The Green Living Show

Today I went with my mom & aunt to the Green Living Show here in Toronto. It was at the Direct Energy Centre & it was apperenlty where every school in the city had sent their kids today. When we were walking by the parking lot we spotted the busses, I didn't think they would be there, but I should know better. Other than the massive amount of young ones I smacked in the head with my bag today it was a good day. One of my favorite parts was the 'Fresh Food Market'. There were about 10 vendors with mini samples of local and organic foods that they were selling, salads, soups, & some desserts. For $10.00 you got 5 vouchers to use. My aunt got some organic coffee, myself & my mom split our food between us, we had a peanut bean sprot salad, a 'Ontario' salad, which all the differnt things in the salad were from Ontario, also we had an apple crisp with local apples & sweet potato donuts, which were my favorite. Along with the food we paid for we got a lot of samples, greek yogurt, pasta sauce, pesto, organic milk, homemade pop, bread, and more stuff than I can remember. Along with all the food there were a lot of beauty prodcuts avalible and a lot of ways to improve your house to keep your power bills down. It was a little strange to see things like Porche & Lexus right next to the people selling organic fair trade coffee. With the size of this show you can see how popular that the green movement is. The fact that there are little home grown companies right next to the big ones & both are looking for your money and the little compines are usually winning out in this kinds of places shows that there are a lot of things that the larger companies have to fix & with how scarce everyones' money is these days consumers are getting pickier & doing way more research into where they're going to spend the money. All and all a good day, so tired now.

Earthquake Aug. 2011

I believe earthquake's are the cruelest jokes that the Earth plays on us as a species. Last year there was an earthquake in Quebec & it could be felt here in Toronto, this time the Earthquake seems to be centred in Virgina and it was about 5.9. This years quake for me last about 20-30 secs, last years I was entirely sure what was going on, this time I knew. Last year I was on the 9th floor at work and my computer screen rocked back and forth, but I had to wait for someone else in the office to go 'what was that'? This time I was sitting in my dinning room at home on the 6th floor and I felt the chair, the table sway & I could see the tea in my mug moving back & forth, also I looked up at my cloth's drying rack moving back & forth & my lamp swaying very visibly. Both times my reaction was to completely freeze and just kind of look around. This one I defiantly had more time to look around & think about do I need to hide under that table or am I fine. The one thing that kept going through my head was, when is this going to stop? Of all things in life, earthquakes are one thing I could have lived without.

FanExpo in just 3 days!!!!

On Thr I will be at the FanExpo in downtown Toronto. This will be my 6th or 7th year. Yup I'm losing count. This year I will be staying at the Fairmount Royal York Hotel with my friend Jonathan & his buddy, I'm super excited. I'm not sure what the internet is going to be like at the Royal York, I"m hoping it'll be good so I might be able to do a few posts, but if not the Monday after the con will be filled with lots & lots of pics & hopefully stories.

For anyone who doesn't know FanExpo is the largest convention of it's type in Canada. & what type is it? It's, as my friend put it, a GeekFest. There's everything, Comics, Sci-Fi, Horror, Anime, Gaming, etc. There's a lot of stuff that crosses genere's which is always awesome. If you wanna know more check out their website(I swear they're not paying me, but it'd be nice) FanExpo Canada

See you all in a week!

