Weekend fun...

Another weekend has come and gone, and I don't really have anything to show for it except for the fact that the blue afghan I mentioned earlier is now finished. I'm a little disappointed with it, though. Because I bought the yarn in bulk and on two separate occasions, I wasn't able to be very picky about the dye lots of the different balls. Result:

I now have a two-toned afghan! If I didn't like the pattern/colours so much I don't think it would bother me that the two blues are so different, but I do, so it does. I was originally planning to give it away, but now I think I'll have to keep this one and make another. But first I need to finish making the matching pillows ;)

On Saturday, we went out for "breakfast" (at approx. 1:00pm) withTC's Brother G and Cousin J, and their respective wives, which was fun. Cousin J was visiting from Ottawa, and he and his wife have the cutest little puppy - I wish I had a picture - that likes to chew people's toes! We left the pup with Brother G's in-laws and had breakfast at an Irish-style pub, and then walked to the Pottery Barn at the request of Mrs. Cousin J. Apparently there isn't one in Ottawa. They have some really nice stuff there, but I find it to be overpriced. It was a good visit, though.

We also spent quite a bit of time this weekend playing a game that we got for Christmas called Ticket to Ride. I highly recommend it - it's a great deal of fun. You are essentially trying to create a network of train lines that connect whichever North American destinations you've been assigned before someone else claims that route or runs out of trains. Fun for the whole family (as long as your family has 2-5 people and is 8+)!

I guess I do have something to show for the weekend after all!

New dresser

Didn't TC do a lovely job assembling the dresser? He was a very busy boy yesterday! I mentioned in the last post that one of my cousins will be coming to live with us for a few months starting in January, and TC put the finishing touches on the guest room which up until yesterday was used primarily as his office. Now it's a cozy little room all set for when cousin P gets here. To tell you the truth, I like it much better this way.

Some updates...and a life lesson...

The amaryllis is continuing to grow, though it didn't make it to maturity by Christmas as I was hoping it would. Still, I'm really enjoying how you can see a little growth each day. On the crafting front, I've wrapped up all of the little projects that I've been working on (no pun intended), but I always have one or two big projects on the go. Right now I'm crocheting away at this afghan:

I ran out of the dark blue yarn while working on it this afternoon, so I decided that we needed to go get some more right away. Off we went to Wal-mart (a store that I am morally conflicted about shopping in, and yet I keep going back - it's like the crack of the department store world), where we of course discovered that there were some other things we needed too (darn that place!). By the time we left, our shopping gears were all fired up, so we decided that mid-afternoon on Boxing Day would be a great time to look for a dresser for our guest room, where my cousin will be living for the next four months.

.

We began by looking in every store near the Wal-mart that we thought might have dressers, but we were thwarted at every turn. It was then that we decided to make the journey out to the nearest Ikea - a trip that took forever because we had to pass the Yorkdale mall enroute. Why would that make it take forever? Because there were so many people going to the mall that we sat at an intersection through 5 green lights because there was no room to advance. As far ahead as we could see, there was nothing but bumper-to-bumper traffic. We proceeded to sit through at least 5 green lights at every intersection. Grr... We finally made it to Ikea, and we did find a dresser that we liked very much, which TC has begun assembling this evening, so it all turned out to be worthwhile. I'll post a picture once he's finished.

.

The moral of the story? Never try to buy a dresser on Boxing Day! I don't know what we were thinking :)

Merry Christmas!

Well, Christmas has come and gone and it turned out to be a wonderful time after all. On Christmas Eve we made our way down to Kensington Market, a community of little shops and restaurants that is essentially an open-air market (hence its name), and just walked about, stopping to peruse the occasional shop and then having some lunch at a little Portugese bakery. As we were doing so, it started to snow - the wispy kind of flakes that don't amount to anything but look really pretty. How perfect is that? Then we indulged in the guilty pleasure of going to the Eaton Centre and watching everybody scurry around to do their last-minute shopping while we sat and drank tea, secure in the knowledge that all of our shopping was done. Later that night we attended a candlelit service at an Anglican church just down the street, which ended shortly after midnight. It was quite lovely!

