, not enough weekend. I’m double booked. Literally and figuratively. I am a member of two book clubs – a recently formed one with my university peeps where we’re reading ‘The Stone Carvers
‘ by Jane Urquhart (I like) and another that I’ve been in for years with my high school girlfriends, where we’re reading ‘Everything is Illuminated‘ by Jonathan Safran Foer. The problem being, today is the day we’re supposed to discuss ‘Everything Is Illuminated’, but I’m supposed to be taking birthday boy Brett out for brunch and then escorting him to his surprise birthday party this afternoon.
Clearly Brett’s big day takes precedence, and although I’m bummed out about not seeing my people – I don’t get enough opportunities to hang out with , and – I’m not terribly sad about not being able to discuss the book. It should have been good, but somehow wasn’t. I love comedic writing, but this felt like a bad mash-up of David Sedaris’s ‘Me Talk Pretty One Day’ and Sasha Baron Cohen’s Borat character. Maybe I’m missing the point, but the machismo attitude of the narrator/translator and his fractured misuse of English failed to amuse me.
Okay, now I’m getting worried… was supposed to be here at 7:45am so that we could go take a second crack at cleaning the other apartment, and she’s over an hour late. That’s very unlike her, and I’ve left messages on both her home and cell phones. She never sleeps in. Hmm. I guess I’ll just make some tea and wait.
