Lynngo

Tell Me More About My Mountains

2008-11-20T22:15:00.003-05:00

Whenever someone compliments my co-worker Wayne, his responding catch phrases is, "Tell me more about my eyes." At lunch, some people from France mistook us for Americans and when we said we were from Canada, they got all happy and started telling us about how they loved Canada. Wayne responded with, "Tell me more about my mountains." I don't know if our sense of humour translates well.

Today was a bit of a blur. More talks and then the conference wrapped up at 4:30 pm. We gathered a group together and went to a German restaurant for dinner. We all ordered the schnitzel. You gotta do it at least once every trip to Germany.

The plan was to once again hit the hotel lobby bar. According to the 2:30, 3:30, 4:30 am bed time pattern established the previous nights, we should have stayed until 5:30, except my taxi was leaving at 4:00 am, so I already knew that wasn't going to happen. I tried my best but only made it to 9:00 pm. I got a few hours of sleep then headed back to Canada. Land of mountains. And very little kirsch, thank goodness.

The Summit Begins

2008-11-19T23:59:00.002-05:00

The conference officially begins! A lot of us are already looking rough. I'm not sure if it was wise for Ralph to drink kirsch until 3:30 am and then do the opening speech without notes, but it's all good.

I was given a stack of ribbons to hand out for people to stick on their badges, with sayings like "I read your email", "Slacker" and "I could be president". Since I got first pick, I chose the sole "Worship Me" ribbon. Very useful for waving in someone's face if they won't bend to your will.

I ran into Gilles from Switzerland in the afternoon. He knows my weakness for all things sugar, and brought me Läderach chocolate. Sorry girls, but he may have bumped you out as my new best friend. That chocolate was sooooo good. Brings tears of joy to your eyes.

After a full day of talks, the official party kicked off at 6:00 pm. At 8:00 pm, the second official party kicked off. This one only had beer, which I don't drink, so I thankfully had an alcohol break. Especially lucky since the party continued until about 2:00 am. At party #2, I got into a deep discussion with Adrian from France. We decided he needed to visit Canada and should therefore host the "STP Summit Symposia Week Supreme" in Ottawa during Winterlude, where he would be the sole participant and most of the time would be spent skating and sightseeing. We pitched this several times to Oisin, the leader of the STP project, to obtain funding, but so far nothing is confirmed.

Since 8 hours of partying wasn't quite enough, we went back to the hotel lobby bar. They were actually closed but the servers tonight/this morning were female and we had enough men to convince them to reopen.

4:30 am bed time. So tired. Many, many conference participants were not looking good by the end of the night.

Kirsch Stikes Again

2008-11-18T23:59:00.000-05:00

Today is the pre-conference symposia day. (Yesterday was sort of a pre-pre-conference day.) My cold is doing much better so I think the threat of laryngitis has passed. I went to a marketing symposium in the morning and finally met some people that I've been emailing with for years, but had never met in person before. Lunch was very busy catching up with people from all over the world that I only get to see once or twice a year.

My work held a special dinner for sponsors in the evening at the Braurei Rosenknecht. They serve a traditional German meal where your meal choice is meat or no meat. I recommend the meat. Mmm... German meat. I made sure to pace the wine as inevitably we end up at the hotel lobby bar.

So back at the hotel, I knew I was in trouble when the kirsch came out again. As one of 2 women among a sea of men, I luckily had the waiter on my side. When he brought out shots for everyone, I tried to turn mine down but he whispered to me that mine was water. I smelled it, and it really was water. I started doing shots in one chug, keeping up with the boys. Just like Marion in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Last Ark. Only my co-worker Wayne figured out what was going on. Because he was sober.

Bed time 3:30 am.

Ludwigsburg Street Gang

2008-11-17T23:59:00.001-05:00

The Nestor Hotel puts on a really good breakfast buffet, but I managed to refrain from eating doughnuts as a meal. Lucky Charms are scarce in Europe, so bullet #2 dodged.

I had the morning free so Ralph and I ran some errands like going to the bank machine and buying water. We found a grocery store and bought 24 litres! Ralph is due to have surgery on his arm next week so I couldn't shirk carrying my share either. 12 litres for several blocks was a workout. My shoulders are still sore.

We had a meeting in the afternoon, followed by a reception. Bring on the German wine! Then my co-worker Wayne and I collected 21 of our closest friends and tried to find a restaurant that would take us. With a lot of us in Eclipse jackets, we looked like a roving street gang... of software developers. Eike from Berlin sweet talked us in to an Italian restaurant and they made one giant table for us. At the end of the meal my credit card was once again declined, no doubt for "my security" because the purchase wasn't made within a 5 km radius of my home address. Good thing I made that bank run in the morning.

Drinks continued in the hotel lobby bar. 2:30 am bed time.

Auerbach Castle

2008-11-16T23:08:00.021-05:00

This morning, some more Canadians arrived in Germany - Dave, Ed and Larry - so Ralph and Susan took all of us out together to see Auerbach Castle. Before looking around, we stopped for lunch at the castle's restaurant. Instead of food, Ralph ordered beer and kirsch shots for those that were still jetlagged. With 1 day of wisdom under my belt, I turned down the kirsch and stuck to apfelsaftschorle (apple juice and mineral water).

The castle is at the top of a really big hill, but unfortunately it was really foggy so we couldn't get any decent photos of the view. We looked around the castle a bit then headed off down the walking path to the bottom of the hill. The kirsch hit poor Larry a bit hard, so we had to stay vigilant to make sure he didn't go off the edge. I was scouting for geocaches on the hike down, but we didn't get close enough to hunt for any.

At the bottom, we stopped for apple pie and hot chocolate in Zwingenberg, and discussed whether the town could build it's tourism by promoting itself as "swing-enberg". Note to the locals - start buying stock in pleather corsets and furry handcuffs now, before the boom hits.

After a break at the apartment watching Ralph's favourite movie, Lucky Number Slevin, we headed out to dinner. It was even more amazing than yesterday. We went to a restaurant that specializes in wild game. Since wild boar is in season, we all ordered it in various forms. Mine was cooked like mini steak medallions - awesome! I should have a pun here. How about, sup-boar-b.

Meetings for the conference start tomorrow, so Ralph drove us all to Ludwigsburg to get settled at the Nestor Hotel. I think it was about an hour's drive, but I'm not sure because I fell asleep in the car. This year, my room got upgraded so I've got a shower AND bathtub. Score!

German Sightseeing - Finally!

2008-11-15T23:52:00.005-05:00

I have a conference in Germany this coming week. My co-worker Ralph and his wife Susan who live in Germany generously offered to show me some sights over the weekend, so I flew in a few days early. I didn't get much sleep overnight on the plane - friggin' economy - but I did finally see The Dark Knight at least.

I landed in Frankfurt and Ralph drove me to his apartment in Zwingenberg. What's the first thing I do? I open my suitcase, which hits some plants on a nearby table and knocks over a really tall cactus. I go to stand it up again and it's completely snapped off. It's always nice to greet your hosts by breaking something that took years to grow within the first 5 minutes of your visit. Step 2, yell "I broke your plaaaa-aaaant!" Susan says she can replant the broken piece into a new cactus , but the guilt will likely haunt me forever.

Susan had to run some errands for her company so we went to Darmstadt and I got to meet Ralph's daughter, Angela. We all did a little bit of shopping together and they took me to see the Waldspirale. It's a crazy apartment building built by the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, where the lines of the building are wavy. It has over 1,000 windows where none of them are the same and the doors all have different handles. Plus the rooms only have rounded corners.

Susan had to get back to Zwingenberg to do some work so I took Ralph to find his first geocache. Luckily I had him with me to translate the original clues in German as Google translate did not do them justice at all. Roughly, the instructions were to find the sign that scares you and turn your back on it in disgust. Ralph says the woman on the sign is the daughter of an important winemaker in the area who declared her the "German Wine Queen". A highly competitive title-awarding process similar to the "Miss ENSIS" contest. Too bad I wasn't traveling with my tiara. This time.

Next we went to Lorsch and saw the King's Hall and Abbey, which is a UNESCO Heritage Site, and the museum centre across the street. We also stopped at a café

After picking up Susan we headed to Poststuben for dinner. I had an excellent dinner of goose and crème brûlée. Ralph knew the chef and told him that his crème brûlée didn't make my top 3 when he came to visit our table. Embarrassing! Too bad there wasn't a cactus around for me to break in half while I was at it. I was also introduced to the terrible wonder known as kirsch. It's a cherry brandy, served as a shot, that's very strong. It tastes like burning, rather than sweet. I couldn't finish it.

Four Years!

2008-11-08T21:40:00.001-05:00

It was 3 days early, but Kevin is busy with curling, so we celebrated our 4th anniversary yesterday. We went to Bekta. Dinner was great, but I have to admit I was expecting more from the #1 Ottawa restaurant. Namely, I has hoping the crème brûlée would make my top 5 list. They did write Happy Anniversary in chocolate on the plate, which made me optimistic, but the crust wasn’t crusty enough. The server also said Happy Anniversary about 7 times with too much staring eye contact, so that was a bit creepy.

To cap off the weekend, I caught a cold from Kevin. I should have laryngitis just in time for the next work conference. I’m continuing the tradition.

Spamalot

2008-11-05T23:50:00.005-05:00

Kevin and I went to see the musical Spamalot, which won the Tony for Best Musical in 2005 and is based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I'm not a super huge Monty Python fan, although I do keep a stuffed rabbit with big pointy teeth on my desk at work. The show definitely had some good moments. The French Taunter was my favourite character and I liked The Song That Goes Like This - definite wedding song contender.

The printed program has a fake intro for a Finnish musical, Dik Od Triaanenen Fol, which takes place entirely in a sauna and features the East Finland Moose Ballet. The description included for Finland describes it as, "Mostly flat but with some raised bits. ...And don't believe anyone who says you can't get tomatoes here. Of course you can. And bags to put them in."

This one wouldn't make my top 10 on Broadway, but definitely worth seeing if it comes through your city. After all, you don't get to see a 45 lb. prop cow catapulted every day.

New Condo for Jen

2008-11-03T07:33:00.001-05:00

Superb pancake breakfast this morning. Since Jen is fancy, she didn’t have any regular flour and ended up using a combo of 3 flours she had in the cupboard. It was the first time I ever had coconut flour. Fancy!

The morning was extra exciting because Jen bought a condo! We went to look at one final place with her agent before she settled on a property she had seen earlier in the week. We went to the Heartland Cafe so she could sign the offer. We shared a piece of carrot cake there and I had my first London Fog (Earl Grey tea, steamed milk and vanilla syrup in a latte-like frothy concoction). Not quite as exciting as buying a condo, but good none the less.

It was a tense afternoon, waiting to hear back on the condo so we went for a patio drink at the James Joyce Pub and then it was off to the airport. I insisted on taking a few pictures before leaving so I'd have some from the weekend, but we were laughing too hard.

Once my standby seat was confirmed, we still had some time, so we went to the mall to try and get Jen a bathing suit for her Palm Springs vacation next week. She doesn’t own 1 bathing suit! I’ve downsized to 5. It’s a travel essential. You never know when a hot tub party will break out. A rule as important as having audition pieces prepared at all times in case I’m ever “discovered”. Dance audition: Tapping to All that Jazz. Piano audition: Chopin waltz. Vocal audition: Oops I Did it Again. My vocals are the weakest link. Clearly, it’s what has prevented my solo career from taking off.

Jen was happy that the mall we ended up in didn’t have a Swimco and the Bay only had maybe 10 sad and oddly-sized suits, so she didn’t have to try anything on for me. This is why I buy off the Internet. One time I racked up a pretty big bathing suit bill from Victoria’s Secret. When the charges didn’t show up after a few weeks, I called back to make sure the transaction went through. They read the number back to me and it was wrong, but because the charge had gone through, they said there was nothing they could do. I would have liked to see the guy that had a $300 Victoria’s Secret charge on his credit card try to explain to his wife that it was some kind of mistake.

I had an uneventful flight home and found out the next day that Jen got her condo. Congratulations! I’m expecting photos Jen! I picture you in the new condo, with Jazz hands. Wearing a new bathing suit.

Calgary Girl Time

2008-11-01T23:30:00.000-05:00

In the morning, Jen, Dani and I went for brunch to Diner Deluxe: sourdough French toast with berry crumble for dessert. We shared dessert so the calories didn't count. We got there just in time because the lineup was out the door by the time we left.

Jen and I went shopping for the day but the only thing I bought was a green scarf. And a Diet Pepsi. Fructose corn syrup goodness.

We were supposed to make dinner for some of Jen’s friends, Nathan and Derek, but they had to cancel because they found a bed bug in the house and didn’t want to risk contaminating anyone else. Sounds bizarre, but it’s true! Poor Nathan stayed at some infected hotel in Edmonton and has been steam cleaning everything in the house for weeks.

We ended up going for sushi at Sushi Kawa instead. I forced Jen and Dani to have sake strawberry margaritas with me. The evening ended with Sex and the City DVDs and wine. And tickle fights in our jammies, of course.

Halloween in Calgary

2008-10-31T23:15:00.001-05:00

I had a 1 day turn around in Ottawa, then off to Calgary for the weekend! I abandoned Kevin so he had to give the Halloween candy out alone. Apparently we only got 16 kids so we have 32 boxes of Smarties to eat. Probably 30, when discounting my preemptive eating before Halloween.

Jen and Dani picked me up from the airport and it was already getting a bit late, so we decided to stay in. I brought a set of tiger ears and a sequined sailor hat in case there would be Halloween festivities, but no pictures were taken. Reluctance due probably to our last makeover/picture session debacle.

We had a simple dinner of popcorn, except with Himalayan sea salt. Jen’s friends accuse her of being fancy because she owns things like Himalayan salt, organic shampoo and a trunk of makeup. There’s nothing wrong with owning a trunk of makeup, people! I need at least 26 MAC eye shadows to choose from, to properly paint my mood on my face in the morning. Okay, I admit only 23 are MAC and the other 3 are drugstore brand. *Gasp!* Standard routine: toner, moisturizer, foundation, eyebrow shadow, 3 eyeshadows, 2 eyeliners, mascara, bronzer, 3 types of concealer, blush, powder and lipstick. Mascara base and sparkle topcoat are optional. All with the end goal of looking like you’re not wearing makeup at all. Darn you beauty industry! Why must your packaging be so shiny with promises of texturizing and highlighting?

Attention Idots!

2008-10-30T19:08:00.001-05:00

Do you ever wonder what's wrong with the idiots in front of you at the airport that seem to have no clue how the whole flying thing works? Today, I was one of the idiots.

