Of course we did do some touristy stuff, how could we not? On the Monday, my dad, sister, and I went to Canterbury for a little shopping (Marks and Spencer’s, we wish you were still in Canada!), and toured the Cathedral. It’s seemingly under constant repair but it was still very beautiful, even to an avowed atheist. While we couldn’t find the tomb of our presumed ancestor, we did find his name on the Archbishop registry.

1139, a long time ago.

Megan, my sister, and I also went up the cliffs of Dover briefly. I took this picture in St.Margaret’s Bay, where my Auntie Ann lives.

The cliffs are enormously high and have no fencing at all around them. I was literally standing less than a foot away from the edge, then I was overcome with a feeling of dread and retreated. The day we were there was so clear, we could see France very clearly.

We also paid a visit to Sandwich, a town that oozes quaintness. It’s pretty much the cutest town ever, with it’s narrow streets, river full of boats and beautiful architecture. I loved this building for it’s fantastic carvings.

And this adorable car was there. No idea what it is, if anyone can help. It’s perfect.

Of course we visited Dover Castle. Megan and I split off from the old ‘uns and did a lot of stair climbing. I love the castle, it’s very…old. I also love the tour of the underground tunnels. This is a Roman lighthouse. It’s old.

Very old.

Part 3 will be family stories.

Other than opening day, which was completely sold out (and I didn’t go to) this is pretty normal for the Skydome on a Friday night, at least in my experience. And I really only have myself to blame, after so many years of hating this sport. Of course now I love it, despite the fact that I have almost no understanding of the rules. Here are two issues I had last night that I had to look up and now I know:

1. RBI.
2. Designated hitter.

I understand both now, more or less, but I’m still kind of curious about the designated hitter, why don’t the Jays assign this job to someone who is a better hitter? Dude last night had 0 runs, 0 RBI.

The other thing I don’t understand that happened at a previous game is the pitcher intentionally throwing balls to walk the guy at bat. The game I saw this happen in there was already someone at first. Is the guy at bat considered good and the guy after him not so good and the pitcher is hedging his bets? I don’t remember how many outs there were at the time and that might make some difference for the answer. Sarah?

We left early because I was freezing to death with the dome wide open and because by the bottom of the seventh the score was 14-1 for the Jays and I was feeling pretty confident we would win. Final score was 14-5 which means the Mets did pull a little something out. Tough luck, Bababooey.

Earlier yesterday, I did more successful baking and here are the results. I made mini baguettes that turned out really nicely, much to my surprise. I’d made some error in the mixing part of the recipe and the dough that resulted was tough, hard as rock. I didn’t throw it out, though, just covered the bowl and went to bed, and to my great surprise it had risen by morning. Rolled it out, slashed the tops, let them rise again and baked for 16 minutes and voila. They aren’t perfect, they’re pretty dense, but they taste nice and the crust was beautiful.

I also made a no knead bread, for fun, which really does seem like magic and tastes so good, mostly because of the texture. That one is not for practical purposes but will be made for home consumption again.

We also got our picture taken with these adorable parrots:

Which, for Xmas, from memory, Ari made into a painting for me, which I love:

It was a super day!

Ha ha! And they laughed at me for taking that picture but I knew it was an important, momentous moment of my life.

I. Won.

Of course it was downhill from there. But who remembers the second game? Or third? My victory dance is truly something to behold, not that it is likely to ever happen again.

I’m on my way home now, on the train. Back to reality. And while I do love to hang out with my ever shrinking Windsor crew, I miss my love every second I’m away and I’m glad to be heading in this direction.

And I gots my strut on.

This handsome fellow was outside the Skydome Roger’s Centre when I went to the Jays game last Friday against Detroit. Hard for me, what with my serious love of all things Detroit, but I’m a Toronto girl at heart. Birdy was hoping for hotdog bun and birdy was not disappoint.

I so very wish I had art that I made when I was a kid. Ari actually handed this over the second she saw me after school the other day, she knew how much I’d like it. And it’s true, I DO like it, it’s hilarious!

So, I don’t know if you can tell right away, but I labeled each block with a number/letter, then went through them and shifted everything by 1 twice (oh, how can this already be confusing?) so block A has A, B, C in it, block B is B, C, D, block C is C, D, E and so on to the end where block X goes back to X, A, B.

Now does it make more sense? I might even start sewing tomorrow, we’ll see how I feel.

In gaming news, I’m in the middle of Lego Harry Potter on DS (it’s not great, Batman and Indiana Jones were way better), Lego Batman on PS3 (love it!) and the latest Mystery Case Files on this, my laptop. I subscribe to the emails so when I found out the latest case had been released, I sucked it up and threw it onto PayPal. It was awesome, unsurprisingly, and I finished it in record time. Then I somehow erased it, BOO!

Darn iphone, I’m hopeless at self portraiture with a regular camera, iphones make it nearly impossible. The makeup looked way better in my mind and a little better before I tried to use one of last year’s contact lenses. That was a mistake, my eye still hurts.

Thanks to Gillian too, for the inspiration.

I’m taking Ari to play on it tomorrow. Hey, we’re up to date on our tetanus shots!*

* Just kidding, obvi. But I do want to take her and show her how awesome it is. And to discuss our future-this mountain represents the building we’d planned on hiding in during the future zombie apocalypse, now we need a backup plan.