— पांच हजार छह सौ बत्तीस —
I had been deliberately populating my Daily Lunch Updates (DLUs) this month with backlocked photos tagged with "dlunused" (DLU photos not yet used) from earlier Pride events, many of which are from last year or even before. But, today it seemed appropriate to use a few of the
thirty "dlunused" photos I still have backlogged from Danielle's and my 2019 trip to Toronto and Niagara falls. (That doesn't include the two shots still unused from Syracuse—the 2019 trip was Toronto + Niagara Falls + Syracuse—but that's not relevant to this year's trip.)
I'm done counting the days! Now I'm down to counting the hours: we'll likely catch the #11 bus to Westlake Station at either 7:08 or 7:38. The latter is a little later than recommended, so I'm thinking we should aim for the former, due to it being an international flight. It is scheduled to take off at 11:10. It was also the time at which it was available to check in last night, and Shobhit pulled me out of bed to sit with him while he did that. I was pretty awake anyway; I made us chai to burn through our milk that will otherwise go bad—something I'll need to do again tonight—and I think I used a bit too much of the loose leaf tea in it.
I'm actually hoping to leave work a bit early this afternoon. With a red eye flight and an inability to check in to our hotel until 3:00 tomorrow afternon, I'm going to take another shower as soon as I get home from work today, to last me through Thursday morning. I will aim to sleep on the flight and don't expect to sleep very well, but I managed okay on the
far longer flights to Sydney, so now I'm actually not super worried about it.
At this point, I feel like we have a pretty healthy mix of expectations of what we want to do on certain days, and a working list of things we would like to do whenever the opportunity presents itself. Tomorrow the plan is to take transit straight to the hotel and ask them to store our suitcase until we can check in, during which time we will then take our backpacks to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for a guided tour, and then to the CN Tower. Aside from that, we might explore the PATH underground tunnel system a bit.
We have a rental car booked for Thursday, so that's going to be the day we take a day trip to Niagara Falls. This only occurred to me just now, as I was writing this: I'm guessing this will work out well for heading out early, because after tonight's flight and walking around town all day, I expect to crash hard, probably relatively early, tomorrow night.
Friday is our anniversary. We hope to find a nice place to have Afternoon Tea that day. I still don't know if it will be that day or Saturday when we go explore Toronto Islands and lounge on the nude beach they have there. Right now the forecast shows a high of 75° on Friday and 70° Saturday, both totally sunny days, but that could be a deciding factor. That said, much like Seattle, I am finding the forecast several days out to alter a bit day by day, so who knows what the weather will actually be like.
We fly back home on Sunday.
— पांच हजार छह सौ बत्तीस —
— पांच हजार छह सौ बत्तीस —
I have had a new approach to activity check lists on trips ever since Shobhit and I went to Victoria for our anniversary in 2022: I use the "Reminders" app on my phone. I have the list set so all unchecked items are visible, but checked items are not, so once we do something on the list, I can check it and then, while it technically stays on the list, it disappears. Another item off the list!
I did this for the 2022 anniversary trip to Victoria; I can't remember if I did for the Vancouver Pride 2022 trip to Vancouver B.C. but I think so; I definitely did for last year's Australia trips to Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney and Adelaide; and again for last summer's trip to Minneapolis / Saint Paul.
So, I am doing it yet again for this trip: one, ever-expanding list for Toronto, and another one for Niagara Falls. I have added a new detail to this trip, though: I have added the locations for every activity or attraction or point of interest, so that I will get a notification when we happen to be nearby. There are several buildings or public art I want to see, and I may not know we're nearby while walking around unless I get a notification. I'm finding this to be a rather clever new approach—assuming it works as expected anyway. (I only just figured out how to widen the radius of proximity for notifications.)
As for packing, it's basically done except for toiletries, which I can't fully pack until I finish showering again this afternoon. I do have my quart bag already filled, of toiletries full of travel size containers that I plan to keep in my backpack as a failsafe in the unlikely event that our packed luggage gets lost. I need to put an extra change of clothes in there too. After my shower I'm going to change into shorts so I can be more comfortable trying to sleep on the plane, which I prefer over changing into pajamas. I know people say you shouldn't wear shorts on airplane seats because they're gross, but whatever. I'll live.
Otherwise, last night was occupied with making burgers for dinner while a Braeburn Condos Zoom meeting, and then Board meeting, occurred to discuss and answer questions about the re-siding project for the building that will hopefully begin this summer—and then last for, I think I heard right, the next 14 months. Yeesh. I can't wait for
that to be over, and it hasn't even started yet.
After that we watched episodes three and four of
Bridgerton, which we are both very much enjoying. The back-half four will get released while we're in Canada so we'll have to catch up on those after we get back.
— पांच हजार छह सौ बत्तीस —
[posted 12:32 pm]