Digression: Using the word idiots always reminds me a letter we received from a customer when I was working at one of the call centres. He was really angry and started off the letter with huge block letters, "Attention Idots!" Yep, he misspelled idiots. Awesome.

So I partially blame waking up at 4:30 in the morning to get to the airport, but still. First, I did self-check in and left my passport on the scanner. I realized within about 5 minutes and went running back and of course, some nice Canadian in line had seen it and held it for me. Then as my bags are going through the x-ray at security they call for a bag check. I was thinking, "What the?", until realizing I packed a bottle of wine that the hotel gave me in my suitcase. They said I could go back and check my bag but I didn't want to risk losing any valuable documents again. Plus the wine was free and I had tried it at the hotel, so meh.

I'm surprised I didn't start discussing bombs or terrorism in a loud voice while boarding.

You'd think this would make me more sympathetic to other stupid travelers ahead of me in the future, but I predict no change. Idots.

Tastes Like Burning

2008-10-29T23:45:00.005-05:00

Still no sign of Kevin's camera. Hence, no pictures for the blog.

I've had Lucky Charms 3 mornings in a row. Sugar... impairing... brain function.

Yesterday was a really productive marketing meeting, then catching up on emails for the rest of the day. I went to Obi Sushi for dinner with my co-worker Wayne and it was pretty bad. The sushi, not Wayne's company. It was the type of place where for spicy rolls, they just squirt a pile of Frank's Red Hot Sauce on top. Heartburn, why must thou plague me so? It would be better if I said it in Japanese, so I could stay on theme. 胸焼け、なぜあなたは私を苦しめる必要がありますか？ How did we live before Google translate? Although it probably actually says, "I'm a North American idiot that shouldn't eat so much horrible junk food." After a quick stop at one of the conference parties back at the hotel, it was off to bed.

Today, I was supposed to help my co-worker Denis with website testing but there was a bunch of snow in Ottawa so his flight was cancelled. Picture of Ottawa provided by Kevin. With his non-lost camera.

In the evening there was a sponsor party followed by a dessert party, hosted by my work. We had s'more s! And cookies, cheesecake, other cake, and more cake My poor stomach. One more drink in the lobby bar with all the die hards, and I was done.

No Restin' in Reston

2008-10-27T23:18:00.001-05:00

I was up early today to check on one of our meeting rooms and I got to have breakfast with the only other person up as early as me - Rich, one of our members from Connecticut. There was a hot breakfast, but also a kickin' selection of breakfast cereals, including Lucky Charms. I gave up buying sugary cereals this year and I forgot how much I missed marshmallows with my morning tea. You know it's a quality cereal when your leftover milk is green.

After a conference call and another meeting during the day, we had a party in the evening. I got to meet some really nice people including Jill from New Jersey who was so similar to me it was a bit eerie. I also got the latest kid updates and baby pictures from all the regulars. My boss Ian got a new Flip video camera and had people do short interviews with him in the hall. The best parts are when the people talking start waving their arms and you can see the beer in their hand.

Post-party I went to dinner at Jackson's with Ian, co-worker Wayne, fellow marketer Melinda from New York and new friend Matt from North Carolina. The waiter started ID'ing people, but I had ordered iced tea and missed out on the ego boost. He claimed he would have ID'ed me, but I'll never know for sure.

Downsides to the evening: horrible heartburn from too much greasy food and I lost Kevin's small digital camera somewhere (the old one at least, but I still feel horrible).

White House Disappointment

2008-10-26T21:41:00.005-05:00

This week I'm in Reston, VA, which is right outside Washington D.C., for a conference. I came in half a day early so I could take some pictures outside the White House and around the National Mall. Turns out the Marine Corps Marathon is today so all the roads in that area are closed off. Thwarted! I wandered around the shops in the area instead and had lunch at Jacksons - beet salad, lychee cocktail and lemon meringue pie. The lunch of champions.

Hiddily Ho Neighbourinos!

2008-10-24T23:31:00.003-05:00

Today the time came to put away summer sandals and get out the winter shoes. Boo! I've had a pair of basic black shoes for years that I wear so often there are holes in the bottom. Every year I vow to buy new shoes but I hate shoe shopping so much, especially when combined with the resulting blisters, that I end up putting it off. When I went to unpack the old shoes this time, they were gone! I threw them out last spring to force myself to buy new ones. I tricked myself! Darn you, self!

Our newest neighbours, Amy & Andrew, that moved in across the street last December had us over for dinner this evening. They also invited our second newest neighbours, Erwin & Maia. We got a tour of their house, including a bathroom that's as bad our black and green tiled monstrosity. But theirs has wood panelling! Luckily, that's just one room in their basement and the rest of the house is very nice. Amy has ties to Bekta, the #1 restaurant in Ottawa, and her cooking didn't disappoint. Squash soup, salad, pork (credit to Andrew for the meat preparation), vegetables, apple pie...! Drink highlights included white wine with cassis to start and an iced apple wine from PEI for dessert. Good thing getting home was just a short stumble away.

Terror at Saunders Farm

2008-10-18T23:04:00.015-05:00

Our friends Tricia and Bogdan (Bogcia) joined us for a night out to haunting season at Saunders Farm. We started with the Barn of Terror. The most terrifying part was the horrendous line-up. There definitely were some scary moments, but I cowered behind the people in front of us, which gave advance warning of people jumping out with various weapons.

I was disappointed that the corn maze was closed in the evening, so our ticket couldn't get us in to that part. We were also falsely promised turnip bowling. There was a corn cannon and apple slingshot, but they cost extra. I prefer to whip vegetables at things from my yard for free. Without waiting in line. Also, the kettle corn was pre-made in bags, not fresh.

On to the Field of Screams. After waiting for about 20 minutes, one of the farm workers asked the line to shift over into another area and we got bumped back a bit. This woman behind us started complaining that people had cut her and started picking a fight with Tricia, even though we had been even farther ahead of her before. Oooooo, scary! Once in, a guy on the paths got us pretty good when he jumped up from behind a fence. Mostly it was just awkward with people making scary noises in your face while you laughed and laughed.

Snack time! Beaver Tails and hot chocolate. Kevin took the obligatory "Lynn with all her candy and pastry" photo.

Finally, the pièce de résistance, the Haunted Hayride. Sans hay. That lineup was huge. They tried to entertain while you waited by having some guy twirling fire. We encouraged children to chant, "Eat it!" [as in the fire] to him. The hayride had some good effects: falling billboard, explosion sound effects, guy in hockey mask chasing with chainsaw and spinning tunnel, to name a few.

We were pretty cold by the end so we went to Bogcia's house with a pizza and watched Run Fatboy Run with drinks. Excellent, especially considering David Schwimmer directed it.

Overeating in Abundance

2008-10-13T17:19:00.006-05:00

Kevin and I drove to Toronto for the Thanksgiving long weekend. Saturday was mostly spent preparing food, but we went out to dinner at Kelsey's with my brother in the evening. I had a terrible drink called a Frost Bite: mandarin and lime blended with tequila and chili flakes. It was neither spicy nor tart. Not recommended. Mike also had a really bad Caesar salad. But of course, we pretended to the server that everything was great. You can only expect so much at Kelsey's to begin with so why try to squeeze blood out of a stone?

Sunday, we got sent on an errand to Yorkdale Mall. Why was I not previously informed of this mall? They had a bunch of stores I didn't know were available in Canada: Bath & Body Works, Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma. I also had time to stop in at Bebe and H&M. I didn't buy anything, but I'm coming back. With more money.

Sunday night was the big Thanksgiving dinner - 18 people! I tried to eat a normal portion and ended up only feeling uncomfortable, rather than horribly sick. My only regret is not eating less proper dinner in lieu of more pumpkin pie. Kevin mocked everyone who took smaller pieces of pie and had a full piece of apple and pumpkin. Thus, opting for the horribly sick option.

Kevin's nieces brought the bunnies vegetable tarts. They were huge (at least for bunnies) and left grease stains on the packaging. Spuckler ate a normal portion and left the rest for later. Savvy ate the whole thing as fast as he could without stopping. Savouring just interferes with his busy day.

Drinking, Travel and Disease Mix Well

2008-10-08T23:02:00.004-05:00

To thank our neighbours Amy and Andrew for collecting our mail while we were in Italy, we had them over for drinks. Between the four of us, we drank a bottle of Prosecco (well Kevin actually opted out and just had a beer) and a bottle of DD Leobard strawberry wine that my parents brought from Winnipeg the last time they visited Ottawa. That's some high quality drinking!

Amy and Andrew (Amdrew perhaps?) have some great travel stories as they put all their stuff in storage for a year to travel the world before moving back to Ottawa from Toronto. They've recommended Portugal and India as future options for us. They too base travel destinations around the quality of desserts available.

Andrew is a photographer and writes reviews of photography equipment. Amy is a cook, but she also acts when she can. Her latest gig is for medical and pharmacy exams. She's given a disease and symptoms and has to act as a patient for students to make diagnoses on their tests. She's bound by a confidentiality agreement, so she couldn't tell us what disease she was. I guess diabetes. And insist on pronouncing it like Wilford Brimley from the commercials - die-a-beet-ess.

Pool Champion of the Office

2008-10-02T21:52:00.006-05:00

For team building, our office had a pool tournament and beers this afternoon at Dooley's. We were grouped in partners and as marketing meddler, I assigned names to all the teams. I collaborated with my teammate Matt for our name: Winning Everything Renders Our Colleagues Kooky (WE ROCK). I was less generous with the others, such as Beauty and the Beast and Team Hazardous When Drinking Wine. We did get to pick our own individual nicknames as well. I chose Scratchy Lynn, which prompted my co-worker Denis to suggest, "Try washing".

Unlike our last bowling outing where I awarded gag prizes from the Dollar Store and had a huge, ghetto, green and gold bowling trophy that I bought on eBay for the ultimate winner, we had prizes of actual value this time - a $50 Amazon gift certificate to each member of the winning team. Good thing Denis was running the show!

So guess where I placed. No, guess again. No, again. No, first! Matt and I had the brilliant strategy of sucking, while the other team cleared the table then scratched on the 8 ball because all of our balls were blocking their way. Our failure strategy failed to fail! Excellent (with tented fingers).

There's No Place Like Home

2008-09-25T23:09:00.004-05:00

After an extremely long day, we're home safe in Ottawa. Between the tram, train, plane and drive from Montreal to Ottawa, it was about a 20-hour journey.

In leg 2, the train we planned to catch was canceled, so we had to wait for the next one. The wait wasn't too bad, but because it was the train to the airport, the next one was insanely packed with double the people and tons of accompanying luggage. We knew in advance we'd be separated so we shoved our way on and we each found a spot in different cars where we wouldn't be trampled. I was standing in the aisle and was afraid to take my backpack off in case I couldn't hoist it back on again. There wasn't anywhere to put it down anyways. I was like a 3 Stooges one-woman show. I'd try to move over to let people by and I'd whack people sitting down in the head with my backpack. I saw them giving their friends the "what the hell" look to each other. Eventually I got a seat, thank goodness.

Our flight was also delayed by about an hour and a half, first because the machine wouldn't read the boarding passes. Apparently looking at the passes manually rather than scanning bar codes was too much to handle, so better to wait an hour for a repairman. Then the ovens for heating meals weren't working. The ovens never did get fixed so we got a plain sandwich for lunch. With a sandwich for a snack. No free lemoncello.

When we got home I weighed my backpack because I thought I was super awesome for carrying it the entire trip without collapsing under the weight of my beauty products. Only 30 pounds! I thought it was at least 40. This means I'm only semi-awesome.

Bada ba boopee!

2008-09-24T23:49:00.000-05:00

Still no hot water in the shower this morning. I used my credit card at a pay phone to call the hotel people to complain. Visa found the 30 cent charge suspicious and canceled my card. For my protection, of course.

It's our last day in Italy so we decided to shop seeing as we won't have to lug our backpacks around much longer. We debated buying a Pope hat, or if they would even sell one to us, but found out they're unbelievably expensive. So that problem solved itself. We took a picture in the window to give the illusion that I'm wearing one instead. We also passed by the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps one last time. Our bad luck continued when we went to buy tram tickets for tomorrow and the machine ripped us off and charged us for an extra ticket. Bada ba boopee! I think Italy is trying to tell us to go home.

At dinner, I have one last spaghetti and clams meal (#5). Usually there are street performers out during dinner but they stay in the middle of the square. There was a crazy woman on the loose tonight that kept standing right next to diners and "singing" opera. It was actually more like a one-note screech that she would hold for an unbelievably long time. And then expect people to give her money. She didn't do it to us, which was disappointing because I was totally in the mood to use my gypsy punch on someone.

Back at the hotel, we have hot water again but the toilet is still leaking. Counting down the hours.

When Back in Rome

2008-09-23T23:32:00.006-05:00

The up side of getting barged in on yesterday is the hotel gave us free breakfast. Sadly, no lemoncello was available.

We ran into our Irish friends at the train station but they were headed north. Once on the train, we sat with a family from Australia. I think they were desperate to talk to people that spoke English. Their daughter was named Zara and she was wearing a shirt from the Zara store that had the name across the front. We thought it was just a coincidence and that’s why they bought it, but they actually named her after the store. The mother said the last time they were in Italy they went to this really cool clothing store in Milan and they liked the name, so that's how they picked it for their daughter. I didn't have the heart to tell her it's a lower-end chain that has stores everywhere including Calgary, New York, Toronto and 3 that we saw in Rome. Still better than Amanda Hugginkiss, I suppose.

Back at Costaguti Palace in Rome, we really started to miss home. The hotel woman showed up over an hour late this time with no apology or explanation. We needed to eat so we didn't stick around long. When we came back later in the evening we found out that the toilet was now leaking and there was no hot water. We went to bed angry.

San Marino

2008-09-22T23:55:00.003-05:00

This morning, the woman working at the front desk of our hotel, Acasamia, was showing someone around and didn’t realize our room was occupied. Luckily, we were already awake and dressed, and we had warning with key fumbling noises at the door, but she was totally embarrassed when she whipped the door open on us. The unwelcome surprise may have been an omen for the day ahead.

Aside from the beach, the real reason we came to Rimini was so we could go to San Marino for the day. It’s off-season right now so 2 buses come to a stop outside the train station each hour, and that’s it. This bus trip was a true nightmare. We got to the bus station about 15 minutes ahead and the buses were already pretty much full. It seemed like people with some type of ticket were still being allowed on, but everyone else got turned away. We decided to try our luck on the bus an hour later. In the mean time we asked at the tourist office and the ticket office about getting tickets, and were told you buy them on the bus. So we planted ourselves at the curb so we’d be at the front of the line for the next one.

