Mike's Bloggity Blog

Bloggity Dates with Ray Ablack February 8th, 2011

All this week, Mike’s Bloggity Blog will be celebrating Valentine’s Day with a special series called Bloggity Dates. Every day, some of the biggest names in Canadian entertainment will be dropping by to share stories of their best, worst and most embarrassing dates. If I were you, I’d take notes to ensure you have a perfect Valentine’s Day. Just be sure to invite me to the wedding.

Degrassi’s Ray Ablack
My girlfriend, Chani, studies abroad in Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates. She does very well, works very hard, and I’m very proud of her. She left this past summer at the end of August. Last summer in May, our relationship began. We did things of all sorts and yet didn’t complete all the wishes on our list – yes, we made a list of things we wanted to do together. I made a bet with myself somewhere in the middle of falling in love with her last summer, that everything to do with our soon to be long distance relationship would work out fine in the end if I just took her skating; all summer she wanted to go skating with me. As a typical Canadian boy, I’ve played hockey my whole life, so skating was never a big deal for me, in fact it’s boring and we always overlooked her most anticipated date activity. And in the last week of her stay I scrambled to pull together some of the last wishes on our list to happen on her last day at home.

On our last date, I picked her up at home and told her to bring her skates along, that we would go public skating. She made me another mixed CD that we listened to for an hour in the car while we drove to Oshawa, where the day before I booked a rink for us to privately skate for an hour and a half. We played our mix CD over the PA system, I tied her skates, and we skated hand in hand cheesily for too short a time. I cleaned her runny nose with my sleeve while she focused so hard and adorably on skating backwards. After our time was up and our hands and noses were frozen, we climbed back into the car and I took Chani to my favourite restaurant, ‘Sushi Mountain’ in the town where I grew up. We came back to my house to sleep off our full bellies and the candles I lit earlier that morning filled the house with the delicious smell I was hoping they would. (I know that’s dangerous…). I don’t eat much steak, it’s just not something my family cooks, but Chani loves steak, and I’d found another activity that I overlooked for a whole summer that was something she wanted to do, and I finally obliged her. There’s a famous steak restaurant in Toronto called ‘Harbour 60′. We dressed up in our fancy clothes and went there for dinner. We drank red wine and even as someone who doesn’t eat steak, I knew that I just ate a very good steak. Chani loved it. It was delicious. She was smiling all day. I drove her home and when it was time to say goodbye for the night, I kissed her on the porch for a long time.

Degrassi returns to Much this Friday!