The days since returning from Newfoundland have passed in a blur. I’ve been doing some paid work which is helping to keep the bank balance up a little bit (though need to find some other clients soon or else the travels will be curtailed somewhat), so that took up a bit of Wednesday and Thursday. I’ve also been working on my book. There’s going to be a lot more to do on that in the month ahead. And I’ve been going to the gym again so that’s really the usual stuff. Of course, there are the fun things too.
Lightning Storm
On Friday night there was an amazing lightning storm in Toronto. Glen and I had been invited up to Bec and Alastair’s for the evening, and while there we saw the storm rolling in from the north. Lightning struck some distance away but it wasn’t long before the storm hit us and there was fork lightning all around. The best part: multiple strikes of lightning on the CN Tower. Most conversation ceased once that started as we waited excitedly for it to be struck again. I think that’s the first big storm we’ve experienced in our 14 months here. Epic!
BBQ with Friends
We went to Dave and Antony’s on Saturday night. Their friend Tom was over from New York (we’d met him in Sydney), and then their friends Richard and Jim from Hamilton/Dundas were also there for dinner. We ate a mountain of food, including baked brie with bread (totally decadent), barbecued sausages and chicken, and then a lot of desserts (including an Eton mess I’d made. It’s fast becoming my go-to dessert). We played multiple rounds of Cards Against Humanity at the end and then toddled home some time after 10:30. For some reason I’d gotten very tired. Must have been the wine.
Toronto International Film Festival Begins
TIFF is on again for another year. We bought a ten-pack of tickets some time again and I’d selected our movies while I was in Newfoundland. I’d been through the program, chosen a selection of options, created a spreadsheet with the dates and times, and then given it to Glen to choose which ones of those he’d liked best. We had our top five but when I went to book them, I couldn’t get three of them because they’d either sold out already or the time in the program was different to the one in the booking system and the new times were not suitable for us. I had to go through our full list of 13 films to finally get five. I collected the tickets on Friday.
Sunday was our first pick, a new French film called The New Girlfriend. TIFF had the premiere of the film on Saturday night. It hasn’t even been screened in France yet. It’s about a woman who discovers that her deceased best friend’s husband is a transvetite. Roman Duris plays the husband and he does an excellent job in portraying the character. There are light-hearted parts throughout so it’s not a harrowing tale. I think the subject matter, about desire and femininity, is handled very well, though there is a bit of a mix-up between transvestism and transsexuality that could have been smoothed out a bit better. Still, it was a very good film. The director, the main actress and Duris were all there at the end of the film to answer questions.
We have another film to see tomorrow night.
Once that was over, Glen and I went shopping in Hudson’s Bay Company as we need white clothes for Dine en Blanc in a fortnight. A whole bunch of strangers get together to have an elegant, all-white dinner somewhere outside in Toronto. Finding white pants is hard.
Travels with Dan 
What do you say, eh?