Well the next bus comes and the crowd starts crushing forward. We figure we’re at the front, so we should be okay. As we go to get on, the guy tells us we need tickets! Turns out about 5 minutes before the bus, some old lady comes wandering down the street, lays out her gear on the garbage can and starts selling tickets. She yells stuff so you know she’s there. In Italian. So everyone at the back of the line sees her and figures out what’s going on, but if you’ve waited an hour at the front and only speak English, you’re screwed. There were quite a few of us that missed 2 sets of buses, so the public outrage began. Eventually the ticket lady got on her phone and called for another bus, so we only had to wait about 20 minutes rather than the full hour. We met some very nice Irish people during the riot. They said they resorted to hair pulling to keep people from cutting them in line. It was a real Amazing Race experience.

Happily, San Marino was totally worth it. San Marino was the 3rd country on this vacation as it's a republic separate from Italy. It was founded in 301 by Marinus, a Christian fleeing religious persecution by the Roman Emperor. San Marino is the oldest constitutional republic in the world with the world's oldest written constitution, from 1600. It's at the top of the Apennine Mountains. I knew about it because they used to hold a Formula 1 race nearby at Imola.

There are 3 towers still standing on the cliffs. We kept taking pictures of the awesome view only to spiral up higher to an even better spot and have to do it all over again. We saw the towers, basilica and the main palace guarded by colourful military guys called the Guard of the Rock, learning for free as we went. I bought a second purse and found some Ferrari series San Marino stamps for my brother. He wanted something Ferrari from Italy that was cheap, but anything with their brand is super expensive. Ugly screened t-shirts are often €80 and toys are at least €60. It only gets worse if you want something nice or useful. Although I was tempted, I refrained from buying a cane that had a built-in bicycle bell and booze holder. I'll have to come back at retirement age.

We didn’t want to press our luck by taking the last bus and getting stuck hotel-less in San Marino, so we only stayed a few hours. This gave us some time to walk downtown Rimini and view more assorted historical sites.

When we got back we had some wine in the room before dinner. I ended the day by throwing my plastic purse from Canada in the garbage. The leatheresque paint was starting to chip off.

From Venice to Rimini

2008-09-21T23:37:00.012-05:00

We were disappointed not to have more time in Venice so we woke up extra early and spent a few more hours walking around the streets and taking pictures. It’s pretty easy to get lost in Venice, but there’s always handy street signs to direct you, as evidenced in the photo here.

We had a quick breakfast at our hotel then caught the train to Rimini. We had a train change in Bologna and bought lunch from a vending machine. If you buy a sandwich in Bologna, is it by default, a bologna sandwich? I’ll have a Bologna sandwich… that’s made of peanut butter.

Rimini is a seaside resort town on the east coast of Italy. Wikipedia also tells me the 1989 Mr. Olympia was held there. Fascinating. I thought hanging out at the beach would be a good way to end the vacation, except temperatures have dropped from the 30’s we were getting in Rome to about 17 now. The beach was completely deserted and we were wearing sweaters.

We ended the day with a bad pizza dinner and a stop for fruit and chocolate from the grocery store. We also picked up a bottle of wine. We went high end and bought the €4 bottle. They had bottles for under €2! We drank in the hotel room and watched the only English tv channel, MTV. Quality programming.

Venice

2008-09-20T23:20:00.018-05:00

We left Lucca today. There was still some confusion when we tried to pay so we ended up with free parking. I think karma kicked back by screwing us when trying to return the rental car in Florence. Their streets are messed up! They’ll go one way east for 2 blocks and then switch so that they’re one way in west for the next 2 blocks. Fantastic system if you’re into mazes, but not so much if you’re trying to return your franjammerrin’ rental car. I don’t know how Kevin found the garage, but he did. I certainly was no help. Finally car free, we walked to the train station to get to our next stop in Venice.

Venice is so pretty! We're staying at Hotel Dalla Mora which has a great view of the canals from our window. We’re on a mission because we only have one day here and have to soak it all in. We walked the canal then did a self-guided tour on a water ferry. I’m super paranoid of motion sickness and water is always especially bad. To be safe, I took a Gravol and wore my Sea-Bands. Success! No puking! One less tale of public embarrassment to share.

From the ferry stop, we walked to San Marco square. Unfortunately we got in too late to tour the Basilica and clocktower, because they looked awesome. We learned what we could for free then went shopping. Venice has all the cool, high-end stores: Gucci, Pucci, Valentino, Versace – you name it. I did end up fulfilling my mission for an Italian purse. It isn't Prada. The nice thing about the stores here is they have little price cards in the window with their displays. So if you’re not familiar with a store you can see if their stuff is €50 or €500. Beats going in, looking at price tags, then leaving in shame.

After spaghetti and clams #4 for dinner, we got Kevin a take-away beer and I had an orange granita, which really turned out to be a regular slurpee. Although I’m glad I didn’t go for green, because here that’s mint, not lime.

We went back to San Marco square, which is amazing at night. Especially since the crowds of cruise ship tourists have cleared out by the evening. Bands play at all of the patios on the square and you can walk around and enjoy concerts for free. We also went to the Rialto bridge, which is the oldest bridge in Venice that crosses the Grand Canal.

Rained Out in Pisa

2008-09-19T23:00:00.005-05:00

Today was the one day the weather really sucked. It rained pretty hard all day. We started with breakfast at the hotel and decided despite the weather, we had to make a day trip to Pisa since we were so close. It was about a 45 minute drive and I think we stayed about 20 minutes. There’s not a lot to see in Pisa other than the “square of miracles” with the Cathedral, Baptistry, monumental cemetery, and the leaning tower. We took pictures, beat away the umbrella vendors and returned to Lucca.

To warm up, we had hot drinks and pastries at Di Sima, the café where Puccini hung out. Very cool! We waited out the rain in our room for a bit and it did clear up.

We walked around and visited Lucca’s amphitheatre and St. Martin's Cathedral, and picked up 2 geocaches. The Cathedral had some interesting history. They had a large crucifix, which legend said was carved by Nicodemus, one of Jesus’ followers. The cross was guided in an unmanned boat to the shores of Italy, then a team of untamed oxen magically pulled the cross to Lucca.

Another good scam was at church San Michele. There’s an angel statue on top of the church with moveable wings. Clergy would go up the back of the church and flap the wings and tell the people it was a miracle. However, there’s clearly a staircase up the back of the building. How did they not see a guy up there working the wings? Even if they corralled everyone to the front during these events, you’d think at some point someone would have said, hey, what’s that staircase back there all about? Stairs to pray closer to God, you say? Yep, that makes sense.

We went back to the hotel and tried to pay so we could leave early in the morning. Unfortunately we ended up talking to a lady who only spoke Italian and really had no interest in helping us understand. She kept talking louder and louder, which we countered with the blank tourist stare. Eventually I looked up “tomorrow” – domani - in our phrase book and she seemed relieved to be rid of us.

For dinner Kevin had wild boar pasta and I had the house specialty, fried chicken with fried vegetables. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when my meal arrived it was just a sea of deep fried. It was good in the moment but I did not feel well afterwards. I had the deep fried sweats for the rest of the night.

Lucca

2008-09-18T23:23:00.012-05:00

It was a bit chilly this morning and the streets are too narrow to get any decent sun, so we went to the Campo for breakfast drinks. We were a bit grumpy that the cafés seemed over priced, but then we inexplicably went nuts ordering. I upgraded my tea to a hot chocolate when I saw the waiter bring one piled with whipped cream to someone else, and I got sucked in by a plate of biscotti that they had on display at the counter. With Kevin’s drink, the bill came to €18! That’s $27! But sooo tasty.

The next Tuscany hotel was La Gemma in Lucca. The old part of Lucca is within a wall, and the wall is so thick the top is used as a bike and walking path. This city was one of our favourites. Once again, we had trouble driving within the wall and this time a police officer yelled at us. Our hotel had a private parking lot, so after checking in, we got it straightened out.

We had a quick lunch of pizza, then rented a tandem bike. We were supposed to give passports in order to rent, but I guess we looked innocent enough and the rental guy trusted us with no i.d. Sucker! We rode the perimeter of Lucca twice on top of the wall. Being good Canadians, we did return the bike and pay our bill. Stealing it seemed like more of a hassle.

For the rest of the day we checked out Via Fillungo – a street with shops and cafés, and the flea market. I tried Italy’s variation on the beaver tail – buccellato. We also walked the wall a bit more.

On the way to dinner, we stopped at opera composer Puccini’s former house. The posted museum hours said it was open but the door was locked. The guidebook said it wasn’t much to see anyway, so I settled for a picture with the Puccini statue.

At dinner, we started with pasta and went with the waiter’s recommendation for the second course – grilled steak. He said it was pretty big so we might want to share it. Thank goodness we did! It was so big it was hanging over the sides of a dinner plate. It really was just average, so it was kind of a weird recommendation since Italy’s not big on steak. We suspect he picked something he thought boring North Americans would want.

San Gimignano

2008-09-17T23:26:00.007-05:00

A lot of churches are starting to look the same at this point. Siena also has a domed cathedral, but you have to pay to go in and look around. Our new tactic is “learning for free” (tried to find a Simpsons clip everywhere for this, but no luck), where you stick your head through the door and absorb as much as you can without physically entering the building, thus avoiding entrance fees.

After Siena’s dome, we headed to San Gimignano for the day. We got over eager about finding a good parking spot and stopped too soon in the wrong town. Luckily they had a map posted outside the parking lot so we realized we were in the wrong place and got back in the car. Five minutes later, San Gimignano!

The town is another walled city that's atop a hill, with 14 medieval towers still standing. The town centre is a Unesco World Heritage Site. Overall, San Gimignano wasn’t our favourite, the low point being having to pay 50 cents each to pee in a non-gender specific bathroom. It wasn’t pretty. Definitely not 50 cents pretty. We bought tickets to tour the town’s main church Collegiata and museum, and they were really overpriced. Maybe we’re just spoiled now after the Vatican. No Michelangelo’s? Pfffft. There was also a “wine museum”, which consisted of one room with a video playing on wine-making. In Italian only. But plenty of space to pay for wine tastings. We did have some excellent grapefruit and melon gelati though.

Since we still had a decent amount of time before dinner, we decided to drive to Montevarchi. Kevin read that they had a Prada outlet. Determined to get an Italian purse, I set out on my mission. Driving there was pretty precarious on winding roads and then we couldn’t even find the outlet! Signs seemed to indicate it was outside Montevarchi, back towards where we came from. Kevin’s not big on purse shopping, so we called it a day.

Back in Siena, we stopped at a little grocery store and bought some fruit and drinks. Drinks being a beer for Kevin and a mini bottle of prosecco for me. With drinks in hand, we set off to the laundromat.

The day ended with spaghetti and clams #3.

Siena

2008-09-16T23:41:00.000-05:00

Kevin and I picked up a rental car today to drive out to some towns in Tuscany. We were upgraded to an Alfa Romeo, which thank the powers had built-in GPS. I don't know what we would have done without it as my Google maps proved useless.

The town for today was Siena - a walled city with a huge square in the middle called the Campo, that is a UNESCO World Heritage site. As we found out, walled cities are not meant for driving in. We decided not to kill any tourists today and instead paid for 2 hours of parking and walked our way in to find Hotel La Perla. We wandered lost and couldn't even find the tourist centre. We bought a map at a tobacco shop and still couldn't find the hotel. I eventually started stopping at every friendly store I saw and they'd point us a little bit closer. In the end, we found our hotel - directly across from the shop where we bought our map. 50 steps away. We counted. Note the photo where the hotel and shop are close enough together they're in the same photo. D'oh! The hotel staff pointed us to a good place to move the car and we stayed on foot for the rest of the day.

The Campo, the city's main square, is slanted in like a bowl and is lined with restaurants. Twice a year they hold a huge horse race in the square so the 17 wards of Siena can duke it out to see who's coolest. The square is big, but I have no idea how they cram a horse race and hundreds of people in there. Throw up some old mattresses for protection and post some "enjoy getting trampled at your own risk" signs", I suppose.

We also did a tour up the Mangia Tower. That climb is a workout - 102 metres! The steps are so narrow that they have a light at the bottom indicating when you can go up, because it's too small for people to pass eachother on the stairs.

Dessert (after dinner of course) was excellent tonight. Despite reservations, I went with the server's recommendation of a traditional Siena cake called panforte. The best part was the sweet wine for dipping. It was probably bad form, but I drank the dipping wine afterwards. Tourist! TOURIST!

Exploring Florence

2008-09-15T23:56:00.011-05:00

I had my first cappuchino in Italy this morning. I normally don't drink coffee at all but I had to break down and try one. Here, it's considered a breakfast drink only so they know you're a loser North American tourist if you order one in the afternoon. It just tasted like coffee to me.

We spent the morning walking to Piazzale Michelangelo, where you have a great view of Florence. The second David copy is there too. After many pictures, we stopped a bit down the road at San Miniato al Monte church. It has the nicest cemetery I've ever seen. Some families have these mini replica basilicas for mausoleums. Kevin captured me pointing and saying, "This is the way to die". (I'm not giving the thumbs up to the dead Masieris.) The church also boasts the worst bathroom ever. It was an outhouse, but with no seat. Just squatting over a hole in the ground. Needless to say, I held it.

There's a nice path that winds along the road so we kept walking until we ended up by Ponte Vecchio for lunch. For the afternoon we toured the Pitti Palace, backed by the Boboli Gardens. Parts of the palace were closed so we spent most of our time walking the gardens. Fountains, sculptures, arbors - you name it. There was a small Porcelain Museum in the gardens and a Costume Gallery inside the palace. We ended up walking the length of the garden 4 times due to bad map reading while looking for the Costume Gallery. All maps in Florence suck. That's a rule here.

We failed at a geocache on our way to dinner and called it a night after some excellent panacotta for me and tiramisu for Kevin.

Florence Church Mania

2008-09-14T13:47:00.013-05:00

Kevin and I headed to Florence in style, as only first class train tickets were available. Yay free juice and crackers (which probably added €25 to the ticket price)! Once there, we had instructions on how to take the bus to our hotel. However, the street we were supposed to catch the bus on was completely closed down for construction. After some wandering, we found the right stop. In theory, we should have been able to catch the bus going in either direction. Upon practical application, we sat on the bus trying to figure out where we were on the map and 45 minutes later ended up back at the train station. We had enough time on our tickets to try one more loop or take a taxi. We opted for a taxi.

