I woke up violently ill and have been trying to recover all day, but I feel really dizzy and my stomach is still churning. Hopefully this is a day-long thing and will be gone by tomorrow so that Andrea and I can enjoy the city.

She's an awesome girl, taking care of me, getting me Gravol, watching movies and TV shows... it's great to have someone like her around because I can turn into a real sook when I get too sick.

I made my first foray onto the transit system today in order to meet Andrea at the downtown bus terminal. 41Keele South bus to the Keele stop on the Bloor-Danforth line, then east to the Spadina transfer to the Yonge-University-Spadina line, then south to the St. Patrick stop. Piece of cake. The only misdirection I had came from trying to WALK to the terminal after surfacing on Dundas. I don't trust my legs. Toronto looks grey and lived-in from a bus window, as if the walls of every building have peeled away ten times over. What are the buildings that line St. Clair West trying to become in their apparent acts of transformation? What's at their core?

Mike lent me this book by Will Ferguson called "Generica" and it's quite funny. It's about a guy who works for a publishing house and has a gift for simile (his manager's hair is pulled back into a ponytail - like a chihuahua's penis). Apparently he publishes a self-help book by a man named Tupac Soiree that actually works and causes the world to fall into chaos. Imagine a world without problems.

Andrea and I have otherwise been bumming around all day, watching episodes of The Office, waiting for Jim and Pam to finally get together. We drank and chilled with her friend Jenna for a bit. Tomorrow we're hooking up with Matt and Kim for some good clean literary fun courtesy of House of Anansi. More on that later.

I need a haircut drastically.

More details on the apartment: the balcony is a tiny thing, but you can see the CN Tower looming in the distance, which is invariably cool. All of the balcony railings on the east side of the building are painted either red, yellow, or in my cousin's case, blue and make the wall look like a playworld from the street. Little kids who walk by must comment on how they want to live here when they grow up, in the building with the brightly coloured windows. The main entrance looks very condo-ish and oddly shaped.

I went to the adjacent wholesale grocery store today and resisted the urge to buy a box of chocolate bars for twenty dollars. I did, however, purchase ingredients for my first culinary "creation": Tomato-Basil Pasta, which I pretty much ruined by putting in far too much basil and undercooking the noodles a little. Jason seemed to like it, though. He put in dibs on the leftovers. I will not let this defeat discourage me.

I spent a great portion of the day looking up schedule information for classes (they'll be falling on Monday, Tuesday and Friday) and found out that my classes don't start until the 10th. I completed my Fall term schedule, filling in the one gap I had with African-Canadian Literature, which is being taught by George Elliot Clarke (!). To have both Clarke and Linda Hutcheon as professors in the same semester is... intimidating, but exciting. I also spent time looking at transit maps and pondering how I'll be getting to certain locations over the next few days. It's going to be a lot easier once I start thinking of the city in terms of north, south, east, and west. Tomorrow I'll be meeting Andrea at the downtown bus terminal; she's going to spend some time with me here before she heads off to Germany for the year.

Other than that, I've been watching episodes of The Office on Jay's computer, and downloading episodes of Flight of the Conchords to keep me smiling.