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Polar bear with carrot

Friday, September 26, 2008

Hey ya hosers...

We are having a really nice time in Toronto. Today we visited the old distillery district and checked out all the cool little shops. Excellent chocolate shop called Soma where they had an eighty year old chocolate press and where Leslie bought a great chocolate drink of the gods, mixed with ginger, cinnamon, orange peel and red chili pepper. Lots of artist galleries including photographers. Leslie said she liked my work better. I tried to stay humble and only quietly agreed.

Then we went to the St. Lawrence Marketplace, a cavernous building which was filled with flowers, fruit and fowl. Leslie bought caviar. I found a ukrainian deli with homeade cabbage rolls. Really great time and wonderful to be up here with my brother and his family along with my father. We bought truffle salt and garlic kielbasa. My niece and nephews have really matured and are now adults that are fun to hang out with. We went out for beers last night at a pub in the fashion district.

The people in Canada are exceedingly friendly. They let each other make turns in traffic, an offense that might get people killed in New York. It is a multicultural, multiethnic city that seems to be relatively caste free. Lots of shades of color. The trees are turning and the parks are beautiful. Biggest weeping willow I've ever seen at the cemetery.

Tomorrow I plan on driving up to Algonquin National Park where the maples are turning and things will be truly gorgeous. This is a nice city but my heart is in the country.

My pop is slightly losing it, which is still ok because he is sweet. He wanted to know what my brother and I did for a living and thought that we left from San Francisco instead of Los Angeles. In a way it is an honor to be able to take care of him since he spent so much time caring for me. We will have the first Rosh Hashana together as a family this week in many years. We try Niagara Falls in a couple days.

We have had the television on today and its been interesting to see all the gamesmanship going on. The gop infighting has to bring warmth to your cockles. McCain wants to hang back and not take any stand at all and has appeared to scuttle the deal between the moderate republicans and the dems. Pelosi rightly takes the stand that the gop is going to have to do the heavy lifting or carry the water. Why should they be on the hook with the public when Bush has basically allowed this whole mess to occur with his deregulation and inattention. So now we are going to elect another deregulator, McCain, right, just what we need. They all believe in deregulation until the shit hits the fan. Then just shift the burden to the stupid taxpayer. But enough politics, I'm on vacation.

Take care, all!

Love, Robert

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

take your time, don't hurry back, we're doing fine without you...

Anonymous said...

Robt.& Leslie, stay in Canada. Ask for political asylum. It's too dangerous down here, and we are going into a depression beyond our wildest beliefs. Today Wall St. crashed to unlucky -777 and if that wasn't bad enough,tomorrow will be known as the Rosh Hasana Stock Crash. No Democrat wants to sign a bill from Geo. W. and the Republicans know it is political suicide to sign a bill that the Democrats support and they also want to distance themselves from the WORST president in the history of our nation. So our chosen representatives have elected to take Tuesday off to honor a Jewish holiday that very few of them know anything about. And in the process, allow the American economic system to be raped by Wall St. greed and a system that could care less.