The late night probably explains why I was able to sleep in on Christmas morning. Normally I wake up quite early, but this year I made it til 8am - something I haven't been able to do since I was too young to know what Christmas was. Anyway, after we opened our presents we headed out to feed TC's brother's cat, which we're looking after for a couple of days. Then we went to a friend's house and spent the afternoon with them, playing games and having a delicious turkey dinner.

Christmas spirit...

It's official - Christmas is here! I've always associated the beginning of Christmas with a certain feeling that I get as the day approaches, a quiet kind of joy and excitement that sneaks up on me without my noticing it, until I'm walking around humming Christmas carols and smiling for no apparent reason. It took a little longer to reach that point this year, but it's finally here! It might have helped that all the Christmas cards have been arriving this week, and my co-workers were handing out their 'thanks for all your help' gifts to the office services staff today so everyone was feeling festive. Or it might be the 2 feet of snow that we got over the weekend, making everything look Christmasy. I'm sure all of those things have contributed to the Christmas feeling, but I think the biggest thing has been the fact that I'm now really looking forward to spending a quiet Christmas morning at home with TC, and then having Christmas dinner with some friends and their family.

Another contributor to the official start of Christmas? Seeing this clip on TV.

Update

This is just a quick update to let you know that TC did indeed make it home safe and sound, for which I am very, very thankful. He arrived at the door Sunday afternoon snowy, tired and a little bit rumpled but otherwise whole.

Snow Day

On a day like today, when I don't have anything that I really have to do, and nowhere that I really have to go, I love a good snowstorm! It has been snowing and blowing like mad outside since yesterday, and I'm loving every minute of it, all curled up on the couch watching old movies and drinking tea. The only real downside is that TC, who was supposed to come back from Washington yesterday has been snowed in at the Detroit airport and won't be getting home until this afternoon, assuming that the new flight isn't cancelled too. He'll get home eventually, though. On the plus side, I've had lots of time to finish up this scarf that I've been making from leftover yarn:

It's kind of Christmasy, don't you think? I recently went through all my craft supplies, which have somehow grown to fill 3 or 4 rubbermaid storage tubs, and found so much scrap yarn that I need to use up in order to make room for more :) There really isn't enough of any one colour to make a major project, but I've discovered that I can usually manage to make a scarf or a hat from it.

Aren't I a little old to be homesick?

I thought that I was doing pretty well with the whole 'not-going-home-for-Christmas' thing, but it seems that I may have been a little premature in coming to that conclusion. I was just looking at some pictures that a friend posted on facebook of their birthday/early Christmas celebration(s) and was swept by a wave of homesickness, which completely took me by surprise. It hit me the moment I realized that we are not only unable to visit our families this year, which is bad enough, but we're also not going to be able to visit all of the friends we would normally see - and all of a sudden I started missing everybody. Sigh. My solution? Everybody needs to come visit us ;)

So in order to keep myself from getting weepy (I am at work, after all, and nobody likes a weepy receptionist), I'm going to make a list of some of the things that I'm enjoying or looking forward to this Christmas:

• not having to worry about booking flights or spending time in the airport
• getting parcels full of presents in the mail
• having 3 extra days off work to relax and enjoy the season
• seeing Toronto all decked out for Christmas (it really is beautiful at this time of year)
• learning about other people's Christmas traditions and experiences
• celebrating with our friends that are here

That's not so bad, is it?

Amaryllis update

We have life! My amaryllis has started to grow, which excites me very much. Probably too much :) I was kind of hoping it would bloom by Christmas, but I don't think it will since that's only 14 days away. We put our Christmas parcels in the mail today, which I hope was soon enough for them to get down home in time.

I had the preliminary interview today for the junior supervisory position that I mentioned earlier. It was a bit of a waste of time, since I already work for the company and have therefore already gone through the preliminary screening process, but for the sake of fairness every applicant has to do it. I therefore travelled 45 minutes from the office I work in to one of our other GTA offices, sat in the reception area for 10-15 minutes, was interviewed for another 10-15 minutes and then travelled 45 minutes back to my office just in time for my lunch break. On the bright side, I was told that I am definitely going to be one of the candidates for the major interview sometime next week. Woo hoo!

