We're halfway through December and I've already been to three Christmas parties, with another to go to tomorrow. It's lots of fun, but I get too stressed when there is this much stuff all close together. I still have Christmas shopping to do and many places to go. I will have two weeks off this Christmas though so that is nice.

The first party of the year was the CIBC Christmas party with Kim. It was held at the Convention Centre and was attended by something like 5000 people. It was pretty insane. The meal was decent (as much as it could be when it had to happen for 5000 people simultaneously), and there was wine on every table and one free drink ticket for everyone. They also had impersonators of famous musicians including Neil Diamond, Elvis, and Abba. It was definitely an experience.

Next up was the NeoEdge Christmas party, which, although I still don't work there, I have attended every year for the past three years on account of being friends with half of the employees. This year Kim and I were bartenders and it was lots of fun. I got to make up drinks that made people make bad faces.

Finally, there was my party, the Autodesk Christmas party. This one definitely had the best food and drink (real bartenders, open bar), but unfortunately it also had the poorest food distribution system (some people waited for more than an hour). It was a nice venue though and for the first time in a long time we were allowed to bring a guest.

Tomorrow is party number four, the annual wing night Christmas party. This year it's a Chili Cookoff and I'm gonna win. My chili is obviously the best.

After that there's just seven more Christmas events, a New Year's party and then I can relax until next year.

I'd just like to take a brief moment to mention my friend Mike's new iPhone application, iMenorah! It's the perfect app for anyone celebrating Chanukah far from home.

I don't own an iPhone, and I'm not Jewish, but I tried it out on a friend's iPhone and it was really well done. Good interactivity, well polished graphics and animation, and Mike singing the blessings at the end is just classic. Oh, and they are donating some of the proceeds from sales to a San Francisco Jewish charity.

For $1.99 it's a great deal.

I know I'm a bit late blogging about this, but some crazy stuff happened recently in Canadian politics! And by crazy I mean, "wow, a lot of people are really dumb."

I can't say I supported anybody in the craziness that was last week and I think the fact that parliament was prorogued was probably the best possible outcome. It should give everybody some time to come to their senses. Of course the best case would be everyone working together but that clearly wasn't going to happen.

Seriously, what did Stephen Harper expect the other parties to do when he introduced that economic update? Hello! You don't have a majority government! That means you need to avoid completely pissing off everyone else. I mean he could have at least tried to work with them a little bit.

Next problem, what the hell is wrong with everyone who thinks that the coalition was pulling some sort of sneaky, underhanded, "undemocratic" maneuver? A lot of people kept talking about "who the Canadian public voted for." But that was never a question. Each riding voted for their candidate and those candidates went to parliament. That hasn't changed at all. The executive power in government is then formed by the largest group of elected candidates that can agree to work together. In a minority situation (ie. the largest such group does not have the majority of the seats), if the rest of the house loses confidence then it's either time for a new election OR a different group can take over (if asked to by the governor general). That's the way it works! Nobody votes for a party, nobody votes for a Prime Minister. You vote for a candidate to represent your riding. That's it. Statements like "the Canadian people did not vote for a Liberal-NDP coalition" are meaningless. The Canadian people voted for 308 different people to come together and run the country.

Next, and this relates to the previous point, I think that the Bloc Quebecois were treated extremely shabbily in this process. I don't want Quebec to separate but as I mentioned above, the elected candidates of that party were chosen by the people of their riding. Those ridings feel that the members of the Bloc are the best people to represent them in parliament. By bashing the party and its members, Stephen Harper is saying, "Hey, Quebecers, everyone can have democracy except you. Your members of parliament should not have a say in the running of the country and thus you should not have a say." I couldn't believe how many times Stephen Harper made harsh comments about the Bloc in his speech to the country. It just blew my mind. It is irrelevant that the Bloc has a mission (or maybe it's just a vague goal at this point) to separate from Canada. They have legally elected members whose duty is to represent their constituents. Those members deserve as much respect as any other member of parliament. To do otherwise is to pay massive disrespect to all of the people represented by those members.

The last point I'd like to make is that there has been a bit too much emphasis on the leader of the various parties lately. This is not the United States. We do not vote for our Prime Minister. The Prime Minister just happens to be the leader of the largest group of MPs who agree to work together in parliament. A strong leader is important, but I see no need to put them up on a pedestal. They're only human. What matters is your local MP and how they represent you in parliament.

Me this afternoon:

"Hmm, I want to watch a movie, lets see what DVDs I have. Oh, Requiem for a Dream, that's a good movie and I haven't seen it since the first time I watched it. I remember it was a painful and emotionally draining experience when I watched it before, but surely it won't be as bad the second time and I'll be able to appreciate the subtler details of this powerful and evocative film."

Wow, what a horrible idea. That wasn't any easier the second time. I don't think there will be a third.

I don't like cilantro. It's tastes like gross and immediately pops out at me from any dish it's in. Even the spiciest curry or the hottest salsa. A single leaf of cilantro ruins it all. I had heard that there was some research indicating that some people have a genetic predisposition to thinking that cilantro tastes like awful. A quick search on Google revealed nothing conclusive, but it did bring up the site, ihatecilantro.com, dedicated to connecting cilantro haters all around the world. There are even haikus written by the members to express their distaste. I think the haiku is one of the most effective form of expression. Much better than ridiculous limericks.

Kim is visiting her sister in Texas this week so I was on my own this weekend. It was pretty quiet and I spent most of today catching up on Dexter. I'm now all the way up to date (unless you count the episode that aired tonight). It's definitely a good show.

Saturday I went to Burlington to participate in a bouldering competition (local Tour de Bloc event) at a brand new climbing gym, Climber's Rock. The route setting was great and I had a really good day. I feel very happy with my absolute performance although they haven't posted the scores yet so I don't know how I did relative to the other competitors. But for most people (myself included) climbing is not really a competitive sport so the relative performance doesn't matter. I'm just trying to do better than I've done before.

After the competition I went to Matt's house for a birthday celebration which involved the eating of much sushi and cake. The sushi was from Sushi Xtra on Queen street and it was pretty decent. I'd definitely get sushi from there again.

Update: I came in 13th out of 26 competitors in my division at the bouldering competition. I'm pretty happy with that.

I've been a bit busy lately, but I don't want to let last weekend go without a blog update so I'm doing a quick one now.

Thursday night Rob made Pad Thai for myself, Kim, Patrick, Toni, and Matt! It was delicious without a doubt and I learned how to make it so that I can do it myself!! So fun!

On Friday I saw the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, with Patrick, Toni, Chris, John and Alex. I liked the movie, although I don't think I liked the fact that it was a direct continuation of Casino Royale. James Bond movies should stand on their own.

Saturday I went shopping with Kim, mostly just wandering around and stuff. Then we went to Patrick's place for a party with lots of fun happy people! The party was organized by Rob without a specific purpose, but I like to think of it as a going away party for him since he left for Fiji the following Tuesday (does Fiji have good Internets Rob?). We had yummy Indian food from Trimurti for dinner and we had drinks and lots of fun.

Sunday I went climbing and I also watched a bunch of episodes of the show Dexter. I'm almost caught up to the current episode now and it's really good!

Did you know you share your birthday with Leon Trotsky? Does that make you a communist? I'm no political scientist, but I suspect it might.

A short summary of Trotsky's life courtesy of Wikipedia:

Leon Trotsky was a Ukrainian-born Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Lenin. During the early days of the Soviet Union, he served first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army and People's Commissar of War. He was also among the first members of the Politburo.

After leading the failed struggle of the Left Opposition against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and the increasing bureaucratization of the Soviet Union, Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party and deported from the Soviet Union. As the head of the Fourth International, he continued in exile to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, and was eventually assassinated in Mexico by Ramón Mercader, a Soviet agent. Trotsky's ideas form the basis of Trotskyism, a term coined as early as 1905 by his opponents in order to separate it from Marxism. Trotsky's ideas remain a major school of Marxist thought that is opposed to the theories of Stalinism.

I didn't put much planning into it, but my birthday turned out great anyway. It fell on Tuesday last week so I co-opted *wing* night for my own purposes. I selected Mengrai Thai which many people claim to be the best Thai food in Toronto. I have no way of judging Thai food (since I have never been to Thailand...you should have been there Rob!) but it was damn tasty. Patrick, Adam and myself all got the fixed price, four-course menu and it was amazing! Everyone else (Kim, Toni, Jen, John, Chris, Jeremy, Matt and Jeff) all ordered single dishes off the menu and had to be jealous/hungry while we ate our starter courses.

My meal started with a selection of four appetizers, then moved on to pumpkin curry soup with lightly breaded spinach (almost like tempura). For my main course I had the #54 Red Curry Chicken which is one of the restaurant's most famous dishes. It is served in half of a scooped out pineapple and has lychee fruit mixed in with the curry sauce and chicken. For dessert I was given a mini crème brûlée with a single candle. The waiter started singing happy birthday, thus forcing everyone at the table to join in. Good times! The food was all totally amazing, and despite being really full I was glad I got the fixed price menu.

The owner of the restaurant was also really awesome. He came out and talked to us because he recognized where I worked from the caller ID when I made the reservation. He even knew that although I work for Autodesk, it's really Alias and Autodesk just bought us. He was super friendly and although the service was slow, I still felt like he was very attentive to our needs.

After dinner we all headed back to my apartment for birthday cake from Dufflet! I got the Chocolate Raspberry Truffle cake and yes, it was totally glorious. We also had Pumpkin Ale from the Great Lakes Brewing Company and hot chocolate with Bailey's. Eventually everyone went home and I went to sleep.

Oh, I almost forgot the most important part! Presents! Jeremy got me a present!

It was a small golden/platinum coloured heart (it's an alloy) with three "chocolate" balls inside. On one side the heart had the word "Glory" along with Japanese characters and on the other it had a sad/angry face. I think I know why. The "chocolate" was not exactly what you would call "good." Jeremy, Patrick and I each had one; mine tasted like poo, Jeremy's tasted like dirt and Patrick's tasted like petrol. Um...awesome?

