Three culture related events this week. First, tonight we saw Riverdance at the Canon theatre courtesy of Patrick and Toni (they had a Mirvish subscription and left the country in the middle of it so we got their tickets to this show). I didn't have high hopes going into the show but it turned out to be really good. It's cool how dancing can express ideas if it's done right. Also the music was fantastic, I could have just listened with my eyes closed and still enjoyed the show.

On Friday Matt and I are seeing Tafelmusik perform "The Creation" by Haydn as part of the "World Creation Festival" where choirs and orchestras from around the world perform the piece in honour of the 200th anniversary of Haydn's death. The classical music world seems to be all about celebrating the deaths of its composers. Strange.

Finally, today I ordered tickets to go see one of the sets of short films in competition at the World Wide Short Film Festival here in Toronto. Film festivals are awesome and shorts are tons of fun. The set I chose has Chris Landreth's new film, The Spine which I'm super excited to see. Chris Landreth also created the film "Ryan" about the amazing NFB animator Ryan Larkin and he actually won the academy award for best short for that film. Another film in the set I got tickets for is the new Wallace and Gromit short, "A Matter of Loaf and Death." Wallace and Gromit are awesome.

I've added nine more photos (all from Ireland) to the Photos section of my website. I'm thinking I should get a maybe get a Flickr account or something instead. Or at least produce a separate RSS feed for my photos.

I've updated my Ireland trip journal with a Google map showing the route we took on our travels. Check it out! Google Maps API programming is fun!

After having most of my friends ridicule me for not having Skype I finally broke down and bought a webcam and installed it on my laptop. I really should have gotten on this years ago but I just didn't for some reason. I have no idea why not but I suspect it's because I'm becoming old and thus resistant to new technologies. Another example of this would be Twitter. I have no intentions of joining that bandwagon any time soon.

If you would like to video chat or whatever with me on Skype my user name is mclausch.

I finally finished my Ireland trip journal so you should go check it out! It's a bit long though so you might want to just look at the pictures.

In addition to the trip details I had a couple general thoughts that I'm going to post here.

First, driving. That was fun/special/insane. It actually wasn't too hard once I got used to the narrow, winding, hilly roads, the roundabouts, and the fact that I was DRIVING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD. Plus the manual transmission gave me another thing to worry about. As a result I think the driving took a lot of my energy. I would still rent a car if I did the trip again because it seemed like so much of the cool stuff was difficult and/or time consuming to get to by bus. We really enjoyed the flexibility of being able to go wherever we wanted and whenever we wanted. It meant that we could spend as much or as little time as we wanted in any spot. But this flexibility came at the cost of increased anxiousness around driving and finding parking and making sure the car was safe and had gas and hadn't exploded. I really feel like I accomplished something by successfully driving around a foreign country. It's always cool to learn that you're capable of doing new and scary things. But I'm not looking to repeat that accomplishment any time soon.

Next, cell phones. I paid €10 to have a cell phone in Ireland for the whole week. I used it many times to book accommodations or to get in touch with Rob and Patrick. Sure, I already had the actual phone loaned to me by Rob, but I was just so impressed with the ease of getting it activated. The cell phone people didn't care who I was or where I was going. I gave them cash, they gave me a SIM card and then I had a cell phone. Incoming calls on cell phones are free in most of the civilized world (not Canada...) and so I was able to have several long conversations with Patrick. Being able to call ahead to book rooms meant that we never had to commit to a city or destination until we were sure we could make it. And having a cell phone while driving made me feel a lot less concerned about getting lost or getting in an accident. I wonder if Canada will ever stop being a horrible place to own a cell phone.

Something else I liked about this trip was the fact that we were able to see so many of our friends while traveling. Obviously this trip was a special case because of the wedding, but it was still really awesome. I love traveling and seeing new places but I also love sharing experiences like that with the people I care about. So being able to get together with some of my closet friends at the end of the trip made the whole experience at least ten times better. Everyone was excited and had different stories to share and the whole atmosphere was unbelievably positive. Of course being at the wedding of Patrick and Toni probably brought that out in people but it still made for a wonderful feeling.

I had my new camera along on this trip and for the most part it worked out pretty well. I'm still a bit clumsy with a few of the settings which I found annoying at various points but on the whole I was really happy with the camera's performance. However, now that I'm home I have the same feeling with regard to my photos that I get on all my trips. I spend time trying to make "good" pictures because I like to take good pictures. But that time spent on photography means that I have less time for enjoying the trip. It also means that sometimes I fail to take more general representative photos of certain areas that will help me to remember the trip years from now. I think if I had a just a little point and shoot camera I'd take more of those sorts of photos. I think next time we go on a trip I'll make sure to take both my D90 and a smaller camera and so we each have a camera and Kim will be able to make sure that we get photos that will help with the memories.