PS I promise this time to actually come back in a week & not like a month or two

Father's Day Restaurant Review

On Father’s day for this year as a family we decided to go to Baton Rouge near Scarborough Town Centre. The building where the Baton Rouge is in used to be a place called the old Scot’s House. Apparently it was a pretty well-known place, but where it was situated wasn’t that great for traffic, as far as I can tell. Until recently there wasn’t exactly a lot out there, since Scarborough Town Centre renovated & there are now box stores out along Progress RD, where this restaurant is there’s a lot more people out there. My family has kind of grown as of late & it’s still growing. 1^st my bro got a gf, & then my cuz, & now my bro’s gf is pregnant. So on father’s day we had a party of 8 for the restaurant, they asked us if we would like a private room, I asked if there was any extra charge, they said no & I said yes to the private room. 1^st issue, when I was asked if I wanted a private room I was told it was upstairs, when we got there it was on the 1^st floor. I think what they had meant to say was that this restaurant is not wheelchair exesable. Now before someone one says ‘Hey isn’t’ that illegal!?” here in Toronto I know there are some buildings that can be exempt from those rules depending on the age of the building & whether or not it is a historical land mark, & I don’t’ know if that holds true for the Old Scots House.  Oh yeah & Baton Rouges idea of private room seemed to mean no one else is going to be sat in this area for a few hrs so you’ll be alone for a bit. These things wouldn’t have bothered me that much (at least not enough to generate a blog post) if it hadn’t been for other things to happen, or not happen as the case may be. At the begging of the meal our waiter informed us that Baton Rouge worked in a team atmosphere, meaning you could ask any server for something and they would help you out. Now I go to Jack Astor’s a lot & that’s one of their things & they do it really well, someone other than your server could show up at your table with your food & you could ask them for something & your server might return with it or someone else in a timely manner, Jack Astor’s knows how to do it. Baton Rouge on the other had doesn’t have to fully figured out, or at least this location doesn’t. 1^st off if any of us who had refillable drinks, water, coffee, pop, etc we were never asked if we wanted a refill, we had to ask our server whenever he came by, if that wasn’t just slightly annoying we had an incident with my bro’s dessert. My bro ordered Apple Cobbler, with ice cream on the side, when the apple cobbler arrived the ice cream was right on top of it, so they took it back & took the ice cream off, here’s the problem, my bro is allergic to dairy he was giving the ice cream to my mom for her dessert. When they brought out the dish my bro noticed that they had just scrapped the ice cream off & he had to get them to get him a new one, explaining his allergy. The guy who had been dealing with my bro’s dessert was not our server, now between him taking it back, again, & our server finding out we don’t know how long it was, but our server came out thinking that my bro had gotten his apple cobbler, which he hadn’t, so when the apple cobbler came back to us with the ice cream on the side the ice cream was almost completely melted. I never did find out how my bro liked the cobbler, but that thing must have spent some time under one of those restaurant heat lamps. On top of that we had to ask another server for our bill since our server disappeared.  Now I want people to understand I don’t complain lightly, I have worked 10 years in customer service, & I also have a Diploma in Hospitality & Tourism Administration, I have some idea what I’m talking about. My biggest problem with the bad experience is the food was awesome!!!!! Luckily there are a couple of other Baton Rouges in Toronto, but still the one we went to is so pretty & we were so looking forward to it. I’m hoping to add Baton Rouge to the restaurants we go to when I’m at the FanExpo, hopefully the Baton Rouge at the CNTower is a lot more organized than the Scarborough Town Centre one was.

All Caught Up

I have just finished catching up to Matt Smith on Doctor Who. I finally got to see the special where David Tenant leaves & it was AWESOME!!!! I'm not going to give too much away but a small spoiler would be that David Tenant gets to say goodbye to a lot of the characters that have been recurring on the show with him & those moments are very touching. It was a very well thought out, planned & executed show, I even cried(which really isn't that hard, but it was still very touching).
For me David Tenant is MY Doctor. I didn't really grow up watching Doctor Who, it used to be on TVO here in Ontario after a bunch of kids cartoons I watched, but the theme music scared me, I've never been able to figure out if that was because I had watched an episode & it had scared the shit out of me & had it imprinted on my mind afterwards, or if my mom would just turn the TV off when it came on to the point where I thought that the music was a bad thing, I dont' know. So I wasn't introduced to Doctor Who until I was much older, my good friend Sam had gotten the new Doctor Who on DVD & initiated me into one of the longest running Sci-Fi shows there are. I totally fell in love, right from the 'It's nice to meet you Rose, now run for your life!' Or some line like that. My favorite companion is Donna Noble, nobody can top her & I was very very VERY upset when she left, which I can't say how unless you've seen it cause that's a BIG spoiler.
I wasn't sure if I wanted to see Matt Smith, because David Tenant is my Doctor, but I had caught a couple of eps here & there, also a great commercial on Space where he's wearing a fez, it's hard to top that. So I downloaded all of series 5 and have caught up to the mid series cliff hanger on series 6.
I'm like Matt Smith's take on the Doctor, there's innocence there & a hell of a lot of him being a complete dork! I love it!!!!!!!!
So if you're still holding out because you loved David Tenant, don't worry, Matt Smith is awesome as the Doctor, but he's not David Tenant & he's not trying to be. Which is a great part for an actor playing the Doctor, it's the same character but totally different.