So what am I going to do with the rest of my evening? Sorting through this:

Two months' worth of receipts. Ugh. Everything gets entered into our budget spreadsheet, a relatively new endeavour prompted by the realization that I really don't know how much we spend on things. I do have a general idea, but it helps to have a definite figure to look at. It's been a very enlightening process.

Salmon supper

I tried a new recipe tonight, which I believe will now become part of the rotation. It's called Parmesan Baked Salmon, and was a breeze to make. Here's the recipe (or rather my version of the recipe, tweaked to fit the ingredients that I had on hand):

1/4 cup mayonaise

2 tbsp. grated parmesan

1/8 tsp. chili powder

4 salmon filets

2 tsp. lemon juice

10 Ritz crackers, crushed

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Mix mayo, cheese, and chili powder until well blended and set aside. Place salmon on foil-lined baking dish. Drizzle with lemon juice and then top with cheese mixture, spreading evenly to cover salmon. Sprinkle with cracker crumbs. Bake 12-15 minutes, or until the filets flake easily with a fork.

Continuing on the Christmas theme...

I'm so tired I can hardly think - you'll have to forgive any incongruities that might show up in this post :) I've been doing two jobs at work since the beginning of last week and it's starting to catch up with me, though on the plus side I've had lots to do every day. Let's see if I can remember what I was going to write about...

Another care package arrived from Mum today. This time it contained the tablecloth and snowman cookie jar you see above, as well as some Christmas socks and napkins. The best part, though, is that the cookie jar came full of Mum's Christmas cooking: peanut butter balls, mocho cakes, and shortbread cookies...mmm...I'm so glad she sent them. I'm still struggling with the reality of not spending Christmas with our families, and it means so much to have that little bit of home. Speaking of which...

Tada! Our Nova Scotia Christmas tree! I love the way the smell of the tree hits me as soon as I walk in the door. And then turning off the lights and drinking a cup of tea at the end of the day while just enjoying the sight and smell of it all...ah...bliss! Have I mentioned yet how much I love Christmas?

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree...

Yay! Our tree is now up and decorated and making our apartment smell like Christmas! Have I mentioned yet how much I enjoy the Christmas season? It's always been a special time of year for me. I'm a little less excited this year, though, since it's the first year that we won't be able to go home at all. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, it will be nice not to have to spend a chunk of Christmas travelling - Pearson airport is definitely not somewhere you want to be this time of year. But on the other hand, we won't be near any family and most of our friends will be home visiting their families, which kind of sucks. I think we'll make out alright, though. If nothing else, this year will be a good reminder that Christmas isn't really about celebrating family, which is what it has become for a large part of our society.

On a related note, we discovered something amazing about our tree after we brought it home from the lot (an adventure in and of itself, involving carrying the 7' tree down six city blocks on a very cold and windy evening). We knew when we bought it that the tree was from Nova Scotia, but then we were removing the tag from the bottom of it and saw that it had been grown by Delong Farms of New Germany, NS - which is where I lived for the first 8 years of my life! How neat is that? Although we can't go home for Christmas, a little bit of home has come to us :)

I'll try to get a picture of the tree on here as soon as we figure out why our camera isn't working. Do any of you photography-inclined people know why a camera would say that it 'cannot use this memory card' when it was using it just fine several seconds earlier? It will work without the card, but then we can only take a couple of pictures before the memory is full. The card isn't full, and it won't even let us download the images that were on it. Grr...

Celebrating...winter?

Whew! It seems like we've been going pretty much non-stop lately. Last night was my office's Christmas party. No, sorry, it was our Winterfest celebration - a more neutral term that encompasses the celebration of Christmakwanzakkah. It was a lot of fun, mainly because the entertainment for the evening was the Barenaked Ladies, who put on a great show. Dinner was a typical 3-course affair, except that they included an extra course of Kraft Dinner with a fancy imported ketchup in honour of the band. :) We stayed for the concert, but left before the dance afterward, which turned out to be a good thing, since there was a bit of a storm last night. It was just pretty and snowy when we left - a fitting ending to a fun evening.