I also got some good presents from other people. Kim got me a gift certificate to Henry's (awesome camera store and source of most things I want at the moment), my mom got me a subscription to Maclean's magazine which I love and Jen made me Chocolate Frangelico Cupcakes with Nutella Swiss Meringue Buttercream on the weekend. Patrick and Toni got me a selection of random beers and Matt got me a wind up squirrel! Eeee!

Me with my #54 Red Curry Chicken

Chocolate Frangelico Cupcakes with Nutella Swiss Meringue Buttercream

After at least a year of wanting one, I finally got around to buying an awesome leather shoulder bag for carrying stuff with me when I go about my day to day business. Yes, it's a man purse and yes I'm OK with that. When walking is your primary means of transportation it's nice to have something to carry stuff in. I'll be using it every day to bring stuff like my lunch to work and also to carry around useful items like an umbrella and sunglasses.

Another thing I keep in it is a reusable shopping bag for groceries. I tend to stop for groceries on my way home from work and I never carry reusable bags with me (because I don't have anything to put them in!). Now I can stop killing the environment by consuming so many plastic bags. Unfortunately, today, my first day with my man purse, I was a massive failure. I went to the grocery store and got some stuff and as I was checking out I prepared my happy reusable bag. Then for some reason I kinda spaced out and suddenly it was all done and the cashier had already put my groceries in plastic bags. I couldn't really ask her to take them back so I put away my reusable bag and went home. Sigh, maybe I'll succeed next time.

I got the bag from Roots, and it's pretty awesome. It's actually based on the bag that Indiana Jones carries around in the movies and so it's even more cool. I love it!

Raiders Bag in Vintage Tribe Leather

Raiders Bag in Vintage Tribe Leather

Raiders Bag in Vintage Tribe Leather

Last weekend was fun! But I was slow to blog about it. Not much is happening this weekend so I'll blog about the last one now.

We hung out with people and watched movies and we relaxed around the house and I also went climbing. But the most exciting part was going to a camera show with Patrick and Toni and Matt on Sunday. We got up bright and early, had breakfast at Cora's and then headed up to the conference centre near the airport. The show was put on by Henry's and had tons of booths from all the major manufacturers. It was primarily focused on digital SLR cameras but had a little bit of stuff for point and shoot cameras too. The best part for me was getting to try out all sorts of fun lenses on my camera. And by fun I mean potentially expensive. Stupid lenses look so nice.

Anyway this post is shorter than I intended but I'm tired so I'm going to stop.

It's snowing a little outside...[HIBERNATION MODE TURN ON]

Not much has been going on in Matthew-land lately, thus the lack of blogging. However there was the Canadian election recently. My riding is Trinity-Spadina where NDP candidate Olivia Chow (wife of NDP leader Jack Layton) won again. I found myself very conflicted this time around because I didn't want to vote for anyone. I didn't want the Conservatives to win, but I didn't feel that anyone else was fit to win either. I ended up voting Liberal, but I sort of regret that now. I knew that my riding would go to either the Liberals or the NDP regardless of my vote so I think I should have voted Green in order to increase their share of the popular vote. More votes equals more funding for future campaigns and I feel that the Green Party had a generally positive effect on the whole process.

Overall though, I am one disenfranchised voter. Blegh.

This past week was pretty random for me. I spent Monday through Thursday in King City attending a leadership training course for work. There is a huge conference centre there that includes a gourmet restaurant and fancy hotel. It was pretty fun and interesting but they kept us super busy. The days started around 8:00am and lasted until 11:00pm at the earliest. We were fed extremely well however and the rooms were quite nice.

On Friday I went in for a half day of work to catch up on email and then left early to get a wisdom tooth removed. I'm not sure that the procedure was necessary because the tooth wasn't bothering me in the slightest but my dentist seemed to think it was doing whatever it is that wisdom teeth do that is a bad thing for mouths. Anyway, when I arrived he suggested that he might as well take the other wisdom tooth on the same side while I was there since it would all be frozen anyway. I agreed mainly to reduce the number of future wisdom tooth-related visits to the dentist. So I now have two fewer wisdom teeth and I am spending the weekend recovering (ie. popping Tylenol 3 like there's no tomorrow).

The procedure itself was super quick. One of the two wisdom teeth was already exposed so once I was frozen he was able to yank it out in under a minute. I was super surprised when I heard it fall into the tray. I was all like, "was that it??" and the dentist seemed a touch offended that I thought so little of the procedure he just performed. The other tooth was not exposed however, and so it took a bit longer. Once the dentist exposed it (with knives I assume) the tooth still refused to come easily and the assistant had to hold my head down while the dentist yanked at it. I half expected him to plant a foot on my face in order to get better leverage.

Anyway, I think I'm recovering nicely. Sleeping was hard last night but I think I can stop taking Tylenol 3 soon and switch to regular Advil. I guess I have to keep taking antibiotics for a while though.

This week I went to two fun evening show type things. On Wednesday Kim and I went to Second City to see the comedy stylings of John Dore and Judah Friedlander (who you may recognize from NBC's awesome show: "30 Rock"). Both acts were really funny, although Judah Friedlander's was a bit too long.

On Thursday I went with Matt to our first Tafelmusik concert of the season. This is our second year as subscribers and I'm still really enjoying it. The group is incredibly talented and the church they perform at is a much more intimate venue than Roy Thomson Hall (which is where the Toronto Symphony Orchestra plays).

On Tuesday for wing night we went to Cafe Polonez for delicious delicious Polish food. I had a potato pancake folded over and filled with pork goulash, and Kim had pierogies. I also shared some random Polish beer with Rob and Will. That restaurant is great. The portions are gigantic and the most expensive meal on the menu is $14. Plus the food is amazing.

Repent and seek shelter! For today being the first day of Autumn is also the first step toward the bleak cold death of winter. Tremble and fear before the oncoming cold and snow and prepare thy defences against their bodily onslaughts.

Yeah, I don't like winter and the mornings have been getting colder lately.

Tonight Kim and I went to see Burn After Reading which is the latest from the Coen brothers. It seems to be very much in the style of The Big Lebowski (ie. awesome) in that it is super-random and ultra-hilarious. The cast was fantastic, all of them. I can't pinpoint any particular one because they were all so good. Even the fairly minor role played by J.K. Simmons was awesome.

When we got home I finally got around to making hummus after several delays. I haven't given it a thorough taste test yet because I prefer hummus to be cold, but from what I licked off my fingers while making it I think it's going to be very good. Check out the recipe and a picture of my results below.

Homemade hummus

I did stuff other than TIFF screenings (see below) this past weekend. I spent some time walking around to random places with Matt and Adrienne and ended up buying a new memory card for my camera. One of my old ones recently corrupted itself at a most inoppourtune time so I decided to replace it with something decent. My previous purchase decision was aimed at spending the least amount of money possible. This time I paid more for what I hope will be long lasting quality. We shall see!

We also had lunch at the crépes place on Queen Street. Mmmmm...crépes.

On Sunday night Kim and I went to Toni's for her birthday party! She made us Aussie-burgers (regular burgers plus fried eggs, fried onions, bacon and beets) and also delicious pavlova. Then we played a new game Toni bought, Apples to Apples. Of course I was super-pro at it because of my previous experiences playing in Algonquin this summer.

My next blog-worthy event is coming this Thursday when I intend to make my own hummus. Excitement!

For the past week and a half the Toronto International Film Festival has been happening here (in Toronto, obviously). I went to three show this year and was reminded again how I should really go to more shows and not less. TIFF is awesome.

My first movie was Real Time which is a Canadian film about the last hour of the life of a compulsive gambler before he is ummm, whacked, for not paying his debts. The title is a reference to the fact that the movie runs in real time. Every minute you sit in the theatre is a minute in the movie and a minute closer to the main character's impending doom. This was not just a gimmick but actually served to control the mood of the movie. It is pretty light-hearted at the start with lots of jokes and funny stuff. But as it progresses and you realize time is running out, things stop being funny and start being pretty depressing. The mood and tone were perfectly managed and the result was an excellent movie.

My second movie, Vinyan was a collaborative horror film from France, the United Kingdom and Belgium. A white couple who lost their only child in the tsunami in Thailand set out to the jungles of Burma to search for their son after seeing a video of tsunami-orphaned children in the region. The children live on their own in a destroyed village and have clearly become feral. Personally, I find children terrifying so this movie definitely frightened me. The acting from the two leads seemed to be a bit dead, but I enjoyed the performance given by their untrustworthy guide (some sort of local gang lord). Also, the scenery and cinematography in the movie were gorgeous.

The final movie I saw was the Spanish slasher-comedy flick, Sexykiller. The movie follows the exploits of a female serial killer on a University campus in Spain. If it weren't for the gore this would be a straight up comedy, however the intensity of the viscera were enough to earn this movie a place in the horror-dominated Midnight Madness program. For me this movie was just plain fun. The female killer, Barbara, is so confident in her convictions about who should die that it's hard not to agree with her. The pacing is excellent, never a dull moment, and there are lots of amusing references to Hollywood classics and other pop culture stuff. Barbara frequently talks directly to the audience in the movie, addressing the camera with such authenticity that it often feels like she can see you. This feeling was further enhanced by the actress's attendance at the screening. Both her and the director talked before and after the movie and they looked like they were having at least as much fun as the audience. Such a great atmosphere!

Next year I'm going to try to go to five screenings. It's just so much fun!

It seems like there is an endless amount of dialogue in Toronto about what to do with the Gardiner and how to improve transit in the downtown core. Today I came across a new proposal that I hadn't seen before, the Toronto Waterfront Viaduct.

Instead of tearing down the Gardiner and then replacing it with something else, this proposal suggests building a suspended expressway above the existing rail lines. This is nice because it means the Gardiner can continue to be used while the new expressway is built. When the new road is complete the Gardiner can be torn down and Lakeshore can be revitalized with fewer lanes and pretty median flower boxes or something.

