Back in town

Back in Toronto after a few very cold days in the countryside outside of Ottawa with family. A highlight of the week was the lighting (not by me) of an outside fire with the help of a jug of chainsaw oil, a spray can of some other kind of highly combustible lubricant (the flame moving very quickly up the stream of oil to ignite the glove holding the can), and, finally, a small cup of gasoline (which went up with a very satisfying whoof!).

Anyway, it looks like I picked the right week to be away from the city:

While most people are uncomfortably hugging their relatives and McDonald's employees are still rolling their eyes when you ask for a free smile, six UBC students/Torontonians were out at Yonge and Dundas yesterday voluntarily hugging people.

[...]

Huggers have been spotted in the downtown core prior to yesterday, but the "Hug Master" of this current escapade is known as Matthew Corker. He started last week around Vancouver and is on his way to bust out the hugs in New York next week. Now what's special about this wonderful and loving homosapien is that he told us something a little hurtful. Honest, but still hurtful. He said that upon his travels and comparatively speaking: Vancouver was more open to the free hugs than Toronto. Yeah, that's what he said.

(from Torontoist.com)

You know, I was looking forward to maybe reading this book if I got the chance, but now I feel as though I need to – just to get the bad taste out of my mouth at the thought of a bunch of clean-cut, super-enthusiastic Vancouverites handing out free hugs.