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I just returned from a good 6km walk from the Fairview Mall down at Don Mills. I headed down, by bus, just before lunch on the hunt for a winter jacket.

Even though Halloween has been over for about 16 hours, the Christmas decorations are on display, holiday music is blaring, and everyone is off to the races to start their shopping for the festive season. I don’t usually enjoy buying presents for my friends since I’m always scared that they will hate whatever I buy them. That’s why I usually just write a cheque. However, today I bought a Christmas present for the wonderful couple of Erin and Matt. The instant I saw it, I knew they would love it, without the shadow of a doubt. I’ve never been this confident with a gift purchase before. I came up empty on the winter jacket problem, though. Every jacket I wanted was too expensive for my budget and all of the cheaper jackets had un-removable hoods which I don’t tend to enjoy. So, I will attempt to conquer the mall again next week or head downtown to the Eaton Centre and find a jacket.

During the long walk home, I witnessed a couple funny situations. As I was approaching an automatic car wash, I noticed about six older men, in their mid to late 60’s, sitting at the exit. They were the kind of guys that you would see in Tim Horton’s drinking coffee all day, or sitting on the benches in the mall for hours on end. As the van emerged from the car wash, each of the guys stood up, as if on cue, and proceeded to the van with their rags to hand dry the vehicle. As I walked by I couldn’t help but laughing at this scene. I’m not sure if they are “official” employees of the car wash or if they’ve found an easy job collecting loose change from drivers for their services. If they are indeed just collecting change, it’s kind of like the next stage after being a squeegee kid and working at the red lights downtown. This is the more relaxing, less stressful job that the kids look forward to.