There would still be a massive highway in the core of the city, but it wouldn't be blocking anything that isn't already blocked by the railway. Furthermore, the proposal suggests that the expressway have two levels, one for traffic and light rail and another level below for pedestrians and bicycles. Thus it would be a useful corridor for anyone needing to travel through the city, regardless of preferred mode of transport.

I'm obviously not a city planner, or even an engineer, but the proposal claims the costs would be similar to any of the other serious proposals and has the added benefit of minimal disruption during the construction phase. If these statements are even halfway true then this is by far the best solution I've ever heard to the transportation problems affecting downtown.

Now someone just needs to come up with a plan to get all of the many and varied stakeholders to agree there is a problem and that something serious needs to be done. Then we'd be set.

I did a bunch of walking around today, down through the harbour and all around High Park. The goal was to take fun photos. Here are the results!

Stickers on a pillar supporting the Gardiner Expressway

Crumbling bits of the Canada Malting Co. buildings

Weird berries on a bush near the Island Airport ferry crossing

Dogs fighting at the far west side of the CityPlace construction area

The Bathurst Street bridge at Front Street

Bumble bees fighting over a flower in High Park

Bumble bee and flower in High Park

Stairs to nowhere in High Park

Berries on a vine in High Park

Dragonfly on a flower in High Park

On Saturday Kim and I went out to "The Beach" because we'd never been there before. A lot of people call it "The Beaches" but according to residents of the area that is incorrect. Meh, whatever.

Anyway it was nice, lots of fun shops with chocolate and other foods and of course long stretches of beach. Unfortunately the E. Coli count was at 398 where acceptable levels are below 100. There were still some people swimming though.

We got ice cream from one of the random stores and the shopkeeper was nice but a bit strange. He seemed to want to keep giving things to his customers. I'm all for free stuff but this was excessive and felt desperate. First a single scoop cone turned out to actually be two gigantic scoops. Then he put two cookies, two chocolate covered pretzels and a huge chunk of dark chocolate into the top scoop. It made for a very precarious treat. While juggling my wallet and the ice cream to pay the man proceeded to give a bag of no-name M&M's to add to the insanity. It was too much! I really only wanted a little bit of ice cream and nothing else.

On Sunday we went to Matt's house for supper with him and Adrienne and Chris. They made yummy curry with rice and I brought samosas and Rice Krispie squares with candied peanuts. I made both the candied peanuts and the squares myself! Check out the recipe! They turned out really well and taste even better today.

After supper we played games with Chris and then I borrowed The Watchmen (widely considered to be the definitive graphic novel) from Adrienne and read that. It was pretty cool and made me want to both see the new movie coming out and maybe check out some other graphic novels too!

My main accomplishment for today was to discover and subsequently purchase a jar of "Green & Black's Organic Hazelnut Chocolate spread." Yes, now I have fancy Nutella. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm sure it will be delicious.

Tonight for wing night we went to House on Parliament for yummy pub-style food. I'm making a quick post here just to say that it was super yummy! They had standard pub fare like burgers, fish and chips, and sandwiches. But they also really good salads and proper entrées. I had a pulled pork sandwich that came on a baguette with onions and apple. Mmm....

I updated the RSS feed for my site so that it doesn't suck quite so much. Now instead of just the title, it also includes content for each post. So, those using Google Reader or other RSS thingers will get nicer, more informative junk from my feed.

Is my title obscure? Probably a little.

The moon was doing stuff with the clouds tonight so I took a couple pictures. I also took a picture of a random flower in the living room and then heavily post-processed the image. And, as a bonus, I'm posting a photo I took of the old Malting Company buildings early this past Spring.

The moon and the clouds

The moon and the clouds

A yellow flower with black and white background

Canada Malting Company buildings, random stairway

When I was little my family would always get delicious poppy seed buns and random European foods from Denninger's in Hamilton. It was always super yummy, but I haven't had food from there in a very long time.

So today Kim and I got a Zipcar and made the drive out to the Denninger's location on the mountain. I've never actually been to Denninger's myself, someone in my family always just picked stuff up and brought it home. So this was a fun new experience for me. The store was awesome and full of constant deliciousness including lots of free samples. There were so many random fun things too, and we spent a really long time just looking at stuff and trying to figure out what it was. One thing that made me laugh were the shrink wrapped frozen soups. They froze soup into a solid block and wrapped it in plastic. Weird.

Any way we got some fun stuff like currywurst mix, spaetzle, sausages, and chicken curry pot pies! I love chicken pot pie and curry is obviously awesome so I can't see how combining them can go wrong. We also got cheese, local blueberries, and lots of yummy chocolate based product. For lunch I had pork schnitzel on a bun with sauerkraut and onions and curry ketchup. Oooh, I also had a small chocolate milk form Hewitt's dairy! Hewitt's is a really awesome place that is based in Hagersville, the town my mom grew up in. They make delicious ice cream and milk based products. Mmmmm.

Denninger's was an exciting place to visit. But, the journey was equally entertaining because our Zipcar wasn't any ordinary Zipcar, it was a Toyota Prius! This was cool because the Prius is much cheaper to rent due to it's reduced gas consumption. The other way we could have gone to Hamilton was to take the GO Train, but that would actually have cost more than renting the Prius for four hours! Plus it takes longer by GO and I was worried about the perishable food getting home intact. We had a bit of traffic on the way there, but it was smooth sailing on the way back and we made it in about half an hour.

The Prius is pretty interesting to drive. Instead of turning a key to start it, you press a big button and it turns on. When you are driving, if you stop for more than a second it turns off the engine (starts instantly when you touch the gas). And it has a big LCD screen that constantly monitors your gas consumption and battery usage. It was a really fun car! Also, we drove over 150km, but as far as I could tell we used no gas at all. The gas gauge didn't budge. Good times!

We made the Beef and Broccoli tonight and it turned out great! I forgot to take a picture in my hurry to eat it though, so you'll just have to imagine how it looked.

Yesterday Kim and I did a bunch of grocery shopping at the St. Lawrence market in preparation for various food-makings.

For supper last night I made delicious delicious chili which we paired with yummy sourdough bread. I was intending to post the recipe but I realized that I don't really have a solid recipe and I generally make it up as I go. So I've decided to write a vague description of the steps and ingredients.

First, brown a bunch of lean or extra lean ground beef. I used somewhere between 1.5 and 2 pounds last night. Next chop up some sirloin steak and pork chops into cubes. Try to get a bit more of this "real" meat than of the ground beef. Now get a big pot. A really big pot. I had to buy a bigger one just for chili. Heat some oil in the bottom of the pot and then fry a big chopped up onion with a bunch of fresh minced garlic in the oil. Add the meats and sear them for a while before throwing in a couple chopped up peppers and a bunch of chopped celery. Mix this all up and let it cook for a few minutes. Then add a big can of diced tomatoes, a smaller can of tomato sauce (just the cheap stuff) and a can of tomato paste. Finally add the beans (with liquid; if it doesn't thicken up after an hour or two of simmering you can always add flour or cornstarch to fix it). One can of pinto beans, one of white kidney beans and one of red kidney beans. Mix this all up and then add the spices. There are a lot of spices, so it's better to prepare them in advance. I use 4 parts beef stock, 2 parts oregano, 1 part flour, 2 parts cumin, 1-2 parts paprika, 6-8 parts chili powder, 1 part cayenne powder, 1 part cinnamon and 1 part ground coriander (last night 1 part equaled a half tablespoon). Go easier on the cayenne, paprika and chili powder if you're concerned about spiciness. Although the chili powder is the stuff that gives it that "chili" taste so I don't like being stingy with it. Mix everything up, bring to a boil and then reduce heat to low and simmer for 1.5-2 hours. Taste it as it cooks and adjust the spiciness if necessary by adding chili powder or cayenne to make it more spicy or sugar to make it less spicy. Serve with delicious fresh bread and grated cheese. You can also add a dollop of sour cream if it's too spicy, the fats take the edge off.

We also bought food yesterday to make Beef and Broccoli sometime this week.

Today we walked through the rain to "Goed Eten" in Kensington Market to get a waffle. Matt recommended the place a while back but we didn't have a chance to try it out until today. The waffle was very tasty indeed. It came with fresh fruit, fresh homemade ice cream, and real whipped cream. I took a before and after photo using my new lens for my camera. It's a 50mm f1.8 fixed length lens and I quite like it. It's fast and sharp and fun to use. Anyway here are the photos:

Delicious waffle with chocolate ice cream, whipped cream, strawberries, bananas, and blueberries

Delicious waffle with chocolate ice cream, whipped cream, strawberries, bananas, and blueberries

For the Civic holiday long weekend I went canoe camping in Algonquin with Matt, my Mom and our family friends from Ottawa. It was an awesome time and I've posted a full trip journal with photos. It was fun having my camera on the trip, but I don't think I took enough time to be careful in the set up of all of my shots. I did get some good ones but I was also disappointed with how a lot of the others turned out.

This weekend I'm hopefully going climbing outdoors at Mount Nemo and I'll be taking more photos there.

This weekend was lots of fun! On Friday night a whole bunch of us went to the Madison for Jeff's birthday. It's a pretty good place and absolutely huge. Simone had reserved a whole section for us and we had lots of beer and wings and even a cake! It was really good times!!

Saturday was the annual Rib-O-Rama at my boss's house. They smoke ribs in smokers and there are lots of salads and desserts and stuff. Kim came with me this year and it was lots of fun. The thunderstorms went away just before it started leaving us with perfect weather. The food was great and the beer was cold. I brought a strawberry-rhubarb crumble pie from Dufflet and someone else brought homemade vanilla ice cream. I combined these two and received very positive feedback.

Also on Saturday I read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. This is a classic of science fiction (it won both the Hugo and the Nebula award) and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I found the suggestion of "morality of intention" a bit strange, but I really liked the emphasis on using children for morally difficult tasks because they are free from all of the preconceptions that burden adults. I'm not saying I think we should enslave children for all our dirty work, I just think it is interesting how much the world changes people and how settled you can get with your notions of the way the world works. This idea became most apparent to me when I read a couple critical analyses of the book and could see the essayist's world views and preconceptions biasing their work. Anyway, the sequel to the book also won both the Hugo and the Nebula (crazy!) so I'll be reading that one as well.