Finally, I'd just like to take a minute to talk about the wedding. I haven't been to many weddings in my life (although this year looks like it's shaping up to be the year of the wedding) but this was the best by far and I think it will remain the best for the rest of my life. Toni and Patrick put so much time and effort into planning it and as a result it turned out amazing (at least from my perspective). Not only were all the details and practicalities perfect, but they were also able to create such an wonderful atmosphere. It was fun and extremely joyful. I'm so very happy for them to be together and to be moving on to their next adventure. They truly are some of the best people I've ever met and Kim and I will both miss them dearly. But they'll be coming to our wedding in October so we'll get to see them one last time before they leave for Australia.

I don't have my Ireland blog done yet, however I do have some fun photos from today so I thought I'd make a quick blog post. Anthony and I were both in London this weekend so we made breakfast for my mom this morning for Mother's Day. On the menu was my mom's favourite: eggs benedict. Anthony practiced poaching eggs all week and became very good at it, so the eggs were perfectly done. In addition to the eggs and hollandaise sauce we included asparagus, Fontina cheese and delicious 18 month old prosciutto from the St. Lawrence market in Toronto. To go with the fatty glory of the hollandaise, cheese and prosciutto we added a heaping mound of fresh cut fruit. Check out the photos below!

Crabapple tree in full bloom in my mom's front yard

My mom with Angus on the front porch

Eggs Benedict with fruit in the background

Eggs Benedict with fruit

We're back from Ireland now and we had a super-fantastic time! Driving worked out great and we were able to see so much because of it. The wedding and wedding-related events were amazing as well. It was fun to travel a bit and then meet up with so many friends and have fun in another country. Anyway, I'm very tired at the moment, but I'll be adding a full account of the trip over the coming week.

The full results of the CN Tower team climb have been posted online so I was able to find out that my time was 321 out of 1862 participants. Not too bad! When combined with the individual climb on Saturday I came in 878 out of 6051. Sweet!

Ireland is very soon (Friday!), but I'm a bit less worried than I was. I went out driving this morning with Sue so that I could reacquaint myself with the fun of manual transmissions. Despite it being five years since I last drove a manual vehicle it all came back very quickly. So now all I have to worry about is doing everything backwards on the wrong side of the super narrow roads with roundabouts everywhere and where all the road signs are different and I don't know where I'm going. Should be easy.

Yesterday was fun too. I went for a walk with Matt to try to find a small filing cabinet for my important papers and such. Both stores I attempted to visit were closed, but the yard sale I found on Craigslist was still good. We arrived at the place near Kensington but there was no filing cabinet on the lawn. So I asked the girl running it and she told me to come inside the house while she looked for one. She also didn't know anything about a Craigslist posting and looked confused when I mentioned it. Anyway, we went upstairs and looked around until she decided that she didn't have a filing cabinet and thus couldn't sell me one. I was a bit confused at this point but then she said, "why don't you ask the guys next door, they had a sale today too and just finished pulling all the leftover stuff inside." It turns out I was at the wrong place and really wanted the other sale. So I knocked on the neighbour's door and the guy did in fact still have a filing cabinet, but it was far too big and heavy and a bit busted up as well. I only need a little two drawer style cabinet that can hold legal sized file folders. I didn't end up getting one yesterday, but it was fun touring around the inside of random Kensington Market houses.

After our walk, Kim and I made supper for Matt. And by made I mean we thawed and baked the extra stuffed pasta shells that we originally made for Patrick and Toni last month. They were still delicious though and this time I made sure to get a couple pictures before devouring them. For dessert we had a delicious banana cream pie from Wanda's Pie in the Sky which we picked up while we were in Kensington Market.

After supper Matt and I had intended to watch Mad Max 2: Road Warrior but before starting we got a call from Jen and Jeremy. All of the Cityplace buildings south of Bremner had lost power. Jen and Jeremy were sitting around in the dark with a rented movie, Meet Bill, and nothing to watch it on. So they came over and we all watched it at Matt's house.

Simultaneously to the power outage in the other buildings, Matt and I were video chatting with Patrick on Skype using Matt's Macbook. Patrick had just arrived in Ireland yesterday and was hard at work helping his parents and dealing with wedding stuff. Eventually we convinced him to go to bed and get some sleep, but it was good to see him and talk with him for a while. We miss them already. I really need to get on to this "Skype" thing. Too bad my laptop doesn't have a fancy built in video camera.

Tonight I'm going climbing, although I'm pretty tired right now so I don't know how well it will go. I also might watch Gran Torino this afternoon instead of being responsible and trying to figure out more Ireland stuff.

Stuffed pasta shells still in the baking dish

Stuffed pasta shells still on the plate

Banana cream pie in the dish

Banana cream pie on the plate

Yay, I climbed the CN Tower!!! And I met my goal of being under 20 minutes. I did it in 17 minutes and 23 seconds. It was a stupidly large amount of stairs though. Soooooo many. Thanks again for all the donations everyone.

After climbing we all headed out for drinks and pool at the Charlotte Room. It was also a goodbye party for Patrick who leaves for Ireland tomorrow, never to permanently return again. I'm sad that he's leaving but happy for him to be moving on to the next part of his life. I'll just have to be sure to visit him in Australia as soon as I can.