The weekend...

...was busy.

On Friday we went to Jen and David's place - supposedly to help prepare food for a church feast. What actually happened is that Jen made all of it, with little or no help from the rest of us. We did, however, help to eat pizza and watch a movie.

Choosing the movie was kinda funny, 'cause everyone went through the McGhee library and picked something. We piled all the movies on the coffee table and then picked names from a hat. Apparantly under these circumstances, Harry Potter can beat both the Taxi Driving De Niro and the Road Warrior. I'm pretty sure he would have lost had we decided to settle things by arm-wrestling.

Saturday - we ran around town buying and mailing cards and things. That night the Loitering Heroes played a show at the Backpackers Hostel. Yes, the hostel at King and Spadina. Yes, weird.

The crowd consisted of bandmembers of the various bands that played, a couple of friends/spouses (such as myself), a rather animated hostel employee/'sound' guy, and a few backpacking/partying type folks who were more interested in drinking at the bar. There was also a slightly crazed DJ/bartender, who was as animated as the 'sound' guy, but in a slightly less psychologically stable way. I sometimes wonder what sort of twisted version of Toronto these people leave with. It was also the first time that the Heroes have played a show with Tupac and Snoop watching over them from a giant oversized poster on the wall.

On Sunday we went to Manfred and Amanda's for a Crokinole tournament. This is a strange Canadian game, sort of like curling, but with little plastic/wood pieces that you flick across a board. Of course if you don't know what Crokinole is, it's quite likely you're not familiar with curling. It is this even weirder thing, sort of like lawn bowls, but on ice, and with brooms. You have to remember that the winters are long and cold here. This is pretty much the first step in understanding anything indigenous to Canada.

Sunday night was a crazy church feast. We visited with another Toronto church (Grace Toronto), in their newly acquired but not yet renovated building. Everybody filled the basement, sitting on rugs on the concrete floor. The place was beautifully (if a little hazardously) decorated with hanging light bulbs, fabric, and projectors. We feasted on a multi-course meal prepared by the many small groups which make up our church. The food was great, especially the course masterminded by the guy at our church who happens to work in one of the top resturants in the city. After feasting, we trekked through the various empty rooms of the building for courses of carol singing, mini-homilies, and communion. It was great.

I met Leah afterwards (she had to work playing the flute at a much less glorious Christmas service... a lot of churches in the city seem like they are still waiting for Jesus to show up on earth, or worse yet, like they might not even care if He ever did) at a small cafe at Ossington and Bloor. Mike and Don where playing some crazy heavy music. I stayed for one song and then we went home due to tiredness/hunger.

And that is it.
If you made it this far, I reward you with the following. Click on this link, scroll down to the Bootsy Collins song, and let Santa's mothership touch down. Sufjan ain't got nothing on this...