Sunday morning Jen and Jeremy made a brunch of delicious crêpes for all the Cityplace dwellers. They had all sorts of fruit and toppings and of course a lot of Nutella. We all had a good time chatting and eating and when we were done I took my bursting stomach out east on Queen to do some rock climbing. It was a good outing and afterwards I enjoyed a peaceful relaxing evening.

Tonight, for wing night, after years of failed attempts, we finally made it to Duff's for wings. Duff's is supposed to have some of the best wings in Toronto. I liked them, but they really made me long for Morty's in Waterloo. I think it might be time for a road trip.

This weekend is camping in Algonquin! I can't wait!!

Last weekend I did a bunch of stuff (see the next post) and one of the activities took me to Dufflet where I picked up this chocolate bar in addition to delicious pastries.

The bar is 85% cocoa and is made from beans from Africa. It is smooth like the other Valrhona bars I've tried, which certainly takes the edge of the increased cocoa content. However smoothness isn't enough. The taste was very flat and uninteresting and the aftertaste was bitter and unpleasant. I wouldn't buy this one again.

I'm just going to take a minute here to point out something I found on the Interwebs this morning. During the writer's strike it seems that Joss Whedon (of Buffy, Angel and Firefly fame) was busy on a personal project. The results are now available. Be sure to check out Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog for glorious, musical, Joss Whedon-esque content staring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion. The first act was released today and the others will be released later this week.

Update: I should mention that these videos will only be online until midnight on Sunday. After that they disappear (although you'll be able to purchase a DVD). So watch them soon if you're interested!

Update 2: It appears that the rest of the Internet also enjoys the work of Joss Whedon as the interest appears to have killed his poor server. I looked around for a mirror without success so I guess just keep trying the main site and maybe it will become fixed by magic.

Final Update: Here are some mirrors to try: mirror 1,mirror 2, and mirror 3.

I did a few things this weekend...so I'll blather on about them for a bit here.

Friday Kim and I hit up Spring Rolls for some supper and then saw Hellboy 2. I liked the original Hellboy and I loved the style of "Pan's Labyrinth" and since the director of all three is the same guy (Guillermo del Toro) this was a must see movie. It was pretty good and the creativity and attention to detail used in the creatures and monsters was awesome. Good movie!

Saturday we went to a bakery on St. Clair in hunt of the best croissant in Toronto. I'm already partial to the ones from Thuet, but since they're the only ones I've tried I though I should broaden my horizons. Anyway, these were good croissants, but not as good as the ones I had recently in New York. These ones could have been just a touch more buttery I thought. The bakery ended up being in the middle of something called the Salsa Festival (which is in it's 4th year apparently) so after getting the croissants we explored that for a bit and got some empanadas. Then we went to the Loblaws that's right there and did a bit of grocery shopping before heading home.

Last night I installed the latest version of Ubuntu on my desktop and today I also installed it on my laptop. It's pretty good, same old happy Linux with updated software and a few new features. I can't complain. Finally, I replaced my never used Vista installation on my laptop with Windows XP (also likely to remain unsed).

This evening I went climbing for the first time in like 3 weeks. It felt good to be back and I'm looking forward to going again on Wednesday.

Lately I've been taking photos in RAW format with my DSLR and using UFRaw to post-process the images. It's not a bad program and it has an awesome batch mode, but I was starting to get the feeling that my camera was better at doing the post-processing than I was.

Anyway, today I found a new program that's a lot more solid and has a lot more features. RawTherapee handles a bunch of stuff automatically as well so it's a bit easier to work with.

There's still a lot of terminology to understand though, but I was able to get a pretty nice result on my first try. Check it out below. I was able to increase the brightness of this image which started out pretty dark and I was also able to really bring out the greens in the background. Finally I was able to soften the noise in background to make it look more like blur than random junk.

Pretty flower in New York City

I finished my trip blogs for both Camping on the Bruce Peninsula and for our trip to New York City. Check them out for some awesome photos and stuff from these two really fun trips!

Also, I finally saw Wall-E on Saturday! It was freaking awesome and the short that runs before it was hilarious too! Pixar continues to produce animated films that are just miles ahead of all the competition. Go see Wall-E!

Kim and I are off to New York this evening but I just wanted to do a quick update before we go so that I don't get too far behind on blogging.

Last weekend I went camping with Matt, Patrick, Toni, Verna and Luis! We went to Bruce Peninsula National Park near Tobermory and it was super fantastic awesome! I've written a page in my Trips section but I haven't posted photos yet (there are a lot of really good ones) so I'm not quite ready to link it yet. I'll do the photos after I get back from New York I guess.

This past weekend was Chris's birthday party and that was super fun too! We went Go Karting at the docks down near Cherry Street. It was really fun with some amusing crashes and spin outs caused by a certain Will Chau. Then we went back to Chris's place and used the building's barbecues to make delicious meat and grilled vegetables for supper. This was accompanied by delicious potato salad and macaroni salad as well as cake and beer! Then we hung around Chris's place chatting and playing Wii and trying out his fancy new bed. It holds more than eight people at once!

I purchased two new pieces of media this weekend too. First was an Apocalyptica CD that I didn't have yet. It's pretty solid, and delivers the awesome driving sound you can only get by four cellos played in heavy metal style. However the band seems to be branching out a bit and including more vocals in their music. I don't think I'm a fan of that as it puts the cellos in a more background/accompaniment role which is clearly not correct.

The other new media I consumed this weekend was the latest Futurama movie: The Beast With a Billion Backs. Futurama is awesome and this was no exception. There's just so much to see and the animation is so well done. Plus a lot of the 3D stuff is done in Maya and there are some cool bonus features that show the 3D work.

Today I'm just hanging out at home, making last minute preparations for our trip to New York and relaxing.

Last night I went to see Dave Matthews Band with Matt at the Molson Amphitheatre. It was a pretty good show, although I think I liked the first time I saw them better. The start of the show was pretty chill with lots of mellow jamming, but by the end they were going pretty hardcore as was expected. Unfortunately the early mellowness seemed to delay the crowd from getting into it and a lot of the people around us didn't seem to even be paying attention at first. It was pretty obnoxious. It got better as the night went on though and overall I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was also nice to be able to walk to and from the concert and avoid all the business on the streets and streetcars.

I was having some difficulty with a bug at work this morning so I took a walk to the distillery district to clear my head. I stopped at Soma Chocolate while I was there and saw a brand of chocolate bar I hadn't heard of before so I picked one up. I meant to wait on breaking it open until I wasn't at work, but it just kept staring at me and I was still having trouble with my bug so I just had to bust out the chocolate. Unfortunately/fortunately it was very good so now I have to blog about it at work while the taste is still in my mouth.

Anyway, the company is a small artisan chocolate company in the US called Amano Chocolate and this particular bar is a 70% made up of beans from Ocumare Valley in Venezuela. It's super smooth and the flavour is spectacular. I think I really like chocolate from Venezuela.

I wanted to make a quick point about tasting fine chocolate here. It's important to have a clean palate (so eat some bread or apple and then rinse with water). You also shouldn't bite down on it at all. Just allow the chocolate to melt on your tongue and the flavours will change and evolve as the melt continues. Mmmm...good!

Man, you write a blog post and then before you know it two weeks have passed and a bunch of stuff has happened and you haven't blogged about any of it. This is definitely a serious problem of the modern age.

So first up, I am now a certified lead climber at the Toronto Climbing Academy. I've been out lead climbing twice and it's going well. I'm gradually getting over the fear part which is important because I find the fear really hurts my climbing. I had to deal with that when I first started climbing top-rope and I found once I stopped thinking about falling I climbed much better. Now that falling is a much bigger deal it's back in my mind and making me more tentative in my moves. Hopefully I'll get control of that soon. I did a 5.11+ on lead this weekend, and I was able to get to the top, but I was over-gripping the holds so much that I still feel sore in my arms today.

Two weekends ago I visited my mom for her birthday and had a really good time. My brother and I got her a new LCD monitor and so I set that up and I think she liked it quite a bit. On the Saturday I helped put together her new patio furniture and then made this really yummy chocolate mousse to have after supper. The recipe is from one of my random blogs, David Lebovitz...Living the Sweet Life in Paris and it was soooooo good. The author of the blog was originally a famous pastry chef and he also writes cookbooks. The blog generally talks about food and restaurants in Paris with a focus on chocolate and dessert. He often posts recipes and always posts photos of the food that make you want to lick your monitor. Anyway, the mousse turned out very well, but it was the richest stuff I've ever made. I accidentally ate too much of it too quickly and was in pain for about an hour afterwards! But I'm getting ahead of myself now. Before eating the mousse Kim and I took my mom out to a nice new Italian restaurant in Byron and had a delicious meal. Then we went back and ate the mousse before watching the movie, The Golden Compass. The movie was pretty well done, but I don't think the books translate well to movie form. Also, they chose to cut the movie off before the end of the first book so that they could have a happy ending instead of a devastating one. I was a bit disappointed in that because I wanted to see how they would do it. Oh well.

Last weekend was hot and I was happy because I like summer. Kim and I went to Toronto Island on Saturday to explore and stuff because neither of us had really been there (well I went to a concert that, but that didn't really count). It was nice! It was like a giant park combined with huge stretches of beach. It also has a small county fair-style amusement park for kids that was as tasteful and untacky as such a thing could be. Oh, and they have a "clothing-optional" beach too. We were walking along the beaches and basically stumbled onto it. There were no signs marking it from the direction we came in and thus we suddenly were walking through a bunch of naked people. And there were a lot of them! It's apparently a very popular place. I feel sorry for the guy who fell asleep on his stomach without putting sunscreen on his bum though. It was sooooo red!! Although we spent a good amount of time by the water, we never went in and we didn't really see anyone else in it either. It's not that the water was dirty, it's just that it was barely above freezing. Lake Ontario is deep and I think it must take most of the summer for it to warm up to something tolerable (but never actually warm). I tried wading out and had to stop quite quickly because the water was so cold it hurt my feet.

