Hey, all. I owe you a big wrap-up of our last week or so, but my mind is elsewhere today. Ru was attacked by a neighbor’s dog yesterday on his afternoon stroll with the dog walker and is at the animal hospital awaiting surgery this morning. Gil’s out of town until tomorrow, so I’m just waiting by the phone and cleaning the house from top to bottom to keep busy.

The situation is especially infuriating because this same dog (a husky) broke through his electric fence and attacked another dog just two weeks ago and it seems the owners didn’t do enough to make sure it couldn’t happen again. So our boy has a big chunk of his haunch missing and needs one surgery today to install a rubber drain and another in a month or so to remove the drain and close the wound. (Ru’s vet took plenty of pictures of the wounds and his office notified the police department, so thank goodness that was taken care of before I even got there.)

So I rushed home from work and got to the animal hospital in time to see him before they closed for the evening.

He was even more pitiful than this when I first saw him, but at least his bed made him comfortable.

There was some panting, but he was loopy from the pain meds, so he wasn’t in a bad mood at all. I think he enjoyed the dirty t-shirt I brought for him, too.

But even getting his favorite new toy (John Calamari or Squid Vicious, depending on which one of us you ask) didn’t stop him from accusing me with his eyes when I was ready to go.

a week’s wrap-up after the jump

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Gil and I spent most of the past four days just wandering around downtown Toronto, taking pictures (his are here, mine are here), and generally being goofy. I’m so glad I married someone who enjoys vacationing without a plan and taking the days as they come. We also got to hang out with friends and family (most of whom I was meeting for the first time), so it was an action-packed four days.

In that time, we had one exceptional meal, one darned good one, and several others that didn’t suck at all. Our exceptional dining experience took place at Rain, one of Toronto’s best-known fine dining establishments. Gil had gone there for a business dinner on a previous trip and, based on his rave reviews, we basically scheduled this vacation around dining there again. Brothers Guy and Michael Rubino — chef and co-owner/host, respectively — have a passion for Asian cuisine and host Food Network Canada’s popular television show Made to Order. I wish we could get that program here, because I’d love to know how they created every item in our prix fixe dinner, especially the squab three ways, complete with the dumpling of doom:

post continues after the jump

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Gil and I decided to spend our long holiday weekend in Toronto because evidently there aren’t enough great restaurants or tall buildings in New York for our taste. Also, the exchange rate is basically 1:1, there’s no language barrier, and I’ve never been north of the border, so why not visit friends and family and experience a little fine dining in the process?

We only wandered around a little bit (darn these flats!) this afternoon, but that turned out to be plenty of time to experience a national treasure: