Okay, so I am so so happy! Another great, positively glowing blog entry! Two in a row! Chris and the possibility of Guelph combined have given me so much to hope for. I feel like I did back in high school; content with my life, completely and overwhelmingly happy, and a bright and hopeful outlook for the future. I haven't felt this way since September. It makes me want to cry... happy tears, of course!

Yesterday turned out to be fantastic. It started out frustrating, because I was running late the entire day, but after I saw Chris, things looked up. In the morning, I had to go drop off my lab reports that I had spent so long doing and met up with Jacquelyn for that. She needed to hand hers in, too, but she didn't tell me until that morning that she hadn't finished the lab report and needed to stay in the library to finish it before handing it in. I was planning on getting there at 11:30am sharp, handing it in, and being back by 12:15pm. Because of Jacquelyn taking forever to finish the assignment, I ended up being a half-hour late. I was supposed to get back to my grandma's to put together my outfit, clean my room and fill out Chris' card. He was getting dropped off by his mom at Yorkdale at two, and I didn't get back to my grandma's until shortly after one, so I had to rush around, throwing things into random drawers to make my room look spotless and completely organized before trying to gather the exact outfit I wanted to wear, plus brush my teeth and fix my hair all nice.

Now, don't go thinking that I feel I have to dress up for Chris. That's not it at all. It's just that usually when I see him, I'm wearing jeans and a t-shirt with holey sneakers and my hair thrown into a ponytail (if it's long enough) at most. I feel completely beautiful when I'm with him, even in my old barn clothes, but when a special occasion comes around, I like to put a lot of effort into looking nice (minus makeup. I hate the stuff). I really wanted to make this day amazing for him and really make him feel special and like his 20th birthday was important (which it is), so I made a really big deal out of it. He's always so sweet and caring towards me and I really wanted him to know how much I appreciate it and how much I care about him, too. Plus, I also really missed him. I hadn't seen him in a long time.

Anyway, I was still filling out his card after I cleaned and got dressed when he texted me, saying he was at Yorkdale. I left as soon as I finished writing the card, but it took a few minutes, because I always write novels in his cards. When I finally got out the door, I missed the Faywood bus, so I had to walk all the way to Sheppard in heels (I'm very bad at walking in heels. I tend to trip a lot... and the heels I was wearing were only an inch high). Luckily that one came fairly quickly. I just got the end of Frequent Service hours, so I got lucky. When I finally got off the subway at Yorkdale and met Chris, I felt so awful for being late. We rushed back to my grandma's house, where...

DA DA DA DUUUUUUMMMM!!!! The epic birthday surprise shall be revealed!!! Chris and I got back and I eagerly pulled a chocolate cheesecake that I baked myself out of the fridge! I'm a terrible cook. I have a hard time boiling water properly, but I really felt bad for not being able to buy him a cake and I knew it would be so special and mean so much to him to know that I worked really hard to do something I'm not very good at in order to make him happy. He says the cake was delicious but I'm not sure I believe him. I had some myself, and it tasted okay to me, but I think I heard something somewhere about how stuff you cook yourself always tastes better to you because you put the effort into making it or something like that. Anyway, I did err a bit on the cake. I ran out of batter, so the cake had no top layer. It was just the batter, then cookie bits, then icing. I also didn't know that you're supposed to make cakes upside-down, cook them, then pop them out of the pan onto a plate so it can be iced and decorated, then cut, so I just made it right-side up in the pan so we had to use a spoon to shovel it out of the pan. I was actually really upset with myself that I screwed that up, but I guess the important thing is that Chris liked his cake and that I worked hard on it for him.

After we had the cake, we watched TV for a little while before we headed out to have dinner and see the play. It was at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in the Distillery District. Chris and I had been to the same theatre before to see a different play, but it was during the winter and was already dark when we got there, so we couldn't really see much of the area. Going there in the daylight, Chris and I realized how beautiful it was. The Distillery District is just a bunch of old factories from the 1800's that have been turned into restaurants and shops and theatres. It's kind of a trendy place now. The thing that makes it so beautiful is that they haven't changed the original architechture of the buildings or as far as I can tell, done anything at all to the buildings that weren't absolutely necessary. There's no cars in the Distillery District, and it's all beautiful cobblestone. You really do feel like you've gone back in time somewhat. It's gorgeous. Chris and I ended up eating at a little café, I think it was called Café Uno. It was very nice and Chris and I had a very nice dinner complete with Jones Sodas.