Now that I'm caught up on the past, it's time for a quick look to the future. I'm going places! First, in two weeks I'm going camping with Matt and Patrick and Toni and Verna and someone else in Bruce Peninsula National Park. It should be fun, although I don't think we're super organized yet. Then, I have the first week of July off due to a company-wide shutdown. So Kim and I are going to New York for four nights to see New York type things. We're flying Porter from Toronto island so it should be super convenient. It's also pretty cheap too, although the fuel surcharges are getting hefty. I wonder how much longer flying will be affordable? Finally, on Civic Holiday weekend, I'm going camping again. This time it is a canoe trip in Algonquin, similar to the one I did last year. Matt's coming this time and I can't wait. Algonquin is awesome.

I'm going to end this post with some photos I took recently. The first three are from doors open Toronto, while rest are from Toronto island. Enjoy!

MEC's Green Roof

St. James Church from within the adjoining park

The market plus some of the Toronto skyline

This random bird we saw on the island, no idea what it is

Beach on Toronto Island

The Toronto skyline from the island, one of the best places to see it from

Random artsy shot through the willow tree while waiting for a ferry boat

My last bar of chocolate from the order was the 70% Amedei Chuao bar. This bar is made from the same variety of Criollo beans as the Chocolat Bonnat bar I reviewed a few weeks ago and I was very much looking forward to what is considered the definitive rendition of these beans in bar form.

Unfortunately I was underwhelmed. The chocolate was good, but it just didn't do it for me the way the Chocolat Bonnat bar did. Plus the Amedei bar is four times as expensive as the Chocolat Bonnat. Combine all this with the fact that I just discovered I can get the Chocolat Bonnat bar at Domino Foods in the St. Lawrence Market and I don't see myself ordering the Amedei again. I will however explore their other, more reasonably priced bars, as the company overall impresses me with their dedication to delicious chocolate.

In other chocolate related news, I went to a little chocolate shop on Queen East last weekend after climbing. I can't remember the name or the address but it's on the south side of Queen street just a little bit east of Broadview. They mostly sold truffles but had a few other things too. I bought four truffles and they were all super delicious. My favourite was definitely the dark chocolate salted caramel. Mmmmm.

Amedei Chuao bar

A bunch of fun stuff happened over the last few days and I haven't blogged much about non-chocolate stuff lately so I thought I'd do a quick update.

Friday I went with a bunch of people to see the Indiana Jones movie. I wasn't really expecting anything more than a typical Indiana Jones movie and so I wasn't disappointed. It certainly doesn't stand on it's own, but it's still a super fun movie.

On Saturday I just relaxed in the morning and then went climbing in the afternoon. For supper we made butter chicken from a fancy mix my mom got me for Christmas. It was pretty good but much much spicier than expected. We had lots of naan bread though so that helped ease the spicy. Saturday evening I played more Boom Blox with Chris and Matt. It's a really cool puzzle game for the Wii that's like a crazy version of Jenga with good physics emulation. Good times!

Sunday Kim and I went to a bunch of Doors Open Toronto stuff. Doors Open Toronto is when a bunch of buildings in Toronto open up for tours and stuff that you can't normally do. Last year I went through the CBC and also a fancy eco-condo thing. This year we saw the old train roundhouse, the green-roof on top of MEC and a couple buildings in the distillery district. The stuff was cool, but nothing super-amazing or anything. It was really nice just to walk around in the sun all day (the sun burn wasn't as nice though).

Monday night was my second lead climbing class! We learned how to belay and even started to practice falling. Falling on lead is a bit scary as you fall much farther, but it worked out pretty well. As a belayer we learned how to catch the falls gently so the climber doesn't slam into the wall or fall too far.

Tonight for wing night we went to Fressen which is a vegan tapas bar on Queen West. It was really good, and lots of fun to share a bunch of random food. For the most part I didn't know what anything was but it was all yummy!

Tomorrow is Wednesday which means more climbing. Since starting the lead class I've been averaging close to three climbing sessions a week which is really really good because the more often I get out the better I get. Unfortunately it's also pretty tiring. I'm visiting my mom for her birthday this weekend so it will be nice to take that time to recover.

After three tasty but not particularly special bars of chocolate I'm now on to the two super unique bars I purchased. Both are from the Italian chocolate company Amedei.

The Amedei Porcelana bar is 70% cocoa and has a truly unique origin. The beans are from a plantation of genetically pure Porcelana Criollo cocoa trees. Because of the difficulty in maintaining such plants Amedei only releases a limited number of bars in batches. They are actually hand-numbered which is pretty cool. My bar is number 2832 of 20000. As you can imagine, this all makes the chocolate particularly expensive. It is by far the most expensive bar I've seen. It cost $15 for a 50g bar. That's 30 cents per gram. A Snickers bar is about one cent per gram. Ouch. Anyway so the question is: is this bar worth the price?

Well it is very very good indeed. The flavour is strong and full and also, unsurprisingly, pure. It's constant and unchanging. It's a very neat experience to just have this solid blast of pure chocolate awesomeness that is sustained until the end. And the end is also noteworthy. The flavour doesn't linger, it just vanishes. This actually makes the chocolate very satisfying. I often find that when I have chocolate flavour still in my mouth it makes me want to eat more of the chocolate right away. This didn't happen here. Which is good because for $15 I feel like I need to make this bar last.

Anyway, is it worth $15? Probably not on a regular basis. But it was definitely worth $15 to try it once.

Amedei Porcelana bar in package

Amedei Porcelana bar out of package

Today's chocolate is from Michel Cluizel in Paris. The beans are from a single plantation in the Dominican and the bar is 67% cocoa. It's neat that the cocoa is from just one plantation that has been farmed by the same family for over 100 years. The chocolate is good, it has a good flavour and is stronger than other bars in the 60% range I've had. It's not nearly as smooth as the Valrhona bars however I've since learned that smoothness is sort of a trademark of Valrhona. Despite the lack of smoothness, the taste and texture end well and it still goes down nicely.

Michel Cluizel Los Ancones in package

Michel Cluizel Los Ancones out of package

I was going to wait a little while before opening my next bar of chocolate, but I got a bit peckish this evening and thought I'd try out the other Valrhona bar I ordered. This one is the Valrhona Grand Cru Guanaja and it's a 70% cocoa bar that is a mix of Trinitario and Criollo beans from plantations in South America.

I wasn't expecting much after the last Valrhona bar was so mediocre, and as a result I was super surprised with the deliciousness of the chocolate. This is exactly what I want from my chocolate. It was smooth like the Caraïbe but not boring. The flavour is rich and full and it lingers in the most pleasant of ways. No bitter aftertaste like crappier dark chocolate, just smooth awesomeness all the way. It melts nicely in your mouth without any effort, it's not grainy at all. This will definitely be a bar I get again.

Valrhona Grand Cru Guanaja in package

Valrhona Grand Cru Guanaja out of package

I got my next order of chocolate on Tuesday but I didn't get a chance to sample it until tonight. I wanted to give each bar proper treatment so I had to make sure I had time to take photos and taste carefully.

I ordered my chocolate from A Taste For Chocolate this time since my other place doesn't stock Amedei and I wanted to try that brand.

Today I tried the Valrhona Grand Cru Caraïbe, a 66% cocoa bar made of beans from the Caribbean. The beans are of the Trinitario variety, which is a hybrid between the common, hardy Forastero cocoa plant and the higher quality but less hardy Criollo cocoa plant. According to Wikipedia, 95% of the world production of cocoa is Forastero while the rest is split between Trinitario and Criollo.

So anyway, the bar was very mild and easy to eat. The flavour was good but not particularly strong or interesting. I checked the Valrhona website and noticed that you can get the same chocolate with slivers of hazelnuts. I think that would be a better bar as the hazelnuts would not have to fight with the flavour of the chocolate (since it's mild). Plus hazelnuts are just awesome. So overall...good chocolate but I probably won't get it again.

In other news I had my first (of three) lead climbing course on Monday and it went really well. We spent the first class learning how to clip the rope as you climb. After practicing again on Wednesday I have it down pretty well. It makes the climb a lot harder though because you have to keep stopping to clip, which requires you to hang off one arm while hauling the rope up with the other. As if there wasn't enough to do with your arms on a climb as it was. But it was fun and will open up a lot more climbing to me so I'm pretty excited.

Anyway here are some photos of the chocolate.

My Chocolate Order

Valrhona Grand Cru Caraibe in package

Valrhona Grand Cru Caraibe out of package

I ordered a bunch more chocolate last night so thought I should write a quick review of the other interesting bar from my previous order. It's from a French company called Pralus and is 100% cocoa from Madagascar. Being a 100% bar it's super intense but in small quantities it's pretty tolerable. I was also surprised by how (relatively) smooth it was. It wasn't powdery or chalky or anything which was very nice. It took me about three weeks to finish the bar, just eating little bits at a time. I don't think I'd get it regularly because it's pretty challenging but I did like it.

I can't wait for my new shipment of chocolate to arrive!

In other food news, we're making chili tonight and it's going to be awesome.

I walk by the convention centre every day on my way to work so I have a pretty good idea of which conventions are in town on any given day. It's always amusing to see all the people heading into the centre from their hotels all with matching convention badges. Anyway for the last two days the LCBO has been holding a conference called "Live the Brand" or something similarly silly. The interesting thing about this was not the conference but the people. Apparently most LCBO employees who would attend such a conference (store managers maybe??) smoke a lot. I walked by several times and there were always hordes of people with matching LCBO name tags smoking just outside the doors. And I mean smoking a lot. I didn't know it was possible to produce clouds of smoke outdoors, but walking through them felt like walking into a dank smoke filled bar.

Last night at climbing I finally signed up to take the lead climbing course. Lead climbing is where you use your own rope and clip in to anchors as you climb. It's an essential skill for outdoor climbing and it also will allow me to try out some new walls at my gym that are lead climb only. I'm pretty excited but the course at my gym is fairly disorganized. They take your money and your name and then they call you "at some point" to tell you when the course will be. It's not a big deal because I trust them, but it would be nice to have a bit more definition.

