Traffic was pretty slow along the QEW heading back to Toronto after my inaugural trip yesterday to the Royal Botanical Gardens, and the smog alert was in full force (index of 6). Something tells me this summer’s going to be as brutal as the past winter…

I made it to Sushi on Bloor and — incredibly — found a spot to park by the restaurant. We only had the room until 7pm, so I had just enough time to meet the crowd and take care of some leftovers. The restaurant was abuzz with sushi-lovers and our bunch alone took up about a third of the second floor space; ordering something from the menu seemed a little too optimistic for a deadline.

Over sushi, I congratulated the participating CSers on their successful climb up the CN Tower last Thursday to raise money for WWF Canada. It’s been so long since I did the Grouse Grind that I wonder how I’d do climbing 1,776 steps (144 flights). But hey, I climbed The Chief in Squamish so maybe I’m underestimating myself. No mountains around here to climb, though.

The weekend weather had all of Toronto out in droves and many of those people were on Bloor Street walking by as we tried to take a group photo. It’s been such a long time since it’s been this warm that the city-wide wardrobe change seemed to happen overnight.

Back at the ranch, there was not one but TWO birthday cakes waiting for us.

We tried to work off a bit of dinner with some games of hacky-sack, but the sacks kept ending up in the neighbours’ yards and a certain pint-sized referee kept kiboshing the play. And a big hole in the yard conspired to injure players, then darkness fell. The hacky-sacking was short-lived.

So we moved on to what we do best: eating and loud board games. This time it was Taboo and Double-Talk, the former by far the louder of the two. After midnight those of us diehards still playing made a half-hearted effort at learning a new game (the name of which I can’t even recall now, less than 24 hours later), and by 2am we were all nearly out of steam.

Which is not bad for mostly thirty-somethings, no? I think the kids would have out-steamed us, if they weren’t sent off to bed.

Pictures here as thumbnails, a slideshow, or in Pictobrowser. There are a bunch marked “friends and family” and not public, so the thumbnail set looks different according to whether you’re a contact of mine in Flickr. Pictobrowser will only show photos marked public.

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