ten things that happened this weekend. (Not a complete list)

1. A tv show got shot. Blind Date is actually pretty staged.

2. I Deduced that my taxi driver was probably high.

3. Poached eggs.

4. Ikea!

5. An extreme rush of happiness produced purely by the confluence of scarlet sheets and an orange duvet.

6. The experience of walking against the crowd leaving the Santa Claus parade.

7. I quaked: No Country for Old Men is suspense-filled. Eek!

9. Estonian beer was consumed. (Also Ukranian, Kenyan, Latvian, Lithuanian, Canadian, Sri Lankan, and German.)

10. Road rash: my bike fell over. While was on it. (This has nothing to do with #9.)

These days...

have been difficult. Explaining would swerve dangerously close to clotting self-pity, suffice to say the real world is kicking my ass.

Days like Sunday are the worst: when I have nothing pressing to do and nobody I want to talk to is in this city and in the silence that is my current stereo-less existence, my mind jerks around the salmon that I reeled in last New Years Day. It jerked around in a frenzy for fifteen minutes, pulling my shoulders out of joint and demanding my numb fingers function. Then it settled down for about five minutes and I caught my breath and methodically reeled it in as the boat trolled back and forth in front of the wall of cloud that sat on the hills of Sooke. We repeated the saga, my salmon and I, for about four cycles, before I got it close enough to the boat for someone to scoop it up in the net and deposit it, writing and gasping on the aluminum floorboards of the boat.

Reeling my mind in took until four in the afternoon when I gave up. Let 'er spool out behind me as I walked down Bloor street into the wind.

the cheese shop

I look forward to shopping for cheese the way some women look forward to a pedicure.

My particular favourite cheese shop is nestled in Kensington Market - Toronto's answer to Camden - around the corner from the fish markets and just up the street from the shop that sells I-don't-know-what but that always has reggae music blasting out the doorway.

The first thing that hits you when you walk through the door (glass, covered in cheese posters) is the smell. Cheese. Fermenting, aging, delicious cheese. On my inaugural visit I was so unprepared for the smell that my eyes watered. I may have stumbled, blinded by cheese fumes.

The shop isn't small, but it seems to be. Along the right hand wall is the service counter, with dockets helpfully numbered. Like going to the bank, cheese shoppers wait in a queue and wait for a free teller. When I am at the front of the line, I walk up to place my order with the cheese-teller. Except I can't see who I am talking to. The entire service counter is covered in a wall of cheese. Massive rounds and block are stacked taller than my head, and the window through which I am talking is above my eye level. I'm actually staring at the label of a jalapeño spiced Gouda.

I ask for Parmesan, and a few seconds later a sliver balanced precariously on a slicer descends over the Gouda. I pop it in my mouth and pronounce it delicious. The disembodied voice of my cheese-teller asks me how much I want and I hold my hands above my head in what I hope is a rough approximation of my weekly cheese consumption.

The voice tells me to pay down at the last docket, and I wind my way through other cheese buyers and head for the door. Ten dollars disappears and I'm shoving a healthy slab of Italy into my bag.

When I get home and open the package, a blast of smell rushes out of the wax paper.

The perfect excuse to make lasagna.