I’m a huge fan of Tetley’s ale. It’s my preferred choice when I’m going to pick up beer at the LCBO. It’s fantastically smooth and doesn’t have a lot of alcohol in it (3.8%). I wish I could find it in more pubs in the area but most of the ones that we’ve been to don’t have it either on draught or in a can/bottle. In a pub my preferred brew is either Kilkenny or 80 Shilling. Both are fantastic.
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2005.
Tags: 80-shilling, beer, imports, kilkenny, tetley
I’m in love with Ferrero Rocher. I got two huge packs of them this Christmas and I’ve eaten almost half of one box already. They’re just so tasty that I can’t get enough of them. It probably stems from when my mom used to give us all three-packs in our stockings each Christmas. I used to try and keep those three chocolates for as long as possible before I succumbed to the temptation. The same cause is likely why I’m such a fan of Amaretto and Disaranno and other hazelnut types of treats.
Tags: chocolate, christmas, ferrero-rocher, Food
It’s been a good holiday so far. We had Christmas at our house and had Marcy’s family over for the Eve and Day. That’s two big holidays that Marcy has prepared a feast for and it a pretty sumptuous one at that! We had a fresh turkey 18 pounds of which has either been eaten already or is in a soup or pie ready to be consumed for a perfect coldweather dinner.
On the Eve we went to the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church (pay attention to that washroom announcement) for a Christmas pageant that featured live animals. I have a few pictures from it that I’ll post on Flickr. It was very dark and as such was hard to take unshaky pictures that weren’t fuzzy/out of focus. I do have a few good pictures though. We also put together a nice gingerbread house before we went to bed (for a long winter’s nap).
Christmas Day was spent opening presents, eating food and talking with relatives. I got lots of wonderful gifts both edible and not that I’m looking forward to enjoying this coming year. I even got some nice thermal underwear to help keep the frostbite away while I’m commuting over the next few months. The weather wasn’t ideal that night so our guests stayed until the Monday morning.
On Monday we travelled to Belleville on our way up to Pembroke. We had coffee with Steven and Stacey at Starbucks and purchased some reading material for Marcy in the car. The drive up north was uneventful thanks to the weather. Our stop at the Shell station in Kaladar revealed that the station has new owners that don’t seem to be taking good care of the place. The washrooms were rather filthy and the fridge wasn’t really keeping things cool. We got up to Pembroke around 6. We had dinner with Marcy’s father and grandmother after which I was quite stuffed. I even had some 5-cup salad which I haven’t had since I was a kid. We stayed up quite late (for us – around 3 AM) and went to bed in one of the spare rooms.
That was probably a mistake since when we got up we were rather sore from the mattress on the bed. Or rather from the lack of boxspring. All it had were springs that tended to poke and prod throughout the night. We left Pembroke around 11:30 on our way to visit my aunt and uncle near Elgin. It took about 2 hours to get there and we drove through some very small towns in eastern Ontario. We stopped in at the Forfar Dairy which produces some cheese that my parents enjoy. They have a nice 4 year old cheddar that I picked up for them. We had a nice visit with Pat and Rob; Rob is looking much better than when we saw him in July. He has pancreatic cancer and wasn’t given much hope to live but he got on an experimental treatment program and the cancer has stopped progressing with a possibility of slight shrinkage. Rob’s best friend Richard and his sister came just before we left for home. We would have stayed for dinner but we had to get back to Toronto to check on our cats. We left them alone for Monday and Tuesday and since Eve and Quentin had surgery last week we wanted to make sure they were ok and weren’t left for too long.
The drive home was uneventful; it took about 3.5 hours. The house wasn’t a disaster as we had feared but Eve had thrown up a couple of times which was concerning. She had thrown up as well on Saturday. She was due to be looked at anyway on Wednesday and we told them about the vomiting. Needless to say a lot of vomiting with a cat is not a good thing. They thought it might be a “foreign body” or something so they took some xrays and told us to monitor her until Thursday. We had been planning on going to Ohio for New Year’s and the plan was to leave on Thursday so we pushed it back to Friday morning instead. Wednesday and Thursday passed and she didn’t throw up any more but then Thursday night right before we went to bed Eve was sick again.
I took her to the vet’s yesterday morning and they gave her some barium pills, “bips” they call them, which will show up on an xray in case there is a blockage or something inside of her. It makes it really easy to tell what’s wrong with her insides. We had to take her in again today to have the xray or if she passed them on her own then we didn’t need to worry about it. I took her in this morning and needless to say we were both pretty worried for her. The last thing we wanted was to have her go through more surgery. Fortunately though the xrays were good which means that we can stop worrying. The downside is that we had to postpone our trip south (or rather southerly because I don’t think Ohio is strictly called “south”) until next weekend.
It’s Marcy and I for New Year’s this year. We’ve rented some movies and we’re going to have an easy dinner and watch some of them tonight. It’s been a nice holiday season so far and hopefully yours has been too. Happy New Year and all the best in 2006!
IMG_9576
Originally uploaded by mclements.
I like this rooster picture as well. It’s one of my favourite decorations on our tree this year.