I suavely told the driver we were going to Casa Cimabue, which I pronounced simabew, and he looked confused. He looked at my paper and said, "Ah, chimabooey!". Ah yeeaaah, that's totally what I said. Smarty-pants driver.

We dropped our bags off and headed to Accademia Gallery. A lot of places were closed on Sunday so ended up at a little café for a quick lunch. We chose a pizza and the lady working proceeded to pop it in the microwave. It was horrendous, but we were hungry. Accedemia Gallery isn't very big, but the clear star is Michelangelo's David. It's huge. Really amazing to see up close.

We grabbed some hot drinks at the Leonardo da Vinci Museum then headed for a whirlwind tour of Florence churches and piazzas: Medicee Chapel & Basilica di San Lorenzo, Piazza San Giovanni & Cathedral di Santa Maria del Fiore, Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, Piazza della Repubblica, Piazza della Signoria & Palazzo Vecchio, Basilica di Santa Croce and Piazza de Ciompi. Cathedral di Santa Maria del Fiore is the standard Florence "postcard shot". When it was built in the 13th century, it crushed the Pantheon in Rome's claim to fame of being the largest dome.

Other cool sites that made the list for today were Ponte Vecchio - the famous bridge lined with jewelery stores, Uffizi Gallery (although we didn't have time to go inside) that has one of the David copies outside, and the National Central Library.

After a long day and a long dinner (it took about 3 hours because the service was so slow) we headed back to the room for showers and Bananagrams. When we checked in in the afternoon, the lady working there went over everything in the hotel in great detail, including having us practice locking the door, working the light switches and adjusting the thermostat. Yet she failed to mention what the string hanging in the shower was for. Since Kevin showered first, he of course pulled the string to see what it did. Exactly what I would have done in his place. Turns out it sets off a panic alarm heard throughout the floor. And of course, the logical way that you turn this off is a light switch in the hall. Funny how that didn't come up during the light switch lesson. No one saw us naked though. Disappointing.

Roming Around

2008-09-13T23:17:00.010-05:00

It was our last day in Rome for this leg of the trip. Since we saw a lot of the big landmarks already, we spent today looking at some of the lesser-known sites. First was the Capuchin Monk Crypt. The description I read said that it was a crypt of monk bones "artfully arranged". I had thought this meant the skeletons would be posed in praying positions or lying in rest, but it turns out it was actually a few rooms of individual bones arranged into mosaic-like patterns. I'm talking vertebrae nailed to the ceiling in a flower pattern, for example. It was a weird mix of interesting and creepy.

Next was the Borghese Gallery. When we got there, there was a sign posted that tickets were sold out for the day. We decided we'd at least look around the gift shop and went in. A lady standing nearby saw that we had no tickets and gave us 2 for free! I guess her friends didn't show up. Score again! After a further art overload of Bernini, Raphael and Bassano, which was all the more sweet for free, we checked out the garden behind the gallery.

Lunch time! I had spaghetti and clams (#2). The restaurant had to move us to a different table to make more room on the patio, and not only did we not get free lemoncello, they seated me directly beside a sign that said "dog parking"! But the real highlight was when this guy came over and said he noticed us reading the Rick Steves' Italy guidebook - extremely popular for North Americans and you see tons of people carrying copies. Then he asked if we had any questions. I thought he was about to follow up with "because I'm Rick Steves", but no. Apparently he was an American that had been in Italy for a whole 9 days and had the same guidebook, so clearly, he was now an expert. He also didn't have any useful advice and had ill-fitting Gap pants.

In the afternoon, we took some pictures outside the Hall of Justice, then we toured Castle San Angelo. The castle was built by Emperor Hadrian as a monument to his boy lover. His wife must have liked that! The castle is a big cylinder, with dark, sprialing walkways and an amazing view of Rome from the top. We got some of our best pictures here.

Before a quick nap back at our hotel, we stopped at Piazza Navona. It had the requisite church and fountains, of course, but they were also setting up a big stage for a tango concert. We came back later to see it and couldn't even get a seat. After about 45 minutes past the advertised start time, still nothing. Everyone started leaving, us included. Full of bitterness due to the lack of tango.

To wash out the bitter taste, we went to dinner and had some wine. The waiters at the restaurant used handheld devices to record orders - unlucky for me. Kevin ordered soup and a chicken entrée and I ordered a salad and scallops, or so I thought. Soup comes. Chicken comes. I still have no food. I guess my order was erased. After we flagged the waitress, I got my food just as Kevin finished eating. The "escallope" also turned out to be pork. It still tasted good!

We hung out for awhile and saw a comedian and then some acrobats perform in the square. I avoided all eye contact with fortune tellers.

Pope Culture

2008-09-12T23:34:00.009-05:00

Off to the Vatican today. Technically, the second country on our tour since it is a sovereign city-state. On the walk there, we stopped at a grocery store to buy fruit. You have to weigh your produce and punch in the bin number to print a bar code in advance, so when you get to the cashier, they just scan it like regular groceries. Someone from the store helped us with the machine, but I still got yelled out by the cashier because I tried to pay for €2 in groceries with a 50. We came well prepared for fights in Italian by seeing a clip from Family Guy, when Peter grows a mustache, right before the trip. We were ready to yell "bada-ba-boopee" whenever necessary. We came up with change so I didn't have to bada-ba-boopee her this time.

We got to St. Peter's Basilica pretty early, so the line up wasn't too bad. It was the most fantastic church I'd ever seen. Michelangelo's work, including the Pietà, Bernini sculptures, tallest dome in the world, painted ceilings, marble everywhere - unbelievable! We didn't take an official tour, so we didn't get to ask our favourite "stupid question to tour guides": How much is this place worth in U.S. dollars?

For a break after the church, we tried to find a geocache. We walked a good part of the wall around the Vatican and couldn't find it. We didn't read the logs in advance that said it had been lost. There were video cameras monitoring the wall anyway, so maybe it was a good thing we didn't have to climb anything or yank bricks out. Although if it came down to a chase by Vatican police I would have busted it to the church screaming, "Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Bada-ba-boopee!"

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Vatican Museums. Wandering through took hours. By the time you get to the Sistine Chapel, your mind is overloaded with marble busts, tapestries, mosaic floors and paintings. There's fabulous-ness everywhere, but you can't even take it in any more.

On the way back to our hotel area, we stopped at Piazza del Popolo to see the twin churches, Santa Maria in Montesanto and Santa Maria dei Miracoli, and to put our feet in the fountain to cool down. Other people were doing it so I hope that was legal.

As a last stop before dinner, we made a second try at geocaching. This one was outside the Colosseum and it was pretty easy to find. We also got a picture of Kevin in his modern day gladiator wear - a Rey Mysterio Mexican wrestling mask (acutally purchased in Mexico, therefore it must be authentic).

We couldn't find the restaurant we wanted to check out, so we ended up back in Trastevere. We picked a patio just as a huge downpour hit. The umbrellas started giving way so they told everyone to crowd inside the restaurant. We had just got there, but it sucked for people who already had food and had no where to sit. Then the power went out. As soon as the rain let up to a reasonable level we left and ate somewhere else because it was a mad house.

Why rest when we could pack in one more landmark? After eating, -we went to the Spanish steps - 138 steps that are the widest in Europe. You have to beat the flower vendors off from giving you "free" roses, which they then harass you to pay for. Kevin and I are prepared with our patented "gypsy punch", if needed. It's a slow curling of the fingers followed by a quick sucker punch between the eyes. We also stopped at the Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon again for a few pictures at night.

When in Rome

2008-09-11T23:38:00.008-05:00

Air Transat stayed in business long enough for us to make it to Italy. The flight was uneventful, other than terrible food.Why would they choose a frozen dinner of Indian curry chicken for Montrealers flying to Rome? After landing, we had a short train ride to the main bus terminal and then a tram to our hotel.

On the 2 minute walk to our hotel, we already started passing by ruins. There’s a fenced in area across the street that’s been excavated with some old columns and building foundations exposed. What would Italians do with such a treasure? Turn it into a cat hospice, of course! They bring cat food and actually use it as a home for stray cats that the public can visit.

Our hotel room is in a former palace – Costaguti Palace. They claim to have a Michelangelo painting, but it’s not viewable to the public, so I have my suspicions. We got a peek at some of the rooms and some seem to be well maintained with fantastic art and furnishings. We got there half an hour before check-in time and I made the mistake of sitting down on the marble stairs. The building manager gave me the no-no finger. Don’t they know butt prints add character?

When the woman arrived to check us in, we saw that the preservation of the palace seems to have stopped at the 4th floor – where we’re staying. As we entered, the fridge in the common area seemed to have broken at some point so there was water all over the floor. Plus our room hadn’t been cleaned so we had to sit around for half an hour while the woman changed sheets and mopped floors. She never really spoke to us either, so it was weird.

Keys finally in hand, we headed off to explore Rome. We needed some time to collect our bearings so we bought a map and stopped for lunch on a patio. After we were seated, a big group came along that wanted to sit together so we offered to move to another table. Our server brought us free lemoncello as a thank you. Score! I’m liking Italy already.

First on the list was the Colosseum. It’s right out of the postcards. We did a tour and saw just how big it was inside. The area below the stage where they used to keep animals and fighters, by itself was huge! Very surreal.

Next we headed to a tour of Palantine Hill, where all the emperors built their houses. They had bathrooms the size of my house. With heated floors! The emperors had so many slaves they had nothing to do but watch gladiator fights and eat. There’s nothing quite like traveling 6,724 km for a tour of vomitoriums.

A quick gelato stop later, we went to the famous Trevi Fountain. Legend says that if you throw a coin in the fountain it will ensure you return to Rome. Apparently they make about 3,000 euros a day from this. I should make my own legend. If you give me a $10 bill every day, I will ensure a more frugal lifestyle for you. The area around the fountain was packed! It’s actually been hard to get a clear picture anywhere due to all the tourists. And this is the off season!

Next, the Pantheon - now a Catholic church, it's the oldest domed structure in Rome and the best preserved building. All of the history and art in Rome is overwhelming. So is the jet lag, so we stopped back at the hotel for a quick nap.

For dinner, we crossed over the Tiber river to the Trastevere area. I had my first, of what will be many, spaghetti and clam dinners - one of my favourites. Wine here is cheap! At some places you can get a ½ litre for about $6 Canadian. Trastevere is very lively at night. Restaurants don’t open until 7:30 and almost everyone eats outside on the patios, so the piazzas are packed with eating, drinking and street performers. I didn’t know you could just walk around Italy with open liquor! We went to find Kevin a “walking beer” (our name for it, not an Italian term) after dinner and found that Duff is really popular. The label is exactly the same as on The Simpsons.

While Kevin walked around with his beer and took pictures I went to see a so-called fortune teller. I say so-called because even despite my prompts, everything she told me was wrong. You’re moving. Nope. Someone close to you is in the process of moving. Nope. Your mother is blonde. Nope. You have cats. Wrong again. Kevin's prediction was better: you will get bilked out of 20 euros in the near future.

Booked a Trip to Italy, Again

2008-08-29T13:37:00.007-05:00

Kevin and I are going on vacation to Italy in less than 2 weeks and the adventures have already begun. The largest complication was the airline we're booked with went bankrupt yesterday. We're going to get our money back from the credit card company, and we managed to book a new flight and adjust our first hotel reservation accordingly, so hopefully that problem is resolved. You'd think this would be a pretty isolated incident but this is the 2nd time an airline has gone bankrupt on me after I booked a vacation. I shake my fist at you Canada 3000 and Zoom! Come on Air Transat, stay in business at least 4 more weeks. Oddly, Zoom sent us a reminder email confirming our flight the day before the bankruptcy, which included travel tips. For some reason, "book a flight with an airline that isn't bankrupt" didn't make their top 10.

The other complications have involved planning the details of the trip. Since neither of us have been to Italy before, we've been researching a lot of towns and sites on the Net. We've come across many helpful maps such as these:
Thanks Siena! I'm glad you clarified that location for us.

Many of the small bed & breakfast places do their best to create an English version of their website, but sometimes I'm suspicious of the really bad translation mistakes. For example, if a hotel claims to have "excellent mygiene", is this a simple error or are they really avoiding any promise of cleanliness? Kind of like selling someone "diamondelle" earrings. We don't have hygiene, but hey, we have mygiene, so close enough right? Trust us and send your credit card number now. Plus if you have to explicitly comment on hygiene, shouldn't that alone make me suspicious? If it's stated as a "feature", that in itself could be a bad sign.

If all goes according to the latest plan we'll be visiting Rome, Florence and some other places in Tuscany, Venice and Rimini, with hopefully a day trip to the Republic of San Marino.

Drinks and Babies (separate events)

2008-08-24T21:21:00.000-05:00

Kevin and I went to the Cornerstone Bar and Grill in the Market with his curling team and their girlfriends for drinks on the weekend. Very nice patio weather! They stuck us on the back patio, further away from the street, supposedly because that's the only place they could a table of 6. But we all suspected it was because we weren't deemed pretty enough to be displayed in a prime location. Fellow curler Ian is going to watch our bunnies while we're traveling, so we also gave him a last chance to get out of it, while his fingers are all still in tact.

After drinks we stopped in to visit Felipe and Hanita to: a) get a tour of their new house, b) say Happy Birthday to Hanita, c) visit their new baby Sophia, and d) fix Felipe's bike. A lot of celebrations - especially the broken bike! My favourite picture of Sophia is shown here.

Wicked

2008-08-22T07:58:00.000-05:00

Last night Kevin and I went to see the Broadway musical Wicked. I wasn't a huge fan of the book despite my love for The Wizard of Oz - my all-time favourite movie, but the story was much better in musical form. The basic story line is the "untold story of the witches of Oz", when Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West are roommates in college. The Glinda role is very funny. She's really into boys and popularity. Little did Kevin know, I used her patented hair "toss-toss" move to win him over. The musical has been around since 2003 so I'm glad I finally got a chance to see it. Definitely recommended.

Walking back to the car after the show, I officially became an Ontarioan. August 21 - it only took 2 years and 22 days. This lady was pulling out into the street from a parking lot and yells out the window to us, "Where are we?" Kevin and I yell back in unison "Ottawa" and keep walking past. We didn't stop to help or even yell the street name afterwards. Am I still technically a Manitoban if I feel guilty about not helping? Kevin claims we were rude as a service to them, so they could learn to think for themselves. But he was raised in Toronto, for gosh sakes! Wicked.

