Someone should follow me around and poke me saying, "Shouldn't you maybe update your blog today? You have stuff to write about you know." But no one does that so my blog goes untouched while I sit around watching Simpsons reruns or playing Wii.

Speaking of the Wii, I recently bought three new games for it: Sonic and the Secret Rings; Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess; and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. They're all awesome. I'm currently playing Sonic and Matt is playing Zelda. I'll probably start playing Metroid in parallel with Sonic though because I really want to play it too.

The weekend before last Kim came up to visit and the big event of the weekend was a dinner party at our house with Matt, Adrienne, Toni and Patrick. It was Matt's idea and it went really well. We had mixed green salad with red and yellow raspberries topped with balsamic vinegar dressing; garlic cheese bread with fresh parsley; cheese ravioli in a creamy onion sauce; and a really big, really tasty caramel chocolate cheesecake. Mmmmmm....so good. Then we played some Wii at Chris's house for a bit.

This weekend just past Kim came to visit again and we went to see Cirque du Soleil: Kooza. It was fantastic! I would recommend it but it's all done now so there isn't much point. After the show we got supper at Da Gianni and Maria's Trattoria which was good as always. I had the pomodoro gnocci and Kim had the lasagna. For an appetizer we shared a plate of tomato slices topped with the best fresh mozzarella I've ever had. Soooooo good. I like food.

Now I'm starting to think about my trip to San Francisco. I'm going for a week leaving November 7th and I want to be sure I see a bunch of stuff so I need to plan out my time.

We switched our thermostat over to heat last night. The heat already had to come on this morning, and when I got out of bed it was chilly and my bathroom floor was cold. And now sitting at work I have to wear a sweater because it's not warm here either. Come back summer!

On my recent trip to France I used a Eurail pass to get around the country by train for slightly less money than if I had just gone to France and bought train tickets. I'm still not sure if it was worth it given the changes that happened with my trip, but whatever.

Anyway, the Eurail people ask you to fill out a survey and mail back your itinerary when you are done your trip. In exchange they send you a present. I chose to get a set of flag pins, one for each member of the European Union. Well my gift came today and I had completely forgotten that it was coming. So I opened the package and took out the pins and this is what I saw:

My pins of the EU

Yes, two pins are missing. And yes, the package is sealed. But it couldn't be a mistake. Perhaps there are only 22 countries in the EU? So I checked Wikipedia. Turns out there are 27 countries in the EU! I'm missing five of them and even if all the spots in the package were filled I'd still be short three pins!

So I figured out the missing countries and they are: Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia and the United Kingdom. Wait a minute, 22 pins + 7 missing countries is a total of 29, not 27. So I must have two pins that are not part of the European Union! I checked again and they are Croatia and Norway. So what the hell is up with this?

Perhaps the pins are only for the countries that are connected by the Eurail system? Wrong again! There are 25 countries in that set, so I would still be missing three. Which three? Well that would be Montenegro, Serbia and Switzerland.

So anyway, nothing about this set of pins really makes sense. But they're still kinda fun.

I'm still pseudo-neglecting the blog here, so I thought I'd do a quick weekend post to at least keep up to date.

This Saturday, Michael came to visit and so did Keizo. Michael was just in town for something to do with a Chess club at his new school and Keizo was here to run the half-marathon on Sunday. I hadn't seen either of them in a while so it was awesome to see both. Especially Michael who has been absent for almost a year I think. Matt and I had Burrito Boyz for lunch with him and played a bunch of Wii. Later, I went with Keizo and many others to supper at the Hot House near the market. It was about the same as usual but the service was really really bad. Especially given that we were such a large group!

Sunday I was up bright and early to go bouldering in Niagara Glen with people from work. It was a perfect day for it and we all had a great time. Real rocks tend to be sharper on the hands though, ouch! When I got back I went rollerblading with Chris and then we met up with Matt, Rob, Patrick, Toni and Will for supper at Epicure. I ate out way too much over the weekend, but I also had A LOT of exercise so I think it balances out.

Tonight was wing night and we went to the Butler's Pantry out on Queen West. The food was good and cheap, but I was most pleased with the walk. It's a nice night tonight, and Queen West is always fun to walk along because of all the shops and other interesting things to look at.