I had my second dental cleaning yesterday in as many weeks, apparently the first one wasn't good enough. It's OK though because my insurance company didn't seem to mind paying again. I have to go back again next week for two small fillings and then I'm done for a little while. Unless the dentist insists on taking my wisdom teeth out. I plan to resist a little because they don't bother me at all.

I recently ordered a bunch of fancy chocolate from ChocoDirect.com, a Canadian company that specializes in importing/attaining fancy chocolate, generally from Europe. I just broke open the bar I was most excited about and I thought I would write a little review.

It is a 75% cocoa dark chocolate bar from Bonnat Chocolatier in France. In particular it is a single source chocolate meaning the beans used all come from the same place. In this case they come from the village of Chuao in Venezuela. There is a bit of controversy about this because the Italian chocolate company Amedei is supposed to have the exclusive rights to those beans in a contract granted by the Venezuelan government. Nonetheless, this is perhaps the finest bar of chocolate I've ever tasted.

It's dark and bitter as it should be, but also smooth and luxurious without any of the bite of harsher chocolates like Lindt. Plus, the flavour is interesting, with lots of subtlety and variation that is lacking from normal dark chocolate. I'm not going to start comparing it to random berries or trees or nuts or things, but I certainly understand how a more pretentious person could. I assume this flavour is the hallmark of the Chuao cocoa bean.

The other neat thing about the chocolate is the ingredients list: cocoa, cocoa butter, sugar. Nothing else, just the pure ingredients. No stupid chemicals like lecithin to mess things up.

I will definitely be getting this one again.

I finally got a dentist here in Toronto and today was my first appointment. It had been about two years since my last cleaning so it took a little longer but I was surprised that it took two hours. I think part of the problem was the number of x-rays. I lost count of the number of times the hygienist left the room to press the little button that made the big machine go buzz at my face. I haven't developed radiation-related super powers yet, but I'm still hopeful.

Last weekend was pretty fun. I climbed on Friday and had a really good night. Then on Saturday I went roller blading with Chris and Justin west along the waterfront path. Round trip we went twelve and a half kilometres which was pretty awesome. Then Patrick and Toni made us salmon for supper and we played Ticket to Ride.

There was some other fun stuff going on too, but I've forgotten and am too distracted by the new episode of The Office that I'm watching right now to remember.

Today I competed in the "Tour de Bloc" eastern regional finals. This is a bouldering competition that is used in part to determine the Canadian national bouldering team. Of course I use the term "compete" loosely as I was only in the recreational division and I didn't do spectacularly well. It was a lot of fun though!

We (myself, John and Lap from work) climbed in the morning and then spent the afternoon shopping/wandering around until the finals started at 6pm. We had supper at a Shoeless Joe's near the gym. Little did we know that that particular location is like the local headquarters for the Toronto Football Club fan base and a game was being played just as we went to get food. The place was absolutely full with TFC people wearing red and screaming at the televisions like a bunch of soccer hoodlums. We had to share a table with some of them because there were no other places to sit in the entire restaurant. It was at least as entertaining to watch all the people as it was to watch the game. Oh, and TFC won 3-2. I think David Beckham was on the other team if that means anything to anyone.

The finals at the competition were beyond anything I've ever seen before. The climbers were all outstanding and the problems were all ridiculous. Nobody got them all but the guy who won got three of four and the final climb had all of the one hundred or so spectators screaming. Pretty exciting! I wish I had brought my camera just to take pictures of the final but I didn't think about it because I knew I'd be climbing and didn't want to carry it around for fear of breaking it.

There were also a ton of door prizes at the end. I won a pair of bright red American Apparel "Classic Girl" underwear branded by the climbing hold company "So Ill." Pretty hilarious, I had to go up to the front and try them on (over my pants) and get my photo taken. There were also good prizes like backpacks and crash pads and awesome t-shirts, but me, I won them women's underwear. Awesome.

The rest of this weekend was pretty fun too, I went shopping a bit with Kim on Saturday and we also hit up Cora's for some yummy breakfast. In the evening I played games with Chris and Patrick and Toni. Good stuff!

Today I played Portal at Patrick's house. And I beat it! That game is way too fun and amusing. And I only had to tolerate mild abuse from Patrick and Matt as they watched my gimpiness.

After playing we went for a walk with cameras to take pictures of things. It was a really nice day and it was fun to go exploring down by the waterfront. I'm pretty tired though so I'm not going to write much and I'll just post some of the photos. There are also two older photos from my mom's house that I just got around to getting off my card today.

Flowers at my mom's house

My cat Angus!

Rickety stairs at the Canada Malting Co.

Towers at the Canada Malting Co.

Warning signs against entering the Canada Malting Co. Apparently it's dangerous.

Cat in an alley in the Canada Malting Co.

More towers at the Canada Malting Co.

Creepy statue at the Canada Malting Co. in front of the city.

Toronto skyline.

Steamwhistle bottle at the bar we stopped at on the way home.

Salt and Pepper shakers

I did a bunch of stuff today and it was pretty good, but nothing really out of the ordinary happened. Still, definitely a good day. I started out by getting up in good time (due to leaving the blinds open last night and the blazing sun coming in at 7:30 in the morning). Then Kim and I went to the market and bought a bunch of stuff including ingredients to make more muesli for myself.

After a nice walk home in the sun we headed back out to go rock climbing. Again, nothing out of the ordinary, but I did have a really good climbing day so that made me pretty happy. I've been a bit off my game lately and I really tried hard today to control my climbing and not just muscle my way up the wall (which is a sure way to fail miserably on hard climbs). I was successful and ended up onsighting (climbing without falling or seeing anyone else do it first) a 5.11+ which is not something I do very often.

On the way back from climbing we passed the Moss Park Armoury (a Canadian Forces facility on Queen East). I've seen it many times but never noticed the word "armoury" before. I'm glad I noticed it because now I know where to go for weapons in the event of zombies. This is important knowledge.

For supper we made some really yummy pasta (penne) with tomatoes, spinach and fresh prosciutto from the market. I was pretty happy with how it turned out. At first I was worried there wasn't enough sauce, but it ended up being the exact right amount. When paired with a San Francisco sourdough and some mini-mousse cakes it made a fine meal. Matt joined us for food and after we headed back to his place to watch the original Jurassic Park movie. It's not as good as I remember, but still enjoyable enough. I actually noticed some stuff that I missed in my original viewings due to being too young/ignorant at the time. Like near the end when a bunch of symbols are projected on the one velociraptor, the symbols are not computer code but in fact DNA bases (ATGC). And how it's a UNIX system and she knows this. I know UNIX too.

Note that my new knowledge of the Moss Park Armoury will not help me in the event of a velociraptor attack and I will not even attempt to use it in such a case. I will tremble in terror until I am eaten or they go away. Raptors are scary!

I was at Futureshop yesterday and was going to buy an SD card for my Wii so that I can transfer games and stuff. I wanted to get something as cheap and small as possible since there isn't really any need for a big card. Anyway, the best Futureshop could do was a 2GB card for $22. A bit much. So I went to use one of their Macs to check the Canada Computers website. Obviously they had much more of what I wanted (I ended up getting a 1GB from them for $7 later in the day). It was funny while I was looking at the website though because a Futureshop employee came up to ask if I needed help and as soon as he saw the Canada Computers website he just turned around and went away. Smart move.

Yesterday on my way to work I noticed that the free newspaper "NOW" had a special section this week on restaurants in Toronto. This naturally attracted enough of my interest to cause me to stop and grab a paper to read after work. The section is pretty good and should give a bunch of new places to try for wing night and other events.

But there was something even cooler hiding in the newspaper. Dave Matthews Band is playing in Toronto in June! And tickets went on sale this morning at 10:00am! If I hadn't have grabbed the paper I would have never known, or I would have found out much too late to still be able to get some.

Anyway, it was all very fortuitous and I was feeling pretty good until I tried to buy the tickets from Ticketmaster this morning. I logged into my account in advance and had everything ready. I refreshed the page at 10:00am and started to go through the catchpas and the privacy stealing questions. Then, on the very last screen, I received an error: 0x201007. So I tried again. And again. Then I though OK, maybe my laptop is funny, I'll try my desktop. Same error. OK, well maybe it doesn't like Linux (not that there should be a problem but some websites don't feel the same way). So I booted Windows and tried again. Nope. So then I grudgingly opened Internet Explorer and tried it. Still nothing. At this point I'm a bit angry but can't think of any other options. I was about to call Matt to get him to try but I thought I'd try one last time on my own. It worked. What?? Nothing was different. Oh yeah, and look, extra Ticketmaster fees turn a $46 ticket into a $64 ticket. Booya, as they (ie. Ticketmaster) say. Gah. Jerks.

I also checked out my Google Analytics page this morning to see all the random combinations of web browsers and operating systems (Hi Matt!) like Safari on Windows and Opera on OSX. While checking this I noticed I have some visits from Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, Australia (Hi Rob!!).

Tonight Kim and I went to see "We Will Rock You" the musical by Queen and Ben Elton. It was really good! Toni and Chris and Jonny recommended it at wing night and then on Wednesday I got an email from Mirvish giving discounts on tickets to the show until the end of March. We were able to get seats in the most expensive section for just $40 a piece. Again, the show was great. Lots of good singing and dancing and stuff, maybe a bit light on plot but definitely a lot of fun.

Before the show we were going to go to dinner at The Senator on the recommendation of Toni, but the place was being painted this week so we had to find something else. We ended up at Eggspectation which was convenient because it was across the street from the theatre, but turned out to be as touristy as I had suspected. Not that it was bad or anything, just nothing special.

This weekend was pretty busy, but full of lots of fun stuff! On Saturday Kim and I tried out my new Zip Car membership with a trip to Costco, Ikea and No Frills to pick up some large groceries and other stuff that would have been obnoxious to get home on the subway.

