Hello October!

With this week came the start of October, my favorite month! The temperatures dropped accordingly and beautiful fall squash and apples began to appear all over.

Mon: Roasted apple and acorn squash soup and a brie and apple grilled

cheese sandwich for dinner! Delicious fall-time meal. 

 Tues: Autumnal gourds. Although I don't have a mantle to decorate, 

I like to adorn my windowsill with seasonal trimmings.

Wed: Spiced apple cider, yet another wonderful 

part of the season. 

Thurs: More fall leaves. I just can't resist taking pictures whenever

I see them. Although I've been amongst the beautiful colors for 8 years now

I always feel a thrill when the trees start changing. 

Fri: Bixi Bikes are Toronto's equivalent to Paris's vélib program. You can

rent bikes by the half hour and return them to any bixi bike station around the city! 

 Sat: Queens park picture #2. In this post I took a picture from the

same perspective to show the change over time. The leaves are just 

starting off here so by next month there should be a distinct difference.

Sun: The Carillon tower of Hart House and the CN tower in the 

distance. 

That is all for now! Wishing all a wonderful start to October!

Goodbye September...

I forgot to post last week so I'll be doing a double post this week. Two weeks ago mom and dad came for a visit in Toronto and while it was brief it was a blast. Without further ado here are the pictures from September 24-30.

 

Mon: The old class periodicals at the Toronto library remind me of 

the books you'd find in a library out of Harry Potter!

Tues: Many of the squirrels here in Toronto are a surprising shade 

of black. They've been busy preparing for the winter!

Wed: Yet another condo construction site. This one is unique because

they are preserving the facade of an old building using the large scaffolding.

 

Thurs: A festive pumpkin Rich bought me during his visit! 

I can't wait for Halloween. It is one of my favorite holidays!

Fri: Hart House- My favorite place on campus. The

theatre and the swimming pool are here! 

Sat: The night of mom and dad's visit we wandered through Nuit Blanche,

an all-night art festival. Unfortunately, we mostly encountered crowds like this. 

 Sun: Here come the fall leaves! I just love the fall for 

all of the beautiful leaves that begin appearing!

Birthday Weekend

I'm entering a very busy week with a grant application due by Friday. So the post this week will be short and sweet. Some pictures from my birthday weekend spent here in Toronto with Rich:

The "Cheese Wall" from the local gourmet grocery store, Loblaws. 

NYC taxi? Toronto taxi? or... 

a film set in New York produced on the streets of Toronto! 

This weekend featured a tour of Toronto ethnic food including

Japanese, Vietnamese, and Ethiopian food! 

To temper the variety of ethnic food we ate,

Rich and I visited a local favorite, Greg's ice cream

for evening desserts. 

Word on the Street- Toronto's literary festival!

Sorry for the abbreviated nature of this post. Hopefully next week I'll have time for a more detailed update. Have a great week everyone! 

Early fall in Toronto

Well it is back to the stress and the hectic life of school. This week I was busy with getting settled back in to life in Toronto. Fortunately, the early fall weather here in Toronto is beautiful. Almost all week it was cool and sunny out. Perfect weather for walking around and running errands around town. This weekend I got a chance to relax outside of the city, however. My friend Christine invited me to come out to a Harvest Festival with her family at a local Pioneer village and it was the highlight of my week.

Monday: Yonge Street
Yonge Street functions as downtown Toronto's main street. There are often parades and street festivals along Yonge street. On my walk to campus on Monday morning this busy thoroughfare was unusually quiet. As you can see in the distance, Toronto is under construction. There are huge condominiums going up all over town. It is nearly impossible to walk two blocks without encountering a new development!

Tuesday: Canada Post
Returning to life in Toronto means a lot of errands to run. This week one of my errands was to stop by the post office. Because the post office is run by the Canadian government, all of the signage and information is required to be in both French and English. Sometimes walking around Toronto is like a mini-French review.

Wednesday: Entrance to campus
The University of Toronto has some truly beautiful buildings. I've even had a couple people tell me, "your school looks like Hogwarts!" after I've told them I go to UofT. This is generally the way I enter onto campus when I'm going to the Centre for Comparative Literature. I always feel very academic walking through the gates onto campus.

Thursday: Filming notification
Once every few months notices like these appear in the entranceway to my building. The small lane that runs next to my building has several old, historic homes that are used for filming on occasion. It is always neat to see the film crews setting up in my "backyard."