Tags: christmas-ornaments, decorations, favourite, Pictures, rooster
IMG_9577
Originally uploaded by mclements.
I like this picture quite a bit. You can even see me in the reflection!
Tags: christmas-ornaments, decorations, favourite, Pictures, reflection
If there’s a day every two weeks that I don’t like it’s Garbage Fridays. Here in Toronto they pick up garbage (i.e. non-recyclables) every two weeks. Our day for waste is Friday. They say that you should have your waste outside by 7 AM. On the Fridays that we have to put recyclables out this isn’t much of a problem because we’re not the first pass of the garbage truck. It hits the other side of the street first (usually around 7:30 AM) and then eventually goes back on our side of the street but that’s always after I’ve left for work. Garbage Fridays though have a bigger problem because it seems like we’re the first side of any street in the area that gets done. If I don’t have the garbage at the front of the house at precisely 7 AM then I’m going to miss it for the week and then we’ll have to find someway to find room for the garbage that will pile up over the next two weeks. This has happened once in the past and a couple of other times I’ve come really close; the garbage truck was a few houses up the street by the time I got all of the garbage to the front of the house. This morning I slept through the alarm or I must have shut it off after it went off at 6:15 AM and I woke up right at 7 with the World Report (the trumpets are hard to sleep through). I didn’t want to miss the garbage pickup so I put some socks on and my jacket and trudged outside and dragged the garbage to the front. I could hear and see the garbage truck just up the street when I finished. One advantage though is that I wake up pretty quickly once I’m outside!
So you might ask why I don’t take the garbage to the front the night before? Well our area seems to be particularly infested with raccoons. If I were to put it at the curb at night by the time the morning came around the garbage would be strewn all over the road and I’d have to clean it up. Since this isn’t really a viable option I guess trying to beat the clock on Friday mornings will have to do for now.
Tags: CBC, early, garbage, garbage-fridays, Toronto, world-report
IMG_9325
Originally uploaded by mclements.
Quentin is our other kitten and he’s the brother of Eve. He’s also having surgery today. He’s getting neutered. He’s one of the biggest suck of a cat you’ve ever seen. He’ll actually crawl onto your arm if you’re petting another cat just to get some more attention. He’s extremely affectionate and his meows are very soft considering his size. He’s a very long cat! We’re looking forward to seeing him tonight.
A lot of people on the bus tend to read 24 Hours, the free newspaper published by the Sun Group. I noticed the headline today on the front page. It reads:
Supreme Court Rules in Vour of Sex Clubs
That’s right – Vour. Perhaps they were talking about Vor, the Norse goddess of the Aesir. They say that she is wise and alert and that she misses nothing. Is this applicable to the headline gaffe? Not really but I have to fill this space with something.
Someone will probably be severely reprimanded for this faux pas. If I had my way the whole newspaper would be fired but that’s probably too much to hope for even if it’s Christmas.
Tags: 24-hours, spellchecker, spelling, vor
When I take the bus to work I have to transfer at Warden to the Eglinton bus. At the corner there is a Coffee Time and on occasion, probably more often than I should, I stop for a coffee. It’s not that Coffee Time has superb coffee or anything and I know that here in Toronto they have a reputation (likely deserved) of being not-so-clean establishments but if anything the coffee from Coffee Time reminds me most of when we used to live in Kitchener. I say this because I used to stop at the Coffee Time near Booksoft everyday before work and the coffee there tastes pretty much the same as the coffee here. The only dangerous part of the whole operation is that I have to carry a cup of coffee on a very crowded bus. Fortunately not one accident has occurred and hopefully that trend continues.
Tags: booksoft, coffee, coffee-time, Commuting, eglinton, kitchener, temptations, Toronto, ttc, warden
Today on the bus, and I don’t mean to scare you, there was a man who was carrying a lightsaber. On top of that it was the dual lightsaber featured in Episode I. I’m not sure what his intentions are for using this weapon of danger but it can’t be good for the city. I’ll keep checking the news to see if anything pops up about this. I should be prepared to report my findings to the police as well. Hopefully today doesn’t end in carnage.
Tags: Commuting, episode-i, lightsaber, star-wars, Toronto, ttc
At home right now there is a lone bus ticket. This ticket was supposed to spend the day with me but in the haste of putting on my watch and rushing out the door, I left the poor ticket behind. Now I will have to make sure that I have enough change to get home again. At least tomorrow I’ll be on schedule in terms of bus tickets again. I don’t like to run out in the middle of the day. I’d prefer to run out of tickets at the end of the day.
If the monthly pass weren’t so expensive that would be a viable alternative but alas it doesn’t make financial sense to use it.
Tags: bus-ticket, Commuting, toront, ttc
Wow, if anyone forgot how cold it could be in the morning when it’s winter, today will sure be a jolt of a reminder. Current air temperature? -14 degrees Celsius. With the wind chill it brings it down to -25 degrees Celsius. That’s pretty cold. There’s no cloud cover today so all of the warmth that the Earth provides gets blown up the atmosphere. Fortunately I don’t have to wait outside for too long today since I drove to work but still the car really felt it this morning when I turned it on. It seemed kind of cranky when I tried to turn it on. I’ll have to make sure that I bundle up tomorrow when I take public transit again. I’ve been spoiled for the last two business days in that I’ve been able to take a nice warm car to work.
