So what the heck have I been doing for the past three weeks that has prevented me from regaling you with tales of yore and derring-do? Well, work, mostly. Lots and lots of work. But it’s all cool and good, and I’m definitely much happier now than I’ve been in a while vis-a-vis le travail. Thanks for asking.

But, as Jack Nicholson said so eloquently, “All work and no play”… and after staring bug-eyed at CSS rendering bugs, Movable Type limitations, and the evil rat bastard that is Internet Explorer 5 for the Mac, I had to get some play in my system, stat. Renée has a very low tolerance for me busting down doors with axes and typing maniacally at a worn-out Underwood while drooling uncontrollably. She’s funny that way.

So it was the giddy rush of The Incredibles on Friday night, chased down Saturday evening by the deep blue sadness of Million Dollar Baby. Today, we ambled our way down to the St. Lawrence Market area, more to get out of the house than to shop. There was fog in the air, and an invigorating chill tickling the earlobes that made you glad you had blood in your veins, and a beautiful girl holding your hand.

Of course, like good little non-native Torontonians we never knew that the Market was closed on Sundays and Mondays - who knew?

It’s interesting to me that the front page article in today’s Sunday Star (which, by the way, is absolutely kicking ass with its new, gorgeous design and rejigged magazine-style content) was a big article on how the rest of Canada views Toronto, entitled Why do they hate Toronto? Of course, the article was replete with cries of unfriendly! and self-centred! and that hoary chestnut, uptight!

Being a non-native, it’s easy sometimes to see why people view Toronto this way. Every city has its share of uptight, self-centred, unfriendly assholes, and Toronto happens to have quite a few of them. But it’s also quite sad and equally ignorant how many people, who have never actually been to Toronto or spent any meaningful amount of time here, feel so strongly that this place is deserving to be known as the asshat of Canada.

Ah well. All I know is that on Friday afternoon I was riding the streetcar. I could hear a Chinese family talking in front of me, while girls gossiped loudly in Portuguese to my right, and two men held hands quietly just over my shoulder. Earlier that day, I heard Spanish and Italian and Arabic and Hebrew and French while walking down the street. Everyone is just living their lives and getting along. There’s outlandishly foreign soda pop available at the corner store, and my eyes are never bored. It makes me glad to be here, asshat of Canada or not.