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!