Writing a blog should not be a chore, but a chore is what it has become for me. So much of my week is devoted to commuting and office work that typing frequent entries has become difficult due to restricted free time post work. While living in Asia, life had a more interesting twist- everyday saw something new happen- a quirky little incident with the language, a funny cultural observation or a new adventure to a different country. These days, my focus has shifted to my career and, as much as I would love to, for the respect of the instuitution I work for and the people I work with I am not able to regale you with the hilarious workplace activites I experience everyday. I could talk at length about Ian and I but that is not something I wish to do via the world web. Instead my blog entries from now on will be limited, ( much like over the last few months) and will be more of a sysnopsis of events for friends and family in Ireland and other parts of the world.

Have a wonderful New Year and here's hoping 2008 will be just as good. Everything appears to be on par for Ian and I as we had our annual New Year's Argument- always a healthy indicator for us.

Enjoy- I will return with a birthday post around February 4th

*Hint Hint*

And the winner is ....

I have found a train service that can out do Iarnrod Eireann for late train excuses. Ireland may have the "leaves on the track" phenomenon, but Ontario has "chain link fence" on the track. I think we have a winner!

Useless Fact # 0001

The surname "Gill" is not exclusive to Ireland and the United Kingdom. It is also a Sikh family name.

Christmas

I watched a girl this morning fill in application forms to join a gym. Filling in the forms was the workout. I have never ever seen so many pages demanding detailed personal information. I am quite sure there was even a question relating to daily excretions.

Anyway, Happy New Year to one and all. I am a mere ten days off target. Hurrah. I hope, too, that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and managed to avoid downing an entire box of Quality Street for the sake of it. Christmas was a wonderful affair here in Canadia.. no typo there. Maebh and I think it is HILARIOUS to say Canadia instead of Canada. There isn't any rational explanation. We just got a kick out of watching Canadians that we knew in Korea very patiently explain the difference between Canada and America, duly ignore them, and continue to reference their home country as Canadia. Fnar Fnar.

Seeing as I am pressed for time I shall revert to the old favourite- bullet points

• Christmas Eve

Not a lot to say here other than I lost Ian and assorted family members to a Christmas Eve jigsaw puzzle. He and his relatives decided to assemble pieces of an aeroplane flying over water. Imagine how many blue pieces there were in teeny tiny ant friendly sized pieces. I was tempted to pull a Homer J. and whip out a scissors to cut pieces to size, but instead I soldiered on and managed to force about ten pieces together before I lost interest and abandoned puzzle for the basement. The Attack of the Nerds continued to keep going and I was ever so impressed with their end result. At four in the morning.

• Christmas Day

Ian's sister made us get up before 9am. Getting up before 9am is exclusively reserved for work days. However her persistent hammering on the door wore us down and forced us down to the living room. To say there were a few gifts under the tree would be an understatement. There were a lot. My disgust with getting up early soon faded what with clearing the contents of my stocking and making my Scooby Doo toy sing Jingle Bells over and over and over again. Present opening took the best part of the morning so I can see Sarah's rational in getting us up early. I got some super gifts with some of the stand out ones being a magnificent special edition of the Kite Runner , my cherished Gap gift card, my very own edition of Cranium and seasons of Sex and the City and Frasier.

• Food

Christmas Day food was excellent- Eggs Benedict, turkey with all the trimmings, including Brussels Sprouts, ( much to the horror of Ian), and Uncle Don's brownies. I would like to make an official apology to the King family for not leaving them any brownies. People, you snooze you loose.

• Games

Three words- Cranium is awesome.

'Nuff said.

And I am done with typing. I am sick and tired of typing and I am very tempted to invest in that speaker Dictaphone thing that can be hooked to your PC and automatically types what you say. Of course I don't think my work colleagues would appreciate me roaring instructions at a computer screen day in day out. Sans my inside voice.

From the mouth of a 17 year old

"I soooo want a salad. I want a Caesar salad. Do you think an Italian restaurant would have that salad? Or was it made by Romans".

Wow. I'm pretty sure Mr J. Caesar took some time out from building his mighty Empire to whip up a salad. With croutons.

