Interaction with inanimates.

Last weekend was the sort of weekend that I'd love to save up for times when my plate is empty. It was so full of wonderfulness that I even stopped worrying about studying for hours at a time! Seriously, why can't I save it? Why did it have to be right then? Oh well, at least it's pushed me into full-on panic and get stuff done mode!

By weekend, I mean weekend starting Thursday, which technically was my last day at York. I got a significant chuck of paper written (still have some brainstorming to do about the discussion, but that'll have to wait till post-exam), and was picked up by Mark in for our super-special anniversary dinner spectacular. Foregoing our typical fancy restaurant, we headed to a pretty sweet chinese supermarket where we split up and secretly gathered ingredients for our designated parts of the meal (me: appetizer, dessert, mark: main). We then headed back to his place and cooked in relative secrecy, and then feasted. Like crazy.

Course one (I really wish that I'd taken pictures): I made yaki nasu, which is one of our favourite things to eat when we go out for Japanese. I found the recipe through a google search, but it led me to a wonderful foodie blog, which I've added to my list of daily reads. It was sooo good, and will probably become one of my staples.

Mark's Mains: This is where it got crazy. Mark made a different dish for each of our four years together. And he made full portions of each. 1) Sesame-five spice grouper steaks. 2) Soy-ginger Mushrooms. 3) Asian pears poached in white wine. 4) Most delicious chicken that I've ever tasted. All of them were damn good, and we had a TON of leftovers.

After dinner we were getting kind of sleepy (like after thanksgiving, but worse) so we had some coffee and waited a while before dessert. I'd made a Shortbread-Blackberry pie (also inspired by tea&cookies), to try and recreate the magic of our BC trip. And then we basically exploded.

Happy 4 years, us.



Friday was mostly uneventful, except for the lovely lunch I had with, and courtesy of, Olivera. I'm going to miss working with her - I've honestly been so lucky in my lab to be surrounded by such warm, caring and intelligent people.

Saturday is when things really picked up: I dragged myself out of bed bright and early (ok, 9, it's still early for me) and made it into Toronto an hour and a half later. I met up with Paula at the ROM around 11am, joining the already-massive line to reserve tickets for the opening of the new addition. After an hour and a bit stationary, and another 45 minutes inching towards the front (past David Suzuki!!), we scored tickets for 2:30. In the morning. And then, we walked down to Travel Cuts and picked up my Brussels-->Accra ticket (by way of CASABLANCA).

OK now I am getting excited:



We finally headed over to Sharon's for some backyard relaxing (and guacamole eating). It was so good to just relax and hang out with Sharon and Paula, along with a few other characters who showed up along the way. We got ready without hurry, and at around 10 headed downtown to meet up with Maggie and possibly join a group of old friends from Western who were out for a pub crawl. I'm getting a bit overwhelmed thinking about recounting everything else that happened that night, so I think that I'll just link to Paula's post about it. And upload some pictures. And go to bed. Mmmhmm.









PS - going to be after the museum? 6:30 am. Paula and Sharon made it till about 3, but Mark and I wandered around until five, and then walked our way back to Sharon's. It was amazing - right before we left (maybe 4:30 am?) we headed down to the lowest floor, where there was an exhibit of Japanese art. It was probably the nicest exhibit in the museum, but aside from the security guard, we were the only ones in the room for the longest time. It was surreal and I loved every minute of it.