Last week was fun. We had a big kick-off week for development on the next version of Maya and I got to meet and talk to lots of people I haven't had a chance to interact with before. And this weekend I managed to go climbing twice and swimming once so I'm feeling healthy. Plus I made really good pasta last night and Matt made apple crisp so I've eaten well.

But the really big news is...I finished the France Journal!!!! I made the big push this afternoon and transcribed the huge amount of stuff I wrote on the second last day of my trip. I'm glad to be done this, so I can stop thinking about how I haven't finished it yet.

The last note for this evening is that I also recently finished reading a really good trilogy of books, Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. This includes the book, "The Golden Compass" which is being released as a movie sometime this year. The series is to some extent comparable to Harry Potter in that the main characters are children and that is has a distinct bent towards fantasy, however it also has a lot more depth than those books. Not to say there's anything bad with Harry Potter (I stayed up late many nights finishing off those books), but I found this series to be meatier and much more engaging. I definitely recommend them.

In the interest of maintaining this blog I thought I would blog tonight given that I have a bunch of stuff to blog about. Blog!

On the weekend my brother and two of his friends came up to Toronto to go to the Virgin Music Festival with me. Really all any of us cared about was seeing the Smashing Pumpkins (OMG!) on Sunday, but it was fun to see other bands too. In addition to the Pumpkins (OMG!) we also saw Tokyo Police Club, Stars, Metric, and the Killers. The bands were good, although in the end it was all about the Smashing Pumpkins (OMG!) for me.

Anyway, I'm going to slow down a bit here and try not to get ahead of myself. On Saturday, I just did some errands and cleaning until the evening when my brother showed up with his friends. We hung out for a bit and then hit up Grace O'Malley's for some food. It was good times and I think Anthony is already enjoying Toronto.

Sunday, I was ready in good time to get to the festival in the early afternoon. Anthony and his friends were going to come meet me at my place and we'd go over together. Unfortunately, they stayed out until 4am the night before so they were a bit...slower getting up. It was OK though since I wasn't interested in any of the earlier bands. We eventually got over to the Toronto Island and had a great time at the festival. We met up with Wilson and Jonny and Rob and Rob's sister and we all used a picnic table by a tree near the main stage. Rob had arrived early, dragged the table to a prime position and viciously guarded it until our arrival when we turned it into more of a shared task. It got quite difficult as the day went on. Lots of pushy people.

So the Smashing Pumpkins had a great set (check out the set list on the Smashing Pumpkins Fan Collaborative). It was about two hours long and they touched on a whole bunch of their old stuff in addition to the new stuff. This concert was something I've been waiting for since I started listening to music. The Pumpkins are basically my favourite band of all time and I never had the chance to see them in concert before they stopped touring and broke up. I thought the chance would never come again, but it did! And it was awesome!

We stayed right to the end of the concert, so it took forever to get on a ferry off the island, but there was no way I was leaving early. The next day I had to go to work, which was rough, but instead of resting in the evening I went and saw a film at the Toronto Film Festival. The movie was called "Normal" and starred Carrie-Anne Moss among others. It was a Canadian movie and was very well done and superbly acted. Film Fest is awesome.

Tonight for wing night we went to Sushi On Bloor for some yummy yummy sushi. It was a difficult evening though. First everyone but me was at least 20 minutes late. Second, the restaurant was crazy and it took and additional 35-40 minutes to get a table. Then it took forever to get food, and halfway through our meal a waiter spilled hot tea all over Toni!!! It was pretty scary but I think she's OK now. The only good thing that came of all this was that the food was great as usual, and it was completely free due to the tea-spillage. I've never dealt with something like that before and it felt super weird to leave without paying. Overall it was a crazy night.

Hi everybody! It's been a while since my last blog, but I'm attempting to fix that now. I don't have much to say here this evening, but I did update my France blog to include a bunch of stuff from the film festival in Annecy and some of the pictures Mike has sent me.

I spent the last two weekends away from the city communing with nature. First I went to Alex's cottage with Alex and Jason, as well as Alex's brother and some of his friends. It was a great trip as expected, with late nights, swimming at the beach and much poker playing. The weather was perfect and the people were excellent. I didn't bring my camera though so I have no pictures. If you're on Facebook I was tagged in some though, so check it out if you're interested.