Jenn and Hen Official at Last

2008-08-17T11:49:00.007-05:00

Today was the big day. After 12 years together, Jenn and Henry finally got married! Jenn looked completely beautiful. She cried during the walk down the aisle but pulled it together for the rest of the ceremony. For the sake of her makeup, she said. The weather was perfect, although the un-air-conditioned church got pretty hot towards the end of the ceremony.

The reception was in the grand ballroom at the Royal Crown. There were about 400 people, which for Jenn and Hen, is limiting to only close family and friends. Hard to imagine since I only have 7 first cousins. Everything was done up in silver and fuchsia - I don't know how she convinced Henry to have so much pink, but I guess waiting 12 years wins you a few concessions. There were also an unprecedented 4 toasts to the bride, by the 2 matrons of honour and her 2 siblings.

For once, I caught the bouquet! Mainly because Jenn's sister Joanne told all the girls to pile on top of Jenn once she threw it, which left it lying on the ground. Prime pickings. I didn't even have to use my pointy elbows on anyone this time.

4 down, 2 to go.

Winnipeg-oh!

2008-08-15T23:34:00.000-05:00

I'm back in Winnipeg for the weekend! Kevin and I started the day stopping by IBM to visit Darin, his old boss/my parents' next door neighbour/our matchmaker. Quite the power combo of titles! Darin's team is made up of 2 other developers - Mike and Curtis, a.k.a. McLovin (see March 20, 2008). Mike and Curtis are also going to weddings this weekend and Curtis is having his own wedding the weekend after. I have a theory on why August beats June for wedding frequency in Winnipeg. If there are 2 things Winnipeggers love, they're good deals and Jeanne's cakes. I suspect the bakery's year-long supply of cookie bases expires in August, causing them to give special deals on wedding cakes, thus driving the popularity of weddings that month. That's one for Freakanomics to explore.

On the drive over, Kevin and I also did a stalking run past my old house on Braemar Ave. Sadly, the year and a half I put in to reshaping the bushes into perfect balls went to waste as the plants appear to be growing untamed now. I had also planted flowers with colours arranged in order of the spectrum. That's right - I have OCD tendencies. Don't tell me you've never separated your Smarties into colour groupings, counted out equal amounts for each group and then eaten them in the order they appear in the rainbow! I still ate the brown ones even though brown isn't in the spectrum, so this proves I'm normal! Any way, the spectrum pattern wasn't evident in the flower beds at all. Sigh. Kevin has forbidden a spectrum garden at the Ottawa house, claiming "random" is a pattern too.

After IBM, Kevin and I went to In Ferno's for lunch with my parents. I of course ordered the duck confit, but for some reason the server thought I meant the duck appetizer, so I got this tiny plate of potstickers. I pointed out the mistake and they managed to whip up the proper meal pretty fast. We got the appetizer for free. Duck appetizer, duck entreé... I tried to get a duck crème brûleé, but no luck.

Post lunch, we went to check out the 99 Pieces of Art on the Wall show at the cre8ery gallery, although 4 had been sold so they were down to 96 by the time we visited. After that, we did a walk around the Forks. We toured the Riverwalk, watched unhelmeted children injure themselves at the skate park (my mom's personal fave) and went through the Johnston Terminal. The new Manitoba display in the Johnston Terminal is pretty cool, although the ballet mannequin on display is clearly too fat to really be a dancer.

In the evening, Kevin and I went to Bellissmo for dinner, with Kevin's former curling buddy, Ian. I was still full of duck but managed to cram in most of a salad. To finish off the evening, we went to Flea Whiskey's for a few games of pool. I won a few games, but only 1 real win - the rest were scratches by the other player. In the end, Ian was declared Pool Champion of the Universe.

National Gallery

2008-08-10T19:33:00.002-05:00

Jenn and I went to the National Gallery today. There's a special exhibit on called The 1930's: The Making of the New Man, which shows the themes that were common in art leading up to and during World War II. Artists in the exhibit included Salvador Dalí, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock. I really liked seeing the Kandinsky's. Many things in the exhibit were both awesome and disturbing at the same time.

So question to the parents in the audience - if you had a one-year-old, would bringing them to the art gallery for an afternoon seem like an appropriate activity? This guy was carrying his crying kid around for a good hour while we were in the exhibit and it was really annoying. Made me think of this quote from Family Guy:

Priest: Good morning everyone. A reading, from the letter of John, to the couple with the crying baby upstairs: "Obviously you hear your kid crying and you are trying to break him of some habit. But I got news for you, It's not working. I swear to God that if it doesn't stop, I will come up there and show him what real pain is." The word of the Lord.
Congregation: Praise be to God.

There's no way to see the entire gallery in 1 day, so the other sections we decided to visit were contemporary art, Inuit art and photography.

There isn't much of a choice around the airport, so we managed to get in a quick (and bad) dinner at Eastside Mario's before Jenn got on her flight back to Calgary.

Sex and the City - Finally!

2008-08-09T23:00:00.004-05:00

I've been dying to go see the Sex and the City movie, but all my scheming to make a friend in Ottawa and go see it with them hasn't worked out so far. I think they hear the desperation in my voice and slowly back away. Then they turn and run as fast as they can, far, far into the distance. "Come back! I haven't told you all my bunny stories yet!" Enter Calgary Jenn. She actually flew to Ottawa to go see the movie with me! Those WestJet employee flight benefits sure come in handy.

We of course started off the day with shopping in the Market. We hit all the standards including Workshop Studio (bunny necklace - but it's tasteful, I swear) and Trustfund (new jeans and a bicycle belt for Kevin). We also went to M.A.C. and I got a free lip gloss for recycling my empty containers.

After dinner with Kevin at MHK Sushi, Jenn and I headed to the cheap theatres to see Sex and the City. Ten weeks of waiting and it was everything I dreamed it would be. So shiny and expensive. I still hate Big. We ended the evening appropriately with cosmos.

Genie and Lynn Kicked out of Restaurant

2008-08-08T23:00:00.001-05:00

Genie was back in Ottawa for a family visit, so we got together for dinner at Zuni Grill. Her cousins tried to thwart our plans by forcing her to eat a pre-dinner at their house and then giving directions that sent her driving in the opposite direction of the restaurant, but they couldn't keep her from the siren song of cocktails. We had a good visit with lots of laughs, and eventually got booted out so they could close the restaurant for the night. Good thing I'll see her again next weekend in Winnipeg!

Lucky 13

2008-08-04T21:05:00.003-05:00

Kevin's parents and granny stayed with us on the long weekend. They arrived on Saturday and we ended up putting on a family dinner for 13 - a new record for the Gay/Barn. We made it work with the dining table, a folding banquet table, plus 3 of us having a "picnic" with the 2 kids in the living room. It might be time to review that new IKEA catalogue for expandable dining tables.

For dessert, we got an awesome raspberry mousse cake from Swiss Pastries for a 3-way birthday celebration. Kevin also said he bought pink marzipan bunnies for "the girls". I excitedly asked if I was considered a girl, along with his nieces Stacey (3 years) and Diana (1 year). Yep, he bought 3 of them. Being a girl rocks.

We spent most of Sunday visiting and playing board games. Namely, Bananagrams and Blokus, our newest game. We declared the last game of Bananagrams would be for the "Champion of the World" title and Kevin's granny won. She cheats.

Hot Dogs in the Market

2008-08-01T06:31:00.003-05:00

This guy and his dogs are my favourite performers in the Market. In between shows, the man wears a backpack/crate thing topped by a platform on his back, and his dogs perch there while he walks around. No one can resist a dog carrying a bucket in his mouth begging for change. With sunglasses on. And a jester hat. Times two. Say it with me, "Awwwww".

Back Massage Hurts My Ear

2008-07-31T18:05:00.001-05:00

I like to think I'm a master - or mistress I suppose - of odd ailments. For example, motion sickness from playing video games, fainting at the eye doctor due to fear of the puff of air from the glaucoma tester, stitches from catching a frisbee and poor night vision due to spraying perfume in one own's eyes when attempting to use it as eyeshadow remover (I wasn't the smartest 7 year-old). The latest is an ear ache from a back massage. I guess I didn't position my head perfectly straight in the face hole on the massage table and now my ear is killing me, with pain extending down to my jaw. Bets on how long it will last? I predict 43 hours.

$0.28 of Free Raspberries

2008-07-25T23:37:00.000-05:00

Kevin's parents and granny are staying with us for one night before heading to a cabin they rented in Quebec. So off Kevin and I went to the Market to buy some fruits and vegetables for dinner. One stand had a fabulous deal on raspberries because they got their shipment late and wanted to get rid of everything before the weekend. They had half a flat (about 6 grocery store-sized containers) for $10, or a basket about half the size for $8. Kevin and I had $9.72 combined. We pulled the "but it's all we have" with sad faces routine, and success! $0.28 of free raspberries. Still got it.

Last Day in Winnipeg? Not So Fast...

2008-07-21T20:33:00.000-05:00

Today started off with an early lunch with Mark, my former co-worker from ENSIS. He was out of town for our reunion last Thursday, but managed to fit me in on my last day in Winnipeg. We ate at the Pony Corral Pier 7 patio. Mark is now a V.P. at Librestream, a company that offers a mobile video collaboration product. I remember back when ENSIS first invested in Librestream, the product was so top-secret we couldn't even talk about what they did. Oh, venture capital. Speaking of which, some of you ENSIS folk will enjoy vcwear.com. My favourite t-shirt there says "Your Mom Is Not A Valid Test Market". You can also buy the company, but every time someone new visits the site the price goes up a dollar, so act fast. Anyway, Mark and I had a really good visit and the patio weather was great, so I'm glad we made time to get together.

After lunch, I was off to visit our family friend Janet and her 3 kids, Ariel, Cameron and Ethan. Her husband John is fighting in Afghanistan right now, but he should hopefully be back by September. I couldn't believe how big the kids are now! We didn't have a lot of time together but I got a tour of the house and an update on all the kids. Ariel showed me her collector Barbies (need I say awesome) and her favourite video game where you cook virtual food. Girl stuff is the best! Janet's always been good at sports, so it's no surprise that Ariel is amazing at ringette, Cameron loves hockey, and Ethan is already starting to skate. I don't know how Janet does it all on her own. Especially with 2 rottweilers added to the mix!

Back at my parents house, I was finally able to have one dinner at home with them before my flight back. However after dinner when I decided to double check my departure info one last time, I discovered my plane was taking off right then. My original flight was canceled and I had been looking at the wrong set of papers! And I had, of course, booked the last flight of the day. Well, one more night in Winnipeg won't hurt. Departure at 7 am. I hope. I think that's the first time I've completely missed a flight due to my incompetence. I showed up a day early to the airport once, but that doesn't count because I didn't actually miss the flight in that situation. I was all the wiser the next day.

Christmas in July

2008-07-20T23:33:00.004-05:00

It's a tradition for the 6 Pack girls (nicknamed in high school because there are 6 of us - not because of beer drinking) to hold a Christmas party every year, no matter how late it has to happen due to scheduling conflicts. Because of my move to Ottawa, we set the record this year by holding our Christmas party in July. I have a pretty tight agenda on this Winnipeg visit, so the only opening was Sunday morning, 10 am. Despite the horrible state we left her in last night, Jenn made it to brunch! Albeit with the same hairdo, but I'm not judging.

We met at Buccacino's with Christmas presents in tow. After recapping to Jenn what happened last night and enjoying the brunch buffet, we moved on to opening presents. It had been so long, we had forgotten what we had bought for each other and what we had even asked for, so it was a real surprise. Among many nice things Karene picked out for me (we rotate who buys for who based on order of birthdays), I got the The Muppet Show Season 2 DVDs. Now I remember why I only have Seasons 1 and 3 - it all makes sense! We're considering making Christmas in July the new tradition.

After brunch, my mom and I went to a wedding shower in Beausejour for our family friend Stacey, better known as "Stacey from the farm". If there's one thing that can be said about Beasejour, the women sure know how to make dainties! Stacey's dad also bought so much Arbor Mist there was enough for every lady to have her own bottle. We played a get to know the bride and groom game and were given papers to write down our marriage advice. Mine was, "The key to happy co-habitation is NO RABBITS!" Stacey took one in before, so she'll know what I'm talking about.

After we got back to Winnipeg, I headed off to Genie's house to meet her and Noemi for pizza and house tours. Genie's house is a bungalow with a really big yard. The best feature is the awesome bathroom upstairs that she renovated, with root beer walls and a jet tub. A close second is the one wallpapered basement wall that is overlaid with velvet stripes. There is a ton of closet space. What I wouldn't give to have a purse closet like Genie. Darn you bunnies and your closet of hay!

A short car ride later, we all arrived at Noemi's. Noemi's house is a 2-storey, also with a huge yard. For those that don't know, she'll need it, as the Ly's will soon be a family of 4. Unleash the uninvited tummy rubs! Noemi's just in the process of renovating the kitchen so I didn't get to see the full effect, but judging by the new counter tops, it's going to look fantastic. I also love the balcony off the main bedroom.

It's been a whirlwind tour. I leave tomorrow for Ottawa, but will be back in another month.

I Love You Too Jenn

2008-07-19T23:17:00.007-05:00

My mom made a BBQ for family and friends today. We had way too much food and visited for a good 6 hours. I checked a suitcase on this trip so I could bring everyone little gifts from IKEA. As a courtesy to Winnipeg readers, I have include links to the top "Bring an IKEA to Winnipeg" petitions here: 1, 2. Also, has anyone heard from the Jets lately? Never give up.

Meanwhile, Jenn was being thrown a surprise bachelorette party. I missed the pre-festivities including laser tag (very Jenn) and the stripper (those were separate events - there's no magical venue that offers strip laser tag), but joined the girls at Pony Corral for dinner. So digression... what would you name your strip laser tag company? I might go with "The Right to Bare Arms".

You know the night is going to be pretty wild when 25 women are packed onto something called the Bada Bing Party Bus, complete with "dancer" pole and free energy drinks. All the girls were given shot glass necklaces and Jenn came around pouring while we drove to the first bar. Don't spill on my precious Trustfund jeans! Nooooo!

The first bar stop was Alive (the former Au Bar or Wise Guys, depending on your age). It was only 9:00 so the bar was pretty dead except for about 4 bachelorette parties. Jenn's sister had prepared a book of tasks for Jenn to complete. My favourite was a sheet of stickers with titles such as "Best Pecs" or "Worst Pickup Line" that she had to go around sticking on boys. She also got called up on stage to dance with the live band. I joined as one of her backup dancers.

