Sydney Grind

 Linking up at Marg at The Intrepid Reader 

Weekend Coffee Share

Sunday Salon

Friendship Friday

June 2022 - Toronto ON

April 2022 - Lake Shore Blvd West Toronto

Check out this townhouse inside a bell tower in a converted church here in Toronto. Price tag? $3.65 million.

Ikea opens a new cashless store downtown.

Saturday was the usual chores. John started cleaning the grout on the tiled floors (we have a lot - kitchen, hallway, pantry and two bathrooms). Our handyman had sent me a tiktok using toilet bowl bleach cleaner. And it worked! 

I had gotten a professional estimate a year or so ago and it was a couple of thousand dollars!

BEFORE

AFTER

He did the bigger bathroom and half the kitchen, then he finished the kitchen and the hall on Sunday. So only the pantry and back bathroom to do. I also think this would work well on the balcony. 

Three loads of laundry got done. All the plants on the balcony got planted.

I began a new embroidery and watched a movie.

John did a Costco run and I interviewed/hired a new cleaning lady. My other one is retiring as she requires surgery on her hands.

John booked the golf simulator in the afternoon.

I went downtown for a haircut on Tuesday and lucked out on some t-shirts at Cleo's. Regular $25 reduced to $15 then 25% off! So 3 for $45 after tax.

We decided on a movie afternoon.

Wednesday the new cleaning lady started so I stayed home with her, I will be giving her a key so that I can go out in future. She is quite young and seems very sweet. She has been in Canada about eight years from Portugal. She had asked for an extra $10 over my previous lady and I had no problem. However when she was leaving she said "about the money" and I figured she wanted more. NO she thought she was overcharging me once she had done her cleaning, she even did a lot more than the previous. She also asked if I wanted my fridge cleaned as part of her duties.

Once she left I started out for Longos for some ingredients for tacos. It was pouring when I got down for the 3:20 bus so I met a friend instead and then headed out for the 4:20 bus, same deal started raining. I gave up and we made do with what we had.

Thursday I went for a mani pedi and John went to pick up a gluten free bagel and focaccia order which took three hours due to traffic. He then rushed off to physio.

I went downtown and picked up sushi as we were going to be out tonight.

A different view of a recent Monday mural by Alanna Cavanagh.

The office towers are slowly becoming a little busier. This is later in the afternoon after the lunch hour period.

Downtown is all decked out for Pride month.

CIBC - Canadian Imperial Bank of Canada

LCBO - Liquor Control Board of Ontario

Citigroup Canada

I had never noticed this painting in the Royal York Hotel, I quite like it.

We headed to a 7 PM music recital by my cousin's daughter's school. She attends a school for the performing arts.

Music director Andrew Jones, a Juno award nominee, was the MC and their teacher.

These kids were so excited to perform before a live audience after two years practicing in seclusion.

Here are a couple of performances from their virtual December 2021 concert.

My cousin is in this one, playing the flute.

ONTARIO ELECTIONS

Lowest voter turnout in history. DoFo gets a majority and the leaders of the Liberal and NDP party resign. God help us! My heart genuinely breaks for more years of climate inaction, growing disparity, rising populism.

Ontario. Don’t complain when your kid has 35 other kids in their class, or when there are no nurses to serve your needs. Or when you have to pay for medical tests and treatments. Don’t complain.

More Ontarians voted Liberal than NDP, yet the NDP have 20 more seats than the Liberals. 60% of voters voted against this “majority” government. Our democracy is broken. It’s time for true electoral reform. Mixed Member Proportional Representation, as they have in Germany.

COOKING

Since I talked about egg substitutions last week, I found a handy chart.

Saturday we finished the last of the frozen meat sauce with spaghetti and the last of the focaccia. For lunch we also finished the last of the wagyu hot dogs.

Sunday I made a crockpot pot roast. 

Monday BBQ chicken quarters roast potatoes, carrots, onions and tomatoes

Tuesday chicken divan

Wednesday pork belly tacos

Thursday sushi takeout

Friday steak and poutine

WATCHING

I watched to 2019 Downton Abbey movie, I didn't love it, it felt a bit stretched but it was fun to reunite with the characters.

But then I started a docu-series The Family, we've all heard of the White House breakfast prayer meetings. Scary stuff, it's not about religion it is about power.

The Family is an American documentary streaming television miniseries. The series examines a conservative Christian group—known as the Family or the Fellowship—its history, and investigates its influence on American politics.
The series was executive produced by Jeff Sharlet, who previously wrote books about the same organization, including C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy and The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

Dear Evan Hanson is a 2021 American musical coming-of-age film. It is based on the 2015 stage musical of the same name. Ben Platt plays the title role, reprising the performance that he originated on stage five years earlier.

We watched Remember, a 2015 drama-thriller film directed by Atom Egoyan and written by Benjamin August. Starring Christopher Plummer, Bruno Ganz, Jürgen Prochnow, Heinz Lieven, Henry Czerny, Dean Norris and Martin Landau, it was a co-production of Canada and Germany. The plot follows an elderly Holocaust survivor with dementia who sets out to kill a Nazi war criminal, and was inspired by August's consideration that there were fewer parts for senior actors in recent years.

Any movie by Egoyan and starring Plummer has to be good, this was so sad.

Operation Mincemeat is a 2021 British World War II drama film starring Colin Firth.

We've been seeing a lot of Firth recently as we are watching the series Staircase.

The Lie 2020 started off feeling like a teen thriller but suddenly turned into a parents' nightmare. We kept throwing out scenarios, what they should do. We didn't see the ending coming. Fun.

Flawless 2007 we love heist movies. And her clothes!

A clever diamond-heist thriller set in 1960s London, where a soon to retire nighttime janitor (Caine) convinces an underappreciated executive (Moore) to help him steal a hefty sum of diamonds from their employer, the London Diamond Corporation.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is a 2021 American documentary film directed and produced by Morgan Neville. It follows the life and career of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain.

  

Roadrunner left us with a confused feeling about the movie and its disjointedness. This New Yorker article helped explain what we were feeling. It garnered controversy over its use of artificial intelligence technology to reproduce Bourdain's voice for some audio clips.

READING

I poked in the bookstore this week.

NYT 88 Books to Bring Your Summer Alive

I finished My Darling Husband and I'm not sure how I feel. There is some suspension of belief, as Cam thinks he will get an insurance cheque on the same day as the fire. Then there is the 9 year old Wonder Woman, really???

I was enjoying the suspense and hoping to learn more about Cam and his restaurants and the background to their marriage. But the ending, seriously???

Life Without Children 2021 Roddy Doyle, short stories set in Dublin during the pandemic. Finished it but I still don't enjoy short stories.

Started The Caretakers and am really enjoying it. Set in a wealthy Parisian suburb, an emotionally riveting debut told from the point of view of six women, and centered around a group of au pairs, one of whom is arrested after a sudden and suspicious tragedy strikes her host family--a dramatic exploration of identity, class, and caregiving from a profoundly talented new writer.
I love that she doesn't feel she "has" to translate the French phrases for the reader like so many authors do.