Tidbits

Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…

Fall Stories

October 22, 2008, 5:22 am

We turned the heater on today in the house. I think this means fall is over. We didn’t end up getting out of town either.

I think the Thanksgiving weekend was the best time for viewing fall colours. We did some driving to Woodstock, Stratford, and then back to Toronto. It was all very nice. Now everything is bare and brown. On the Saturday, I (that is, my mom), scored tickets to a complimentary event at Stratford from Amex. It includes buffet dinner, drinks, and show ticket for Caesar and Cleopatra, for two. All you have to do is call in at a certain time and hope you connect. I tagged team with my mom to call. I got busy signals every time, but some how she got in. The dinner was decent, if typical, of these executive catered buffet meals. The show was also entertaining and enjoyable, if not particularly deep.

So since we were going to be in the Stratford area Saturday evening, we decided to do some pumpkin picking as well. Birtch Farms, near Woodstock, caught our eye because it’s a farm AND a winery. They specialized in fruit wines, but alas, they all sucked. The other thing to note about picking pumpkins is that you don’t actually go into the patch and liberate one with a hacksaw. Instead, they are all pre-picked and cleaned, and lined up in neat rows for your picking pleasure. Sounds silly, sure, but I went by the pumpkin patches and I have no desire to walk in it. Of course, we are also the ones who despite the fact that you can pick your own apples from the trees there, we just walked into the store and purchased a basket of pre-picked ones. Our excuse is that we started wandering into the apple orchards without a basket, and it was only far into the property that we found the good trees. By then, we were too lazy to head back to the entrance for a basket and head back.

We also ended up with a orange pumpkin and a white pumpkin. I’ve never seen a white pumpkin before, hence I had to get one.

Then this weekend, we headed to Elora Gorge, but alas, the fall colours were past peak with 40% leaf fall, at least according to the Ontario Fall Colours Report. It was different to walk around the top of the gorge compared to tubing in it. After that, we headed into the town of Elora to check out Tim Murton’s Twilight Zoo. We also wanted to catch dinner there as well, except we weren’t able to find any restaurants. Is there any interesting places to eat in Elora??

Here are the rest of the photos from Elora and Stratford. I had a lot of fun with the tele at Stratford. Dang, that thing is sharp. I can see individual feathers on the ducks.