Weekend Round Up: Movies, Gardening, Bloodsports

Friday: By the time Friday rolled around I was dead dog tired. Never did recover from our whirlwind trip to the Saguenay and I trapped in a bad habits of going into work late and leaving late. After work I walked down to Mile End to buy cosmetics at the organic grocery store we found a couple of weeks earlier. Called L. at home and he met me there so we could find a place to eat together. On the way to the Polish restaurant/general store L. had spotted on his way to meet me we ran into an old friend of my sister's. I told her that my sis would be visiting me in June and she gave me her number so they could hook-up.

At the Polish place we got the platter for two, which consisted of two kinds of perogies, cabbage rolls, Polish sausage, goulash, potato dumplings & something called "hunter's stew". It all had a wonderful homemade taste and was all together delicious and extremely filling. Actually, a little too filling for me, if truth be told. That said, I would gladly go back for their chicken perogies any day.

After dinner we went back to the house so L. could change as we decided that at least he should go to the party we'd been invited to by Mark & Andrea. I was just too tired. L. walked me to the video store so I could grab some DVDs I knew he wouldn't want to watch and he continued on to the Metro. I settled on an eclectic triple bill of Primer, Paprika and The Sea Hawk.

After thoroughly bending my brain with the first too films, I was still up watching ol' Errol Flinn when L. came home around 2 AM. Turns out the couple with the two cats who were on the flight from Vancouver with us were at the party. Small world.

Saturday: Since the weather was still good we decided to focus to getting stuff together for our garden since L.'s dad would be arriving soon to help us with it and we hadn't even started demolishing the faux deck yet.

After a surprisingly tasty breakfast at a new place on Parc in Mile End, we opted to pop in to Rona to start amassing supplies. We got a crowbar to start the demo, as well as planters and lots of dirt. I also grabbed a bunch of seeds and a little rake and a trowel to start working the soil.

When we got home, I determined that we didn't have enough soil and we also needed some rocks for drainage so we ventured out again to Home Depot to pick up the rest of what we needed. L. and I both put out our backs carrying home big heavy bags of dirt and rocks. I spent the rest of the afternoon building my Martha style tiered planter (thanks for the tip, Bean!) and cleaning the garbage and weeds out of our front "yard". L. meanwhile took charge of cleaning the inside of the house in anticipation of our hockey watching guests.

I was anticipating an easy Habs victory, meaning that they could move on to the next round of the playoffs. But no. They let an early lead go as we all howled and wailed at the television, deeply disturbing poor K.C. I think he was just upset we hadn't gotten him a little Canadiens jersey yet.

After the game Andrea had to make an appearance at a birthday party and I convinced everyone once else to follow me to the creepy sports bar near our place to watch the Georges St-Pierre/Matt Sera UFC match. Yeah, that's right, UFC. I had recently discovered Georges St-Pierre on RDS late one Friday night about a month ago. Actually, the fight I saw was the titled bought he had lost to Matt Sera where St-Pierre had been strongly favoured, but had gotten his ass handed to him in violent and mildly disturbing fashion. Hearing that a rematch was on the horizon and knowing that it was going to be held in St-Pierre's hometown of Montreal I was very interested in seeing the fight, but after the Canadiens' shocking loss, it was imperative. I had to see someone from Montreal win something that night!

We quickly found a spot amongst our fellow depressed Canadiens fans and settled in for the fight. There were four matches before the main event and we quickly determined that we could guess the winner from their entrance theme. Dude who entered to the Verve Pipe did not do well. Our boy St-Pierre came out to a French Rap song, so we knew he'd do well.

There were a number of Canadians fighting, including St-Pierre. The first fight involved a kid from Toronto named Mark Bocek who lost, but he stayed in all three rounds despite crying blood through two of them, so he did okay. However, this show of true Canadian grit augmented our disappointment at Kaleb Starnes of Surrey's performance, dancing around so his opponent, Nate Quarry, couldn't even take a swing. My other faves (incidentally they also won their respective fights) were Mancurian Michael Bisping and Rich Franklin.

Finally it was time for the main event. Everyone was channeling their hockey frustrations towards Matt Sera. Although he comes from NY, to us he represented Boston. And we howled with blood lust as Georges St-Pierre charged into the octagon and pummeled Sera like he should have the first time. While Alain was hoping they would go at least three rounds, it was called near the end of the second round, St-Pierre winning on a TKO.

Sadly, Andrea arrived just as the match finished, so she missed out on our vicarious vengence. Alain and MC had to go home, but Mark and Andrea followed us back home to watch a movie. Being that Andrea needed some serious cheering up we pulled out the Showgirls box set again, although this time we abstained from the drinking game. However, we did play a quick round of Pin the Pasties on Elizabeth Berkley just for fun.

At about 3:30 AM, Mark and Andrea said their farewells and L. and I crawled into bed.

Sunday: Annie called at 10:30 AM to see if we were still up for breakfast before salsa dancing. Being that neither of us could move, we opted to skip both, knowing that skipping a second week of dancing lessons essentially meant we were dropping out of the class. But we promised instead to join up the next classic ballroom class offered at the same studio in May.

After lying in bed as long as we could we moved to the couch and watch Right At Your Door, a surprisingly effective low-budget apocalyptic flick we'd missed at last year's Fantasia. While the ending was a little too Twilight Zone for my liking, it was still quite well done and I totally recommend checking it out, especially if you have a crush on Rory Cochran like I do.

After the movie we decided to get dressed and located some cash, cheap food and more DVDs. We ended up at Le Roi Du Smoked Meat in St-Hubert plaza where we ate our meal in the company of an Italian bridal shower upstairs. Luckily they had Mulberry Street, another one we missed at Fantasia which L. has been obsessed with, at the video store. I also got to pick a film and for some reason opted for Richard Kelly's epic mess, Southland Tales.

After enduring Southland Tales, where about every three minutes L. and I would look at each other and say "Uh, what?" we opted to at least make a real dinner to make up for our complete lack of motivation in every other aspect of our day. Then it was on to Mulberry Street, which did not disappoint. If you like old school survivalist horror, see this movie. I highly, highly recommend it.

Sadly our viewing of the film was interrupted by a mini-infestation of some sort of horrible multi-legged bug I had never seen before. They came one by one, but there were three of them. Each dispatched in turn by L.'s boot and quickly disposed of so we knew it wasn't just the same one. Even K.C. was scared of these things, backing away as is skited across the floor. Somehow, despite all this we managed to get to bed a decent hour so that we could start the week in better shape than the last one.