Random observations on having not been to hogtown in almost a year, and this before seeing much of the insides deeper than the far burbs: I open a laptop a few blocks from Sun Microsystems, brand new homes, upscale neighbourhood, and not even a faint beep of WiFi; using Ray's dialup -- Ray says he found a hotspot up the street near the hospital, but no idea if it is free access or not; there's a thing across from the Eaton Centre, looks like a monument to the Gardiner Expressway as pillars supporting a chunk of road going nowhere (what is this thing?); the Big A is everywhere downtown, and more than one bus drives by, all-weather banner ad for the Atkins™ with the caption, "There's nothing you can eat on Atkins™ except ..." and it only shows maybe 12 food items --- ah, that explains why the weight loss! --- and on the ™ part ... I think back on a 70's vintage tarantella, the Maharishi-patented Transcendental Meditation™ and wonder how many times before they know to smell for aging fish.

Rain and wetsnow dogged the trek to Kensington Market; the kids had fallen asleep in the car and woke quite grumpy, only coaxable to the market on the promise of the candy story, but when we got there, it also being my destination coffee-supply shop, it was not among the Sunday shopping spots; one by one I lifted the little kids (we'd gained a daughter with Ray and Ling's Tiffany in our troup) to peek in just so they knew I wasn't kidding about the scope of this thing, but then we had to walk on unquenched. As luck would have it, the rendezvous spot to meet up with May, the basement of the Chinese mall a block south of Dundas and Spadina, had electric motorbikes on a rental for $3/quarter-hour, so by the time they'd gone around and around and around crashing into the swarm of about a dozen other kids on these things, the tribulation of the candy-store quest was quite completely forgotten.

Wet snow has changed to just rain off and on, peppered with tempting bursts of sunshine, so it's a toss-up for busking tomorrow; Paul's the expert here, so when I get there I'll let him decide if we're calling the game due to rain, or if weather just separates the real street musicians from the wannabees...