The car was great, no problems getting it started or getting in and out of the garage. The cost was $10.50/hour and we rented for three hours. At first I thought this was a bit expensive because Patrick always talks about how he can get really good deals for rental cars from Hertz for a whole day. But as I thought about it I realized that although it is more expensive, the Zip Car thing isn't a bad deal. Gas and insurance is paid for (unlike normal rental cars) and since you only rent for as long as you need, you don't need to pay for parking the car anywhere. If we were to do the same thing by TTC it would cost almost $10 for a day pass, which is cheaper, but it would have taken a lot more time and we wouldn't have been able to carry all the stuff back. Anyway, I was satisfied with the service. The only problem was that we cut the time a bit close due to traffic on the way home. I got the car back with exactly one minute to spare.

On Sunday I went to Barrie with work people to go climbing at a gym there that just opened a huge new bouldering section. It was really amazing. They had between 80 and 100 bouldering problems circling this huge structure with all sorts of angles and surfaces and you could top out on all of the routes. Pretty sweet. After the climbing we went to the Bloor Cinema to see the "Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour" which was a bunch of outdoor sports movies and clips from movies. It was pretty good, although John said that it had been much better in previous years.

Wing night was awesome tonight, Patrick's parents are visiting Canada and they joined us to make a party of 13. We went to the new Terroni on Adelaide street, and it was even better than the old Terroni. I had some awesome rigatoni with fresh mozzarella, zucchini and tomatoes. And of course I had the tiramisu which is sooooo good at Terroni. Good times!

Sometimes at night I watch out the window to see if people in the apartments nearby are doing anything interesting. Until tonight I've never seen anything other than people watching TV or dark apartments. But just now I saw something both amusing and familiar. The silhouette of some guy strumming a plastic guitar. Yay for Guitar Hero!!

I was climbing last night as usual and I happened to leave at the same time as one of the co-op students who was also climbing that night. At the same corner as the gym is an establishment known as "Jilly's." I've never been there but I believe it is a "gentleman's club" of some sort.

Anyway, I normally wait for a streetcar down the road a bit, but since the co-op was also taking the streetcar I waited with him at the stop in front of this "Jilly's." We were chatting and a young woman came out and joined us in the bus shelter. She asked if we would mind if she had a smoke in the shelter because it was cold out and she "had less clothes than the average bear" on under her fairly short jacket.

Well, I can't say I approve of cigarettes, but I'm generally non-confrontational so I said that would be fine. The co-op and I continued to have a pleasant conversation for a minute and then I noticed that she was in fact smoking a joint and not a cigarette. Then she asked if we'd heard about the accident just up the road. We used this opportunity to exit the shelter and see if this accident meant there would be no streetcars for a while. And at this point we also decided to wait at the next stop down the road.

Not that I have a problem with strippers or marijuana, it was just a damn weird situation and was compounded by the fact that I was with someone I only slightly knew. If I were with a close friend we could have communicated silently and been amused or whatever, and if I were with someone I didn't know at all I could have just done my own thing. But being with an acquaintance who I would have to see again in the near future, yeah, that threw me off.

On a related note, all of the big pictures on the side of Jilly's were boarded over that night, so maybe the rumours of it closing down are true. I wouldn't be surprised at all. Queen and Broadview is prime for condo developments. My climbing gym is going to be torn down in a year and a half for a condo in fact. Unfortunately the people who run the gym only rent the building so they had no control when the owner was given a dump truck full of money for the land. They do intend to move the gym to a new location however, so I hope that works out. It really is the best gym in Toronto in my opinion.

One final thing for the night. One of the random blogs I read, Dooce, just won four awards at the 2008 Bloggies, which I guess is the equivalent of the Oscars or something. It was also ranked number five in a list of the world's 50 most powerful blogs. Craziness. I like reading it because it's amusing and well written. Plus the author posts some really good photos of her dogs and the world around her. The blog is famous because the author was fired from her job back in 2002 for blogging about work. In fact, the name of the blog has been verbed, to mean getting fired for blogging (ie. being dooced). The situation turned out OK for her though, as the blog apparently makes the author enough money in advertising to provide a middle-class life for herself and her family in Utah. Hmm...maybe I should throw up a few Google ads here.

Staying at work until 9pm when you arrived at 9am is less than awesome.

Not too much is going on right now, I feel like I'm just biding my time until winter decides to go away. I did do my taxes last night though. But they weren't that exciting because I only get like $200 back. My RRSP is deducted directly from my pay cheque so I pas less tax all year long. Which is better I guess but it's still fun to get a big lump sum in the Spring.

I also signed up for the Zipcar service here in Toronto after a coworker shared an awesome deal with me (no application fees and a lower yearly fee, contact me for details if you're interested). I still might not use it that much but at least it isn't costing much to try it. I plan on making an Ikea/Costco trip as soon as I can.

Wing night tonight almost failed spectacularly. I was organising it because Jen had to study and it tends to fail when I organise. Tonight I suggested Le Papillon, a french-ish restaurant on Church street. I went there once a year or so ago and really enjoyed the tourtière, but apparently everyone else thinks the place is horrible. Each response to the wing night email was more negative than the last. It really put me in a foul mood. Anyway, I ended up just meeting Patrick, Chris, Matt and Toni and we went for food at the Queen Mother on Queen street west. It was really good, but I still have a hankering for some tourtière. After food we went back to Chris's to play Star Munchkin and watch the snow storm (with extra thunder and lightning). And now I'm in a less bad mood.

Can't let February 29th go by without a post!

This weekend was an unexpected long weekend as we in Ontario celebrate "Family Day," a new holiday invented by the provincial government. I didn't really spend time with family, but it was still a nice break.

Friday night my brother came to stay with us as he missed his connecting bus to visit his girlfriend in Belleville. Something happened (not sure what yet) that made it so that his bus left Waterloo two hours late. Of course he still had to stand outside for those two hours because it's Greyhound and they're not very good at telling the people standing in line in the cold what's going on. Ahh...memories. So Anthony stayed on our couch and we had some Pizza for supper. We also watched four episodes of "Flight of the Conchords" which is truly an amazing show.

Kim has an exam for a course for work coming up so I spent the rest of the weekend doing things that took me away from the apartment so she could study. Saturday I went on a big shopping trip for things that I've wanted to get for a while. I picked up a knife block with knives, new running shoes and shorts for the gym, season three of The Office on DVD, a bunch of books, some new batteries for my key fob, and finally, a Playstation 2! The PS2 I managed to get used from EB for only $40! It seems to work great so far and it even came with the network adapter! Not sure what to do with the network adapter but in any case I can now play Guitar Hero again! Yay!

Saturday night Kim and I joined Toni and Patrick and Adrienne at Matt's place for pizza and cake. The cake was a super tasty chocolate truffle cake from Dufflet on Queen West and was really really good. I got to talk to Patrick and Toni a bunch about fun camera stuff and even got to try out the wireless flash feature on their new Nikon D300. It's pretty cool what you can do with a proper flash and it made me rethink my original disdain for all things flash (I prefer the light of the scene, not artificial light). It turns out I just need to spend more money on better stuff. Haha. Anyway, after supper Toni and I went down to Chris's place to play Star Munchkin with him and Justin. It was very "Chez Geek" like and quite amusing.

Sunday I went climbing in the afternoon after watching a bunch of the Office with Kim in the morning. It was a good outing, and I did a fun climb where I was trying to emulate being shorter by never reaching more than three inches above my head. It made the climb much harder and really forced me to use better technique. When I got home Kim and I made some yummy pork chops with cream of broccoli soup and vegetables and rice. Then we watched a lot more of the Office; we're almost done season three!

Today I met up with Adrienne and we went to the Autoshow at the convention centre. I've never been before and it was pretty good. I'm not really thinking of ever buying a car so I was mostly interested in all the super fancy things but I did enjoy sitting in a Mini Cooper. If I were to buy a car I would want a small one, but most of the small ones I've sat in are very uncomfortable for me. The Mini wasn't cramped at all though so that was pretty cool.

Valentine's rose

Mercedes something or other

New Dodge Viper

Ooooh, it's a red car

Totally a southern belle car

A blue and white car!

That car has a trunk, awesome!

Lamborghini lineup

Lamborghini Countach 25th anniversary edition

Lamborghini Diablo

Lamborghini concept car

Maserati...nice

Ferrari

Mazda concept car...runs on Ethanol!

This weekend was pretty lazy, I played some Mario Galaxy, read a bunch of my book and watched almost all of the first two seasons of the Office with Kim. Good times! We also made some really good chili (with a loaf of sourdough from the market) for supper on Saturday and I made some healthy Muesli stuff to eat for breakfast. It's oats with a bunch of different dried fruits and vegetables. Thanks Mrs. Jutan for the recipe!

Muesli...mmm healthy

Chili with shredded cheese and sour cream!

I went to see Cloverfield with Kim tonight after a quick supper of Butter Chicken roti from Gandhi Roti (mmm...roti). Anyway the movie was pretty good, obviously no deep meaningful content, but definitely one of the best monster movies I've ever seen. I read some critic say that this was what the late-90s remake of Godzilla should have been, and I think that was a very apt description.

It's all shot first person sort of Blair Witch Project style, but with a better quality camera. It's pretty shaky which can be disorienting and unpleasant at times, but I found that I eventually got used to it.

Whenever I see a movie about some sort of disaster and it's effects on large cities I think about how bad it is to be in a large city when anything out of the ordinary happens. There's basically no way to get out of the city and there are so many extra bad things that can happen (like buildings falling over when giant monsters fall into them). Anyway, I comfort myself knowing that Toronto wouldn't be a very interesting place for monsters or other disasters to come visit, so I'm probably OK here.

Last Friday Matt and Toni hosted a surprise birthday party for Patrick at Matt's house and it went really well. Everyone even managed to keep it a surprise. We had sushi and pizza and all kinds of other snacks and drinks and I think maybe thirty people showed up.

Saturday night I played Chris's new version of Ticket to Ride with him and Patrick and Toni. Board games are fun, but I never get to play any of the ones they have enough times to get any good at them. They always seem to have new ones.