Next stop was Blush. Activities there included getting a guy to leave a message on Henry's (Jenn's fiancé) phone, cheers-ing with strangers and a whole lotta drinking.

Back on the bus, poor Jenn wasn't holding up so well. It probably didn't help that we all kept chanting instructions at her such as "dance, dance" or "cry, cry". A true highlight of the evening, in response to "speech, speech", was Jenn's deeply moving, "I love you, and I love you, and I love you, and I love you," speech. It will be interesting to see how our brunch at 10 am tomorrow morning works out.

Post bachelorette party event note: photos of Jenn at her party have been suspiciously hard to come by. Come on, they can't ALL be incriminating!

Tess Just Married... Again!

2008-07-18T23:57:00.001-05:00

Maritess (a.k.a. Paige) and Jorge finally had their church wedding ceremony today after a 9-year delay after the civil ceremony. That was 4 boyfriends ago for me! Including many bad dates in between.

The girls met at Jenn's in the morning to get ready. My dress was made with measurements I emailed to Tess and I didn't get a chance to have it fitted, so it was my first time seeing it and trying it on. It was pretty big, but a few safety pins and a quick sew job later, it was wearable. There's a great picture of me in my underwear on Jenn's couch, sewing my dress, which for obvious reasons, I decided not to post here. Obvious reasons being you have to pay me $10 first. Sales of my LynnXXX operating system are slow, so I need to make up the lost revenue somehow.

We packed Jenn's vehicle like a clown car of bridesmaids and headed to the Manitoba Legislative Building for pictures. Pictures went on for about 2 hours, then Tess's family whipped out this entire lunch buffet from the trunk of a car. Another hour of pictures later, I was pretty sunburned. Not really a problem for the other girls. The photographer actually called me "Whitey". Then after being corrected, "Liz". Apparently he's not good with names.

After a slurpee stop on the way to the church (Winnipeg is the slurpee capital of North America, so it only makes sense), the wedding was underway. It's official - Tess and Jorge are married! They drove off in a hummer with a "Just Married Again" sign on the back. Awesome.

Dinner was at Rembrandts in Lockport, which is a restaurant and conference centre run by Frances, our friend from St. Mary's. The food was excellent and Tess's daughter Vina gave an incredible performance of Whitney Houston's I Have Nothing. Someone should YouTube that now, before she's famous. Just keep her away from boys named Bobby!

Special thanks to Noemi for being my wedding date. Her daughter entertained me with a 10-minute discussion of macaroni as well. The wedding was lovely, but the best part was seeing everyone again. Good thing there's still 2 days left of fun-packed activities.

ENSIS-tini Reunion

2008-07-17T23:10:00.004-05:00

My first day back in Winnipeg since Christmas 2006! My mom and I went shopping at Polo Park for most of the day. We found some new clothes for her, we both got some new accessories and nail polish, and I introduced her to the miracle of Spanx.

At 4:30, she dropped me off at Earls on Main for the ENSIS-tini Reunion. All previous and current employees of ENSIS that I could track down were invited for drinks on the patio - just like the old days. Thirteen of us hung out and caught up on news. We also tackled important issues such as should Bruce shave his mustache? Unanimous yes. Does Earls serve the same white wine to everyone and pretend it's different varieties? Likely. Should we have reunions more often? Definitely.

It was so great to hang out with everybody again. I guess as of next Thursday, ENSIS will officially become part of the GrowthWorks Canadian Fund and entrance to the ENSIS alumni club will be closed. I can't wait to see the alumni pin-up calendar in another 10 years. Yikes!

Missing from photo: Bryan and John

Dye-saster

2008-07-15T20:57:00.002-05:00

I wanted to dye my hair blonde before my trip to Winnipeg so what salon would be the most logical place to choose? Salon? Nah. I went to some stranger’s basement instead. To be fair, I had been to this woman once before and there were no issues. This time, not so much.

I entered the house to the sound of screaming children. Apparently the hairdresser’s kids had missed their naps that day and they were not in a good mood. After the screaming from the smallest one wouldn’t stop, she let her come down to the basement and poke me/step on my feet/ shoot a blow dryer at me for the 2 ½ hour appointment to shut her up. Lovely. Plus there was some bonus screaming and random singing throughout.

I could have dealt with the kid, had my hair been perfect, but instead I ended up with a golden-orange stripe around my roots. I left with dignity, had Kevin confirm that I did indeed have a stripe and it wasn't just my contacts going bad, cried for 20 minutes, told myself that other people go bald due to serious illnesses so I should suck it up, cried for 1 more minute, then started packing for Winnipeg.

Luckily I still had 1 day to get my hair fixed. My co-worker recommended Byblos, known for good colour jobs. They were very nice and the lady they booked me with, Lucy, managed to get rid of the stripe. My hair is now worth $210. I charge $2/minute if you'd like to touch it.

Sean & Sam at Bluesfest

2008-07-13T23:31:00.001-05:00

It was the last night of the Ottawa Bluesfest today and mercifully, the rain held off. Since Kevin's work was a sponsor this year, we were able to get into their patio for a free drink. There's nothing like drinking cheap chardonnay out of a plastic glass. For free!

We watched Sean Paul first, who insisted on wearing a leather jacket despite the hot weather and bright stage lights. He had an entourage that randomly came to hang out on the stage doing nothing and some cheesy back up dancers. I couldn't understand anything he said, so it was just like listening to his cd's. Don't know why I like him, but I do.

Sam Roberts was next. He put on a good show and we had a good view even though the crowd was so big. He did the obligatory encore, then we left before Donna Summer came on to close out the festival.

A-maze-ing

2008-07-12T21:40:00.000-05:00

Kevin and I went to Saunders Farm today to check out their hedge mazes. I wasn’t expecting much – something on the level of Tinkertown as compared to DisneyWorld – but it turned out to be pretty cool. They had 10 mazes, a water park area and a playground for kids. In the fall they also have a haunted house and a corn maze. Since I'm a nerd, I should clarify that the farm has a mix of labyrinths and mazes. A labyrinth has only a single path and a maze has multiple branching paths. Labyrinth is also a stellar film directed by Jim Henson and starring David Bowie. I just searched the word "trifecta" to see if I could find a synonym for 2 components - bifecta? I declare the movie a bifecta of awesomeness.

We were at the farm for a few hours, although a good 45 minutes was spent waiting for a wagon ride. The first time an employee told us to wait at the wrong spot and we missed it, so we had to wait again. I tried throwing a tantrum, kicking and screaming on the gravel path, but stuff like that happens every 10 minutes there, so the employees didn't care. Plus I had already had an ice cream cone, so there wasn't much else I could bargain for.

Two of my favourite mazes were the Mile Maze because it was the hardest, and the Musical Maze because who doesn't like to make a bunch of noise ringing bells? Hopefully we'll visit again in the fall for the Halloween corn maze, because it looked huge. (It was only knee-high on our visit.) Plus it will give me a chance to dust off the Britney Spears costume.

German Rum

2008-07-11T23:32:00.000-05:00

My co-worker Ralph, from Germany, came over for dinner today. He keeps trying to convince us to move there. I did learn some German at our European conference last year that could come in handy. I was trying to order a rum and Coke, but the bartender couldn’t understand me. When he finally got it, I asked him how to say rum in German. Apparently it is “ba-car-di”. True story.

Team Bonding

2008-07-10T07:16:00.000-05:00

I awoke to a lovely day in Perth. Unfortunately it was an hour before my alarm was supposed to go off, to the sound of machinery noises. Some genius decided to schedule a pile of dirt in the parking lot to be moved at exactly 7:00 am. Clearly an important task. This tiny bobcat took an hour and a half to do the job so there was beeping every 2 minutes each time he reversed. It angried my blood up.

I was a last minute replacement for a golf game with my co-workers at Links O'Tay, the oldest operating golf course in Canada. I called Kevin the night before and he offered to meet me halfway with my clubs, but I said I’d have to wait and see how drunk I was after dinner. He said, “Yeah, me too.” Needless to say, I had to rent golf clubs. I was also afraid of getting booted out for wearing a sleeveless top with *gasp* no collar, but no one yelled at me. For my sake, we played best ball and I declared a rule of do-overs whenever I felt like it. By the end of the game, everyone had resorted to using unlimited mulligans. I like to take credit for the moral decline.

After a quick lunch, everyone met up at our boss’s cabin for swimming and dinner. Our golf ran a bit late so I missed the water skiing. Just close your eyes and imagine photos of me doing awesome tricks. With perfect abs. I water skied once when I was 12, so this obviously would have equated to me being even better 20 years later. Most people spent their swimming time jumping off the roof of the boat dock. I opted out because I was a) scared, and b) told that I should check my bathing suit top after jumping as bikinis tended to shift upon lake entry. Sounded like advice based on real-life experience. I already managed to escape ridicule by successfully following Google maps yesterday and I didn’t want to steal attention from Barb’s Renfrew mishap by flashing my co-workers. I stuck to basic dog paddling.

After dinner and a campfire we went back to the hotel. I overheard more partying in the suite next door so I knocked and joined in. All the ladies were having post-dinner drinks and we ended up hanging out until 2:00 am.

Worldwide Gathering in Perth

2008-07-08T23:52:00.001-05:00

Eclipse staff from around the world gathered for team building in Perth this week. Sounds very exciting, except our worldwide staff is made up of only 18 people and we travelled to Perth, Ontari o, not Australia. It claims to be the "prettiest town in Ontario", as chosen by TV Ontario in an unspecified year. Hmmmmm.

Perth is just over an hour away from Ontario, but I'm terrible with directions and was paranoid about getting lost and being late. Luckily Barb and Janet took all the pressure off. They missed the first exit on their drive and ended up in Renfrew, about an hour and a half away in the wrong direction. I think it'll be a long time before they live that one down.

We're all staying at the new Code's Mill Inn. I lucked out with my hotel room. I’m right next to the party suite. Basically an extra big room that the hotel gave to Sharon W., for organizing all the meeting arrangements. From my room, I could hear joviality going on in the suite so I knocked on the door and joined the party. We had pre-dinner drinks, then went across the street to Fiddleheads for dinner.

Well, after 32 years I finally broke down and tried poutine. I didn’t love it. I’m not big on gravy to begin with. And now I can’t talk about how I’m Canadian and have never tried it. Darn you poutine! I also had a pasta dish with emu, which I’ve never tried. It just tasted like beef, but the meal wasn’t the greatest, so it might be better if I tried it again. I reserve judgement.

We closed down the restaurant, but many from the group still wanted to try and find another bar. I wasn’t optimistic about our options in Perth on a Tuesday night, so I went back to the hotel. I tried out the jetted bathtub instead of bar hopping. Instead of the usual jet thingys (the technical term), the tub had pinholes all around the base, providing more even bubble distribution. The downside was I couldn’t figure how to turn them off! I’d press the button and they’d shut off, but the lighted button would continue flashing. Then 15 minutes later they’d come on again - even after there was no water in the tub. I couldn’t call down to have someone turn them off for me because I had already washed off my makeup. And the fact that I would look like a loser. I found out the next day that it did this to clean the water out. If I had just stopped screwing with it and pressing the button every time the jets came back on it would have stopped. Tip to the new Codes Mill Inn – leave some instructions in the guest rooms! The majority of us are idiots. Put that in your employee handbook.

Bluesfest is Eclectictastic

2008-07-06T23:44:00.002-05:00

Kevin’s work gave us free tickets to Ottawa Bluesfest. Bluesfest started as an event for blues music, but is now more a festival for music from all genres. Our night out included Snoop Dogg, the Loved Ones and the Weakerthans. Eclectictastic!

When we arrived, we witnessed Snoop Dogg on stage smoking illegal substances openly in front of the crowd. Or I should say, smok'n illegal substances openly in F-R-to-tha-izzont of tha crowd. How did we get by before Gizoogle.com’s “tranzilations”? Snoopdogg.com also has a translation feature that will “shizzolate” tweets on Twitter. I’m registered on Twitter, have never used it, but still have 7 people following me. My goal is to see how many followers I can procure without ever actually typing anything in.

The Loved Ones – meh. They were a punk band we’ve never heard of.

Kevin owns Weakerthans cd’s and t-shirts - i.e. is an official fan - so he probably enjoyed them more than I did. They’re from Winnipeg, so of course, we are connected within 6 degrees. Actually 2. Our friend Rob is housesitting for the lead singer John right now. John announced that he’s looking to put a new curling team together this year, so put the word out. (Sorry Rob, guess this means you’re cut.) The Weakerthans encored with One Great City, subtitled “I Hate Winnipeg”. The song is excellent, yet angers me at the same time. They’re from Winnipeg, so they do have license to mock, yet how can I condone the statement that the Guess Who suck? We have so few celebrities to cling to! Who else is going to sing at every Grey Cup/Junos show/Pam Am Games ceremony/Salisbury House opening? Don’t anger the Guess Who!

Hog's Back Falls

2008-07-05T20:39:00.003-05:00

We’ve barely done any geocaching this summer so with nice weather today, the time had come. Kevin also promised me ice cream. An important component of geocaching.

We went to Hog’s Back Falls on the Rideau Canal, so we could spend a nice day in the park. However most of the caches in the area ended up being in very un-picturesque locations such as a lamppost in the parking lot and bushes next to the Canada Post offices. We did still take a nice walk by the water. We found 5 caches and are up to a cumulative total of 235. Kevin also came through on his promise and the excursion ended with a vanilla cone at Dairy Queen.

Love Thy Neighbour(s)

2008-07-04T23:37:00.001-05:00

Two couples that live on our street came over for dinner today: Maia & Erwin and Amy & Andrew. Amy’s a vegetarian so Kevin and I did our best to cook a menu largely made up of recipes we’d never tried before. Except for having to make a 2^nd batch of meringues for the dessert (I shake my fist at you and your baking directions Jamie Oliver), it all went well. Although I’ve decided I’m not a big fan of bean burgers. Other than the fine company, the highlight of the evening was finally cracking open our last bottle of ice wine.

It’s nice to know that if our house is being robbed we now have at least 2 sets of neighbours that will care.

Free Long Distance Calls to Me

2008-07-03T07:57:00.000-05:00

Apparently Vonage has a local access feature I never knew about. People in Winnipeg can call me for free by dialling 480-9716 (that's in area code 204), then following the prompts to call me at my home number. No long distance charges for you! If you're calling from somewhere else in Canada, the U.S., Mexico, the U.K., France or Spain, you can look up other local numbers.

Let the gabfest begin!

