With my favourite band's most popular song playing in the background.

It's been a pretty busy and eventful few days since I've last blogged. Here's an update about what I've been up to.

On Thursday evening, I went to see a "live" viewing of The National Theatre's production of Frankenstein. It's pretty neat that you can see a performance broadcast from the London broadcast in major cities across the world. It was an amazing production directed by Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) and with amazing actors in the roles of the creature and the doctor. I really enjoyed the show, despite the fact that Frankenstein is a rather depressing story. If I had written it, the blind man would have told his family about the creature before just springing him on them, and they all would have lived happily ever after.

Friday was absolutely beautiful weather-wise. I took Fea and my student teacher (it was her last day) out for lunch at a neighbourhood bakery, and it was a nice way to spend a Friday lunch. After school, I went to the gym and then the grocery store. However, after that I didn't have too much energy left. I had a hot bath and then went to bed at 9 pm for an absolutely epic sleep.

Saturday was another beautiful sunny day. I got out my bicycle pump, inflated my bike's tires, and rode my bike to the gym. The wind made for a tiring ride home (there's a bit of a hill that I really feel after a workout when it's windy), but it was great getting my bike out. Starting on Monday my building's really wonky elevator (age: 55) is going to be renovated, so I don't know how often I'll be dragging out my bike 'til it's fixed (I live on the fourth floor).

After my nice bout of exercise, I relaxed a bit and got started on phase 1 of spring cleaning: spring tidying. I have so much crap about that I need to deal with. However, step one of minimizing the look of disaster in my apartment is done. I hope that next weekend I'll have time to start going through stuff, and do some hardcore cleaning.

After my tidying, I met up with Jason for a nice little pub dinner, and then we came back here to watch some Tim Burton movies in preparation for finally seeing the Tim Burton exhibit at the TIFF Lightbox. We only managed to watch Corpse Bride (my fave) before watching SNL, so it was not the Tim Burtonathon that I envisioned, but still enjoyable.

Today was the day of actually going to the exhibit. I can't believe that I waited this long: Tim Burton is my favourite director by far. However, I knew it was in town until April, and my natural procrastinator took hold. Good thing about procrastinating: I got a Groupon for 2 for 1 admission. Bad thing about procrastinating: the exhibit was super busy. After showing up at 12 pm to get tickets for the 2 pm viewing, we hit up the Rivoli for brunch. Eating french toast at the first place that I ever went to a proper bar rock show (Hawksley Workman in 2001) is fun.

The exhibit was amazing. Ever since I was a kid, I've been fascinated with ghouls, ghosts, graveyards, all things gothic, death, and suburbia. Tim Burton's art and movies encompasses all this stuff in a way that sucks me in, and I've loved his movies since I first saw Beetlejuice. The highlight for me were the items from The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, and Edward Scissorhands, but all of the movie-related items brought back memories of growing up/growing older with his work. In addition, seeing all of Tim Burton's other artwork, including his earlier artwork, was fun too. We laughed pretty hard at one particular sketch that said a couple "liked to hold hands" but they were actually holding severed hands. Awesome.

You can't take any pictures inside the exhibition, and they mean business. We heard a girl getting in huge trouble for taking a picture of Edward Scissorhand's costume. She had to show that she deleted the photo, or they would have kicked her out. However, you are allowed to take pictures at the instillation at the entrance:

Here's me looking like a blurry, happy dork.

This evening I met up with my friend Flora for dinner and dessert. We had a really great time catching up, and I gave her the "Flora" brand cookies that I bought for her in Spain. We first came across the "Flora" brand of food in Australia when we travelled there in 2005. It's a brand of margarine. Flora actually bought a tub and dumped out the spread so she could have the container. Too bad we hadn't come across the cookies then.

Here's a picture of the cookies along with all the other goodies I had packed in my suitcase on the way home.

Tomorrow, I am not going to work. I am going to jury duty! Can you believe it? I hope I don't get picked. Seriously, there is so much going on right now at work. I can't afford to be gone for too many days. My summons says to expect to be gone a week, but I'm hoping that I'm only gone for a day or two. I've left lesson plans to cover Monday and Tuesday. If I'm there longer than that, I'll have to go in to school to make more, ugh. This is one of those few times in life that I really hope that I get rejected.

Hope you all have nice weeks!