An evening with Bach

We went to another concert last night, in the same church where the last one was held. This time it was Bach's Christmas Oratorio and Magnificat, performed by the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir. Some impressions:

1) Men should not be altos. The alto soloist was a man named Daniel Taylor, and while he sang well, on the lower notes where a woman's voice would have given the song a rich, full sound, his voice faded out because he was singing in his falsetto.

2) There are people out there who are as into Bach as some people are into different rock bands. I had to laugh when I looked down into the ground floor audience (we were in the balcony) and saw one man singing along and completely grooving to the music - a feat made more remarkable by the fact that the entire performance was in German.

3) Something is lost when you can't understand a word of the songs being sung. Translations were provided with the program, but you can't really appreciate the music if you're focusing on the words written on the page.

On the whole, we enjoyed the evening, but I would only give it a 7 out of 10. It was good, but it wasn't remarkable. The whole performance lacked heart, which is unfortunate because the music deserved better.

This and that...

There's something very satisfying about having a productive day. I'm already loving my new job - yesterday I reorganized a storage room, and organized the maintenance requirements for all of the meeting rooms. It made the day go by so quickly! I also applied for a junior supervisory position that just opened up, so here's hoping that something comes of that.


I wasn't so busy yesterday, though, that I couldn't finish up our Christmas letters! The guys in the print room printed them off for me (and did a great job, I think), and I folded and stuffed them in the cards, all ready to go as soon as I remember to pick up some stamps. I love Christmas!

The Continuing Saga...

Imagine my surprise, if you will, when I turned on the tv last night while taking a break from catching up on my french course, and there on the screen was Rick Mercer, accompanied by Shawn Graham, premier of New Brunswick, learning to make chicken bones at the Ganong factory! I nearly died from laughing. If I wasn't already a believer in the phenomenon of synchronicity, I definitely would be now. You can check it out for yourself here.

Becoming a Floater...

It's official - today I (sort of) started a new position in the company that I work for as the new Office Services Floater. It's not a promotion, but it is a change that I hope will provide me with more to do each day. I say that I 'sort of' started because I am currently training the person who will be working at reception in my place. So I will gradually be doing less at reception and more in the servery, the mailroom and the fileroom, floating between the different areas as needed.

Another ideal day...

I love Saturdays! It's the only day of the week where the only thing I have to do is what I want to do - for the most part :)

Today that meant making some more soap, this time a batch each of lemon chamomile (on the right) and clove (on the left).

Then I made some Christmas cookies, a very yummy lemon sugar cookie with lemon glaze. Here's the recipe:

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk

2 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp lemon zest

1 tsp vanilla

2-1/4 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Glaze: 3/4 cups icing sugar, 1-1/2 tsp lemon juice, 2 tsp water

Mix butter and sugar together well. Beat in egg. Add milk, lemon juice, lemon zest and vanilla. Stir in flour, baking powder and salt. Roll out on a lightly floured surface and cut into Christmasy shapes. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes, or until edges are slightly browned. Let cool slightly and then glaze.

I even planted my amarylis! I'll try to remember to post updates on its progress. Now if I could just get work done on my French course, I'd be all set!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

...Christmas!!

I love the fact that even though I haven't lived at home for years and years, my mom still sends me care packages! I just received one in the mail today filled with all kinds of Christmas goodies, including, but not limited to...

...these adorable Christmas tree ornaments...

...these Christmas decorations (isn't the reindeer cute?)...

...chicken bones, a chocolate-filled cinnamony East Coast Christmas tradition...

...a Christmas amaryllis...

...and finally this beautiful china cup! Mum is a tea drinker like me (or I'm a tea drinker like her?), so she knows how much I love china cups.

Thanks, Mum!

Winter wonderland...

Today was the first snowy day of the season, and everything is beginning to feel (and look) Christmasy! Yay!

A night of Tagore

What a wonderful evening! Last night we attended a concert put on by the Talisker Players called the Harp of Fire. It was amazing! The concert was a set of songs inspired by the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, a late nineteenth, early twentieth century Indian poet and philosopher, pictured below. It was held in a church on Bloor Street, shown on the right. The music was phenomenal - I really can't say enough about it.

