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.