Anyway, an extreme cold weather warning has been issued for Toronto. Tomorrow should see -20. Chilly. Today, with the wind chill it was -23...... I learned a lot walking from the subway to the office. Wearing tights and a skirt does NOT stop cold burn. And my ears don't react well to cold. And I think I got brain freeze.

I STILL have to get cracking on my Christmas/New Year recap, but there is just so much to describe that I am having a few problems getting me to sit down, focus and type. Expect it to turn up around this time next year.

Not enough time in the day

There is a detailed, second by second account of Christmas in the works. Unfortunately, I have not had the luxury of lying around on the living room floor stuffing myself with chocolates, conjuring fun blog sentence structuring, as I have been indulging in that fun activity called, "work". I had Christmas Day and Boxing Day off, but it was back to the grindstone on the 27th. Nevertheless, I managed to pack a veritable medley of fun activities into those two days which I will elaborate on over the course of the coming week. Tomorrow evening Ian and I are going to a New Year's Part being hosted by some friends. I am very excited... almost Christmas Eve levels of excitement.

Also, I have become far far too domesticated. This evening I purposely went to the drug store to stock up on Christmas cards for NEXT CHRISTMAS BECAUSE THEY WERE ON SALE! I used to make fun people who did that kind of thing, now, I think such advanced planning is genius.

Speaking of genius, Ian is watching a show on TV called Jesus Camp. It brings a whole new level of 'shocking' to TV. It is horrific to think this sort of conduct is permitted in modern America.

So last weekend I was Christmas shopping at a local mall. I flitted from store to store offloading all that unnecessary cash in my account to money grabbing retailers having a merry ol' time. My merry feeling was a little bruised by the lack of Christmas cheer displayed by store staff. Here, in mucho liberal Canada, it is frowned upon for people to wish strangers a "Merry Christmas"for fear of offending non Christians. Store staff are expected not to say anything but if they must it can only be along the lines of "Happy Holidays. Give me a break. This is PC thinking taken that one step too far. So what if non Christians don't like it- they still indulge in the commercialism of Christmas, don't they? They still take 'Christmas' vacation, don't they? It angers me that the powers that be succumbed to the whims of some non Christians simply to appease ludicrous mob mentality. I could go on and on about this one, but for the sake of my blood pressure I shall close the lid on this one and yell Merry Christmas at whomever I wish.

Pah.

Ian and I had our Christmas date last night. We went to a little bistro in the town run by a Frenchman from Nice and his Quebec City wife. What a phenomenal gastronomic experience it was. I was very surprised at how tasty rabbit liver mousse and bison were. We were provided with a delightful 2003 French red that was the perfect perfect match for our main course ( Bison for Ian and Angus Striploin pour moi). The owners are wonderful and very quirky with that wonderful expressive body language only the French possess. Each utterance from la femme was melded with dramatic hand movements, exaggerated head bobbing and that particular 'bof' sound the French people have perfected. What a perfect start to the Christmas season. ( Note I typed Christmas and not any of that pc mumbo jumbo).

Sadly Ian and I have to work tomorrow, but hopefully for only a few hours and then it is back home and over to the Kings to indulge in some Christmas cheer. I am very excited for gifts, time off work and food. I expect I will be found passed out in a pile of turkey, rum balls and gift wrap. Turkey OD is a serious condition.

I saw a ridiculous sign at one of the local gyms yesterday. This particular place has one of those old style cinema signs ( the ones with removable letters in black with a a white background). The person in charge of advertising was evidently sick the day punctuation was being done in class. The sign read

"Give the gift of health free spa"

Methinks there should have been a member of the puncutation family resident between the words health and free. Still it made me laugh.

Storm Day

Today we had the first snow storm of the season and I must say it was quite spectacular.... what with watching it from the comfort of my nice warm living room. I have charted the day's events below. Prepare for a thrilling read....

So below we see the tree that I spent the first half of the morning admiring, (the second half of my morning was spent deciding between thickening and moisturizing shampoo.. for those of you that care, I went with moisturizing and I do regret my decision). Note all the gifts under tree. All wrapped with love by me. Ian has an aversion to wrapping gifts, but not to opening them. I posted a picture with the top of the tree missing. I did have many other pictures with tree top evident but who knew "Del" areally did mean Delete.

