What are you doing New Year's Eve?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! And thank you for the warm birthday wishes. We ended 2005 with a relaxing Christmas and a low key New Year's Eve/ birthday celebration. As usual, we spent much of each day on the phone talking to family and friends. Santa was very good to us this year. Christmas started early when we took delivery of our new 32" Sharp LCD TV on Tuesday, Dec. 20 (after they cancelled delivery once we finally got satisfaction from our salesperson because the customer service line was useless.) We got a bunch of our fave DVDs including Kill Bill vols. 1 & 2 and some great CDs (thanks Rich and Steve!) Thank you also to Uncle Wes and Marcella and Mom and Dad in Calgary and Winnipeg for your Christmas packages. Richard gave me a Bose Sound Dock for my iPod - it looks cool and sounds great. It kept me company in the kitchen while I was cooking Christmas dinner. No turkey this year - just a veal chop with scalloped potatoes and vichy carrots...mmmm... And of course a great wine from Uncle Wes and Marcella. New year's is also quiet - just watching the celebrations from Nathan Phillips Square and Niagara Falls. Who would imagine we would spend so much time in our basement but it's great to be finally using the space after starting the reno last spring. There are always things to work on (the bathroom!?) but it is teaching me patience and a new acronym: GEPO (good enough, push on).

Richard and I look forward to a happy, healthy and prosperous 2006 and wish you the same.

Dinner with The M Club

Tonight The M Club (Mary, Marlene, Manny and Mary Margaret) met for a delectable Christmas dinner at Avant Gout (8 Birch St just north of the Summerhill LCBO). It's a narrow house that has about 9 tables. The interior is painted a dark red and when you walk in you feel like you're in the dining car of the Orient Express. The chef is North African from France and my meal was delicious: fresh greens in a vinaigrette with goat cheese and salmon tagine. We even had a warm chocolate cake for dessert. I brought Christmas crackers and all the Ms were such good sports, everyone wore their party hats!

KONG is KING

See the mighty Kong
Skull Island and dinosaurs
Listen to Jack Black

WOW! Really enjoyed King Kong which we saw Saturday afternoon at the Beach Cinemas. I heard Director Peter Jackson say that the Lord of the Rings trilogy was "just a warm-up" for making Kong. At 3 hours (+ 20 minutes of trailers), it's not short but neither did it drag. Jackson did a great job and got wonderful performances from Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Kong - very emotive (it's all in their eyes). In the end, King Kong is a sad and touching movie that just happens to have sumptuous 30's sets and costumes and awesome CGI dinosaur fight scenes that blow Jurassic Park out of the water. (I'm sure we'll see a Skull Island ride at DisneyWorld or Universal Studios soon.)

As we were leaving the theatre I noticed a kid who couldn't have been more than 4 or 5. I really don't know what some parents are thinking because I feel Kong needs a height requirement: "You must be this tall to see this movie". Many scenes are graphic and scary (giant bugs eating peoples' faces and massive dinosaurs chomping at people and other dinosaurs.) My friends' kids have trouble with scenes in Stuart Little.

That night after a wonderful party with friends, we caught the tail-end of Saturday Night Live featuring guest host Jack Black. Here is Jack's opening monologue and The Kong Song on SNL - pretty hilarious.

Winning at Winners

As many of you know I work at College Park above the best Winners in Toronto. I have regular weekly (daily?) shopping therapy sessions at Winners and this week I have to share my fantastic find. Che, even though you were dissing Winners saying it had been picked over before Christmas I found 6 Nachtmann crystal Bordeaux wine glasses (the website says they're handblown) for $3.99 each!!!! That's 6 Grande lattes at Starbucks (talk about the latte factor) and probably less than the price of 1 glass at William Ashley's. I found a photo of the glasses on the Nachtmann website: (the one behind at left)

Can't diss Winners now
Source of my favourite glasses
Bordeaux anyone?

Finding Balance

I meant what I said in the last line of my previous post: I really can't wait for time off. Work has been INSANE for the past month and it is only now starting to ease up. As my friend Dori notes, I'm putting in private sector hours in a public sector job. And most evenings I'm working in the dark (they turn the lights out at 7:00 on my floor at College Park and I have often been there late working by the light of my monitor until 8:00 or 9:00pm). What up?

So now I am "taking back the night" and reclaiming some of those lost hours. The first step is seeing more movies! Last night's was the first in 6 weeks - highly irregular for Haikugirl's natural moviegoing habits.

In early December I took a course on Work-Life Management led by Dr. David Posen, author of The Little Book of Stress Relief. The course was amazing and couldn't have come at a better time for me. I am working at bringing more balance to my life at work and at home. One strategy is to just deal with the next 15 minutes (instead of getting overwhelmed by everything we have to do). Another is to do something for yourself every day. I made a commitment to blog, play piano, or walk at lunch at least 30 minutes each day to shift the focus away from work.

Wishing you and yours balance at the holiday season. May you have as relaxing a Christmas as we hope to have, filled with family, food, song and DVDs.

Christmastime is here
May peace and love fill your home
Enjoy your time off

The Squid and the Whale

Caught The Squid and the Whale last night at the Cumberland with Alison and Pavlina. A real spur-of-the-moment movie outing after we celebrated Pavlina's birthday dinner with Sarah at Saigon Sister. We wanted to see Jake and Heath in Brokeback Mountain but all screenings were sold out. Back to the film: Laura Linney is married to Jeff Daniels and they split up. The story follows the kids going back and forth between houses. Amazing performances by the whole family, although Jeff Daniels plays a pr*** and we didn't see enough of Laura Linney. Son #2 Frank is played by Owen Kline, son of Kevin and Phoebe Cates (he's got his mother's eyes). The soundtrack is sweet - just what you'd expect from the co-writer of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Writer/director Noah Baumbach made a nice film about a sad subject (his friend Wes Anderson of Life Aquatic and Royal Tenenbaums fame produces). Alison is glad she didn't know that until afterward or else we might not have seen it. More movies on tap for this weekend.

N-E-1-4 Kong?
Brokeback Mountain? Family Stone?
can't wait for time off