Canada Day Eve

2008-06-30T22:21:00.003-05:00

Today, we went with Kevin's parents and his granny to Allan Gardens. The conservatory is made up of six greenhouses full of plants, and there are some untamed flower beds outside. Kevin and his dad both got fancy digital SLR cameras a few months ago, so it was a good opportunity for a shoot-off. Lots of flower close-ups. My favourite was the cacti room. There's nothing better than a plant you don't ever have to water and that produces tequila.

For dinner, we met up with Kevin's friend Tim at the Black Dog Pub. They claim to be the greenest restaurant in the GTA. The food is really good although the desserts taste a bit "organic" (i.e. not enough sugar). Tim had just finished his first day at a new job, so it was a good time for sharing drinks.

Family Visits are Stumpthing Special

2008-06-29T23:03:00.004-05:00

Kevin and Mike went to a Blue Jays game today so I had a visit with my parents. Actually, my dad polished my car for 4 hours while I visited with my mom. Just like old times.

After the boys got back and we had dinner, we watched Spain win the final of the European Cup. When the semi-finals started, Kevin and I decided we'd take our vacation in whatever country won, so I guess we're going to Spain! I'd like to get there at the end of August for La Tomatina (tomato fight festival) outside Valencia, but we'll see how the planning goes.

It wouldn't be a Gayowski family gathering without getting some yard work done, so at about 8:30 pm we drifted out to the yard and watched my dad and brother take turns hacking at a tree stump with an axe. Gah, you say? The background: my parents cut down a dead tree in my brother's yard the previous day and wanted to hack out enough of the stump so they could cover it over with dirt. Why this project was started at 8:30 pm though, is not clear to me. The important thing is we took a family portrait with the axe.

Joint Family BBQ

2008-06-28T23:40:00.000-05:00

My parents are still visiting my brother Mike in Toronto, so Kevin and I went down to join them for the weekend. My boss Ian - who for the record, rocks - gave me Monday off so we've got a 4-day long weekend. Yay Canada! The bunnies survived the 4-hour drive without incident. As long as you don't consider pee stains in the cage "incidents".

Kevin's parents hosted a joint family barbeque today. Officially, we're the Gay/Barnes (credit to Karene for the nickname). 18 people total! Plus Tucker, the dog. It rained like crazy in the morning but cleared up in time for everyone to sit outside for the party. Excellent strawberry shortcake was had by all.

Eclipse Parties Around the World

2008-06-27T07:15:00.000-05:00

The software parties continue! I helped set up a series of democamps around the world to celebrate our new release. Democamps are essentially parties, but with presentations of cool software stuff thrown in. We ended up with 24 parties in 12 countries. The most popular ones were the Googleplex in California, Karlsruhe (near Stuttgart) in Germany and both Krakow and Poznan in Poland.

Ottawa's democamp took place yesterday at a bar called the Clock Tower Brew Pub. I had a mini freakout when they told me that morning that they had our reservation on the wrong day and we weren't booked in. Luckily, they had room for us and disaster was averted. I'm going to add that to my resumé - "disaster aversion specialist". It will flow nicely after "parade pageant queen".

Eclipse Software Party

2008-06-25T20:35:00.007-05:00

Today we had our major, annual software release. I really don't contribute anything to the software itself, but I'm in charge of planning all the parties to celebrate. Whoo hoo! There's 1 main rule to planning a successful software party - have free beer. If you want to have a REALLY successful software party - have lots of free beer. My book on party planning is going to be pretty short. If there's one thing I learned at St. Mary's though, it's extra wide margins, double spacing and giant font = 10-page minimum requirement met.

This party has been getting bigger every year, so we decided to move it from our office to a sports bar called Marshy's, which is down the street from us. My coworker Denis and I set up a V.I.P. entrance with a red carpet for all the software developers attending. My block printing skills still come in handy. I did refrain from drawing cartoons on the sign with my trusty pencil crayons.

Barb and Sharon C. that work in the office space next to mine, are on the intellectual property (I.P.) team - basically legal review stuff. They figured some developers may have pent up hostility towards them, so they set up a dunk tank , with an accompanying waiver required to play. The catch was it was a mini dunk tank with Barbies that looked like them. They even gave them haircuts. The clothes were a bit tarty, but I guess Barbie considers animal print and platform shoes appropriate "Summer Fun" wear.

The party was a real success (yep, lots of free beer) and Kevin's team from IBM even stopped by for a while.

World's Most Expensive Turnip (as declared by me)

2008-06-22T21:44:00.004-05:00

We finally had a break from the rain this weekend so Kevin and I took advantage and headed out to the Ottawa Farmers' Market at Lansdowne. They mainly have organic vegetables and meat but there are a few stands with baking, miscellaneous food products and crafts. Our only purchase was a white Japanese turnip. $3! For one turnip! We were intrigued because this variety is pretty rare in Canada and it's sweet, so you eat it raw like an apple. There's nothing like sitting by the canal on a park bench, sharing bites of a turnip. It felt very hillbilly chic.

Rib Fest

2008-06-19T19:08:00.002-05:00

Kevin and I went to the International Chicken and Rib Cook-Off (better known as Rib Fest) with Felipe and Hanita. I had to miss Hanita's baby shower a few weeks ago, so our outing was in lieu. Plus it's always good form to take pregnant friends for all you can eat meat.

Rib Fest takes place on Sparks Street, which is a street downtown that's only open to pedestrians. The street would be awesome if it weren't full of tourist trap souvenir shops. Does anyone really believe that stuffed beavers in mountie outfits, canoe placemats and maple syrup flavoured mustard really represent the essence of Canada? The horror.

We decided to pick the rib stand with the most trophies and titles, and chose Uncle Sam's. They claimed to be Ottawa's 2007 winner for best ribs and had a lot of tacky trophies topped with pigs. Kevin has a theory that as the companies travel the "rib circuit", the different stands just take turns being the previous year's winner so they all get a turn at raking in the money. Uncle Sam's "from Albuquerque, New Mexico" also appeared to have a suspiciously all-Canadian crew. Despite the deceit, we managed to finish a half rack of ribs and half a chicken in one sitting.

Happy Father's Day

2008-06-15T23:51:00.003-05:00

We decided to go to the Museum of Civilization today. I especially wanted to see a special exhibit they have right now on Glenn Gould. Glenn Gould was a genius Canadian pianist, famous for playing Bach's Goldberg Variations. He performed for quite a few years and then did a lot of radio work with the CBC. He ended up kind of crazy, afraid of germs.

Loved it! They had both of his pianos on display (unfortunately behind impenetrable velvet ropes), the super low folding chair he sat on to play, marked scores and a bunch of other cool memorabilia. They even had the 7 silver medals from his Royal Conservatory exams. I only have 2. But I can wear gloves and fear germs with the best of them, so there Glenn!

There was another exhibit on Jamestown, Quebec and Santa Fe: Three North American Beginnings. That room was pretty dead so they pounced on us and forced Kevin and me to dress up in period clothing. Cool that the clothing was 400 years old, but not fun to wear wool and fur for 7 minutes trying to coordinate a photo. My mom refuses to use a digital camera in case she accidentally deletes pictures and my dad's batteries were dead. We got a few shots on Kevin's camera in the end.

After the exhibits, we toured the main part of the museum for a few hours. I managed to find some bunnies.

For Father's Day dinner, we took my dad to an Italian restaurant called Capone's. I judge Italian restaurants on how well they do spaghetti with clams and Kevin judges on the lasagna. We weren't that impressed. Italian Week was on so it was too busy to try some of the places in Ottawa's Little Italy. Lesson learned - stick to Preston Street.

Camper Van Kudos

2008-06-14T22:35:00.000-05:00

Since my parents are visiting from Winnipeg, where's the first place we headed to Saturday morning? IKEA of course. Good thing my parents brought the camper van. Kevin and I seized the opportunity and also took my old deep freeze in to the recycling center. The freezer came with my house in Winnipeg but I never needed to use it. We moved it to Ottawa and finally tried plugging it in this past January. 2,100 km and 3 years later... it didn't work!

We also made 3 trips to Loblaws to buy patio furniture. Trip 1 - informed there was a sale that day, but it only started after 5:00 pm. Trip 2 - mad rush at the store when everybody shows up at 5:00 and the 2 furniture guys have to fetch massive patio sets for all the waiting customers. We bought the furniture after getting a different table top because the glass in ours was smashed. Trip 3 - realized the bench was bent and took it back in exchange for the floor model.

Ultimately, success! It hasn't stopped raining here since the purchase so we only got to sit on it once.

Junk Food Smorgasbord

2008-06-13T22:57:00.004-05:00

My parents arrived in Ottawa this afternoon after a 3-day drive. Since I like weird junk food, they picked up some interesting items when they passed through the States. Most notably, Barbie Pop-Tarts, chocolate mix Skittles and Criss-Cross Apple Jacks. That's 2 full meals right there.

So, cereal tangent. Does anyone remember Strawberry Shortcake or Winnie the Pooh cereal? They were awesome. I think my greatest cereal-eating achievements so far have been a box of Magic Stars that Quel brought back for me from Malaysia and a set of Count Chocula, Franken Berry and Boo Berry that I bought off eBay so I could them together - the monster marshmallow trifecta. Sadly, I never had the chance to try Frute Brute or Yummy Mummy. A regret I'll take to the grave.

My parents also brought some D.D. Leobard's strawberry wine from Manitoba, which I haven't yet found in Ontario. We gave my parents the grand tour of the latest house and landscaping improvements, then went to Ahora for dinner and a pitcher of margaritas. Arriba!

Chore Weekend

2008-06-09T07:40:00.002-05:00

Kevin and I got an amazing amount of chores done this past weekend. The weather was in the 30's but for some crazy reason we decided not to turn on the air-conditioning. Priming and painting the upstairs bathroom was like a bonus hot yoga session for the week. If bunnies could talk, I believe their stares of disapproval would say, "Turn on the a/c, you cheap bastards!". With Dutch accents. And more cussing.

Quick side note for other crazy bunny folk out there (Anyone? Hello? I'm so alone.)... enjoy Disapproving Rabbits. (Ha! See, I'm looking pretty sane compared to that blog, aren't I? RIGHT?)

Other fun-filled activities included steam cleaning carpets and furniture, washing and vacuuming the cars, cutting the grass and weeding. Steam cleaning was awesome. There's nothing like turning a tub of water black with the couch you lounge on every day. In my defense, I've owned it for 8 years - that's a lot of Häagen-Dazs for one piece of furniture to endure.

My parents are visiting in 1 more week, so I should have more exciting stories then.

Yoga Nightmares

2008-05-30T07:16:00.000-05:00

I have frequent nightmares - generally about being murdered (and always by stabbing for some reason), but there are some animal attacks, late for an exam, falling in an elevator, fired from my job, having children episodes thrown in for good measure. I occasionally start screaming in my sleep as a result, and Kevin has to wake me up.

I did this the other night and Kevin thought the dream was about spiders, but I think it was a premonition of the hot yoga class we tried last night. Okay, it actually wasn't that bad except for the crow pose into headstand. Squat with your hands on the floor, balance your knees forward on your elbows, take your feet off the ground, then stand on your head. What the?

Maybe if I spend hundreds of dollars on lululemon clothing, my yoga-ing will improve.

I'm in a Place Where I Don't Know Where I Am

2008-05-27T07:59:00.000-05:00

I tried to start an outdoor running routine yesterday. There's a bike/running path across the street from us, which is really convenient. Yep, I got lost. It turned into an hour-long run (although I walked a good 20 minutes of it). With my terrible sense of direction, I'm going to be in awesome shape!

I did get to see a big brown and white snake. I may have entered Arizona accidentally at some point.

Excellent Weekend Kickoff, Bad Follow Through

2008-05-26T07:37:00.001-05:00

Friday after work, I I had a cocktail party at my house with the 4 other women from my office. The house specialties were sangria, cosmos and raspberry mojitos, and my co-workers brought recipes for a cougar (basically a cosmo with cointreau instead of triple sec) and a caramel kiss (Bailey's, butter ripple, vodka, milk and caramel sundae topping). Tasty!

Saturday we tried to go to the Great Glebe Garage Sale. The Glebe is a really nice neighbourhood in Ottawa, and for the last 20 years, they've held a coordinated sale one day each summer. We (i.e. I) didn't get moving until about 11:00, so it was nuts! We drove up and down the streets for about 20 minutes then gave up and went home when we still didn't find parking. Garage sale shopping from the car definitely isn't that interesting.

Sunday we cleaned out the garage because it was full of cement dust from getting our driveway redone. Par-tay! Then Kevin's aunt and uncle from Toronto stopped by for a late lunch. We pretty much napped for the rest of the evening.

Smell You Later NYC!

2008-05-19T23:59:00.000-05:00

It was our last day in New York. We took Gerry out for breakfast at Utopia. I'll point out that it was his pick because when I searched for a link to the restaurant's site I came across an inspection report from 2 months ago that showed Utopia had 5 violations including not vermin-proof, roaches, mice, food worker prepares food or handles utensil when ill with a disease transmissible by food or has exposed infected cut or burn on their hand, and cold food held above 41°F. And since this resulted in only 25 violation points, no follow-up inspection was required. Oh, New York. I'm sure the honour system works though and they still took care of all the violations. Thank bejebus for that final Hep A shot (see April 7).

Kevin and I headed over to the United Nations for a tour. The security tent alone was worth the trip - tourists getting yelled at for taking pictures and not moving to the appropriate metal detector - welcome to America! The wait for a guided tour ended up being at least 2 hours so we looked around the public part of the building a bit and left.

We spent the rest of the day touring the fancy American department stores: Bloomingdale's (very expensive), Barneys (outrageously expensive) and Macy's (expensive). Although we couldn't afford anything, I did get to touch some Christian Louboutin and Manolo Blahnik shoes at Barneys. I guess I'll have to hold out until they start collections at Payless.

After several weather delays and annoying teenage girls in the airport wait area, we made it back to Ottawa. Air Canada gives you free booze if the flight is late. Just what you need - angry patrons full of vodka. I took a mini bottle of rum with me out of spite.

At home, the pet sitter had left a note that Spuckler somehow jumped out of her cage and the fence around the cage while she was getting their vegetables and attacked Savvy. He seems to have fully recovered but had these loose hunks of fur hanging off his butt. Poor guy. I'll have to knit him a butt toupee.

New York Times

2008-05-18T23:08:00.002-05:00

Another day in New York. We started with breakfast at Sarabeths with Kevin's friend Jeff.

