Man, today has been a completely shitty day.
Stay back -- I'm on a roll -- and please, for the love of GOD, don't let me hold your child...

1. I dropped a bottle of Frank's hot sauce in the kitchen. It hit ceramic tile floor and EXPLODED. Glass shards embedded into my legs and feet. Not fun! Glass and hot sauce sprayed everywhere -- CSI would have had a field day trying to work out the spray pattern. I learned what no one needs to ever learn; that hot sauce stains your skin. My legs are covered in unsightly orange splotches that will not come off with any amount of scrubbing.

2. I dropped my camera, my love, my joy, my baby. I love my camera -- and now, it is dented and coming apart -- though miraculously-- it still works. I guess we need to follow Kathy's lead and buy the camera you can drop from 5 feet.

Neil sometimes admonishes me that I could stand to be more friendly. So today being a beautiful day I decided to walk to the U of T to meet Neil for lunch. Before that, however, I had to go return some movies to my local neighbourhood blockbuster and drop a letter in the mailbox. I'm heading down the street after returning my movies when I notice 2 guys in orange coveralls working on the street. Making eye contact with the first, I smile and say hi and keep on trucking. Well the guy says loudly, "wow, a beautiful day and pretty lady smiling at me... You've made my day, sweet lady, you've made my day." I was a bit creeped out by this and sped up my walking pace... a block later I could still hear the guy yelling his praises.... My first thought had been that they were city workers. In retrospect, they were probably ex-cons out doing community service. So lesson learned. When in TO, I must act like a Torontonian. Thus, I will gladly return to avoiding eye contact, being unfriendly and refusing to get out the way for anyone (a classic TO trait).

Neil and I ended up in Chinatown for lunch. My fortune (so ironic as lately I've had nothing but time to myself...):
You'll accomplish more later if you take some time for yourself.

In other news, I had a job interview yesterday and it went (in my opinion) awesome! I'll know in 2-3 weeks (the hiring process here is painfully slow and drawn out) but I am fairly confident that my prospects for work are looking up.

Neil loves his breakfast. When I say loves, I means LOVES.

When we lived in Vancouver, there was a little diner on 41st called, "Art's Place" that we became regulars at. Now this place didn't have a to-die-for breakfast but it did have a decent selection of cheap, fast, and generally served hot breakfasts to choose from. We also became great fans of Pannekoeke's or Dutch Pancakes at De Dutch Restaurants (a chain).

Since moving to TO, we have tried (in vain) to find a decent diner for breakfast. Hell, we've even tried some of the breakfast chains (Over Easy, Golden Griddle) and have always left disappointed. The first diner we tried showed merit... It was rundown (the norm in TO) and was packed on a Sunday morning. No lie, not only was the food subpar but the ketchup was disgusting. We actually saw a guy get up and go next door to the McD's and return with ketchup cups from the McD's dispensers. How do you screw up ketchup????

The next place we tried was down on College -- was recommended to us as TO's best breakfast. Here's what we had...

It doesn't look bad but it took 30 minutes for someone to take our order (including coffee), another 40 minutes to get our meal and our meal was COLD.

Top that off with in the 70 minutes we sat waiting we notice this on the window:

Yummy, a conditional pass from TO Public Health. Mmmm bring on my breakfast! We laughed because we think the conditional pass might have had something to do with the fact that there were clearly too many people in the place (fire hazard). Case in point, the couple sitting next to us couldn't get out without Neil and I lifting our table over a foot because the tables were butted up next to each other trapping the person sitting against the wall. We either physically moved our table or they had to crawl out from under theirs. What fun!

We've tried scoping out our neighbourhood and have discovered that there are more bakery type, grab a coffee and a croissant places than actual greasy spoons. Now, that might have been ok for me, but Neil loves his eggs. To demonstrate this love, I will tell you a short tale. One that seriously pissed me off at the time....

Once a upon a time, in a small city called Regina, lived a girl and a guy who had just started dating. Said girl really wanted to treat her new guy to a nice meal on his birthday and she asked him where he'd like to go.... She was thinking out for a nice juicy steak... he replied, "Smitty's." She said, "You can't be serious!" He said, "Mmm mmm mmm that's what I want." So what's a girl to do, she begrudgingly took the man to Smitty's.

Back to the main point of this blog though... I have a tendency to ramble.... As a result of having terrible luck finding a decent breakfast, we've been cooking our own breakfasts. Which are always better than eating out but lack the whole "going out experience." I have even learned to make a killer quiche. That said, this past week we took it upon ourselves to learn to make Pannekoeke's. Oh My God!! SUCCESS!!
Here's a picture:

Besides the best part about cooking at home:

Without a doubt, N & I are nerds. We like game shows like Jeopardy, Millionaire, and 1 vs 100 -- games where you have to show some smarts. So it was no surprise that we got sucked into watching CBC's Test the Nation last night.

Watching the show live proved way too tedious - moved way to slow! As a result, Neil and I taped it and then went to our respective computers to take the IQ test. After we got our scores we went back and watched the taped show with the added benefit of being able to fast forward the boring bits. I did my best on the language questions and my worst on the memory ones. Neil did well at everything, his worst was the perception -- those damn puzzle piece questions. We both have taken IQ tests before and agreed that the timed element made things interesting -- especially for me with the math questions as I'm mathematically challenged.

Both of us are above the national average -- yay!! S-M-R-T, we are so smart! Question is, are you??

Click here to take the test and find out.

Perhaps some spoilerish info below... you've been warned....

Is anyone else sad about how incredibly pathetic Grey's Anatomy has become?? It has gone from something I enjoyed every week to a toss up between incredibly predictable (most disappointing 3 episode story arc --> ferry accident) and incredibly terrible writing (Izzie and George).

While Grey's has sucked, LOST has gotten interesting again... (What the hell is John Locke up to?? Jack and Claire siblings?) (Desmond can see the future... Charlie is going to die???)

I hate to admit this but I am shamelessly addicted to what would appear to be the worst season of American Idol?? Seriously, it is so bad it is entertaining -- though only through the taping power of the PVR and the ability to fast forward.

Gilmore girls wasn't on this week and that was sad -- hands down my favorite show on TV. While that may be true I still found this MAd TV skit of "Gabmore Girls" pretty funny.

Watched a Biography special on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and am once again longing for something of its quality to grace the TV screen again.

My sister-in-law introduced me to "How I Met Your Mother" on Mondays -- it's pretty funny! It has now been added to the rather embarrassingly long list of programmed to record on the PVR weekly viewing.

In movie news -- and I rarely see any movies but recently I've seen The Last Kiss (subpar), Stranger Than Fiction (way better than expected), and Casino Royale (a touch disappointing though Daniel Craig makes a very good 007). We also rented The Departed but haven't watched it yet...

Lamest post ever? Possibly -- but then again, I am pretty lame.