It was finally a gorgious weekend with sunshine and warmth that really told us that summer was coming to Toronto. So good that it had everyone buzzing outside with joy, filling the patios, parks, and any other place people were free to walk around in.

Friday had me saying goodbye to a friend of mine who was getting ready to move to Boston. Landing a writing gig at New Scientist, it was an opportunity that he could not refuse. Saturday I found myself watching X-Men: The Last Stand, which was actually very entertaining. It was the first movie that I had seen in a long time and thus was happy to have enjoyed it fully. Anyone going to see it, I’ll tell you now that you should wait in the theatre until the end of the credits. It was a simple Saturday as I opted to stay in and finish off my Spring Cleaning weekend.

Sunday I found myself on the soccer fields area in North York, where the Historical Photographic Society of Canada was holding their annual sale, selling anything to do with camera equipment. I booked myself a booth to sell and introduce my U&I Magazine. I really didn’t know what to expect out of all of this since this was my first exhibition displaying my magazine to the public. I had one of the simplest tables in the area with no big and glamorous signs, but I have to say, at certain points in the day, I had the largest crowd around my table. I was quite happy about that. I had garnered a lot of interested parties, and even managed to get some sales, which I wasn’t even sure I would even get today. It was a successful day as I even managed to talk to the editor of PhotoEd, another Canadian publication started off 5 years ago exactly the same way as I did. The selling was fun as I met with a few Toronto Photography Meetup Group members, whom I wasn’t expecting to see, and had my trusty assistant helping me throughout the day as well.

Afterwards, hungry as can be, we went for a late lunch to Mr. Greek, where I had my favourite Pork Souvlaki dinner on rice. Mmm… We went to Palerno’s for some good Italian gelatos to satisfy our sweet tooth. The say was still young and my friend was having her photoshoot itch, so we decided to go scouting for possible locations. I didn’t really know the area too well so we drove around hoping to find something. The cemetary was too open and wasn’t actually very interesting. We noticed that Black Creek Pioneer Village was just down the road, so we hopped on by there and found a path that led to some place. We basically walked along it, doing impromptu shoots and found it to be quite a nice walk on a gorgious Sunday afternoon. I’m not sure how long we were out there but I do know that I was extremely thirsty afterwards. We went back downtown to Gabby’s on King Street, where we chilled some more with a much needed Moosehead. That essentially took us to the evening where it was still a warm enough temperature that we didn’t need our jackets.

As my friend would say, she loves Toronto in the summer. Indeed, it is these days that make me want to move downtown and enjoy what Toronto has to offer.

One of these days. Really.

It’s been a while since my last post, and many things have happened already. I’ve been pretty tied up with many things on the go that I haven’t had the time – and much less energy – to actually post anything for the last little while.

Everything from my family’s birthdays, my magazine, allergies, visiting friends, roadtrip, and work has filled up my schedule quickly. As suspected, May is in deed a busy month for me.

Tonight was the first night in a long time that I actually had some time to rest a little. I managed to watch the season finale of The Amazing Race, which was always exciting. I missed my friend’s annual get-together for this race since my body has been going through a lot lately and I wanted to give it a little rest before I take on another full week ahead.

I’m happy for the winners of the Race, as the hippies were always entertaining to watch. They did a good job coming from behind and winning the entire race, making them this season’s official million dollar winners. The final three teams spent quite a long time in Japan this time, as they tried to make their way through the busy streets of Tokyo’s Shibuya. Fortunately for the hippies, one guy actually knew how to speak some Japanese, which was quite comical in certain ways. His pronounciation was actually quite impressive for a “crazy foreign person.”

In other news, I also witnessed Elliotte Yamin get eliminated in the American Idol, which makes Katharine McPhee and Taylor Hicks the final two singers in next week’s finale. This is interesting as each have their own pros and cons. Taylor has his own style, limited singing arrangements, and an interesting stage presence, while Katharine has the looks, more elegant voice, yet a somewhat limited singing style as well. My prediction will go towards Kats, but really, this is a 50-50 split as we saw last night’s results were evenly split at 33.06%, 33.26%, and 33.46% for the final three contestants.

Since I predict yet another busy week ahead of me, I may not be able to write much more until the end of May. But feel free to stop on by and comment, or view my flickr account as I sometimes do still upload photos throughout the day.

Dessert at Vineland Estates Winery

Today, May 1st, 2006 marks my father’s 60th birthday. To celebrate, we went to Niagara-on-the-Lake for the day yesterday, courtesy of my brother and I.

We were fortunate to have such a great, sunny, spring day and it made for a great trip to wine-country. We had lunch at one of my parent’s favourite vineyard, Vineland Estates Winery, where this dessert platter was made especially for my dad (who is pictured here in the background with his camera).

After some wine tastings here, we headed over to another winery (Chateau des Charmes) but realized that we were in fact too full and wined out to even try another glass. So instead we made our way to the core of Niagara-on-the-Lake where we meandred for the rest of the afternoon.

We came home shortly after 7:30pm and recouperated for a bit. Shortly after we made our way to Kumai Sushi where we had a sushi dinner to cap the evening off.

It was a good family outing where I hoped to have relieved my dad from any worries of having to drive and pay. It’s the least my brother and I can do after all these years of putting up with us.

It looks like today will be a nice day too, so I hope he does have a very Happy day!

Happy Birthday, Dad! Yippee!