too much to tell!!!

i haven't posted in forevers and evers and thus have the backlog of all backlogs. wednesday night was my hideous night wrassling with the ttc and their completely inept and customer-service skills bereft staff. when i realized that i wouldn't be getting home any time soon, i called the dotytron and told him to pick up 2 boxes of kd, a pack of all beef hot dogs, and a pack of buns.


i ended up eating FIVE hot dogs and 1 box of kd that night and then spent the rest of the night writhing and rolling around on the couch complaining of thirst (probably because i had ingested the equivalent of ONE CUP of salt).




the following night we played a killer game of dodgeball and then met up at caplansky's for round dos with our buddy L. L started with the matzoh ball soup (he said it was lacking salt - i was really skeptical that it would be as good as my matzoh ball soup, anyway) and we split a smoked meat poutine. the dotytron ordered the kishka again and the potato leek soup (special of the day) which had a good hit of white pepper (maybe a bit too much - white pepper can give an ass-y aroma to stuff sometimes) which was tasty. then the dotytron went sammy and i got the caplansky's combo, which is tongue (I LOVE TONGUE!!!), smoked turkey (meh, i'm meh on turkey and smoked turkey is still bland), grilled #58 verst salami (sooooooooo good!), liver, and fatty smoked meat. it's about 1lb of meat - but i polished it off fine. the place held up to a second visit, for sure!

friday night we picked up chinese bbq and rice takeout and headed to A & C's for the quickest eating of all time. then we drove to the kdubs to help lug stuff to A & J's new digs...but by the time we got there all the hauling was done so we just got to hang out with the kdubsguelph crew. i love those guys...A & J's new house is huge! and beautiful! with a big, gorgeous maple tree in the front and a YARD at the back! AND it came with a giant bbq that's hooked up to the gas line! and it's got an awesome kitchen with green glass tile backsplash, a huge new fridge and a gas range with a power burner that could probably boil water in under 2 seconds. custom cabinetry, a pantry, all kinds of nooks and crannies that you expect in an old house, a cold storage room for preserves - it's fantastic. i'm so happy for them! and so sad for me for overpaying for my miserable hovel.

just kidding! the thing i'm realizing is, then when you buy your own house, you kinda start to love it, warts and all, cuz it's YOUR house. it's yours! everything about it is about YOU and YOUR decisions - so i'm growing to love lil' ugmo...and right now, i can't see myself trading it in for anything else - we've already banked some good memories here and i'm excited for the times to come. this also bodes well for me loving whatever children may or may not be in my future, even if the kid is kinda dumb or isn't cute. because it's YOUR kid! i was actually kinda worried that if my kid wasn't the awesomest, that i might not love it. isn't that awful? but what if my kid turns out to be an anti-abortion religious libertarian anarchist? how am i supposed to love that?

last night was HILARES. total, total HILARES. i finished carving my pumpkins and set up our gravestones just in time for the first kiddies. kids come EARLY! like, at 6pm they started!!! this is what our front looked like:

we ended up doing gravestones with "rip rigor" "rip nuance" "rip critical thinking" and "here lies william blake" (if you think about it, the william blake shout-out kind of ties the whole thing together). lol!!! we were a BIG hit around the neighbourhood.

these are my pumpkins this year:


darth vader cuz all the kids on my street are OBSESSED with clone wars.

and acclaimed documentary filmmaker, werner herzog:


the neighbourhood kind of went bananas. i had MANY favorable comments (although some people thought werner was karl marx?!??) peeps were coming up and saying "oh, i was told to come to this house to check out the pumpkins" lol!!! so much pressure for next year!!!

we didn't get as many kids as we had thought...but it was still awesome seeing the costumes. kids are the cutest! we had dr. rei and hanbo over for dinner - i spent all day cooking...i made us porchetta (i skinned and trimmed the fat off a pork loin roast, butterflied it, rubbed it with a mixture of salt, ground fennel seeds, lemon zest and black pepper, rolled it up and tied it and cooked it PERFECTLY - so that it was about medium, still pink, and verrrry juicy); scallion corn pudding with cheddar cheese; pan sautéed brussel sprouts; and a sweet potato and yukon gold buttermilk mash with dill.

we basically spent the whole meal laughing our butts off and simultaneously stuffing our faces to the point of PAIN. the funniest moment of the night was when the dotytron was telling us about the musician themed costumes at his school -

dotytron: "so one of the teachers was jimi hendrix, the other one was kanye, the receptionist was gaga"
hanbo: "kermit head gaga?"
dotytron: "no, lady"

which basically had us barfing with laughter. the central confusion being that the dotytron clearly hasn't seen THIS infamous image of the gaga:

we COULD NOT stop laughing. so funny!

then bwong came by and we suited up:

gandalf and dumbledore - you don't know which is which.

mr. peanut

wolfgang amadeus mozart

group shot with bwong's highly topical balloon boy costume in the back.

LOL!!! we obviously decided to bail on every party we were invited to/contemplated going to and went for a walk. bwong went off to some other house party and then we ate snickerdoodles (picture is coming) and drank tea and those guys ate candy and we watched "drag me to hell" which is kind of textbook sam raimi (funny, gory, kinda scary in the jolty kind of way):

and that was halloween 2009. it was a resounding success all around AND we have THE BEST costume for next year already figured out. it's a group one.

yesterday i cleaned house like a mofo - i tore apart our vestibule, painted the stairs, went and did errands, carved my two pumpkins, and made a sumptuous feast. today i'm doing more organizing stuff but in a more laid back manner and tonight we're going to have all you can eat hot pot dinner with my mum up in markham.

fin.