Happy September, everyone! 'Tis the end of the summer, psychologically speaking. And a lovely end it was, in Toronto, anyway: a nice, bright, sunny, warm weekend, perfect for puttering about town.

Saturday was shopping day: over to the Eaton Centre for a failed attempt at getting picture frames and a successful attempt to get new shoes and trousers from Harry Rosen, then up to Anne's place to feed the cat (Scotty) before stopping in at the Loblaws and hauling home food for Sunday. Dinner on Sunday evening was a nice mix of Usual Suspects (Joyce, Patrick, me) and other friends (Anne, Pete, Anne's friend Laurie). Feast your virtual taste buds on the menu. Anne made a gaspacho soup, then I served the main course (grilled NY steaks with salsa verde, grilled corn, orzo with tomato and oregano) and dessert (miniature icebox cakes, basically chocolate wafers separated by layers of sweet whipped cream, with a layer of raspberries, all glazed with more whipped cream and garnished with grated semi-sweet chocolate). Yum.

It was a lovely evening, and beautiful outside, so we stayed out and played Pictionary, guys vs. girls. The ladies got off to a superb start, clearing half of the board in their first turn, but we came back and were (briefly) in the lead after 3/4 of the board. It ended up in a neck-and-neck race to the finish, with both of our teams going for the final All Play category... but in the end, the ladies won. Must be that feminine intuition. (You should have seen the round where they got the word "spending" in 9 seconds flat.) :-)

Monday I played tennis with Pete, and despite his overall fitness level I managed to beat him 6-2. He hasn't played in a couple of years, so he's pretty rusty, but I felt pretty good about my serve and general ability to hit the ball over the net. Still, I was tiring much faster than he was so I'm sure if we'd kept going he would have had my number before long.

In other news, my parents are back from England safe and sound, and Anne and I are going to visit them next weekend. Should be fun...
posted by Tom at 7:42 PM | link |