Fancy Tables

Fancy Tables, originally uploaded by mchaiton.

The climax of the last couple of weeks was Andy and Karen's wedding, held at Graydon Hall in Toronto. It was a really fanastic event at a really elegant venue. Erin is planning on stealing the flowers. Joel and Jessica stayed at our house for a couple of days and it was good to see Sean, Dave Brown and their respective partners. I have pictures of all of the Lisgar crew at my Flikr site.

Sunset at Bruce Beach

Sunset at Bruce Beach, originally uploaded by mchaiton.

Hilary took some great shots of the sunset. And some very cheesy pictures which I won't inflict on the world.

Hilary in the waves

Hilary in the waves

Today, Hilary escapes the country to teach english to the English. But don't fear, because you follow her adventures in the newest chaiton sibling blog: www.hchaiton.blogspot.com.

Hilary gets to deal with the fun that has become our new flying regulations. I think that the big change in the new regulations is that water, or nail polish, or lipstick, or what have you, is not actually dangerous. It's one thing to ban explosives or guns or other weapons, and it's quite another to start banning things that would be dangerous if and only if they were a different thing. While the ban on nail files and scissors was ridiculous, at least theoretically the scissors and such could be used as weapons. Water, not so much.

The picture of Hilary is from a couple of weekends ago when Hilary and Nathan came to Toronto to inauguarate the successful opening of the Chaiton-Murray guest bedroom, and then join us up at a cottage on Lake Huron. It was a great time, despite the competitive team spirit and associated cheerleading.

The Troubles and The Automatic: aka stealing from Matt

The pictures from Matt's recent trip to Northern Ireland are amazing! I'm a real sucker for landscape like that. On the other hand, I think all the murals would freak me out a bit.

I've been falling down rather disgracefully lately on the finding new music business. The descriptions of the bands from T in the park (now that's a festival!), particularly The Automatic and Captain, were very intriguing, but I can't find their music online. Apparently, I might have to enter a real life CD store.

Also, apparently, I'm filthy rich and likely you are too.

It's just that he was/exceptionally clean

Last night, after seeing "The Chairs" at Soulpepper, we got stuck in one of those brilliant thunderstorms. Lightening flashing everywhere. Wind blowing so hard, we didn't even try to open our umbrella. And we ran through the cobblestones of the distillery district-me hobbling with my nagging rugby injury through the thick rain that felt so good after the beyond ridiculous heat of the past few days. It was the kind of storm that always makes me feel so great. I'm not sure why that happens. I tell people that the storm creates negative ions, an explanation that I've heard somewhere that is probably some tall tale. Don Delillo claims that it has something to do with the fear of death and the sublime, which also strikes me as a stretch. But whatever the explanation, I know it's not just me, as the security guards giggling in the rain last night would attest.

In other news, a few days ago, there was a racoon on dupont who got its head stuck in a tin can. It may have been the saddest thing I've ever seen, which made me feel bad for laughing so hard. It obviously couldn't see at all and was wandering back and forth across the street, banging into things, and just missing being run over. Some good people with no fear of rabies tried to get the can off its head--at one point, holding onto the can and swinging the racoon around like a discus. The can wasn't going anywhere. As I said, it was a bit sad as it was seemingly inevitable that there was no hope for the racoon. It was like the time a racoon got stuck at the top of the lampost (a big city light one) on bloor. The fire department, hydro, humane society, all just shrugged because there wasn't anything they could do and waited for the thing to take a leap.

I'm not sure what the morals of these stories are.