Toronto

I’ve been to Toronto a few times: Billy and I went for our first trip together, Family vacations, stopovers at the airport (which doesn’t count towards the goal of visiting all the capitals of Canada!). I never really explored the city; we always had an agenda. I wanted this trip to be a little different than the others.

In 2010, I was flying to Jamaica for a wedding and the only available, reasonably priced flight the travel agent could find for me was from Toronto. I decided that I may as well take the opportunity to explore Ontario’s Capital City and fly in a couple days early.

I booked myself in for 2 nights at the Canadiana Backpackers Inn. The location was perfect to allow me to explore the city on foot.

A few of the things I did while flying by the seat of my pants in Toronto:

• Walked a lot.
• Met up with a couple Flickr contacts and we walked around the Eaton Centre and that part of town
• Had lunch at 360: The rotating restaurant atop the CN Tower.
• Watched the Blue Jays get ready for a game from the glass floor of the CN Tower
• Strolled around Kensington Market – this was probably my favourite part
• Walked on the Canadian Walk of Fame and checked out some ‘stars’
• Took lots of photos “from the hip”

Give Blood

The whole process of one person donating takes about an hour and a half from start to finish; It’s not a big commitment: It’s something like 2 hours every 3 months which works out to only about a half day per year. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather spend a half day of my year saving lives than doing something annoying like cleaning my kitchen!

Approximately every minute of every day, someone in Canada needs blood. In fact, according to a recent poll, 52 per cent of Canadians say they, or a family member, have needed blood or blood products for surgery or for medical treatment.

That’s a big blood requirement! I can’t remember if there was a specific motivating factor that convinced me to finally start donating but because I couldn’t think of a good reason not to donate I had added “give blood” to my life list.

Reasons to donate:

• Save Lives! (that makes you a REAL superhero!)
• Free Cookies! (all the oreo cookies you can eat! before AND after!)
• Free Soup! (if you like that sort of thing)
• Free Cupcakes! (occasionally)
• Nice People! (the nurses are super nice and friendly and so are the other donors!)

I’m hoping to get to at least 100 donations in my lifetime. My first donation was on June 29th, 2007.

My blood donation milestones
01 donation – Jun-29-2007
05 donations – Jul-16-2009
10 donations – Dec-30-2011
15 donations – Oct-06-2012
20 donations – Coming Soon
30 donations –
40 donations –
50 donations –

Win the lottery

When I put “Win the Lottery” on my life list – I didn’t specify it had to be the big jackpot.

The first win came about in a group at work in May of 2003; I think there were 6 of us. It was pretty exciting to come to work to find out we’d won a little bit of money. It worked out to about $400 each. Not a jackpot by any means – but it did allow me to scratch “own a digital camera” off the list.

But the win I had in November of 2005 has to be (by far!) the most exciting and nerve wracking win of anything I’ve ever experienced. It gave me a glimpse into the emotions one might go through when you win “the big one”.

It was an Atlantic 6/49. The prize structure for this draw is defined with a top prize of one million dollars but I didn’t know exactly how it worked. What I did know is that in “regular” 6/49 – matching 5 numbers means you’ve probably won a nice little chunk of change.

I remember waking up and sitting at the computer with my ticket to check the numbers, what happened next probably went a little like this:

1st number: check.
2nd number: check.
3rd number: check.
4th number: check.
Holy jesus! What is going on?!
5th number: nope.
6th number: check.
Holy Mother! No. I gotta check those again.

2nd number: yup.
3rd number: yup.
4th number: yup.
*shaking begins*
5th number: nope.
6th number: yup.

I think that at this point, I ran out to the living room where Billy was probably playing on the Playstation and told him that “I’ve won some money. Holy mother Mary, I’ve just matched 5 out of 6 numbers on my lottery ticket. I don’t know what that means. But Oh My God what is going on!?” He probably told me to relax and check again. I looked up the payout table:

$649 bucks! Wow! Well – it’s not going to pay off my car – but I’m not complaining.

After this experience, I can only begin to imagine what sort of disbelief a person must go through when they match 6 for 6.

It’s certainly an experience I’d love to live through again!

Discussing Opportunities

I decided to start this little website (journal/diary/blog/reminiscences/call-it-what-you-will) because I wanted a place where I could share stories regarding some of the items on my lifelist.

I’ll be able to post pictures and give a little bit more detail regarding the things I’ve done and the things I want to do.

If there’s something in particular that you’d like to have me write about – don’t hesitate to drop me a quick e-mail. You can add comments to existing stories by clicking on the name of the post or clicking the “comment” link at the bottom of each post.

Look around. Comment. Carpe Diem!