Anyway, Sunday was climbing in the morning (which was excellent) and then I played Super Mario Galaxy with Kim for like 6 hours or something. The game is primarily one player, but a second can help with some small things as the main player moves throughout the level. Anyway Kim started a game while I was climbing and she seems to be a bit addicted now. It's pretty amusing.

Sunday night Kim and I went to the gym for some proper exercise and that went pretty well. We met Chris there and he showed me a couple stretches and things which is good because I'm pretty incompetent.

The rest of my Montreal trip was pretty good, although there wasn't much to report on. I spent most of the time working and the rest out with co-workers for supper and drinks. The hotel was really nice, and the flight back was as nice as the flight in. I really didn't get to see Montreal though, so that was too bad.

Rob is off to Australia for a year so we had a couple going away events for him this weekend. On Friday Kim and I met him with Patrick to go to the Old Mill Inn for a Winterlicious meal. It was a really nice restaurant and the food was great. Last night was the official going away party for Rob at a bar in Queen West. I think he managed to pull in about 50 people which was pretty impressive. We had a great time having drinks and food, chatting and play pool. I'm going to miss Rob so I'm glad there was a good opportunity to see him a bunch before he's off.

Today we cleaned a bunch and relaxed, and I played with Patrick's camera some more. Now that things are unpacked and clean I even took some pictures of the apartment for the blog. Tonight we're having supper with Matt and probably watch the new James Bond movie on his fancy new TV.

Kitchen and Dining Room

Kitchen

Bathroom

Bedroom

Den 1

Den 2

Living Room 1

Living Room 2

Living Room 3

View from balcony 1

View from balcony 2

View from balcony 3

View from balcony 4

View from balcony 5

View from balcony 6

View from balcony 7

Coffee table clutter

I'm in Montreal now! Specifically in my hotel room connected to sweet sweet free Internet. Having a laptop is a good thing.

I'm really impressed with my whole travel experience this evening. I took Porter Airlines from the Toronto island airport. In total it took three hours to get from my apartment in Toronto to my hotel room in Montreal. That's pretty damn good I think. Plus it was definitely the best flying experience I've ever had. I went to Union station and got on the free shuttle to the ferry dock. At the ferry dock there was a special Porter lounge where I was able to check in while I waited for the ferry. After the 90 second long ferry ride I was directly connected to the terminal where I was able to sit and relax for half an hour in comfy chairs with cookies and a cup of tea.

The flight wasn't very full so I had my seat to myself and was able to read a bunch of my book while eating yummy fancy "root vegetable" chips (potato, carrot, taro, turnip, etc) and drinking free drinks. The plane was a fancy new plane that is super quiet and efficient and so on. Apparently it's more efficient and environmentally friendly per-passenger to fly this plane to Montreal than to take a bus or car. So that's fun too (as an aside, the train is still the efficiency winner for mass transit). The pilot talked to me a bit before I left and he mentioned that it's also really powerful and fun to fly. All the staff seemed really friendly and happy so it was a really good experience.

I left the plane and walked to pick up my checked bag, and as I arrived at baggage claim my bag popped out and I was able to pick it up and keep going without even stopping. I grabbed a taxi and although the guy drove like a crazy-person I arrived here in one piece and in amazing time.

I just checked and standard fare to Montreal by train is equal to standard fare by Porter (about $250). So if I'm ever going to Montreal by my own money I would seriously consider Porter just for how easy it all was. I really didn't feel like travelling tonight, so I'm glad it was so easy.

We had a successful trip to Ikea last week so we've been able to almost finish unpacking. The apartment is in much better shape although I'm not quite ready to take pictures of it yet. We got a rental van from U-Haul to cart all the stuff back home. They claimed it would cost $20 + kilometers which would be a better deal than the $60 delivery charge from Ikea. I know there are often extra charges but I thought I'd at least be able to avoid getting insurance. Unfortunately that is mandatory now so by the time everything was added up the cost was about $60. Which is equivalent to the cost of delivery. Fortunately we added value by using the van to get a ton of groceries from No Frills and Costco.

Also from Costco I picked up a spice rack. Matt had one at our old place and I liked having it because adding new spices to food makes it more interesting. So I got the big 25-jar spice rack hoping to store the five different spices I currently own and slowly accumulate new ones as I learn what to do with them. But when we got home and opened it, all the jars were already full of spices!! This may seem like a deal but I feel robbed of the opportunity to choose my own spices and learn about them. Plus I have no where to put the spices I already own, which was the main purpose of the purchase. I guess I can try to learn about the spices that came with it, but that feels too much like someone else making my spicing decisions for me. And I think empty jars would have been more motivating than jars filled with strange, even frightening looking substances.

Today I was in Ilderton helping Kim finish clean out her old apartment and we had supper with my Mom which was pretty good too. My cousins Shannon and David showed up just before supper because they were skiing at Boler Mountain all day (which is right next to my mom's place). They were able to stay for supper which was great since I normally only see them on holidays and other family events.

I had to come back to Toronto tonight because I'm off to Montreal on a business trip tomorrow. Plus I have to go to John's house in the morning to help test out some new holds for his climbing wall. Should be fun!

The trip back today was...interesting. I had two large suitcases containing the rest of Kim's stuff so I had to take a taxi from the bus station home. I maybe could have walked and dragged them here, but that would have been a massive schlep and I figured it would be better to take the $7 ($10 tops) cab ride. Boy was I wrong. "Something," is happening in Toronto tonight (no idea what) but when "something" happens the roads around our buildings kinda explode/implode on themselves with the result that driving times increase exponentially as you approach Front Street. Well all seemed well when I came in on the bus, but between the time I got off the bus and the taxi got to about Adelaide and Simcoe the traffic explosion hit. It took another half an hour from that point to get to my building. The fare was over $25 by the time we got here but I only had $20 in cash. Rather than spend time mucking about with my credit card the driver just took the twenty and drove off muttering all the way. If I had come into the city five minutes earlier I would have missed the traffic completely. And looking out my window now I can see that it is entirely cleared up only fifteen minutes after I got home. Crazy.

Patrick just got a sweet new camera, the Nikon D300, and he's looking to sell his old Nikon D70 so I'm evaluating it for a couple weeks to see if I like it. It's a nice intro-level digital SLR camera. I've been thinking of buying one for a while because I don't like how restrictive my point and shoot is (even though it is one of the most manual friendly point and shoot cameras around). I also like that DSLRs let you take photos in "RAW" format, allowing you maximum control over the final image and complete retention of all data. Anyway, I've been playing with it tonight and I present to you the standard "rock and dreidel on my desk shot" that I do when I'm playing with cameras (be sure to click for the full size version).

Rock+Dreidel on desk

Kim and I had a "date" night last night where we went out for supper and movie and stuff like that. It's a bit different when you live together I guess. But it was good times nonetheless. We went to Swiss Chalet for supper, which, while not on the top of my list for places to eat, was still good because I had a bunch of gift certificates from Christmas so it was free.

The movie wasn't until 10pm, so after supper we went shopping and ended up at MEC. Kim needed new running shoes and MEC had some crazy sales on. She got a pair of Solomon "Trail Running" shoes (which seem to just be running shoes with a bit of extra tread), for $29! They were regular $130 so it was a really good deal. After getting those we went across the street to Europe Bound to get me a new Nalgene bottle (the proper, hormone disrupting kind that MEC no longer sells...damn hippies). Anyway, the Europe Bound clerk noticed the shoes and told Kim that she could have got them cheaper at Europe Bound, but when we told him the price he got pretty mad because $29 is apparently "way below cost." Well duh. I'm always amused at the anger Europe Bound people have for MEC. You can't go in there with a MEC bag without getting some sort of comment.

After shopping we went to see the movie Juno, which was completely amazing as expected. Excellent acting and very Arrested Development-style writing. The casting was pretty glorious too, everyone seemed to fill their roles very well and made the whole thing seem completely natural. I did find that the character of Juno to be a bit too mature for her supposed age of 16, but it wouldn't be as interesting if she actually acted 16. 16-year olds just aren't that interesting.

Today we went to the market and got a bunch of food, including the fixings for yummy homemade tomato sauce for pasta tonight. Tomorrow is Ikea day as well as a proper grocery shopping trip and a trip to Costco. Once we have the extra furniture from Ikea, we'll be able to finish unpacking and I can stop twitching at the various piles in my apartment.

We've managed to unpack a lot of stuff now, and the apartment is approaching livable. A lot of the unpacked stuff makes me twitchy still, but only a little. This weekend we're going to Ikea to get some shelves and stuff so that the unpacking can finish.

Last Sunday I posted my old twin bed on Craigslist and by Monday morning I had two replies. By Monday night the bed was gone and I had an extra $75. I can't believe I got that much money for a 5+ year old crappy twin bed that was used by students. It's not like it was in bad shape, but it was never that good a mattress or anything. I think my point is, Craigslist rocks.

Tuesday was wing night, and we went out to the Mill St Brew pub, in the distillery district. It's actually the Mill St brewery as well so there was much fresh tasty beer on hand. The food was also great (I had a steak and smoked gouda wrap thing) and we had like 15 people make it out. So it was an extremely successful wing night, all without Jen (who has decided to do something healthy for the next 5 weeks instead of wing night).

Tonight Kim and I are going to go see Juno which I can't wait for. It's supposed to be amazing! I noticed this movie was playing at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, so that's pretty cool too. I would have loved to have seen it then, but it's always hard to pick movies at the film festival because there is normally so little information to go on. I guess that's part of the fun though.

And...I'm moved. The place is a shambles because nothing's unpacked but at least it's all here and the move went alright.

I had a pretty quiet New Year's eve this year, just hanging out at Chris's place with a 5 or 6 people. We played some Wii, and generally relaxed. This was good because I was tired from all the Christmas stuff and also tired in anticipation of all the moving stuff so I really didn't want to go running around the city all night.

Mike's been in Toronto for the last couple days as well so I've been able to hang out with him a bunch (obviously going to Spring Rolls more than once). We also went to a Korean BBQ place that was pretty awesome.

Finally I'm almost done packing for the move, it's pretty exciting!!