This past weekend I went a bit deeper into nature on a canoe trip into the interior of Algonquin park with my mom and some family friends from Ottawa. After some initial car-related difficulty getting to Ottawa, we set out early Saturday morning for the park. We canoed in to our campsite and then proceeded to set up and prepare the site for our stay. I spent a bunch of time dragging and gathering fire wood for the weekend, in particular using a small saw to cut up a very large dead tree and then an axe to split the logs. This, combined with canoeing, was more physical work than I'm used to, so I was pretty tired that night. Supper was awesome though. Steaks cooked over the fire, with garlic potatoes and carrots (cooked in aluminum foil over the fire).

On Sunday I went fishing in the morning, and was able to catch a bunch without any effort at all! The place we fished at was full of fish, and as soon as you put the line in the water you basically had a bite. They were mostly small fish though, so we tossed them back and after a while head back to the site. The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing and chatting, and also cutting and splitting more fire wood. I built the fire for that night and it was most excellent. Building and maintaining fires is one of my favourite parts of camping.

On Monday we paddled back to the launch site, headed back to Ottawa and got cleaned up and comfortable. I took Tuesday off so that we could stay in Ottawa Monday night instead of rushing back. It was definitely a good idea, despite the rolled tractor trailer on the 401 that caused the drive home to be extremely painful.

A view from our campsite

A loon

My mom and I looking out over the lake

The campsite

A cool plant thing growing up out of the water

Mmmm...steak

The fire wood

Me and my fire

Me and my fire

Into the fire

Canoes in the morning

Paddling home

Looking into the Barron Canyon

This evening I partook in an eclectic mix of activities. After supper I went rollerblading with Chris along the waterfront all the way to Ontario Place. It was a nice night for it and I was happy to see that after almost a year of neglect, my rollerblading skills are still intact. Then I came home and wasted some time on the Internet for a bit before deciding to watch a bit of TV while adding to my France Journal. I managed to add details about my time in Lyon and the trip to Rumilly. But it took a lot longer than it should have because I was pretty distracted by the movie I was watching, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (truly a classic of our times).

I've updated my France Journal with details of my time in Nice and all the fun train rides.

Inspired by my recent viewing of the Transformers movie I've decided to download the original cartoon series and watch it. Today I watched the very first episode, and I was very very happy because of this.

I also went climbing tonight as usual, and managed to scramble up a 5.12-, a new personal best for me. Good times!

Finally, I updated my France Journal again with a description of my last day in Paris.

I made a good sized update to my France Journal tonight. I'm almost halfway through my notes, so maybe I'll finish one day.

On an unrelated note, I saw today that the mayor's plans for some random tax hikes have been delayed until closer to the municipal elections. I don't claim to be knowledgeable in municipal politics, and I don't know a lot about all of the proposed increases, but I am sad that this was delayed because I agree with the spirit of one the proposals.

The mayor wanted to double registration fees on vehicles in Toronto. Normally the province collects the fees, but in this case the city would get the same amount as well. I personally support any and all measures to get people to stop driving in this city. I think that all major routes into the core (Gardiner, DVP, Allen, etc) should be toll roads, parking and gas should be taxed extra by the city, and that fines and tickets for traffic violations should be increased. Large transport or construction vehicles should probably be exempt from a bunch of that, but all passenger vehicles should be fully milked. Also, for the toll roads, if you're driving a larger vehicle you should have to pay more (unless you have enough people inside to justify the size of the vehicle). At least half of this extra money should be reinvested into the TTC and Go systems and the remaining should be used to improve the safety and quality of the road systems (to reduce congestion from the cars that still drive in the area). This is one of those areas where I feel that government intervention is a good thing, because people just aren't getting it that it is really stupid to drive regularly in the downtown core. Perhaps if it becomes prohibitively expensive they will not do it as much.

I've been very busy lately, and so, despite having lots to blog about (not to mention finishing the France blog), I have been unable to sit down at my computer long enough to do so. This sucks, because I'd rather blog about each thing soon after it happens rather than attempting the massive summary which I find myself doing now.

Last week on Tuesday I saw Ratatouille with Jason and Alex at the Rainbow cinema near the market. We went there because Jason is still a poor unpaid intern and because it is close to work. I would have rather seen it in a proper theatre but I didn't really mind. The movie was AWESOME. Absolutely up to the high high standards that Pixar continues to set for itself. The story was brilliant and funny and the graphics were beautiful. Of particular note was the fur on the rats (very detailed) and the character animation. All of the animation was done without motion capture, but the movement of the characters was so realistic that I can hardly believe it. The animators at Pixar are certainly among the most talented in the world. After the movie we went to the Spaghetti Factory and had a good meal. We stayed right till close chatting; even our waitress left before we did! Good times.

