Holy cr- Happy Thanksgiving!

I can't believe I forgot to talk about Thanksgiving in Toronto last month. Well, since it's the Thanksgiving weekend in the states, where my dear friends Felix-chan and Davy-san are both residing at the moment, I would like to share my Thanksgiving story for my dear readers. (If any.)

Friday - Jorgh's birthday I missed

The day was supposed to go like this - my class would end, I would get home, pack, and wait for my mother and my brother to arrive in their car at my apartment because they were supposed to leave me something. (Which they eventually forgot.) My sister and her boyfriend, Brian, were supposed to come by at the same time in their car and I was going to go to Toronto with them. I completely forgot about Simon coming by, and I saw this guy on our doorstep with a huge hat and a bike, so I thought it was a weirdo. (Which he is, but I mean another kind of weirdo... uh... nevermind.) Anyway, he ended up buzzing a million times before I finally recognized him and let him up.

Brian and my sister waited at my apartment for a good hour later than planned. Finally, my brother buzzed my door, and stormed up to my apartment. He muttered something incomprehensible, as younger adolescent/post-puberty kids do, and hid in my washroom.

We were puzzled as to why my mother was not coming by as well. My brother finally vacated the washroom (and then suddenly everyone had to go at the same time, of course), and told us that they were held up by the cops.

"What the crap did you do?"
"I'M NOT PAYING MY TICKET!!!"

Somehow, we found out from my brother's irate garbling that my mother and my brother both got a combined ticket for not wearing their safety belts properly in the car. My mother was driving, but she's short so she tends to put the shoulder strap of the belt at an odd angle, which renders the seat belt completely ineffective. My brother was in the back seat, being his lazy self, without his seat belt on. They were stopped by a police car down my street because the cops were diverting traffic, and one noticed that neither had their seat belts properly put on.

Then my brother started protesting to the cop that it was "legal" for him not to be wearing his belt because he was no longer a minor and he was in the backseat. He also argued that he knew the legal code...

Well, then the cop must have been pretty pissed at him because (1) my brother was completely wrong in both counts and (2) both my mum and he got fined.

Anyway, we finally set off towards Toronto, and arrived at Kingston for supper. At Harveys, my sister insisted heavily on the veggie burger, while I had naught but onion rings (ha ha, Jorgh!). [ed: That restaurant was packed with white trash...!]

Finally at Toronto, we settled down at my loving cousins' house. Eddie and Rebecca were busy making a huge-assed fudge cake for a friend's wedding. Apparently, they worked all day and night, well into the night, playing with fudge and butter and more fudge and cake and cream... Rebecca was definitely sick of chocolate by that point.

There was this tremendously long battle over who would sleep where, which in the end didn't matter because I ended up on the faux-snakeskin stiff-as-conrete bed in the basement, as usual. I swear, every time I go there with my family, it's always that scary-assed snakeskin thing.

Saturday - the Boredom...!

We had all sorts of silly things happening during the weekend, I can't remember which order they were in because of all the crappy things that happened as well. I'll just summarize the day below.

• The crappy: Sitting in those damn chinese malls for hours and hours, eating and sitting, eating and sitting, eating some more until we were about to fall asleep, sitting and waiting for *more* food... etc.



• The good:.... Sprawl malls. We lived in Old Navy for three hours or something.



• The remarkable: Brian, Simon, and my brother slept in the living room. Brian told us that at some point in the early hours, he woke up and was walking about, when he noticed Simon making a weird scrunched up face, curl up, stick one leg in the air, and then let out a really loud one. Then Simon went back to sleep (or maybe he wasn't awake).

Actually, a lot of stuff that occured happen to revolve around how Simon acted during the stay in Toronto. He was literally freaking over every single thing he was seeing because he had never been in Toronto before. We sort of questioned his parents' judgement in his upbringing occasionally. Often. Most of the time.

My cousin Eddie found his pants sitting on the stairs because they fell of the banister. He picked them up.
"Whose are these?" he asked.
"You don't want to touch them," my brother responded.
"Why's that?"
"They're Simon's."
"So?"
"[He doesn't wear underwear.]" [cantonese]

With that, we all erupted into a giant chinese mess of laughter. Brian was told the joke, and he joined in. Simon finally entered the room, but no one wanted to tell him the awful truth about what we were laughing about... He then got upset and ran off with an ice cream bowl out to the street, down the block...

"Don't you want to go after him?" we asked my brother.
"He'll be fine..."
"Seriously, go after him."
"Arrgh... SIMON!!!"

