[NON BLOG] Thursday Afternoon

[rfmcdonald]

I was quite excited at the idea of being able to meet, among many other worthy people (hi, mickeytor, quillon, and vaneramos!), roosterbear. I've known roosterbear for two and a half years. Though that friendship was conducted entirely through the media of E-mail and Livejournal, it's been crucial in my development. It isn't too much of an exaggeration to say that despite this distance, I might well not be here if not for roosterbear--not only did he provide me with the Livejournal startup codes that I needed back in May of 2002 to start off this humble weblog, but soon after I made my first panicked post on soc.bi asking for help he initiated a very helpful E-mail correspondence. I wanted to meet with him on his trip to Toronto, very much.

To a considerable extent, though, Thursday was an evening marked by misadventure, most of it immediately funny and none of it damaging. mickeytor, roosterbear and vaneramos have all written up the evening's events. It's my turn now.



I got off of work at 5 o'clock, and planned to meet up with roosterbear, somewhere. Many of the evening's hiccups stem from the fact that I had forgotten to charge my cell phone the night before. During the workday, that was a minor annoyance at best. When I turned my cell on leaving the store to check my voicemail, I realized that I had less than a quarter of the battery power remaining. Oh, and that I didn't have a pen to copy down roosterbear's phone number.

I ended up borrowing a pen from the number, and jotted it down. A brief descent into the underground segment of the Yonge-Eglinton Centre to buy a phone card, and I made the first call. I got a woman's voice, speaking in a thick Boston accent. I checked my voicemail again, and found that I copied down an eight instead of a zero. I started walking south, towards the Davisville station, and called again; this time, I managed to get routed into AT&T's voicemail. A third time, but I misentered the phone card's PIN. The fourth time, I reached roosterbear. I normally don't shout on phones, and I normally don't interrupt people; he reacted as well as could be expected, just as my cell phone powered down. Reaching him again via a pay phone, I arranged to meet him on the corner of Queen and Church streets. Miraculously, the subway and the quick brisdk walk east went well.





We'd arranged to meet with mickeytor at Fresh, a vegetarian restaurant. Fresh was apparently in the area of Queen and Spadina. I was happy at this choice of restaurant, since I knew where it was from innumerable walks and streetcar rides up and down the length of Queen Street West, and I led our intrepid band.

As time passed, though, and we continued to trudge westward, not a few people commented that we were travelling rather far from Spadina. It turns out that, in fact, Fresh is a restaurant chain, with not one but two restaurants on Queen Street. We got in touch with mickeytor's roommate and headed for the first one as mickeytor chased us around in a taxi. It wasn't surprising that we missed the first Fresh, actually, considering the poor signage (recessed front area, sign hidden by the neighbouring Rivoli's canopy) and that, bizarrely, it had closed at six o'clock on a weekday.

mickeytor appeared, though. We opted for Chinese on Spadina.





I'd met schillerium in person more than two years ago. I hadn't met any of the other people, though. Yes, they did look like their photos, and yes, all of them were nice charming guys. roosterbear had a faint Texan accent--stronger, I think I have to say, than schizmatic's. Dinner and dinnertime conversation was good. A walk east on Dundas followed, with a stop at a tea house for bubble tea; my thanks to quillon for paying the cost for mine. We headed over to HMV for some audiovisual shopping (I picked up Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out single and Felix da Housecat's Excursions), and thence mickeytor's apartment for the obligatory photographs with Sue Ellen. We also had the dubious good luck to witness the outcome of the Canadian Idol competition. From that point, mickeytor stayed chez lui whieel the five of us meandered over to roosterbear and quillon's hotel before going our separate ways.



It was a fun evening, misadventures included. The height of the evening was, of course, spending time with these five great guys. We'll have to make plans for future engagements.

One more thing. In case anyone wants proof that I am, in fact, a physical entity, two images featuring me exist. The first is a black and white photograph taken by vaneramos (bottom of the page); the second is a colour photograph of me with the charming Sue Ellen taken by mickeytor.