Friday: Early Birthday Wishes
I got an early birthday card from mom and dad on Friday. It was a great way to start off the weekend after a busy start to the semester. I love receiving cards! It is wonderful to get something besides bills and junk mail in my mailbox.

Saturday: Black Creek Pioneer Village
Black Creek is a recreation of a 19th-century pioneer village in Ontario, built from original historic buildings around the area. My friend Christine invited me to come along with her family for their annual trip to the Harvest Festival held at the village. We spent the day exploring the buildings and sampling the delicious foods sold by the local Mennonite and Pennsylvania Dutch. It was a real treat for me to get out of the city for a day. As always, I love doing anything that celebrates the fall. I sampled my first cup of hot cider for the season and indulged in my first slice of pumpkin pie! To see more pictures from my visit click here.

Sunday: Football day!
Sundays are reserved for watching football and preparing for the week ahead. Today I enjoyed the Eagles and Chargers victory with a side of the Mennonite sausage, sauerkraut, and green beans I bought yesterday at the Harvest Festival. I washed it all down with a tasty German beer given to me by Christine's dad, who is from Germany.












The weekend has almost come to an end and that means another busy week lies ahead of me. On Thursday Rich is coming to visit for my birthday. I'm really looking forward to spending some of the beautiful early fall weather outside with him!

The end of summer and return to Toronto

Well the summer has officially ended. This past Monday was my final day at the pool for the summer. After that I had a couple days in New York to prepare for my return to Toronto on Thursday. I am sad the summer has come to an end. It was such a great summer, but I am looking forward to an equally eventful and busy fall.

Monday: Rye Golf Club
As I said Monday was my last day at the golf club. After 150 hours of work over 2 weeks I was feeling pretty ready to be done for the summer. Still, I did feel a bit sad to leave the poolside, knowing that I won't be spending more than a few hours a week outside during the school year.

Tuesday: Book Culture
On Tuesday I visited my favorite book store, Book Culture, which is conveniently located only several blocks away from me in New York. What I love about this store is it has a huge selection of academic books and books in foreign languages. It is so nice to be able to drop by the book store to pick something up rather than waiting a week for it to arrive from amazon.

Wednesday: Bubbly Columbus Circle
As a way to say farewell for now to the city I took a long walk around the West Side. I walked past the Lincoln Center (where the Metropolitan Opera and the NYC Ballet are) and meandered over to Columbus Circle. There is always something going on at Columbus Circle. On Wednesday people were making giant bubbles by dipping strings attached to two long sticks into a soap solution. It seemed to mostly excite the younger viewers of the crowd, but bubbles are mesmerizing to watch at any age.

Thursday: Flight to Toronto
I decided to splash out and take the luxury way back to Toronto. I flew instead of taking the usual bus trip. Canada has this small airlines called Porter, which I flew up here with. Porter is one of the most relaxing and easy modes of transportation I've ever taken. The flights are short haul, the planes are small, and thus the baggage check, security lines, and waiting areas are all relatively uncrowded and the staff that works for Porter is extremely friendly and helpful. But the real perk of flying Porter is all the freebies. Porter offers complimentary drinks, snacks, and wifi in their waiting area and every flight no matter how short serves a meal with complimentary wine or beer. It was nice to return to Toronto in style.

Friday: Late Summer in Queen's Park
I walk through Queen's Park almost on a daily basis on my way to various places on campus. The park transforms drastically with the seasons and I thought I would document those changes here. I'll be taking a picture from this perspective each month so you can see the metamorphosis between summer, fall, and winter. 

Saturday: Hockey Spirit
After my grocery shopping trip this week I came across a local university's preparatory performances for one of their hockey games. It's not every grocery trip that you get to see a line of snare drummers dressed in kilts on the way out the door!

Sunday: The smells of fall
One of my favorite things about fall is the great smelling candles I get to burn during this time. My favorites are made by Yankee Candle. They have so many great fall scents it is hard to choose. This fall I purchased "Autumn Leaves," "Pumpkin Pie," "Harvest Welcome," and "Apple Pumpkin." They really make my little apartment feel home-y and festive.












