Part 2

It's 6:30ish on Tuesday morning and the last few moments of my vacation week are dwindling quickly...I want another one please. I'm usually fairly happy about going to work and being at work even but this week off has made me entirely apathetic about it. Hopefully my malaise will disappear when I get to work this morning.

Jen says that she too would like me to have another week off because of all the goodies that emerged from my kitchen and found their way down to the apartment this week was miraculous. We had butter tarts, cherry tarts, cinnamon pastries and chocolate chip cookies.

Andrew and I went to the ROM and managed to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit which was all lead up and very little substance. I would have been upset had I paid to see the exhibit but ti was free with our membership. The display had elaborate explanations of the land, people, customs etc surrounding the Scrolls and finally after a long line you reach the far corner where there are 6-7 cases in which there is a page or less of the scrolls. There was only 1 complete page that was intact and the rest were fragments. I realize that the scrolls are basically fragments but there are literally millions of those fragments and what was on display was a minuscule number of fragments. With all the hype and protests I expected that there would be more of the Scrolls to see. We also visited the new biodiversity exhibit (stuffed animals) which is great but it was filled with kids and people that day so we did a quick walk through, but we will try to go back on a quieter day. The exhibit opens with a white rhino who lived at the Toronto Zoo until his death last year.






We watched some movies this week. Starting with Coraline which was visually beautiful but not nearly as creepy as the audio version of the book, which made me jump in fright every time the mice started singing. We also watched Grey Gardens which has magnificent acting by Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore. They really embodied the Beale women and the back story revealed how they came to live in such squalor. If you have seen the documentary, you really should also watch the movie to get a fuller picture of the story and to be able to marvel how Lange and Barrymore channeled the women. Then we also rented the first few episode of True Blood, which is and HBO series based on the Sookie Stackhouse Books by Charlaine Harris. The premise is that the Japanese invent a synthetic blood which satisfies the dietary needs of vampires and so vampires come out of the crypt and live "normal" lives. The main character, Sookie, can hear people's thoughts and she dates a vampire named Bill because he is the only person whose mind is quiet. It had a vivid cast of characters and is set in Louisiana. The TV series was created by Alana Ball who did 6 feet under, so if you liked that you may like True Blood. I enjoyed the first book in the series and really liked the TV show. Andrew was lukewarm on the show because he doesn't believe that American society would be accepting of vampires living openly after only 2 years. Yep that's the unbelievable part of the show.

Andrew took me out to dinner last night to celebrate my birthday. I have 8 hours of classes on Thursday (my actual birthday) and he feels that I may make waitresses cry if we go out after I have worked all day. I had a great steak and we ate outside on the patio, so it was about perfect.

Okay I think those were the highlights of the week, and I should go get dressed for work. I hope everyone had a great long weekend.

M