staycation

Virgo's Groove

On the recent excursions

Lia Matthew Brown

Lia Matthew Brown

— 5 min read
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Virgo's Groove

Had a couple weeks off, hope you don’t mind me bragging about it. See, a couple of times in the past few years I’ve chosen October to take off somewhere else in the world, and that’s obviously a fine thing, but nearly always, my first thought upon boarding the plane is, “but I like Ontario in October.” Arguably, it’s my favourite time of year.

So no ramen safaris or family heritage adventures this year. Instead, I just fucked around Souther Ontario a bit, and enjoyed the vibes.

It began, rather unexpectedly, at the Pickle Festival — I say “unexpectedly” because 1/ who knew there’s a Pickle Festival and, 2/, it kind of ruled.

Not that I am much of a pickle connoisseur or even fan, but y’all know me, I love it when people are into their shit. So when I rolled up to the Henderson Brewing Co. and there was, like, 600 people outside, better than half of them in pickle-themed garb (even just the colour green counts as pickle-themed garb), well. It charmed me.

Did it charm me enough not to say, loudly and incredulously, “whadda they got in there, just pickles?” Of course not. But still: it charmed me.

left: pickle rosé. Don't do it. right: pickle head coverings. Wish I'd done it.

Next day was a toy show, with Dr. Z and Branko. The usual Mississauga thingie, happens 4 times a year but the name keeps changing. I’ve been digging my hobby a lot lately, even as Hasbro completely craters on the 3 3/4″ scale. I bought a Queen’s Royal Starship a few weeks back (cough, my third) and I’ve been fixing it up, and I wanted to get some of the accompanying figures I was missing.

At which, I did surprisingly well! It was a surprisingly Star Wars-light show overall (Transformers and G.I. Joe seemed to rule this particular roost) but there was one dealer all the way at the back, with box after box after box after box of ’99-’02 carded figures, which just happens to be my sweet spot in the line (though I’ll never turn down the back half of the aughts, obviously).

That’s Slag in the middle. I don’t know who the other two guys are.

Rajo also turned me on to Blokees, because I needed another thing to fixate on I guess. These things are ingenious, especially at the price point; Slag here was, like, eight bucks. Made of LEGO-quality plastic in a blind-box format, assemble him yourself and he is astonishingly poseable.

Having never heard of these things a week ago I am now seeing them everywhere. Which is going to be great for the ol’ pocketbook I’ll bet.

The view from the observation deck at Skylon Tower. Yeah, our falls are better. But I gotta say: the whole thing put together is pretty amazing.

Then I took off for Niagara for a few days. This was mostly because I’d always wanted to go up the Skylon Tower and had never done so. (Don’t ask me why: when I was a kid I thought those pill-shaped yellow elevators on the outside of the tower were cool as hell.)

While I was out there I availed myself of the autumnal opportunities, bought a hat, did some hiking in Welland,

and later, Belfountain.

In and around the time outdoors I was mostly to be found driving these highways and byways listening to Beyoncé, thinking through that project I mentioned last week and, as is perhaps natural, getting deeply sidetracked on a few particulars of Zombie Survival Camp, which has me craving another draft soon. It’s amazing how much clearer things are when you’re just moving around.

The comforts of home

Obviously, in the midst of all this, I had to keep myself fed. My leeks came in, so I was all about some quiches, plus I made myself a big whack of Anglesey eggs because I am very special. Finished the last of the birthday cake, and picked up one more strawberry rhubarb pie from Nonna Luisa’s on my way out of Niagara. Every tomato still on the vine, from my garden, went into a creamy tomato soup for having with grilled cheeses, these next few weeks, while I plop down on the couch and watch cozily spooky movies.

And when I got back this weekend, my family was nice enough to indulge me in the exact Thanksgiving dinner I’d been craving all week, which made the staycation worth my while on its own.

Not pictured: sweet potatoes; the lake of gravy that soon doused this.

The end is the beginning is the end

Back to work next week (i.e., “paid work,” which I really need to stop using as the default of “work,” given I have been working steadily on my development project this whole time, though not as much or as fruitfully as I’d hoped… God damn that Kat G for putting this in my head, by the way:)

This last one comes with a content warning for sexual assault.

Look, we’ve all been reading about the Cornell assaults, the news of which broke out over my birthday weekend so I wasn’t online enough to be caught up at the time. I’ve been going back to familiarize myself and I just wanted to take a moment to shout out the Cornell Daily Sun, because their local reporting on the issue is thunderous. When we need evidence-based examples of why local journalism matters, and how it differs from the conglomeratized crap higher up the chain, this writing should be at the top of the stack.

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