One song was particularly moving, called 'Baajay koruno shurey...' or 'The plaintive tune'. The music was performed by a string quartet and a flute, with the lyrics sung by mezzo soprano Krisztina Szabo. It's sung in another language (I don't know which one), so I had no idea what the words were, but as I was listening I was filled with this sense of longing and grief. The music and the singing worked together so well that the entire audience was spellbound, even after the song was finished. Then I read the translation of the Tagore poem provided in the program and everything came together:

The plaintive tune, heard from afar,

Is the music of the path kissed by your feet,

This, my wandering mind, is unquiet,

I know not why.

As the fragrance of jasmine flowers

Spreads restlessly in the fretful air,

So my mind, in slow sorrow

Grieves in the extreme dark of our separation.

No respect...

It's funny - I'm having a hard time creating this post, not because I don't have anything to say but because I have too much! It's been a busy, eventful weekend, though I don't have any pictures to show for it...

I'm so glad that I've gotten involved in the Friday night gym program. It has given me a little bit of insight into what life it like for these kids. This past Friday we had to cancel because of an incident that took place at the school basketball tournament prior to our program. I don't know the particulars, but it caused the tournament to run a little late. As we were standing there waiting to find out when the game would end, three kids ran in to ask the principal if he could give them a ride to the nearest subway station. They had had something to do with the incident at the tournament, and were afraid of what would happen to them if they had to wait at the bus stop. It turns out that they were right to be afraid. The principal wouldn't give them a ride, and as our kids started arriving they reported that there was a very one-sided fight going on down the street near the bus stop. Since our program is a drop-in, open to anyone, it was decided it would be best to cancel so that it couldn't carry over and affect us. What really got to me was the way the kids just accepted the beating the others were getting as a normal part of life. You step over the line without the ability to back it up and you get 'rubbed'. That's just how it is. No wonder it's so difficult to reach these kids with a message that promotes peace and forgiveness as the best way to handle things - it's a totally foreign concept in their 'respect' dominated world.

The new house...not ours :-)

So the week has improved significantly since Monday. TC got back from his trip down home, and brought these pictures of Mum & Dad's new house being built:

This is the view from the lot, before everything started going in.

The foundation...

The crane to lift the house on to the foundation...

And here comes the house! Or half of it anyway.

Doesn't that look like fun? I'm glad I wasn't the one having to back half a house up that driveway!

There it goes!

And there it is! Pretty neat, I think.

Conscious positivity

This is definitely one of those days... I slept through my alarm this morning, leaving myself 20 minutes to get ready for work and get out the door. I then managed to zone out on the subway to such an extent that I missed my stop and had to get off at the next one and backtrack, which made me late. It's a cold, wet, miserable day - the grey kind of day when it's not really raining, but is misting so heavily that it wreaks havoc on your hair and you wish it would just rain and get it over with.


So to counteract all this negativity, I want to share 2 things that happened recently which reminded me of what I like about living in Toronto. One of the things that I like is the diversity of people and experiences in this city. I was reminded of this last night when I was invited to supper with some friends, one of whom is from Zimbabwe. She cooked us a traditional meal of oxtail and cornmeal, which has a name that I can't really remember but was very yummy. We ate with our hands - a new, messy and fun experience for me. I've only known this woman for a couple of months, but I have already learned so much from her.

Another thing that I like about living in Toronto is that you never know what you're going to see. This morning on the streetcar on my way to work I saw what I thought was a cyclist going down the sidewalk, which isn't that unusual a sight, but the more I looked at him the more it seemed that something wasn't quite right. As he came closer I realized that he wasn't riding a bike, he was riding a unicycle! And I thought, if I could ride a unicycle I would ride it to work every morning too :-)

Working 9 to 5...

I have been wondering why I've felt a little down this week, and the reason dawned on me this morning - I no longer get to see the sun. The reception area where I work, while very open and bright, has no windows, so I don't see outside except on my way there and back. And it's now dark when I leave the house in the morning, and dark when I get home. I'm not getting my vitamin A! Or is it vitamin D? Whichever one that exposure to the sun produces.


