Summer Is Officially Over

The weather's suddenly turned cold as of today. A good time to haul out the Smiths. This one's one of my all-time, as well as current, favourites. Every time it comes up on the mp3 player while I'm wandering around, I'm instantly back in high school in the suburbs of Toronto, waxing solipsistic and feeling sorry for myself. But somehow I enjoy reminiscing about that feeling. Maybe because stuff like this made me feel like someone somewhere understood. Plus it's just such an undeniably great song: how the hell is Morrissey able to express such depth with so little, lyrically? And on what planet did he find those gorgeous ad libbed yodels at the end?

Softball playoffs were yesterday. We lost both of our games, but played admirably. More importantly, we finally got team T-shirts, at the eleventh hour. Logo courtesy of yours truly.
Here's me and Meg hamming it up in our new shirts.

Here's a better look at the beautiful logo, modelled by Ali.

A happy team after losing by only one run.

The final sign that the apocalypse, I mean autumn, is here, is that the students are back in droves, virtually doubling the city's population in the space of about a week. First thing I heard upon walking into a restaurant Saturday for brunch: one young 'un says to the other, "It's, like, an ILLUSION of democracy." But I shouldn't complain. This is a great city full of delightful weirdos, as seen today at the Ecology Action Centre's hippy dippy food and music festival, and later at the North End Festival on Gottingen Street, where people walked through the crowd on giant stilts with deer hooves for feet, and a parade of cyclists in inflatable white costumes pedalled into the wind, thereby growing humps and wings.

The Wizard of Oz, by the way, was as great as it always is, and there was a nearly full moon behind us for the whole film. Our friend Jeff was down from Toronto so he came too. Meg and her friend Tomomi were also there, seeing it for the first time. They loved it, as did the many adorable kids in the audience. We got to hang out with Jeff a few more times over the weekend, as well. All in all, a very nice changing of the seasonal guard.

- Andrew