Tomorrow is the first day of classes and although I am neither taking nor teaching classes this semester, this means the start of a busy time. As always I have some start of semester jitters especially since I'm embarking on new territory-- a semester with no classes. My time is all mine to dedicate to research and as nice as that is, it is also a challenge to properly manage the time I have. Here's to a good start to the school year and I'll be writing to you all again next week!

A relaxing weekend in New Jersey

Hello everyone! I'm posting quickly today before I head off to work. I'll be taking a bit of a hiatus from the blog for the remainder of August. As the summer comes to an end and as more and more lifeguards go back to school, I work more and more. Right now I'm scheduled to work every day until Labor Day so I won't have much time (or energy!) to take pictures and post them. As a way to prepare for this marathon of work, Rich and I went to New Jersey over the weekend to relax with his family. Here is a quick sampling of our time there...

Rich and Bowie hanging out on the porch. 

Vibrant tomatoes at the farmer's market.

Local and "Jersey Fresh" at the farmer's market!

Debbie, Rich's mom, preparing lima beans for succotash. 

Bird watching on the porch. 

Rita's italian ice (water ice) is a summer favorite here. 

Charlie, Rich's step-dad, preparing dinner on the grill! 

I hope everyone has a great end of the summer and can squeeze in that last bit of fun before school starts and the weather turns cold. I'll be back for more regular updates in September! 

Olympics!

Hi everyone. I apologize for my absence last week. This summer is turning out to be way more hectic than I anticipated. I am spending most of my time between two places: the pool and the apartment (specifically at the desk where I'm doing my dissertation work) and unfortunately that doesn't make for very many interesting or varied photo opportunities. So, this week will be a compilation of the past two weeks into one.

Before I begin I just want to take a moment to gush about how excited I am for the Olympics. The summer Olympics are one of the most exciting times for the sport of swimming since we get highlighted and are put up front and center for the country to see. I just love all the attention the sport gets around this time, not to mention all of the dramatic swims we get to see. If you've missed it there are two very entertaining youtube videos circulating right now: 1) The US Olympic swim team lip syncing to this summer's big song, Carly Rae Jepson's "Call Me Maybe" and 2) A parody of this highlighting Ryan Lochte's win over Michael Phelps in the men's 400 IM. Both are great and exemplify the hype surrounding swimming this summer. I could write pages and pages of commentary about swimming in the Olympics, but I'll spare you and move on to the photos.

Monday: Morningside Park
The apartment in Manhattan is right next to Morningside Park, a small park that is situated on a steep cliff. Recently I've decided to walk along the park in the morning instead of the busy street. It is a very calming view, even on rainy days.

Tuesday: Snack bar at the pool 
The pool at Rye Golf Club has a snack bar, which on long, hot days is a big relief for the lifeguards. When we start feeling weary or tired they always have delicious iced tea and iced coffee for us. Also, it is great to chat with my friends working in the snack bar when I need a break from staring at the pool.

Wednesday: The Hot Car
When riding the subway it is usually preferable to get on a car that is less occupied. That way your chances of getting a seat are better. However, if you happen upon an entirely empty car beware. This car resembles a ghost town for a reason: It is not air conditioned. I happened to get on one of these cars this week, but since I was going only a few stops I decided to tough it out and I got a few good pictures of the distinctive yellow and orange chairs while I was at it.

Thursday: Union Square
Union Square park is at the centre of the east portion of downtown. It is a hub for street artists, protesters, tourists, and vendors. Most days of the week there is also one of New York's largest farmer's market in the park. On days when I feel I need a scenery change, I'll head down to Union Square. It feels worlds away from my neighborhood on the Upper West Side.

Friday: 110th Street Subway 
One of the nicest things about the subways in New York is the beautiful tiling and decorative work that still exists at the stations. Among the dirt and the occasional rat, the historical artwork of the subways stands out and is a reminder of the city's history.

Saturday: Hummingbirds from the porch 
Rich and I spent the weekend in New Jersey visiting his family (and watching the Olympics of course!). One of everyone's favorite pastimes during the summer is bird watching on the porch. I was lucky to catch a couple shots of the elusive hummingbirds flitting around the yard. Hopefully I'll get a chance to take some better shots at the end of the summer.

Sunday: More from the porch 
This is definitely one of the most relaxing places to spend a nice summer day.










I hope everyone is getting a chance to tune into the Olympics or follow them online! Have an Olympic-ally great week!