The more I experience of the 9-5 world of office work, the more I'm convinced that it's not a natural way of life. Most people in North America, myself included, spend the majority of their day doing something of no real value, in the sense that their profession exists as either a result of or an outlet for our surplus wealth (dog grooming, anyone?). We send our kids off to be looked after and taught by others, and relegate the elderly and infirm to "old folks' homes." Most of the population, and particularly the urban population, has never produced any of their own food, and has no idea where it actually comes from except in the abstract sense - they know that milk comes from a cow, but they don't know where that cow is. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with being a city-dwelling dog groomer who sends their kids to daycare, has their parents in a home and has never seen a cow. I just can't help thinking that there must be a better way. I don't know what that way would necessarily look like, but I think it would involve a great deal of simplification in our lives. It would be necessary to completely re-examine, on both an individual and a societal level, the values that cause us to spend so much of our time, effort and money on things/services that we don't need, and often don't really want.

Just a thought...

Concrete, concrete everywhere...

One of the things that I have had the hardest time getting used to with regards to living in Toronto is the vast amount of concrete everywhere I look. Yes there are trees and parks, and some of them are quite lovely, but always there in the corner of my eye or above the treetops is more concrete or brick. There are only 2 places in the city where I can forget that the concrete jungle exists. The first is called the Beaches - a beautiful park on the shore of Lake Ontario - but since it takes about 45 minutes to get there I don't get to see it very often. The second place, on the other hand, is on my way to work. For a few seconds every day as I walk from the subway station to the office, I can look to my left and see this:

No concrete anywhere within sight, and it always smells how a field is supposed to smell - in summer there are wildflowers that bloom along the sidewalk, in fall there is the smell of decaying leaves, in winter the crisp smell of snow, and in spring the smell of wet earth. So for a few seconds each day I can forget that I live in the city and feel refreshed by this little bit of greenness.

Then I blink, and look to my right and see this:

And I am swiftly transported back to reality. But those few moments do wonders for my nature-starved soul!

Hats, Hats, and More Hats...

I've been crocheting up a storm lately, getting into the world of hats! I've never made hats before, and am having a great deal of fun figuring out which yarns and hooks work best with which patterns. Here's a look at the ones I've made so far:


This is the good copy of the hat I gave to our friends who are expecting the baby (a girl, as you can tell).

These are 3 versions of the same hat made while I played with hook size and yarn tension. The first one would probably fit a 4-5 year old, the second one is huge, and the third one fits me nicely. So all I need to do is find a papa bear, mama bear and baby bear and I'll be all set!

This is my first attempt at creating my own pattern - it looks a little fez-like in the picture, but the top rounds out when it's actually on someone's head.

I think this beret is adorable! I just need to find a 5-7 year old girl who could wear it.

This last hat is not quite finished. There's supposed to be a ribbon going through the little gaps you can see about 2/3 of the way down, but I don't have it yet. I'm thinking a pretty blue would be nice.

An Ideal Day

I have been having a fantastic day! I slept in this morning, and then all I've done today is putter around the house, cooking, crocheting and even getting some work done on my French course. Oh, and I did go get groceries - a process which was greatly simplified by the menu plan I came up with. No more wondering what to get each week! I had my list ready in 5 minutes, walked to the store with my little cart while enjoying the crisp fall air, and was back out of the store within half an hour.

I made these granola bars yesterday with a recipe from a friend of mine. If I'd been thinking I would have taken a picture before I wrapped them up, but it's too late now :-) Then today I made spaghetti squash with feta-stuffed meatballs, which we'll have for supper tonight - a new recipe I found here. It says to make your own tomato sauce, but I cheated and used some pre-made stuff. I also had to cook the spaghetti squash a lot longer than the recipe called for, which made dinner a bit late, but well worth the wait. The best thing about it is that almost everything can be done ahead of time, so all you have to do just before is saute the spaghetti squash and put the meatballs in the tomato sauce and heat it up. It was very yummy! We had a friend staying with us for the weekend, and though none of us liked squash we all loved this dish. And for desert...

...pumpkin pie! Again, I cheated and used canned pumpkin, but it was much quicker that way :-)

All in all, an ideal day!