My two favourite windows

I grabbed the camera, put on a good pair of walking shoes, wandered the city for over three hours, to come across this! A film shoot infront of my favourite store window to shoot....grrrrrrrrrr! I should have just walked through it, seeing as they were filming people walking up and down the sidewalk, but cops always make me feel like I'm doing something wrong...even if I'm not!

Smarty Pants

Note the gum stuck to the pole already, I'm not sure if these things will start popping up all over the city, but it was a clever idea.

Stickers

I'm not sure if these were part of the window display or some freewheelin sticker sticking streetartist's work.

Easter's a coming!

What the?

Chinatown Fruit

Signs of Spring

It's Spring!

30th Anniversary at Eaton's Centre

Second Batch

From top to bottom: Pumpkin Bread x2, Carrot Zucchini Bread, and Banana Muffins (or Walnut muffins with a hint of Banana).

Great Fabric Find

I was stocking up my fabric stash again! Here is Kaffe Fassett's Stripe Shirt fabric.

Email from LP

I thought this was pretty funny, LP is always clarifying medical issues for me. This was her response to my email about last weekends fire:

"You were sick because of the smoke, don't try to blame it on food! You two are losers in denial. Think about it, you were running in a smoke filled building and you inhaled smoke into your lungs and likely into your stomach and you GOT SICK. Fact. I am just very glad you are both okay regardless and you were able to help that poor woman."

But how does she know it wasn't some sort of food poisoning!

Childhood funny

I know this probably looks a little gross, but I took the picture because I had flashbacks of something I did and tried to deny a couple of weeks later.

The story goes something like this. When we were little Grandma used to live with us, and I'm not saying she used to let us do anything, but she never stopped me from trying new things out. I remember grating some carrots, pretty much the whole bag, and making a carrot cake or at least trying to. I believe it was another infamous Joyce cake which sometimes (mostly when she lived at Lemay) would serve people. Boy, when I think of all the people she'd give the "bread" or "cakes" too! Anyways, thats another story.

So back to the carrot cake. I remember making a batter of flour, grated carrots, and water. Pouring into a rectangle take out tray, then worrying that I'd get in trouble for wasting flour and all those carrots. So I had this great plan of hiding it, in my parents closet - not so great. Well let me tell you after a week or so of wondering what the smell was and where it was coming from, my parents found this mouldy goop which some of my mom's clothes happened to be dried to.

It was pretty clear that it wasn't J1 or J3, but I still tried to say it wasn't me! I don't think they believed me. This is probably what my new experiment looked like before I tried to hide the evidence.

$20 Special

A few hours before the fire, we happened to go to our local business supply store. I had a coupon that was going to expire in a month and this chair had been marked down so much we couldn't pass it up for $19.99 with tax. There are some scratches on the legs and a 1 inch tear in the leather, but other than that the rest is in great condition. And a bonus is that it is a massage chair too, which is fully functional. I've used it for the past two days before heading to work, I think my back got messed up from this weekends incident.

The Yard

D-day....or CT Day, in my case!

It's been scheduled, I'll be having my Carpal Tunnel surgery on May 16th. Right hand first!

Saturday Night

It had been a long day, and we had just gone to bed. I turned on the tv and thought I could hear a beeping noise. It just so happend I was synchronizing the mute button with the fired detectors beeping at the very moment it was between beeps. It only took a few more seconds before we realized that someone's fire alarm was going off in the building. Jokingly I told A.M. to take the fire extinguisher with him (our own 2pounder). As soon as he opened the door to the apartment, he could see fire through the crack at the top of the doorway of the apartment across the hall from us. Everything happened in slow motion, but this lasted only minutes.

Apartment door being opened, flames seemingly everywhere (in the end it was contained to the sofabed), calling 911, woman being pulled out, running from floor to floor trying to evacuate other tenants, police arriving, somehow finding the same woman on the 1st floor, trying to get her to talk, police questions, fire department running up the stairs with hoses, not being able to find A.M. or getting tenants to leave their apartments, in my mind it was a little chaotic. Spending 45 min outside in the cold, fire trucks, police, ambulances everywhere. Street closed off. Picture taking.

In the time it took me to run through the building 3 times to get everyone out, AM had extinguished the fire, with 2 extinguishers (injuring his hand when he smashed through the plexiglass), carried her out of the apartment into the hall, and then down two flights of stairs to the first floor.

Summary, don't drink and do drugs while smoking while you're coming in and out of consciousness with candles lit.

Things that freaked me out about the night:
1. We weren't supposed to be home at that time, and no one else on our floor was home either
2. We could have come home to absolutely nothing.
3. This is the third time, we've come to the same woman's assistance. (First time, she was passed out and locked inside while her dog was panic barking. Second time, she was passed out while her entire apartment filled with smoke from a burnt out pot. And this last time, she set her mother's apartment on fire). Its just getting worse and worse. What's next?

This is how I remember the 911 call I made:
911: 911, fire, ambulance or police
me: FIRE FIRE, THERE IS A FIRE AT ----------
911: Is it in your apartment?
me: (how does she know its an apartment?) NO
911: Which apartment is it?
me: ACROSS THE HALL!
911: Which apartment NUMBER is it?
me: I don't know (why don't I know this?) IT'S THE TOP FLOOR BACK APARTMENT TO THE RIGHT.
911: Is there anyone in there?
me: YES...NO, he got her out and she's laying in the hallway.
All the while putting on my coat, grabbing any valuables I could see and dumping them into my purse.

AM must be this lady's guardian angel!

The Damage

Fire!

Admittedly, I was pretty shaken up, and so were my hands. Most of the photos I took were a blurry mess. There were around 8 fire vehicles (various kinds), 4 police cars, and two ambulances that came to the apartment fire.