Binge & Purge

This past weekend was incredible for unloading a lot of crap that I had piling up in my room, mainly clothing that I had attached ridiculous sentimental value to but hadn't worn in at least three years. It was unnecessary for it to be clogging my closet and close to breaking my dresser. The purge started around 11pm on Friday and only took about an hour to complete. At the end of it I had two full garbage bags of clothing to donate and all the clothes I actually wear immediately visible to my eye upon opening my closet doors. I was so happy I can't even begin to tell you what it was like. I mostly felt unburdened because with all the moving around I have done, I have accumulated a lot of extra crap that I don't really need.
Sometimes I daydream about finally moving out of my parents house for good and when I do go, I know there is going to be a lot of stuff coming with me, although I hope it is fair to say that now it will mostly be my books.
I was actually kind of surprised that I had so much to get rid of because at every holiday for the past three years, I have come home and done a spring cleaning of stuff that I knew I didn't want or need anymore, so I have actually gotten rid of quite a bit in increments. Obviously, I was still hoarding quite a bit of it and had managed to jam it into the small confines of the closet a lot better than I had imagined. It was a little insane to see the pile of empty hangers on my bed afterwards, but I am so glad that stuff is leaving. It just represented a part of my life that is over and if I ever mourn any of that stuff, well I guess I always have pictures.

On the binge-ing side of things, I read in the paper last week that Abercrombie & Fitch's first Canadian store opened in Sherway Gardens at the end of last month. I thought A&F would have been in Canada years ago after seeing the successful crossover of American Eagle Outfitters, but who knows or really cares why the delay. They are here now and I am willing to bank that by June there will at least be another three stores in malls throughout the GTA. I predict the Eaton Centre downtown, Yorkdale, and possibly either Fairview or Scarborough Town Centre.
Now of course with Michaela finally arriving home for her Reading Week this weekend, we decided that we were going to go and check out the new store at Sherway. It was actually quite large as most A&F stores in the US are and the prices were comparable to what AE is charging for their clothing here. Michaela picked up an awesome jean jacket that I might consider looking into as well, but the price of that item is a little off-putting to my budget right now. She, however, could justify it as she has searched high and low for years for the perfect jean jacket, and both my cousin Erin and I agreed that she couldn't leave without it. Thankfully, I only bought that cute white Olympic hat with the red maple leaves on it. That item is so awesome and reasonably priced... I am glad HBC did our Olympic gear because it's way more affordable than Roots ever was. And they had the ingenuity to hire Tu Ly, the designer who started our obsession with Olympic gear back in 1998 with the Nagano games. Besides, was anyone really impressed with what Roots put out for the USA this year?
Canada House in Turin is apparently selling out of all the Canadian Olympic wear... with a lot of it going to Italians and Olympians from other countries, although apparently the NBC anchors have snagged some of the sheepskin trapper hats. I wonder if they've actually sported them yet since they do have 'CANADA' emblazoned on the front.

Gosh and I went out on Saturday night to 7 West, our favourite 24 hour martini bar. We mainly went with the intention to have a good drunken mope about Valentine's Day, which we did, but then we sweetened it a bit with cake. We both recommend the carrot cake and banana-chocolate cake if you're interested...
Later on we met up with J. at a small lounge called Pur on King St. W. It's nice for a place that is just getting off the ground... but I assume improvements are still forthcoming. It's got three floors to it which I find perilous when drinking and apparently you aren't even supposed to be carrying drinks up and down the stairs between floors with you, but I didn't see that enforced.
I imagine it will be lovely in the summer when the plate windows are taken off so more air will be circulating through it. The major downside to it for me was that people were allowed to smoke inside because it is designated as a 'patio' even with all the windows being sealed tight for the winter. That was fucking awful and contributed to a powerful headache that I had even before beginning the evening with martinis. To top it off, some guy who obviously thought he had magical hands tried to massage my neck which only succeeded in creeping me out and making my exit that much quicker. It was probably good I left when I did because I woke up on Sunday feeling much more hungover than I thought I would be.
The one thing that I do remember clearly from Saturday night was J. telling me that he is in possession of some incriminating photos of myself and a certain partner in crime from the Berkeley bash in December. Now I have an irrational need to get my hands on those before they get published for the world to see. I don't necessarily want to see them more than actually destroy them. They can't be that bad, but then again every other photo from that night has been HIDEOUS so, I really think it's in my best interest to know what other people may have on me.

And on one last purging note, where the fuck was Team Canada in that hockey game against Finland yesterday? Even when the camera panned to Wayne Gretzky he looked like he'd rather be anywhere but watching Canada suck it up against Suomi. Pat Quinn was characteristically enraged and red in the face. He must have felt like he was watching hockey in Toronto rather than Torino. All I can say is if Team Canada has to lose, at least contain it to the preliminaries and get your fucking acts together. On that note, good luck to the women in the hunt for gold today.