Carnivals, Woofstock, and Blogging - all in a days work for me

Well its now after 9pm and today has been a very busy day. My son is a early riser, and by 9am we were outside and heading for the park. By accident we discovered one of the local schools setting up its annual fundraising carnival. OOH bad news - this means I can't take son back to dad as planned so I can attend blog meeting later. He would kick up a stinker of a tantrum if I try and do this. A slight change of plan is called for. Drag son up to St Lawrence markets to use the pay phone and call home. Tell dad he MUST be at the carnival by 1pm. He agrees.

Outside the markets on Front street, all is quiet. The craft tables are being set up like they always do. The roads are clear and the traffic is flowing freely. There is nothing to indicate that chaos is about to descend. And despite having commented last weekend about Woofstock being on this weekend, I had completely forgotten about it.

Back at the carnival, my son and I have an enjoyable time. He gets an all day pass to do the rides and games, wins lots of prizes and my bag quickly starts to overflow with toys. We even won a cake in the raffle. I found some great new kids books going really cheap and snapped those up. My son gets bored with his books, and always wants "something different". Finally dad showed up so I ditched the carnival and headed back up past the markets. Right into chaos on Front Street. Dogs everywhere.

The Woofstock the annual dogshow is being held this weekend along Front and Wellington streets (between Jarvis & Yonge). Its amazing there was not more noise being heard one block down at the carnival, but I guess a carnival is noisy as well.

Got to Solferinos early. In fact I think I was the first one there. Sassy monkey arrived soon after I did. We made contact and then we sat and chatted while we waited for everyone else. Traffic was just as chaotic, and everyone was late, but then parking down here is HORRENDOUS!!! One young lady was standing around for quite some time before she plucked up enough courage to ask "Are you the blogging group".

The get together was WONDERFUL!!! Six women getting together on a gorgeous sunny day and talking nonstop, mostly about books, for 3 hours. I had a great time - despite all the noise.

So who was there?

Karen the Technical writer who organised this get together because she wanted to meet some Toronto Bloggers before moving back to Montreal.

Patricia the Cartoonist who is a published illustrator

Kate from Saskatoon who is a published author.

Melanie the Librarian who came all the way in from Stratford.

Deanne the Online Editor

And of course me - the only one who does not actually work in the Book industry - although I dearly wish I was.

Solferino's is a cafe (38 Wellington Street East, Downtown Toronto) that sells tea, coffee, juice, the usual, but it also sells GELATO. Italian Icecream. The notice on the wall said that gelato was icecream with NO air in it which made it thicker and creamier.

Being from New Zealand I grew up with passionfruit and kiwifruit vines outside my house. To this day I love passionfruit, but I detest kiwifruit. Not sure why. Anyway, I had a small bowl of passionfruit gelato and it was just so so scrumptious and yummy.

"The flavour I would enthusiastically recommend, however, is the passion fruit, rich in aroma and flavour with a cool and fruity taste that will make even Toronto’s hottest summer’s days seem bearable." (as reviewed in the Solferino link above) GO PASSIONFRUIT

The cafe was very loud, noisy and chaotic. Everywhere you looked there were bloggers, babies, dogs, and more bloggers.

And the cafe got more noisy when another group of bloggers showed up and started putting a lovely photo exhibit on the wall right behind where we were sitting.

Our resident photographer took the requisite photos (of our group and the photo display). You should be able to email me now. Please send me copies of the photos, thanks.

So what did we talk about? Books of course. Including how to get published, the pros and cons of self publishing, Publicists and Agents - the good and bad, Authors we have met, Authors who have insulted us, Books we did and didnt like, Book signing parties, genealogy and accents, whether or not women really need men (as in spouse or partner) to get ahead in life.

We finally broke up at 5 pm. Not because we had run out of things to say. Oh no, it because several of the ladies had events to attend at the Book Expo also being held downtown.

I barely walked in the door at home before I was back outside, taking my son back to the playground again. We didnt get home until well after 8pm. I am sunburned and tired but I had a fantastic day.

Thanks Karen for organising the meeting.

And if you're still reading this novella, thanks for sticking with me all the way. LOL