Last Friday of 2006

Last night we had a lovely evening out with friends. Started with cocktails at the swank Pantages Hotel on Victoria St. (next to the Canon Theatre)

Pantages Bar Lounge
Sleek, chic, yummy mixed nuts &
five-buck martinis

Yes, you read it right. Five dollar Grey Goose martinis no less. And who can resist bar nuts in the bar? Not me.

Then we walked to The Keg on York St. for dinner.

Hangin' at The Keg
Marci and Greg are the best
More good times next year

Merry Christmas from haikugirl!

Hope you had a great Christmas. We had a relaxing and enjoyable Christmas Eve Eve, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Lots of delicious food (R is out running it off as we speak!) and great conversations with family and friends.

This Christmas Santa was very good to haikugirl and bought her a MacBook Pro - so sleek and sexy. Now I have no excuses not to make my movie! Expect big things from haikugirl and her new Mac in 2007 - starting with a new email address and website.... Stay tuned!


What a lucky girl -
Now I have a MacBook Pro
Santa is the best!

Thanks again to Santa for the biggest and best surprise ever! Guess those Mac/PC commercials are effective (not to mention the constant barrage of pro-Mac emails from my dad ;-)

Casino Royale

Casino Royale was AWESOME! Everyone's favourite adjective to describe it is raw and I would agree. This is a back-to-basics Bond with great stunts instead of special effects and I am officially printing this retraction to my earlier post that Clive Owen would be the best Bond. Daniel Craig totally pulls it off and does a superb job. This high octane movie has lots of action (check the trailer), amazing locations, fast cars and very few gadgets. I say MMMMM - WAY TO GO!

Casino Royale
Daniel Craig is a great Bond
hip, raw and sexy

4 more days & Golden Globe nods!

Christmas is coming in 4 days and I'm ALMOST ready. Today is my last day of work for 2006 (yippee!) and then we're home for the holidays.

Plans for time off include everything haikugirl loves:

movies, music, food,
shopping, cooking, hanging out
waiting for Santa

Be sure to check out the Golden Globe nominations - with trailers and make your personal picks before the LIVE telecast on Monday, January 15, 2007 at 8:00pm EST on NBC. I hope Penelope wins Best Actress but she has stiff competition from Helen Mirren's stiff upper lip as The Queen.

more haiku for haikugirl

Chris S (from the Hargrave) sent me another haiku:

MM partied large
today, is she less perky?
can she still haiku?

And of course the answers are: no, I'm fine and yes, definitely!

Work demands are high
Priorities always shift
Can't wait for time off!

gotta run... BYE!

Volver - at last!

I can't believe I'm only getting to my review of Volver now. Saw it November 26 and was blown away. I think it is Almodovar's best film and definitely Penelope's best onscreen performance ever. She has this other dimension when acting in her native Spanish and she is truly outstanding. The entire female cast deserved the award for Best Actress at Cannes. Definitely deserves an MMMMM rating.

At lunch on Friday we were trying to think about potential nominees for best actress and actor for the Oscars and naming quality female performances was tough. Penelope tops my list, they'll probably nominate Cate Blanchett for Babel (haven't seen it yet) but most of the movies this year have focused on men's stories. They may have to nominate Kate Winslet for The Holiday because there's not much else to consider. Except Catherine O'Hara in For Your Consideration, which - true to its premise - already has Oscar buzz.

haiku at the Hargrave

Saturday night we made ourselves a delicious dinner at home: thick, juicy beef tenderloin grilled to perfection by Rich on the BBQ, with yummy sides by haikugirl: garlic mushrooms, roasted mini-potatoes and crunchy sugar snap peas. I should have been a snackerazzi and taken a photo it was so good!

Then we headed out to the Christmas Party at our local pub The Hargrave on the Danforth. Lots of fun, dancing, chatting, even penning a few haiku:

Party at the 'Grave
Mary Margaret got her groove on
she got it on, now

Christmas time again
Hargrave Party with our friends
Chris writes great haiku

The evening ended on a high note: in the 50/50 raffle we won a fantastic down parka (XL with a Guinness logo on it) Yay MM and Rich! Chris wrote:

Mary Margaret won
Richard got a new jacket
Richard owes her sex

The Holiday and Pavlina's Birthday

Had a Girls Night for the Film Club on Friday: went to see The Holiday. A charming movie that put us in the mood for Christmas and New Year's. Kate Winslet is lovely and Cameron Diaz does fine as Amanda. I just want her job/life/LA home with built-in recording studio that she uses to edit movie trailers. Jack Black's at-home studio is the new model for ours upstairs (complete with Herman Miller chair.) He plays a guy who scores movies and he does this great bit in the film where he walks through the video store with Kate Winslet and points out all the great soundtracks. Lots of sweet moments in the film - especially for Kate Winslet's and Jude Law's characters. I sometimes felt Cameron Diaz was a bit out of her element with the other acting heavyweights but her wardrobe is da bomb.

After the movie we headed to Il Fornello on the Danforth to have dinner and celebrate Pavlina's birthday. She was sick all week so we were happy she felt well enough to come out for the evening. We had yummy food and even sang Happy Birthday with a candle in the creme brulee. Bonne Fete Pavlina!

Christmas Classics

Are you in the Christmas Spirit yet? A colleague found this funny link:
It's a Wonderful Life in 30 seconds re-enacted by bunnies
-- a perfect capsule summary of the 2+hour movie.

It's not Christmas until I've seen How The Grinch Stole Christmas (the ORIGINAL , NOT the Jim Carey version) and A Charlie Brown Christmas - here's an interesting article on how it came to be...

Christmas is coming
lots of TV specials on
nothing beats The Grinch

Lucy's birthday

We celebrated Lucy's 40th birthday on Saturday, Dec. 2nd at Mimosa Bistro on Yonge St. What a lovely party! Her husband Dave organized everything from the menu, invitations and even cut her a rap video: "everybody stand up and cheer, Lucy's turning 40 this year!" It was a wonderful night, as you can see by the photos...