I'm sorry... I'm Canadian...

What Canadians say instead of "um."

I am not rich enough to warrant my politeness.  I paid $26 for a buffet breakfast this morning, because I didn't want to offend the waitress.  See, she'd already poured me juice... I was unwilling to abandon a tumbler of orange juice on account of the fact that I took a sip before I knew what was going on! 

I don't have $26 to spend on breakfast!  (And I mean, come on!!!  Breakfasts should be no more than $5!  Eggs, 2 pieces of bacon and potatoes?  I could feed SIX people for... let me do the math here... about $9 with ingredients bought at No Frills).  But more the fool me, as I had a few spare moments this morning while waiting for the theatre to open, I decided that I would have a leisurely breakfast at an upscale diner that I had passed a couple times this week.

Okay, first off? The Yonge Street Diner has little to do with Yonge Street and everything to do with the Marriott.    I shouldn't have gone in.  I should have just gone across the street to McDonald's and got a couple of breakfast burritos and a fork and eaten the scrambled eggs out of them for about $23 less than I spent for the buffet at the Marriott's trapping 'diner'. Had I walked a couple of blocks further I could have gone to Fran's and spent WAY less.  Or if I weren't trying so hard to avoid gluten - I could have gone to the Second Cup and had a muffin or cupcake or streudel or brownie or biscotti with my decaf/soy/hazelnut/latte.  And before you say anything -  I like coffee to taste like dessert and that isn't wrong!!!

I opened the menu and my angina kicked in a little bit when I saw that the hot buffet breakfast was $21 - but that's okay, because it included the coffee and juice (HAH!) The a la carte menu started at $14.50, but then I might not get home fries and half the reason I pay for breakfast out is to get the homefries, plus then I would have had to pay for the orange juice, which I'm sure would have been like $6.  This is all that was going through my head as I'm weighing my options.  I only drank a sip of the o.j., maybe I can give her a quarter for that?  If I just leave a Toonie, could I slink out and go across the street to get a breakfast burrito?  What if I just loudly announce to the room at large "I am not wealthy enough to eat here!"  They'll be embarrassed for me and give me that pitying look, but then I can save all that money.  What did I then do?  I got up and went to the buffett tables and got my probably powdered scrambled eggs (I've waitressed for hotel buffets - I know the deal), overdone bacon and homefries.  And then I paid my $26 - $21+tax+tip because the waitress was very nice.  Because also in my internal dialogue earlier I had been thinking what if the waitress really NEEDS the lousy $2.50 tip that I'm going to leave her?  Only $2.50 because come on, all she did was bring me juice... and ketchup.  She brough me ketchup too. CRAP!  I should have given her more.

On a complete tangent - I just caught a tourist kid on the sidewalk doing the Greased Lightning dance beside the window. What was fantastic is that Adele's Rumour Has It came on the EXACT time the kid started dancing and it was perfectly synchronized. (I know she's a tourist because her parents are well dressed and perusing a map.  Plus from what I was lip reading, they seemed to be speaking in a foreign tongue.)

Imagine this, but with a blond, possibly Scandinavian, girl with her parents as unwitting backup

 Oh and before I forget - Rissa has decided to call the Yonge-University-Spadina subway line the Yonge-University-Vagina line.  There's my girl...