Toronto Zoo Trip

 Last Thr I went to the Toronto Zoo with my friend Sam & her BF Leo. It was an awesome trip, I haven't been to the zoo in what feels like forever. There were so many great moments, the peacock that had to block Sam from getting into the restaurant(Sam & peacocks have a whole history), the peacock that decided that all males of the human species were not allowed in the bathroom, the polar bear playing(which I have vid of) the long walk to see the Grizzly bears, the Emu trying to escape from a walk through area(I have vid of that too), & so much more. It was a fun day. I highly recomend going to popular destinations during the week if you can do it.

When we got to the zoo it's true that it felt like half of Scarborough schools had decided to have field trips that day. When you go through the main entrance of the Toronto Zoo there are a few ways to go to see the animals, but the biggest directions are the easy one's, right or left. Most of the super popular animals are off to the left, which is where all the children headed, so we went to the right. The 1st few pavilions were pretty quite too, which was just great to look at the animals. We could always hear the children coming. I'm still trying to decide if the elementary kids were loader than the teenagers. The elementary kids voices are kind of in the high pitch range so that does kind of add to the annoying factor. With the fact that they were so loud you could hear them coming from three province's away (for any Americana's just take a look at a Canadian map to understand how far that is) & they were pretty much all gone by three they didn't end up making a dent in our trip.

Overall awesome trip, I highly recomend the zoo if you have one in your city. If you don't have one in your city & you go on vacation to a place that has one, especially a good one, check it out.

Niagara Falls Trip

On May 14th of this year(2011) myself, EmperorEJ & his GF all went to Niagara Fall, ON, Canada. I was born & raised in Toronto so I have been to Niagara Falls A LOT of times, it's a pretty easy day trip from here. For EmperorEJ & his GF it was their 1st time going. They're originally from St John, NB, Canada. I love going to Niagara it's always a fun time. There's the super cheesey of the wax museums, Ripley's Belive it or Not, Fun Houses & all kinds of strangeness, I also LOVE the casino's. There was a slight problem that weekend, check out this vid & you'll understand

My YouTube Channel CrystalMAD17

I just finished uploading a whole bunch of vids on my YouTube Channel. I have stuff from my trip to Niagara Falls a couple of weeks ago. There's a vid of my bro's dog, Gambit.

Check'em out!!!
(Please & thank you!!!!)

Long Time

Holy Crap!!! I'm sucking at the blog thing these days. Sad because I'm home right now & have time to do them, I just keep seeming to find excuses not to do them. But that stops NOW!!! Why? Because I'm done being lazy at this and other stuff.

I'm not at home right at this second so I don't have access to a bunch of stuff I've wanted to blog about so this is also a bit of a preview of what's coming up. I will be adding a new blog(of course) I live in an apartment building in Toronto & the past 3 years or so we've grown tomatoes on the balcony so I'll be doing a balcony gardening blog since we've added strawberries & we are in the middle of locating seed potatoes.

Also a few weekends ago myself, EmperorEJ & his GF were all in Niagara Falls, Canada & I have pics & vids from the experience so I'll be posting those.

I'm still unemployed at this very second, so they'll be some whining about THAT at some point(you have been warned!) I'm hoping to add something to the dessert blog this week. I will also be doing a whole blog about the buses here in Toronto.

So get ready for more randomness & other weirdness!!!

I'm BACK baby!!

I'm Back!!!

I know it's been a while but I'm back! I finally feel like writing again. I'm currently watching MASH, I love MASH. Last night I went out with my family for mothers day. We had 3 mothers & 1 mother to be there. My family keeps getting bigger. When I was growing up it used to be just me mom & my bro, maybe my older cousin's once & a while, or my aunt & uncle & younger cousin when they came to visit from Newfoundland, so I'm finding it really weird to make a table reservation for 8 & there's a little one on the way. I can't wait for the little one, there were 3D ultrasounds taken & it's still amazing at how much detail there is in the photos, you look at the kid & you wanna hold it already. (and another post comes to an abrupt end)