It led to a long walk. I followed along with Eddie, Brian, and Eddie's aunt from Victoria, to the Beaches area. My brother finally caught up with Simon, talked briefly with him, apologized, and my brother went home. Simon seemed to continue walking into the cemetary, I think...

The Beaches area at night was charming and bright, but with hardly many people walking about because of the cold. It wasn't even cold, it was "Toronto" cold. Meaning something like 10 degrees.

I slept on the snakeskin thing but it was getting harder to sleep due to the carpeting. And it does get freaking cold at night in a basement when it's 10 degrees outside.

Sunday - Prelude to the Banquet

My family was slotted to visit my mother's godmother, and then join her (80th!) birthday banquet at some restaurant at one of the chinese malls. (Pacific Mall) Simon was gone off to downtown Toronto to wreak havoc. (I think it was just to make sure he wouldn't get lost in Scarborough and cause even more craziness.)

We ended up going to Scarborough City Center for a few hours. My brother had bought two ridiculously priced t-shirts and pants from Bluenotes on Saturday, for which we (as siblings) chided him greatly. In fact, we told my mum and she freaked for a good two hours at what he bought. He returned them at this mall, but was starting to eye some things so we pulled him out of there.

Afterwards, we visited popo in these fantastically tall apartment buildings (she lives in apartment number 911, if you can believe it). We napped some more because we did absolutely nothing that day anyway.

Finally, we changed and went to the restaurant.

The Banquet

My brother built himself a reputation the last year he went to the birthday banquet. Basically, he was bribed into eating a chicken head, and he pretty much did that. With pictures. Dammit.

So this year, he wanted to outdo himself. The cousins were watching him like hawks, waiting for him to do something stupider than last year. Finally, they got this idea to get him to strip and play the violin with only a tie and pants. Of course, our goal wasn't to traumatize my mom's godmother so he demanded more money, but he found he wasn't drunk enough yet.

Throughout the evening, a wedding party right next door to the banquet was disturbing us with its crappy 80's-90's romance/pop music so we dared him instead to streak into the next room. The aunts and uncles got wind of his antics, and tried their best to persuade him not to. They even stole the chicken head from him this year. Eventually, he chickened out.

Finally, we were all totally boozed up (even me, but not to such great extent). My brother finally drank enough to get his inhibitions out of the way and crashed the wedding party with his violin playing the wedding song. Through the flimsy wall. Then he ran away but he got enough applause. The cousins were lamenting that the hadn't had the initiative to pass around the hat because it *was* a free performance from a very talented classically trained violinist, of course.

Anyway, the funniest part of the evening was the drive home. We hadn't realized it but Brian was boozed up so much he was starting to spew out weird things from his mouth. Us siblings were totally gauding him about his drunkenness, but of course (as anyone will tell you) the ones who are drunk will be the ones vehemently denying it.

So he basically taunted us about being too uptight and kept repeating some question for half an hour about something (I can't remember anymore either). When we got home, Eddie and Rebecca were totally amused by his weird conversations. Rebecca said, "I like you better when you're drunk. You promise you'll be like this from now on?"
"I'm not drunk!"
"So do you promise you'll be like this tomorrow morning?"
"Okay."

Monday - hangover blues?

Actually, my brother said that he drank 6 beers. They happened to be Coors Lite, so he wasn't even the slightest bit drunk from them. It was the rest of the alcohol that did him in. I had two glasses of red wine and turned beet red, apparently. My sister had about the same. My mum had a little sip of red for toast, but she was driving so she declined everything else. Brian had some questionable amount of alcohol.

My sister woke up Brian, but he was completely disoriented. She came back and told me that he didn't remember anything from the previous night, starting from the ride home. "He doesn't know how he got home, so I told him he strip-danced when we got home."

The entire day was spent making fun of him being so funny last night, and how he danced around without his shirt on. Rebecca reminded him of the previous night's conversation. "What? I said that?" I don't think he believed these crazy stories, but it was funny all the same to tease him.

Ah yes. We ate turkey that afternoon. It was a *lot* of turkey. And it is dry. I don't care what anyone says, it's always too dry to enjoy all the time.

Anyway, we went back to Montreal that evening. All I brought back was a lot of red envelopes, and a bunch of clothes I bought at Old Navy for Jorgh's birthday I missed on Friday.

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I had fun. Let's go again next year. This time I'll get tons of pictures...!