Tags: canada, celsius, temperature, winter
I think I’m going to start uploading more photors to my Flickr account. I’ve set up Gallery on this new site but I’m thinking that I might as well use my Flickr Pro account since I’m allowed to upload quite a bit to that site and my disk space on this server is more limited. So watch that site for new pictures!
Jon came up yesterday and spent some time in the afternoon visiting with us. It was really great to see him; we haven’t seen him since last July at our tea reception in Belleville. He was up for his friend’s wedding in Waterloo and dropped another friend off in Whitby so it was sort of on the way home to Hamilton for him. He’s living in New Jersey near Manhattan now so we talked quite a bit about the differences between living here in Toronto and where he lives. Some things are quite similar but many aspects of our lives are dissimilar. We showed him our house and drove him around the neighbourhood we’re thinking of buying into when we can afford it and then took him to one of our favourite pubs, Tara Inn in Cliffside.
Now if there’s one consistent thing about this place is that the service is very inconsistent. The first time we went we had fairly decent service but every other time the service has been dreadful; it’s like they purposely don’t hire enough waitstaff or hire waitstaff that are not attentive enough the result of which is that you end up getting your drinks fairly quickly and then waiting for a dreadfully long time for the food to appear. This was the case yesterday. We arrived at just after 2:30 for lunch and didn’t finish our lunch until almost 4:30. It’s not like we took our time eating either; it just happened that our food took an extremely long time to arrive. Fortunately though the one good aspect of this restaurant and the real reason that we keep going back is that the food is very good.
All in all a quite enjoyable afternoon spent with Jon. Hopefully we’ll be able to see him again soon.
Tags: cliffside, friends, hamilton, jon, tara-inn, Toronto, visiting, waterloo
For the past few weeks I have been getting the occasional migraine when I come home from work. It was always when I came home; never when I went to work would I have such a serious headache. I would come home and need to lie down in the dark for a few moments to recover from the blinding pain and nausea. I’ve had migraines in the past but they were really spread out in terms of the period of time in between and it wasn’t making much sense why I would be getting them so consistently.
I think I may have figured out what was happening though. When I come home I have to take 3 buses and the amount of time that I need to wait outside in the cold (since it is now December) varies greatly from day to day. It is cold and dark when I leave work and the buses all have their heaters blowing at a fierce rate to keep the passengers warm. So my head has to go from warm (office) to cold to warm (Eglinton bus) to cold to warm (Warden bus) to cold to warm (Warden station) to warm (Markham Road bus) to cold again in a relatively short period of time. This constant change in temperature must be what is triggering these migraines. I’ve procured some Advil migraine-strength pills to help me cope. I think the reason that this doesn’t happen in the morning is that I know when the bus will be at the bus stop and it’s very consistent in its on-time behaviour. Also the connections with the other buses are almost instantaneous so I don’t have to wait outside for very long at all.
Tags: cold, Commuting, eglinton, headaches, hot, markham-road, migraines, transit, ttc, warden, winter
If I were to come back after I die and I wanted to be as heartless as possible then I would definitely choose to come back as a bus driver on the 68 – Warden bus route. These bus drivers are consistently late and so to keep themselves on schedule because they get in trouble if they are too late, they don’t stop at certain stops to let people on. I’ve been on this bus numerous times where we blow by a big group of people waiting at a bus stop merely because we need to stay on schedule and it just happens that no one wanted to get off the bus at that point. I’m fortunate in that where I get on this bus is a major intersection and the bus almost always has to stop there so I can get on but I can see on the bus drivers’ faces that given the option they would choose not to stop.
Well I said that I would check the attendance of last night’s Raptors game and it seems that there were ~4000 more fans last night for the game against the Lakers than the previous home game against Memphis. It’s tough to say how much of that was due to the increased advertising for the game or just because it was the Lakers.
Tags: attendance, basketball, lakers, los-angeles, memphis, nba, raptors, Toronto
Inspired by Kristin’s post I’ll be answering her questions below the fold.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: answers, kristin, kristonium, meme, q-and-a, questions
The Raptors (Canada’s team) are getting desperate it seems. On the front page of today’s 24 Hours (a truly tabloid free newspaper) they’re advertising 10% off of all of the tickets to tonight’s game against the Lakers. That’s 10%! That means that you could save $50 on a courtside seat. Keep in mind that the Raptors are currently 3-16 and the Lakers, though playing in a tougher conference, are still only 8-9. That’s hardly a blockbuster game no matter how you spin it or however big a Kobe fan you may be. I’ll have to remember to look at the attendance for this game to see if their campaign worked or not.
Tags: 24-hours, attendance, basketball, lakers, los-angeles, nba, raptors, Toronto
I just saw an older man try to turn onto the exit ramp (offramp) from the Don Valley Parkway from Eglinton. I think he would have actually made the turn too if there hadn’t been two cars on the offramp waiting to turn left. Who knows what that would have led to.
Tags: Commuting, don-valley-parkway, dvp, eglinton, Toronto
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