The theatre itself is very nice and classy, too. It has a café and bar in the lounge and a nice fireplace with benches around it where you can see out to the rest of the Distillery District. I silently thanked my professor for the tickets when we were seated because Chris and I easily ended up with the best seats in the house. We were four rows back and to the side, so we were at a perfect level in proportion to the stage with a crystal-clear view of everything. Though I think my TA may have deliberately given me those tickets when I showed up, because she seems to really like me; however, that may just be a pleasant coincidence.

The play turned out to be wonderful. Chris really loved it, which was great. There's only been one play I've taken him to see out of four before this one that he liked, so I was really nervous about that. I really wanted the play we saw for his birthday to be good. It's called I, Claudia and it's a one-hander, written and performed by Kristen Thomson. She plays four different characters with masks (the masks were wonderfully expressive and they showed different emotions when the light hit them at certain angles. They were fantastic). She's very talented. The play was hysterically funny, but also heartbreakingly honest. Chris and I laughed a lot. It really was a very fun play to see, even though it had very serious undertones. We both left in good spirits.

We stopped at Second Cup on the way back (because we had been so trendy all day, we didn't want to break our trend-streak) and it was there that I fell in love with Vanilla Bean Hot Chocolate with Whipped Cream. Oh. My. Goddess. It was the best thing I have ever consumed in my entire life. I cannot describe the sheer joy of vanilla-hinted hot chocolate and creamy goodness running down your throat and bathing your tongue in sugary goodness. Mmmmmmm... sugar.

When we got back, my family was all already upstairs in bed, so Chris and I just settled on the couch with some tea and popcorn and The Nightmare Before Christmas on DVD, because it was the only thing we both could agree on to watch that I hadn't lost the disk for. I MUST FIND MY COPY OF FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF! After that, we just kind of talked until I fell asleep around 3:30am and Chris had to practically pick me up and put me in my bed, because I was so exhausted. I couldn't even really sit up on my own very well without Chris supporting me. All the running around and preparing that day really wore me out. He even tucked me in, so I had no chance of protesting his use of the couch, let alone of getting up to go sleep on the couch myself. I fell asleep instantly. I'm sure that was his intention, the clever guy.

I went and woke Chris up at 9:00am or so because I heard my family rising for the day upstairs and since he insisted on sleeping on the couch, I thought he'd rather be woken by me than by my family coming downstairs for breakfast. I ended up dozing again on my bed while he got dressed. I was a little mad at him, because he told me he was going to get dressed and to go back to sleep because I looked exhausted and he'd come back and wake me up in a few minutes when he was done, but he ended up letting me sleep for an hour and a half until I woke up on my own. I realize he was trying to be sweet, however, so I let it go. I wasn't even really all that mad at him in the first place.

We had pancakes and croissants for breakfast and Trinity bored Chris stupid by showing him every single one of her million Pokémon cards, one at a time and taking five minutes to explain each one. Then we had until 4:30pm before we needed to be at Yorkdale where his mom was picking him up, so we decided to go to the ROM. It was a lot of fun going with Chris, but I was so disappointed in the new renovations. They destroyed the entire museum. It used to be a big beautiful historic building with original architechture and mouldings and everything just looked so Victorian and timeless. Now all it is is plain hardwood floors and slanted white walls with absolutely no décor. It's just modern and white and cold. It's like you just stepped into a chapter out of Brave New World. I remember how the dinosaur exhibit used to be dark and eerie with just lights on the skeletons, and the ceiling was covered with this giant beautiful mosaic of dinosaurs. It was gorgeous and filled you with a sense of awe, especially as a young child. Now it's just this bare, white room with the skeletons scattered everywhere. The only good thing about it is there's more dinosaurs, but it's just so anti-climactic after knowing what the original looked like that it's sad. I have to admit, the giant crystal protruding from the side of the building now actually looks quite beautiful, but it's sad that they put it on such a beautiful, old building, and the shape of the crystal makes the inside a big mess, because there's so much dead and wasted space. There's pathways that lead into walls and giant empty spaces with nothing but white to look at. It's stunningly beautiful until you remember the original beauty of the building it was put on. The crystal actually looms over part of the street, it's so big. I like the crystal itself, but I'm sad for the piece of Toronto's history that's been destroyed.

I think the best part of the museum today was the Book of the Dead exhibit. The ROM just got an actual Book of the Dead from a wealthy man's tomb and the papyrus scroll is about six feet long, with tiny little heiroglyphs outlining spells and chants and basically just trying to convince Osiris that the guy's heart was light and that he was worthy enough to be allowed into the Afterlife. It's really neat to see and look at the artwork in the scroll. A lot of it was damaged, but you could still see a lot of the spells, prayers and illustrations in the book. It was fascinating.