Last weekend I saw Ratatouille again with Chris, Patrick and Toni, but this time at the Paramount. It was at least as good as the first time (perhaps better), and I was able to get a photo of Mike's name in the credits.

Monday I made homemade tomato sauce (mmm...) and had some Spaghetti for supper. Then I went with Alex and Matt to see the Transformers movie. That movie certainly isn't going to win non-technical awards, but it was everything I wanted from a Transformers movie. Basically transforming robots fighting and transforming with lots of explosions and action. The transformers themselves were all computer generated, but I've never seen CG stuff that well integrated into live action. ILM did an excellent job at making the movie extremely immersive. You never stopped and thought, "hey, that giant robot isn't ACTUALLY there." So it was awesome.

On Tuesday we had wing night obviously. We went to a Summerlicious place called "5th Elementt" up near Bay and Wellesley. We had a really good turn out, twelve people showed up. Also, the restaurant was fabulous! There was a very good selection on the Summerlicious menu so everyone was happy. I had a spinach paneer kofta, with rice and this white sauce that was soooo good. I am of the opinion that my meal was the best on the menu. For an appetizer I had foie gras with arugula salad and pear chutney. The dessert was a chocolate souffle, but it was more like an upside down cupcake and so it wasn't that special. That's OK though because everything else was amazing. After supper Dave and Jen had a guitar hero competition at my house (Jen won). They didn't stay long and I should have used the opportunity to sleep, but instead I stayed up reading some of the sixth Harry Potter book.

Wednesday was climbing of course as well as a bit more Harry Potter reading. Thursday I watched the fourth Harry Potter movie at Chris's house with Matt and that was good times as usual. I also made arrangements for Friday night.

Our closest family friends live in Ottawa and some of my best childhood memories involve hanging out with them. My parents were good friends with the parents in that family and they had two kids who were about the same ages as my brother and I. Kurtis, their son, is moving to Japan to teach English in a couple weeks so we gathered in Toronto to see him off. My mom and brother came up and we met Kurtis and his parents for supper at Pizza Rustica. We had a great meal and a lot of fun chatting and I'm sure we stayed way longer than the proprietors would have liked. By a strange series of events Mike was in Toronto this weekend as well, So after supper Alex and him met up with Kurtis and Anthony and I and we headed off to Andy Poolhall to have a night out with Kurtis and some of Kurtis's friends who were also in Toronto. The bar was great and we had an awesome night.

Anthony and Kurtis slept at my house (after we watched the Big Lebowski) and the next morning we met the parents at Cora's for breakfast. Cora's is my favourite place to go for breakfast and it's even better after a night out. I had a huge pile of french toast, sausage and eggs, plus a big glass of orange juice. After breakfast we all went to my place to chat for a bit and then everyone went home.

Saturday was also Rib-o-Rama VII, an annual event held by John from work. He gets a bunch of rib smokers in and makes up a whole bunch of ribs for all of our co-workers as well as many of his other friends. It's potluck too, and everyone from my work seem to be amazing with food, so everything was delicious. I went with Alex and Mike and we stayed from about 4:30-9:00, at which point Mike and I had to hurry back downtown to meet Chris for the new Harry Potter movie (Order of the Phoenix). We were pretty late getting there and Chris had to wait in line and get seat by himself. I felt pretty bad, but it was hard to get away from the party. I think I tried to jam too much stuff into that day. I hate when things pile up like that and you end up doing all of it kinda poorly. Anyway, we made it for the movie and it was just as good as all the others. I like that they all have a similar style. I know they're not perfectly consistent, but it's still pretty good.

Mike stayed at my house last night and we caught up a bit about all his final adventures on his trip. This morning I took him to the train station and then went shopping to try to catch some of the summer sales. There was lots of stuff but I was in a picky grumpy mood so it didn't work very well. I did manage to find one polo shirt I liked but I still felt like the trip was mostly a failure. So this afternoon I curled up with the sixth Harry Potter and finished it off. I'm so happy that the seventh (and final) book is coming out soon, because I don't think I can wait too long to find out what happens!

Tonight I am going to try to go to bed early. I really really need to.

Another trip update tonight (that's all I do on the blog now, at least until I finish). This time it's about Versailles. Check out the France Journal for new pictures, videos and random babbling.