Time for a little Swashbuckling

"SABRE!" - Peter Suddard

On Saturday my family headed to Newmarket High School for my sister's fencing tournament.

Like last time, I took my digital camera with me and recorded almost all of my sister's matches:

Match #1


Match #2


Match #3


Match #4


Match #5


Quarter Final Match Part 1


Quarter Final Match Part 2

Thanks to Jocelyn, Mike, and others for coming out to support my sister's swashbucking efforts!

Lest We Forget

Aurora's War Memorial tonight.

Lovin' Bein' Shoeless

On Friday night my girlfriend and I headed up to King Henry's Arms for a bite to eat. I had looked at Restaurantica.com to see where might be a good place to go to eat besides my regular places in town. King Henry's Arms was well rated and I had never been there before. My girlfriend and I arrived around 7:00 P.M. to find there was an hour wait!

We decided to head across the street to Shoeless Joe's at Orchard Heights & Yonge Street in Aurora. We were seated right away. This is a relatively small restaurant compared to others in town (i.e. East Side Marios) and have always had decent service here. Jaclyn, our server, took our drink order right away. The drinks came pretty quickly and she gave us additional time for my girlfriend to decide on an order.

My girlfriend had the classic burger with fries and I had the triple play burger with fries. The food came quick and was decently cooked. We took our time and Jaclyn checked in once to see if we needed anything else after she delivered the food. We both enjoyed our meal.

Following our meal Jaclyn inquired if we would like dessert or anything else. We politely got the bill. We tipped her fairly well and left. Jaclyn was a great server in that she kept things moving a decent pace and we never had to wait long for service when required. The food was well prepared as well.

Hopefully, one day we will get to King Henry's Arms, but since it seems like it is the most popular place in town, we don't mind having old standbys like Sholess Joe's where good service and decent food are normal.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

6 Year Old Vandal? New York has gone to chalk

A six year old girl was out on her front stoop in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn within New York City doing what any other six year would do, help her mom redecorate the boring concrete with run of the mill sidewalk chalk.

The six year old girl is disrupted by some idiot working for New York City's departmant of sanitation who hands her mom a letter stating that unless she removes her daughter's artwork, that enforcement action will be undertaken against the mother by the city.

Apparently the City of New York has nothing better to do than harass a six year old passing some quality time on her front stoop and nearby sidwalk with some sidewalk chalk. Horrors! This kid isn't hanging out at the store asking for spare change or raising a ruckus on the New York City Subway.

The buffoon from the city said enforcement would be undertaken under a New York City law that was passed in 2005 saying:

"any letter, word, name, number, symbol, slogan, message, drawing, picture, writing … that is drawn, painted, chiseled, scratched, or etched on a commercial building or residential building.”

Further on in the bureaucratise of this law it states:

"...not consented to by the owner of the commercial building or residential building."

The daughter was being nailed on the first part of this law while the city idiot, nonetheless employed by the city itself, failed to even look at the second part of the law. This is obvious because if the mother, who owns the property, had of been asked if she consented to the chalk drawings obviously would have said "yes I do. " The "yes I approve" from the mother would have easily cleared this young suspect of the crime under the section requiring lack of consent. But obviously that would be too easy.

The city of New York instead wishes to waste their taxpayer's money on chasing a young six year old holding a piece of chalk. Whats next? Enforcement money being asked for by the city for preventing Staples from selling your basic sidewalk chalk?

Doesn't the city have anything better to do like cleaning the subway stations of the gum marks, sticky floors, the graffitti, etc.? How about educating students about manners and the importance of a good education. Or how about encouraging school aged children to get active in physical education lessons considering the increase in obesity in the United States is at epidemic proportions. These are only a couple of suggestions that would improve the city rather than checking up on the activities of a law abiding six year old.

Apparently the city has nothing better to do than harass a six year old and her mother over a bunch of harmless chalk drawings that will dissappear during the next rainstorm. What's next? The city hunting down six year olds for not having a vendor's permit to hold a lemonade sale or a building permit for that snow man?

What a Barrel of Pickles

Last night my girlfriend and I headed out to dinner at the Pickle Barrel restaurant at Promenade Mall. We had hoped to have a nice dinner out before heading home for the evening. I had been to a nother Pickle Barrel restaurant before with my fellow coworkers and thought the food and service was excellent. The Promenade Mall location was on our way home so we decided to try this other location out.

What a disaster it turned out to be!

We arrived and were seated at 6:00 P.M. The hostess had a long line up and several reservations to deal with. There didn't seem to be any help for her, but she did keep plugging away and was very courteous about it.

My girlfriend and I pondered over our menus for about five minutes before putting them down. We waited until 6:10 P.M. to even know who our server was! Mitchell, our server, then took our drink order. Now normally in my restaurenting experience drink orders are normally taken at most five minutes after the people sit down. This got my ears perked up that something was wrong.

Perhaps another inclination that we were not in for at least decent service was Mitchell, even before approaching our table for the drink order, was seen playing around with a three year old a table behind us.

Next when Mitchell brought us our drinks he explained there were no large cups left and that he would have to keep refilling our small cups. He even switched our drinks around so my girlfriend and I had each other's drinks instead of our own. We quickly rectified that problem after Mitchell left our table.

At 6:25 P.M. Mitchell refillled my 7 Up. However, instead of getting a 7 up, I recieved a large glass of water! Nice, after paying the usual outrageous restaurant price of $1.99 for watered down pop with free refills, they forget to get you the same thing to refill!

After a few dirty looks to Mitchell, I flagged him down and asked why I received water. He quickly got a new 7 Up in a large glass.

The food came about 6:35 P.M. which was adequate timing between ordering and receiving of the food. However, I was a little dissapointed with what I ordered:

CANADIAN CHEDDAR CHEESE BURGER ~ 7.99

Original deli burger topped with Canadian cheddar.Served with French fries & coleslaw.

Add bacon...1.00

The above is what the menu said I ordered. The burger was decent and I added the bacon for an extra dollar. However, there number of fries was dissapointing. My girlfriend ordered:

MUSHROOM & SWISS BURGER ~ 8.99

Original deli burger topped with Swiss cheese, grilled onion and mushrooms, served with French fries & coleslaw.

And got way more fries than I did! Basically both orders of burgers were the same except hers had added mushrooms, swiss cheese (instead of chedder), grilled onoin and mushrooms. So why does she get twice as many fries as I did? I didn't question it verbally with the waiter, but my mind was now not leaning towards ever returning to this restaurant again.

Finally, after we finished our meal, we asked for a refill on our water and 7 Up. It took Mitchell another five minutes to complete this task and then get our bill.

Our bill was screwed up. On the bill for my order to add the bacon the price was $1.99 instead of the $1.00 listed in the menu. I got up immediately to speak with the manager. The manager gave us a discount of $1.00 off the price we paid (including taxes).

My girlfriend and I gathered up our cash for the bill. I approached Mitchell to pay for the bill. I asked for change, he searched and said he didn't have any below a five. A waiter not having any change below a five? HELLO! Something is wrong! Usually wait staff have gobs of coin as that is what tips are usually done out in. I grabbed the cash and receipt and asked him to bring the change to our seat. My girlfriend and I refigured out the cash and got it to within ten cents and left.

To say the least we both hope Mitchell enjoys his ten cent tip. Do we care? No not really as we will never be back to this location again.

A walk in woods on a fine Autumn Day

Last Sunday my girlfriend and I headed for Case Woodlot in Aurora to check out the fall colours. Here is what we saw:







More photos of our hike in the woods can be found in the Aurora area of the Scrapbook section of my website.