For Christmas, my brother and I got my mom tickets to see Rain: The Beatles Experience, which is basically a concert put on by some of the world's foremost Beatles impersonators. This weekend was the show and we all had a great time. The performers did an amazing job and it was amusing to see all the baby-boomers in the audience really getting into it.

After the show we took my mom to Weezies, a great restaurant near King and Parliament. I had arctic char and the most delicious piece of pecan pie ever. We also enjoyed lots of wine and good conversation. Despite being in the same city as my brother we're still kinda failing at seeing each other regularly so it was nice to catch up.

Today we of course watched the Men's gold medal hockey game. It was crazy after the win, Toronto just exploded. We stepped out on our balcony and all we could hear were car horns and very excited yelling. It was pretty cool.

I love watching the Olympics! Normally I don't watch "sports" as I've never been any good at them but the Olympics are different for some reason. I just really enjoy watching them.

However, in most sports, the actual active competition bits are quite short. And in between competitors there are endless commercials and scads of obnoxious commentator banter. So while watching the Olympics I've also been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation from the beginning (using my laptop). Growing up I watched a lot of the episodes, but mostly out of order in reruns and certainly not all of them. It's geeky, but so far I'm really enjoying them.

I just finished watching The Secret of Kells which is nominated for Best Animated Film at the Oscars this year. The story is about the creation of the illuminated Book of Kells (which Kim and I saw at Trinity College in Dublin last year). The film is hand drawn, traditional animation and is absolutely beautiful. Almost every frame attempts to evoke the patterns and colours of the book itself and the result is fantastic.

Perhaps the film affected me more because I've been to Ireland recently, however I think that it stands on it's own quite well too. I will definitely be buying the DVD as soon as they get a North American distributer (which seems likely given the Oscar nomination).

Check out the official website for more information, trailers and a really nice gallery of images from the movie. To see the movie, either wait for North American distribution or use the powers of the Internet to "acquire" it immediately. However, if you enjoy the movie, be sure to give financial support to the studio (Cartoon Saloon from Ireland) when it becomes possible.

I recently discovered a pretty useful site for finding out when various products become available at the LCBO. It's called Drinkvine and it was made by a guy who enjoys fancy beers but did not enjoy trying to figure out which LCBO had them and when.

You input your favourite beers/wines and your preferred LCBO locations and it will email you when your drinks are in stock at one of your locations. It works pretty well. Of course they're just scraping the official LCBO website, but it seems to be pretty up to date.

Tonight instead of going to bed early I created a separate RSS Feed for my Photos page. It will update every time I add a new photo. Enjoy!

Now that January is over I can post my goals without them sounds like resolutions. Maybe that will help them come true?

In an earlier post I mentioned that I wanted to prioritize some of the things in my life and I figure the easiest way to do that is to come up with some concrete goals and see how well I do at achieving them. Then I can reevaluate those goals next year and adjust them based on how I did. This should also help me decide which things truly are important to me. If I get irritated trying to keep up with certain things then it is clear that those things are not as important and I should devote the time to other endeavours.

Anyway, in no particular order, here are my goals for the year:

• Blog at least once a week
• Climb at least five times a month
• Add at least twelve new photos to my photos pageover the course of the year (the idea is to go out to take photos at least once a month)
• Cook something new at least twice a month
• Start and complete a personal programming project (possibly a recipe storage thinger accessed through my website to hold the recipes for all the new things I cook)
• Read more books, nothing concrete here because books can vary in size and readability a lot (I used to read a ton, but haven't done as much lately and I miss it)
• Travel to at least one place by plane
• Travel somewhere new in Canada
• Purchase a home of some sort

The last goal may override and/or be mutually exclusive with all of the other goals. It is also the scariest. I worry that when interest rates go up the housing market will stop being insane and prices will come down. We would like to purchase a house after that point and not before. But when will it happen? Do we just keep waiting forever? Grah.

Anyway, it should be interesting to see how I do with all of this stuff.

Today for lunch I walked to Church and Alexander to get a burrito. That's over 2km which is pretty far in the cold on a work day. But I have been restless and wanting to be outside despite the brutal cold and I had recently heard of this new burrito place in the area, Chino Locos.

Anyway, the burrito was totally worth it. The ingredients in mine were: slow roast pork, guacamole, tomatoes, edamame beans, red onions, black beans, green peppers, cilantro, cheese, sour cream, and chipotle sauce. So it's not really a "standard burrito" but who cares when it's that good. Maybe it's just the frostbite talking but I'd say it is the best burrito I've had in Toronto (and there are a lot of "gourmet" burrito places downtown).

Also of note, I decided to check out the worst block in Toronto since it was on the way (George Street between Dundas and Gerrard). It was definitely sketchy and I wouldn't really want to be there at night but, as I suspected, it wasn't that bad. Sure, about 50% of the houses are boarded up and there is a giant men's homeless shelter and there are tons of dodgy looking people loitering around, but many of the non-boarded up houses were perfectly fine, a couple were even kind of nice. Toronto doesn't really do "bad" like other cities do.