iPhone
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
Surprise
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Yule log
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(39 more photos)

Since I’m rarely in Toronto and rarely in Toronto for more than a couple of days, I often miss my good and wonderful Torontonian friends.

However, in December, I get to stay a few more days, which I hope to be jam-packed with adventure. Or barring that, hugs and smiles.

I propose that we sally forth on Boxing Day and take over some establishment. An establishment, that perhaps serves food and drink?

Loons
416 Roncesvalles Ave.
26 December 2008 at 19h

( Facebook | Map )

New Yorker
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

We were only at the Hudson for a short time, back in July. The next day, we moved our bags to the New Yorker Hotel, which is significantly less spacious. We were joined by Ani and Alex, who split the room with us, and were also attending the same conference.

The Last Hope is a computer security conference held at the historic, but doomed, Hotel Pennsylvania. That hotel was even more cramped than ours!

There were a few talks that I wanted to attend, but I mostly wanted to see my friends. It’s nice to have friends all over the world, but it does make it inconvenient to have them over for dinner. We did attend a talk on how to get passwords out of your computer, even when it’s been turned off. And saw a demonstration on lockpicking. And ate some instant icecream.

Jacob Appelbaum
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I was most happy to see ioerror, janviere, secretsoflife, and Micah. All of which I hadn’t talked to in a very long time. I also got to have dinner with bokunenjin and meet princessleia2, at a stylish, but awful, restaurant.

You know, I’m getting worse and worse at actually attending conferences. Instead, the worrying trend is that I go to foreign cities to shop for hats, buy books, drink tea, and eat. Strangely enough, this doesn’t make me unhappy at all.

Small baths do, though. I got the worst crink in my neck while I was there. And bathing was so necessary in the sweltering moist heat of a metropolis in July. It should be no surprise to many of my readers that this was something highly encouraged, and frequently ignored, at this conference.

Artists used to live here
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

On the last day of HOPE, we scooped up some bottles of Club-Mate, grabbed some souvenirs, and went to stay with andukar. All the ex-NITIots in New York seem to be living under the same roof, which is nice because it’s a rather lovely one. We shopped for clothes in Williamsburg, took some photographs, and ate with regyt and novalis.

I can’t wait to go back. But mostly for the pizza.