When the stresses of tree gazing and decision making started to take their toll I chose to gaze at the antique decorations we have on the tree. The bauble below, is very beautiful and came from East Germany.. that should give an indication as to how old it is.


After such an historical bauble I felt I needed some comedic relief in my day and had a little giggle at the decoration that Ian made when he was in Grade One. Aww. Admire this one as quickly as you can, as when Ian discovers I posted this on the world wide web, I imagine he will have a little petition drafted demanding its removal.

And then the storm came. I had an invigorating hour watching the snow plough guys.


Once the snow was scrapped I ventured outside to see the damage. This pictures demonstrates just how much snow fell. The path leads from the car park to the back door of the apartment block. Impressive levels of snow. What, ho, old chap.




This is a pristine, untouched blanket of snow which was destroyed by me moments after taking this picture. There is nothing as satisfying as breaking fresh snow with a body jump.

My boot print- if you look closely at the snow it looks like snow is quite the glitter fan what with all the sparkles. Of course there is a scientific explanation for the whole thing. My memory fails me at the moment, however.


The storm brought with it snow, in the common sense of the word, and 'blowing snow'. I like the patterns left by the wind whipping up the flakes... sort of a snowy attempt at Saharan winds.


Yeah, I know, wow. Best part? I jumped into all of it afterwards. Point of note..snow LOOKS soft. It is anything but.

I did of course pause to admire the beauty of a silent night.



And then the snow came back and Bambi got lost.

Game on

On Sunday Ian and I went to a Toronto Raptors game ( of the basketball variety). To be honest I wasn't all that excited at the prospect of watching ten guys throw a ball around a sprung floor for a few hours so I was pleasantly surprised when I found myself on my feet, cheering and screaming for the Raptors. I also watched a living sporting legend take to the court in the form of the Houston Rocket's Yao Ming. Is that guy ever tall- all 7' 6" of him. However, due to his height, he looks rather clumsy loping from one basket to the other. The most entertaining aspect of the whole evening came in the form of a man dressed in a costume. Let me explain- most, if not all, basketball teams in the NBA have a team mascot, and for the Raptors it is a guy dressed in a red Raptor suit. However, this mascot has taken the costume one step further by now sporting an inflatable costume complete with giant head and little arms making him look like a Lilliputian with an unusually oversized 'tete'. There are numerous videos on You Tube of this little critter doing his dance moves, tumbles and comedic acts. They are hilarious! He comes on court during breaks in play and half time. Sporting events in North America are very very different to those in Europe. They are considered a huge day out for friends and family and while crowd participation is encouraged, the crowd isn't as frantic as at a Premier League football game. Instead during half time people are asked to come from their seats to court to take part in games with an emphasis placed on children participating. The whole ambiance of the game is intended to make the game as comfortable as possible. There are ushers to guide you to your seats, soft seats to sit on, numerous food vendors and if you are lucky to sit in the good seats (as Ian and I once did), a menu is provided for you to select your goodies and an assigned usher brings them to you! Also, music is constantly playing so I get to sing along! The people sitting beside us must have been very happy to hear me warble out the lyrics of Kanye West's, "Stronger". A world apart from the plastic seats of GAA games. Anyhoo, the Raptors won the game and no one was quite as content as me. I may have become a fan and have become a little more receptive to Ian watching every single one of their games on TV... in case you hadn't realised, I happen to be dating a die hard Raptors fan. While the basketball was enormous fun my one goal for the coming year is to finally see the Toronto Maple Leaf's play on ice. Getting one of these hockey tickets is akin to winning one of Willy Wonka's limited chocolate factory tours- basically impossible. However, I am undeterred in my quest.


I have to award a great big round of applause to those running the Distillery District in Toronto. As the name suggests it was once a haven for liquor production but now houses art galleries, select bars and a yummy chocolatier. During the festive season the bars host many corporate Christmas events, so during the run up to the season the District is providing free rides home after a night of celebratory drinking. I am so happy to hear that someone has taken this step and is providing an alternative to drink driving. It is only taking effect on certain dates but, no matter what, it is a very positive step and something I highly commend.