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!!