I’m dri­ving out to Toronto tomor­row. Instead of a long vaca­tion, I’ve decided to do long week­ends until Christmas.

I’m pray­ing for a safe drive, as it’ll be my first win­ter with the Civic, and the fact that it already snowed in Toronto today. I’ve always pic­tured myself in my car, warm inside, pro­tected from the cold out­side. I like that idea.

As per usual, I’ll be pack­ing all my cam­era and video gear.

I’ve been so busy get­ting ready for this trip — orga­niz­ing plans with peo­ple, get­ting my pic­tures printed and framed, pack­ing, doing extra work for my first boss — that I’m already feel­ing some­what over­whelmed. It’s going to be four days packed with peo­ple, so I know I’ll be feel­ing over­stim­u­lated by the end.

Normally, I don’t like to have things this tight, but there are so many peo­ple I want to see. If I could, I’d fit in Andrew and Alex, maybe even explore on my own.

I’m still pretty excited though.

Schedule

Thursday

  • Leave some time in the afternoon.
  • Arrive at my dad’s house, where I’ll be stay­ing the night. Dinner (roast duck) with him. Looking for­ward to this.

Friday

  • Meet up with Rita at noon, who’s giv­ing me a tour of her U of T office, and then head­ing down­town with another pho­tog­ra­pher to take pic­tures of alleys and graffiti.
  • Dinner with Rita and per­haps peo­ple I have yet to meet.
  • Staying at Rita’s that night.

Saturday

  • Brunch party with Rita’s crew. This has been can­celed, and now I have time to see John in the morning/afternoon. We may actu­ally go watch a movie, some­thing we used to do daily in the sum­mers of uni­ver­sity, but haven’t done in years now.
  • Meet up with Oreste (not sure if it’ll be Saturday or Sunday), whom I was lucky enough to find and con­tact.
  • Drive to Darren’s to catch up and stay the night.

Sunday

  • Have dim sum with my dad. Not so sure about this because of Monday’s plans
  • Hang out with Darren some more.

Monday

  • Meet up with my first boss, whom I haven’t seen in about six years, for lunch. He likes to do dim sum, and I don’t like to do dim sum two days in a row, so we’ll see.
  • Head home.
  • Buy gro­ceries.
  • Take a really long shower.

Driving Tunes

In the car, I’ll have some new music to guide me there and back. I’ve been hold­ing off on lis­ten­ing to these tunes as much as pos­si­ble lately.

  • Dungen’s lat­est psy­che­delic album, 4
  • Accoustic sin­gles that Shane Watt burned for me (jeal­ous much?)
  • Atreyu’s sec­ond (and arguably fastest) album, The Curse
  • Coheed and Cambria’s first album, The Second Stage Turbine Blade, which I recently re-discovered
  • Eagles of Death Metal sec­ond album, Death By Sexy
  • Iron and Wine’s lat­est, The Shepherd’s Dog
  • Leonard Cohen’s third folk-rock album, Songs of Love and Hate