We also did the bat cave, because we wanted to relive our childhoods, haha. I'm so happy at least one thing about the ROM that I loved as a child stayed the same. It seems smaller and shorter now, but that's probably just because I hadn't been there since I was a little kid and everything looks bigger and grander when you're little... well, little as in a child, anyway. I'm still not much taller than I was when I was ten.

We were supposed to go back to my grandparents' early to play Trinity's Samba De Amigo Wii game with her. We told her we would, but we ran out of time, so we stopped at the Second Cup right across the street from the ROM before we headed to Yorkdale on the subway and I got another Vanilla Bean Hot Chocolate with Whipped Cream. Chris got a Mixed Berry Smoothie both times we went to Second Cup this weekend and we laughed at this magazine that was all about weed, because today was the Marijuana March right beside the ROM. There were so many people who were high walking around wearing shirts with glittering marijuana leaves on them. It was hilarious.

I was kind of sad on the way to Yorkdale because I didn't want to let Chris go again. We don't see each other nearly enough and it's always hard to say goodbye after having such wonderful weekends like this weekend together. It wasn't as hard as it is when I have to leave him behind at school. I always cry on the bus back to Toronto until I can't cry anymore. I feel like my heart's breaking. I know I'm going to see him again soon, though. If not this weekend, then definitely next weekend, because his family's having a birthday party for him (or maybe it's this weekend, in which case, I'm definitely coming home. There's no way I'm missing Chris' birthday party. Not for anything). We looked around HMV at Yorkdale for a few minutes and made fun of all the retarded Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana shit littering everything in there, then bought a bottle of water at the food court so I'd have change to get back on the subway. I ended up forgoing my metro pass in favour of giving Chris a nice weekend, and I am so glad I did. It was really worth it to see how happy he was and how special I made him feel. He's worth much more to me than a silly piece of plastic.

We met his mom in the parking lot and she offered to drive me back to my grandma's, so I didn't need the change from Chris buying the water after all, but it will come in handy on Monday when I need to get on the bus. I didn't want him to pay for anything at all this weekend, but I'm still glad I at least paid for most of it, even our ROM tickets. I will find a way to spend the 10 dollars he gave me back as repayment on him. Grrrr... I wish I'd paid for ALL of it! Well, I paid for everything yesterday, and mostly everything today (I think. I didn't keep track), and I will just find a way to spend the money he paid on him somehow in the near future.

I gave him his cake to take back to his house when his mom dropped me off at my grandma's. I hope his mom doesn't make fun of it. I know she's a chef (or was for many, many years) and I'm not very good at cooking or baking or anything involving food and a kitchen, really, but I did put a lot of effort into that cake and really tried to make it special for Chris, so it would be very mean and hurtful of her to make fun of something I put a lot of love into.

After he left, I took a shower and just crashed. I was so exhausted. I did promise Trinity I'd play her Samba De Amigo game with her since Chris couldn't. Chris apologized profusely for that. He felt really bad. I think he's taken a liking to Trinity, though the reason why escapes me. I also think Trinity has a crush on Chris, which is absolutely adorable. Anyway, Trinity suddenly got really sick and shivery and started throwing up so she wasn't in the mood to play anymore, which was just as well. I was too tired to play the game, anyway. Trinity started freaking out because she thought she had the swine flu, then she thought she was having a seizure from playing her video games too much, then she thought she had the swine flu again. Personally, I think it might be swine flu, but I'm not too worried. The media's blowing this whole pandemic thing way out of proportion. Most of the people infected with swine flu didn't even need hospitalization. Just lots of rest and fluids like any other flu. I'm still going to make a point of washing my hands more often and not touching things I know Trinity touches a lot. No point in getting sick if I can avoid it.

I fell asleep on the couch while watching Ella Enchanted (terrible movie, by the way). I woke up and was planning on going to bed, but then I remembered that all the preparations for Chris' visit and nerves over Guelph had caused me to ignore Alex lately and I felt bad, so I talked to her for a few hours, then Chris texted me to say goodnight and thank you for the weekend. He went to bed fairly early, so I guess the weekend must have tired him out, too. It was such a fun, amazing weekend, though. I'm so glad it happened the way it did.

Oh, and one last note... GUELPH RECEIVED MY APPLICATION ON TIME! I just got their email today, thanking me for applying there! Now I just need to get my grades up and hope they accept me and if they do, apply for OSAP and start looking for jobs.

Now, goodnight. I'm pooped.