Peter, from England, was my model houseguest for three days. In all those three days I didn’t once point the camera at him (can you believe it?), until he was just about to head off and only then did I have the presence of mind to take a parting snap. So this is… my parting snap! He gave me a hand with replacing the smoke detector (yeah, finally — I’m too short to do the job myself) and put together the IKEA shelving that’s been sitting on the floor of the spare room for far too long. This place has been in its best shape since I moved in. Thanks Peter!

… who’s the squarest of them all?

The bog at Richtree’s — the ladies’, anyway. Photographs are prohibited in the restaurant, but nobody said anything about the loo…

Looks familiar!

Xe Lua Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown (Spadina Ave)
Toronto

pho

lemongrass chicken

The air got mighty chilly on Sunday evening, and I say what better way to warm up than a big steaming bowl of pho? And, if that doesn’t fire up the belly, a plate of lemongrass chicken with chili-and-onion rice sure will! At an average of $6 per person for a full meal, Vietnamese food has got to be one of the best ways to satisfy an appetite on a budget.

HUH?!? We couldn’t believe our eyes: a full-grown male deer bounding across the Humber River underneath the bridge on Bloor Street near Old Mill station. Of course, I was holding a camera at that very moment. It’s not every day you see a deer with antlers in proximity of a subway!

(And, of course, I couldn’t help but think of Mister Look! A Deer! himself.)

My bedroom skylight, which as you can tell by the tree, isn’t directly overhead but at a high angle on the sloped roof. It’s directly over the bed so I always know what the weather is like as soon as I wake up. It’s a beautiful morning in Toronto.

I was downtown on Friday night and spotted four cartons on a… milk run? I’m amazed this shot turned out as well as it did — they were in a hurry! Were they late meeting a plate of cookies?

We’ve got: soy, homogenized, half & half, and 2%. View larger.

Queen Street West
Toronto

the Howard tomb

Colborne Lodge in High Park is haunted! Go there at night in October, see the house and grounds by candlelight, hear some very creepy ghost stories while fog shrouds the moon, and be prepared for your imagination to run away…

the parlour, where a wreath of hair lies on display

In 1873 John George Howard and his wife Jemima deeded the park (which includes the house and the property) to the City of Toronto, and the city has been its steward ever since. Colborne Lodge is now a museum which is open year round, and in October they switch up the supernatural factor and give a haunted house tour.

Jemima Howard’s bedroom

It’s not all smoke and mirrors, though, the Howard stories are supported by the couple’s detailed journals and meticulous record-keeping; the legends that abound from the era are well-known to local historians.

I took the photo above in Jemima Howard’s bedroom, the room she died in… her husband, John, tried to get her committed to the Provincial Lunatic Asylum (he was the architect). He was unsuccessful, so he sequestered her to one end of the house and kept her locked up. Aren’t you glad this isn’t 1877? It turns out later that she was suffering from symptoms of breast cancer, one of the first women in Canada to receive such a diagnosis.

For more about “Haunted in High Park”, visit the Colborne Lodge page at the City of Toronto’s website.

View larger

I chucked some change in his case and asked permission to take his photo. He said, "Yes, only because you asked. People take my picture all the time but don’t ask me first."

Street photography continues to be a dilemma for me. I don’t like to take photos of people without asking, but I always prefer candid shots. Most photographers see anyone in the public view, on the street, fair game. Me, I feel a twinge of guilt taking photos of people on the sly, only because I don’t know how I’d feel about seeing a photo of me somewhere, maybe in tears and trying to be invisible or just trying to be invisible because I’ve had a hard day. Street photography is about humanity, and that includes frailty, but it’s much easier to justify it when the subject is someone else. One day it could be me, and I try and be mindful of that when I’m behind the lens.

I bought 10 navel oranges from the produce stand a little while ago to see how much juice I could make out of them. Since tomorrow is garbage and organic recycling pick-up day, I thought I’d choose tonight to make my pile o’ rinds. And what a pile it was! I added it to the big bag of melon carcasses I stashed in the fridge until I could dispose of them (so they don’t attract the raccoons behind the house), and marvelled at how much one person could generate SO MUCH RIND.

I sliced… and sliced… and sliced… and sliced… and finally blended until I got a frothy orange cloud of pulp and juice. It’s a good thing I *like* pulp, because there was enough to, uh, make a bottle of Metamucil? The pulp was incredibly filling and the juice tasted great because it wasn’t sweet and concentrated like store-bought orange juice.

It was a lot of work and washing-up for about a half-litre of juice (I used lots of water in the blending process), but in the end it’s cheaper than buying orange juice and is probably healthier. Maybe a weekly project? I thought about buying a juicer recently, but they’re expensive with more parts to clean. The problem with making a big batch is I’d have to drink it right away, I can’t store it. Hmmm.

My friend introduced me to this pub called The Pilot Tavern in Yorkville, which loosely follows an aviation theme, complete with a propeller on the wall and old photographs of warbirds. The Flight Deck is a rooftop patio that’s heated, with ceiling fans and a retractable awning for the elements. The best part is that it’s conveniently located near a Bloor line subway station, and I have enough light to take goofy pictures like this one in the loo, surrounded by reflective sheet metal and rivets.

And speaking of flight, I snapped this picture at lunchtime while I was fiddling with the dials on my camera:

swoop

A little blurry, but I like the way the toes look. Pigeon-toed?