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!!