TIFF Love.

 [ Girls on film. Girls on film. ]

A busy-busy week is preventing me from getting in on much of the TIFF action. Really. Alex left today after a crazy, crazy weekend of packing and tour-planning (*sniff, sniff*). The rest of my week is full, too, with:

Real-work temping

Make-believe-journalist sleuthing

Girl coffee-dates

Scary medical tests for inexplicable symptoms (no, I'm not a hypochondriac if there are ACTUALLY a thousand things wrong with me)

Bootcamp

Brunches

Hip-hop karaoke

and....

Job interviews (yes!)

Any small gaps in my schedule must be earmarked for dog-love. The poor pooches are so used to having a full-time stay-home mom and dad. This week will be hard for them. And me too: single-mom-dom is tough.

 [ sad: the puppy condition ]

BUT I did get a small taste of TIFF-love via some good bandwife and BlogTO hookups:

One.

Friday I snagged tix to the Vitaminwater late-night party which ended up being lame despite a valiant effort to pull off a cool 70s/futuristic backyard theme. 

 The party was all gravy, no meat. And too much advertising. Attendance was poor and there were no celebs in sight. Not that I'm starstruck in any way, but you'd expect even some local celeb-action at these shindigs. I dragged Miss M out after work - I was lucky to land a plus-one on my first try (she's reliable and spontaneous like that). 

[ My hot date. Wowza. ]

While the party wasn't "fun" per se, we had our own brand which, as usual, erred on the side of ridiculous. I got to rock leopard tights and take red carpet pics, too.

Twitter buzz indicated that Strombo's party around the corner was THE place to be, and while furious texting did nothing to get us a guest list spot, we faked our way past two levels of bouncers and event staff with sheer babe-power and confident lying. This completely out-of-character maneuver was amply fueled by cleverly named Vitaminwater cocktails at the previous party. The term "open-bar" is not my friend. Strombo was at least able to provide minor shoulder-rubbing with somewhat-celebs. The whole thing was absurd and amusing. 

We abused the free photo booth, dragging blogger Casie Stewart and TV host Bruce Turner (really, such a super nice and genuine person) in with us.  Chris Hyndman applied my lip gloss for me, sloppily. AND, I may or may not have caused ex-"boyfriend" trouble for my friend (sorry Joey, will explain later). See? So, so random.The lameness of our exploits made them all the more hilarious. 

Uncharacteristically, I arrived home at 4am - at least 5 hours past my usual Friday bedtime, and 3 hours later than Alex who had returned that night from playing the K-OS show in Kingston. So much ridiculousness. For the 934th time in my life, I vowed to never drink again.

Two.

Alex's film debuted at TIFF this weekend! OK, not HIS film. Not even Sweet Thing's film. But the film that featured their song like 500 times! We were invited yesterday as guests to a pre-release-date screening for radio winners. Easy A was incredible! So great in terms of teen movies - almost as good as Mean Girls (a film that also had a great "adult" supporting cast). Stanley Tucci, Patricia Clarkson, Thomas Hayden Church - amazing performances. I am SO excited for everyone to see it!! It's released this Friday, September 17th. Go!

 I am sad to miss checking out any other TIFF flicks. Next year... Any good renters for after the fest?

---

Just back from bootcamp, waiting (im)patiently for a postponed Skype date with my West-Coast hubby. 

Can I please offer marriage advice? Do not pick a fight with your husband the DAY BEFORE he leaves for two weeks. You will sorely regret it. We went to bed mad for the first time in the history of our four-and-a-half year relationship. We only had 3 minutes of morning-breath-scented making-up before he was gone. I cried and then almost slept in for my temp job. Never go to bed angry. We're obviously way-OK now but I hate that our last half-day together was spent in fuming silence. Over nothing.

Being apart is hard. Is that why I pick fights when it gets close? Misguided emotions? 

Gah. It's only been 11 hours. Only 288 hours to go. I miss him.

[ Hey Victoria, go see Sweet Thing and Justin Nozuka tomorrow. 'Cause I can't. ]

(p.s. now that I am tweeting regularly, it's hard NOT to use #hashtags and @symbols in everything I write!)