Ok, my whereabouts for the past three days can not be 100% predicted based on my new status as an owner of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 for the PS2, as the following will indicate. More on the game later, let’s move on to a weekend in the life…
Friday night: it’s drinking time, and drink we did. A case of beer and a new videogame or two probably works out to the cost of a night actually spent in a bar, so we went with that plan and got the aforementioned THPS3 along with some football thing that I won’t name, because I lost heavily. I discover the joy that is THPS3 and ramble drunkenly that I want a skateboard of my very own. Good times.
Saturday morning: early Saturday morning. Heavy early Saturday morning. I’m still drunk Saturday morning. It’s time to haul everything over to AngelA’s art show, about 3 clicks away. Lacking a vehicle, we booked a minivan taxi. Who shows up half an hour late. Half an hour of negative sleep late. Since I still have a few brilliant brain cells left, I elect to ride my bike to the show so we have a way of getting out of the post-industrial wasteland that the site sits on in the even that we need anything, like, say, lunch. Ok, I’m now chasing a minivan on a bike that I’ve been on for about an hour this year, it’s early, I’m either drunk or hung over, and I’m wearing a t-shirt. Oh yeah, I’m feeling good. At the show someone from another booth lends me an extra jacket. It seems that the pastel green towel I had clipped on like a cape was a fashion faux pas. Heh, artists.
Saturday day: I discovered that biking in Toronto is actually fun. I don’t know why, but it seems easier than it used to be. I was gunning up and down streets like I actually knew what I was doing, and I even made decent time. Of course, after a half hour of hard (for me) cycling, I discovered that the store I was going to had closed. The way back was kinda downhill. I also discovered that my water bottle cage will not hold onto bottles picked up at the convenience store, because my drink was gone when I got to the art site. It’s possible that I was a victim of some really fast pickpocket. I will name her Soosan.
Sunday: Word on the Street, the annual festival where I can justify buying anything with writing on it. Somehow I managed to subscribe to three magazines and I bought copious amounts of back issues. I also grabbed three books, all of which I expect to read in the next decade. AngelA scored a copy of that Coupland book that Shawn was all happy about. Yep, readers are leaders or something.
The rest of the available time, since walking seemed so strange after biking, was spent on the multiply aforementioned THPS3. I now understand why people play video games, and I even see why people skateboard. To be honest, I’d been using my PS2 pretty much exclusively for DVDs, with a little Grand Theft Auto 3 every once in awhile. THPS3 is an actually fun game. You can do stuff that’s way cooler than the stuff I see people do across the street from my office, like jump and land. It’s not even oppressively hard. Sure, it’s hard, but it’s not one of those games where you’re either good at it or you spend your whole time swearing and not having fun. I say that with some credibility behind me, because I’m not reknowned for being very good at video games in general.
So yeah, drinking, biking, setting up art, reading (or pre-reading buying), and video-skateboarding. That be the weekend. The rest of the week has just been cancelled, because it won’t be as eventful, and I’d rather be playing videogames.