Gerry, who we're staying with, has a golden retriever named Bear. After breakfast we went over to Central Park to take Bear for a walk. We tried to find 2 geocaches, but the first location was too busy so we gave up. You can only stare at the walls of a tunnel pretending to examine the rocks for so long, before people think you're child snatchers. We did manage to find the 2nd one without people noticing what we were doing. Central Park was especially busy today because it turns out the AIDS Walk was taking place. Although we weren't wearing the ribbon, we were able to walk in it for a bit without being accosted.

Our friend Gina from Toronto arrived in New York for training, so after our walk, we met up with her at her hotel and went to Soho for shopping. Soho has all the fancy stores. You start to become numb to the crazy prices! Not numb enough to actually spend the $600 on a pair of shoes, but enough that it doesn't seem surprising.

The weather wasn't great, so we stopped at a café for lunch when the rain picked up. We also had a really hard time getting Gina a cab. Apparently 3:30-4:30 is a magic time where there's a cab vortex as shifts change over. So there's taxis everywhere, but none of them will stop. She eventually ran into the street, kicking a few babies and small children out of her way, and stole a cab from a group of people that were naively waiting at the curb.

After more shopping, Kevin and I had a Cajun dinner at one of his favourite spots from his New York days - the Great Jones Café. We both had shaggys - spicy ginger ale with rum. They were freakin' spicy all right! Tastes like burning.

With the sun going down, we walked over to the Empire State Building. We paid a ridiculous amount of money so I could go to the very top. Although the ticket is vastly over-priced, it was definitely cool to see so much of the city from up high and watch the sun set.

New York, New York

2008-05-17T23:21:00.004-05:00

I made Kevin a top 10 list of sites I wanted to see in New York and we managed to cover off 7 in the first day: Ground Zero, the Statue of Liberty, the Stock Exchange building, Grand Central Station, Rockefeller Center, Times Square and a Broadway show. Other items we saw along the way included Battery Park, the South Street Seaport, Radio City Music Hall, the Ed Sullivan Theatre and Columbus Circle.

Halfway through the day we met up with Kevin's former co-worker Mike and his girlfriend Melinda for lunch. Gerry joined us too. We went to Essex, which had an awesome brunch special for $16 that included 3 mimosas. Kevin and I actually showed up early for lunch so we pre-drank 2 mimosas as well. We had a good view of the bar and they were using real champagne!

I think my favourite part of the day was seeing Times Square at night and the Broadway show. We bought half price tickets to Avenue Q, which I've been wanting to see for years now. It won the Tony for Best Musical in 2004 and is basically like real-life, dirty Sesame Street for adults. Songs include It Sucks To Be Me, If You Were Gay and The Internet is for Porn, to give you an idea.

We obviously were exhausted at the end of the day and finished off with dinner at Il Violino.

It was weird to finally see all the larger than life New York landmarks in person. Surreal. The subway and people were also much more normal and friendly than as depicted on tv. Law & Order has been lying to me! Donk donk. (That's the Law & Order sound bite.) Zero shootings and stabbings witnessed as of yet.

5-Month Streak Over

2008-05-17T07:14:00.000-05:00

I had a rocky start in New York last night. We were delayed an hour and a half due to weather and the flight was pretty turbulent. I had an almost 5-month non-puking streak... that ended yesterday. And it ended with the use of an airline sickness bag. Poor Lynn? No. Poor Kevin. To my credit, I'm a discreet thrower-upper.

What's that you ask? Of course I'll keep everyone fully updated on future throwing-up episodes. If there's enough demand, perhaps I can track my progress via an Excel chart.

Rare and Unusual Sunday

2008-05-11T21:59:00.001-05:00

Kevin and I went to the Experimental Farm's rare and unusual plant sale bright and early today. It's usually a bonus if I'm ready to leave the house on the weekend by noon, but I pulled it together for 9am today. How rare and unusual!

A lot of the plants ended up being things that are pretty ordinary, but some of the stands had some really different varieties. The prices were generally decent too. We really wanted to get some evergreen shrubs to fill in our front flower bed and some trilliums - Ontario's provincial flower. We snagged the last 2 trilliums at the show and bought a bunch of other random flowers and shrubs.

We went to Loblaws and Home Depot as well, to pick up a few more filler items. What did we find? A whole table of "rare and unusual" trilliums at Loblaws! At least we were able to buy a few more. Kind of killed the caché though.

We spent the rest of the day planting our herb and vegetable garden at the side of the house and all of our flowers and shrubs in the front. I managed to break the top off of all the tulips when I moved them, because I'm delicate that way.

Tulip Festival Weekend - Minus Tulips

2008-05-10T23:36:00.002-05:00

Our friends Tim and Gina from Toronto are visiting for the weekend during Ottawa's Tulip Festival. Per usual, we headed to the Byward Market. We did a tour of some of the shops and had lunch on the Cornerstones patio - very similar to Earl's. They had raspberry mojitos, so how could Gina and I resist?

A trip to the Market wouldn't be complete without indulgent over-spending at Trustfund. Gina needed a new pair of jeans and couldn't decide on a style, so she bought 2. That seems to happen a lot at their store. By coincidence, Gina is going to New York for training next week so Kevin and I are going to meet her there and bring the jeans once they're hemmed. Very jet set.

After all the spending we decided to have dinner in. We bought trout, vegetables, potatoes and fiddleheads. None of us had tried fiddleheads before but they're big in Ontario this time of year. It's really a wild baby fern, rolled up in a ball. Turns out they taste like asparagus (but not quite as good).

We tried to watch a movie afterwards and picked Awake. Hated it. There were way too many graphic surgery scenes. And it sucked. The one redeeming feature is Jessica Alba - if you're a man. Gina and Tim both fell asleep.

We never really did tour any tulip gardens today, but yay Tulip Festival!

Speed Shopping

2008-05-09T23:19:00.001-05:00

After breakfast, I had just under 2 hours to hit as many stores as I could before the flight back. I managed to fit in Victorias Secret, H&M, Betsey Johnson and Bebe. The most fun was definitely Betsey Johnson. They started picking dresses for me to try with a pair of sparkly gold high heels. Everything was so over the top bridesmaid-esque. I did avoid buying an expensive dress I didn't need, but I couldn't resist this ruffly, sweater/cape thing in aqua. Very Carrie Bradshaw. It's one of those things that people will see and will love, or mock mercilessly behind my back. Couldn't everyone's wardrobe use more aqua ruffles?

The flight back was uneventful. I watched The Golden Compass and Mad Money. Both were more disappointing than expected, so I'm glad I didn't pay to rent them.

SWAG-tastic

2008-05-08T21:01:00.002-05:00

Ah, the final day of the conference. From the attendees' perspective, this means a free for all for giveaways in the exhibit hall. We had a line up for the remaining t-shirts as people loaded up on what was left. We managed to give out 750 t-shirts, 50 baseball hats and 500 yo-yos over 3 days. I did a quick tour of the other booths and got a slinky and a mini-lint brush for myself. Woot woot!

Everyone was tired so we had dinner together at Annabelles and went our separate ways. I had a lemon mojito this time, but it paled in comparison to the raspberry. I'm hoping to do some shopping in the morning before my flight.

It was Grand... times 10!

2008-05-07T23:36:00.002-05:00

After a shorter day in the exhibit hall, I had a quick break at my hotel. Another awesome feature of Kimpton hotels is a lot of them host a free beer and wine hour at 5:00 in the lobby. I had a nice chat with the wine lady Kat and other random people in the lobby while enjoying a glass of chardonnay.

Then it was off to our party at a restaurant called the ThirstyBear. The restaurant brews some of its own beers and has a really neat location in a historic brick building in downtown San Francisco. We had the 2nd floor of the restaurant closed off and it was packed! We had just over 300 people and maxed out the tab in a record 2 hours and 15 minutes.

There's nothing like handing over your credit card to pay for a $10,000 party.

Our buddy Mik Kersten from Vancouver (middle) took a picture at the end of the party with me and my boss Ian (right).

JavaOne Begins

2008-05-06T23:13:00.000-05:00

The JavaOne conference kicked off today and there are about 15,000 people here this year. My job is to answer questions at our booth and get people to play our game for a free t-shirt. Techies love a free t-shirt. Especially if it's black so they can spill food on it and it's less noticeable. I'm not even being facetious - I was instructed to order dark shirts for this reason.

The first day was 9 hours long and pretty busy. We didn't get any food at the party in the evening because the line was so long, so a group of us went to a sushi restaurant called Sakana afterwards. Excellent! We made Luke eat the fish bones that came with the bill since he was our token Asian.

Conference Eve in San Francisco

2008-05-05T20:45:00.002-05:00

I had time today to finish setting up our company's booth for the conference tomorrow and to catch up on emails. My last sign did arrive! This may be the first time in the last year that a hotel hasn't lost any of my shipments. Kudos to the Palomar Hotel. So far my experiences with Kimpton hotels have rocked - highly recommended! They also have funky animal print robes which make you look like a pimp. My camera batteries are dead, so I couldn't take a picture. Photos of me in a bathrobe should probably stay off the Internet anyways. Kimptons are also cool because you can request to have a fish bowl, complete with goldfish, in your room.

I was starving by 4:00 so I headed out to find a place to eat, and ended up running into my friend Tim, who works out of Mexico for one of our member companies. He joined me for dinner, but we had a hard time finding anything open. We ended up having cheese and drinks at Café de la Presse first. I was too shy to force him to go shopping with me, so he grabbed the GPS from his car and we tried to find a geocache. Unfortunately, the GPS wasn't built for off-road directions and it wasn't accurate enough to get us close. We wandered around Yerba Buena Gardens a bit and gave up.

By then, restaurants were open for dinner so on my hotel's recommendation, we decided to try Lulu for some seafood. It was really nice. Somehow the couple seated at the next table got the impression that it was Tim's birthday, so that was a bit weird. We just played along.

Off to San Francisco

2008-05-04T19:39:00.004-05:00

I was off to San Francisco today for a software conference. Of course, my tv for the 5 ½ hour flight was broken and I get motion sickness when I read, so my two options were to sleep and to stare straight ahead listening to my iPod. I alternated between the two and was pretty bored after 4 hours.

I decided to pick up all my deliveries and get them over to the conference centre so the next day I could just do set up. It was quite the work out carrying everything over. The doorman offered to help once I had 1 last box to bring over. So far, only 1 sign is missing.

Due to getting up at 5 am and the 3 hour time change, I was starving by 4:00, so I headed out for dinner. The concierge recommended a restaurant called Annabelles, just down the street. I had the best mojito ever! They used raspberry rum and the drink menu claimed they “burned” (in quotations) the mint instead of muddling it, although the waiter had no clue what that meant. They’re probably just guarding the secret recipe. Duck salad and vanilla crème brulee, and I was done. I was pretty much asleep by 8:00.

Hazardous Waste and Dinner

2008-05-03T22:19:00.002-05:00

Ottawa has certain days where they set up hazardous waste depots where you can drop off used oil, old paint, nuclear waste, etc. The people we bought our house from had a bunch of paint cans rusted shut in the garage so we decided to take them in. It was quite the process!

The city had the street we were going to closed off and blocked by a police car, so we had to drive around the block to get into the designated parking lot. Every side street along the way was being guarded by people in white jumpsuits. Once we got around the block and got close, we were stopped by the first set of jumpsuits who told us to continue driving ahead. The second set of jumpsuits asked for our postal code and allowed us to turn into the parking lot. The third set of jumpsuits told us to again drive ahead and stop at the drop off. Once we parked and popped the trunk, there were at least 5 people in jumpsuits to take our few paint cans out of the trunk. Other than us, the entire drop off was empty. I think they managed to employ about 50 people that day.

Hazardous-waste free, we headed off to some garden centres to get herbs for our garden. The coolest find of the day was a pineapple mint plant at Loblaws. Let the mojito season begin!

For dinner, we met up with Kevin’s friend Matt and his wife Cindy. We went to Shogun, which is kind of like Ichiban or Benihana. The best part is when they light a stack of onion on fire like a volcano. Mmm, flaming onion volcano.

Party - with Maracas!

2008-05-02T23:40:00.000-05:00

Our neighbour Erwin invited us to his 30^th birthday party today. Some new neighbours, Andrew and Amy, moved in across the street from us around Christmas and they were there too. Erwin is originally from Columbia, so as the party progressed it turned into quite the Latin fiesta. I’ve never known anybody with so many sets of maracas. They got people to dance around with them in their back pockets. I’d give Amy the prize for best maraca-booty shaking. Kevin and I were shy. What can I say – we’re reserved Canadians.

Free Ice Cream? Psyche.

2008-04-30T19:36:00.002-05:00

Yesterday Kevin got me all exited about free scoop day at Ben & Jerrys. We had to do some research on the Net and discuss with co-workers to figure out where the locations in Ottawa are. Turns out there’s only one. Then we discovered that it wasn’t a “participating location” – so no free ice cream.

Today Kevin tells me about 30 cent cone day at Baskin Robbins. I again choose my flavour. Then learn only the U.S. locations run the promotion.

We ate No Name ice cream sandwiches at home to take away the taste of bitterness.

Makeup & Tea - Yay Girl Day!

2008-04-27T22:32:00.003-05:00

Jen and I went back downtown to the mall today. When Jen moved a few weeks ago from Toronto to Calgary, the movers lost and broke a bunch of her stuff. The worst part is they lost her makeup case of products and didn’t think it was a big deal. They couldn’t comprehend that it was worth hundreds of dollars. The one up side is we got to go on a spending spree at M.A.C. to replace everything (hopefully her insurance comes through). So many shiny bottles. After sampling and purchasing an assortment, Jen also got me a new eye shadow for a belated birthday present.

We wandered around the mall a bit and then went to the Tea Store. We had cranberry scones and shared a pot of excellent caramel tea on the patio. An older guy asked if we would watch his bike while he bought some tea. We appeared trustworthy, so his eyesight must have been pretty bad. Twenty minutes later we look in and he’s sitting there having lunch. He did agree to move outside and watch his own bike so we could leave for the airport.

We checked Jen in and made sure she had a seat on her flight, then left for a quick dinner. We ended up at Kelseys and shared nachos and a salad. We were the only ones sitting on the patio so I think the waitress forgot about us. We waited forever to pay the bill and eventually had to just scrape some cash together so we could leave without waiting again to run credit cards through. Unfortunately, together we had just enough to cover the bill and could only tip about 60 cents. Embarrassing, but somewhat justified. We peeled out quickly so the waitress wouldn’t run after the car shaking her fist and Jen made it to her flight on time.

"Calgary Jen" Visits

2008-04-26T23:22:00.003-05:00

My friend Jen, now “Calgary Jen” once more, came to visit for the weekend. With a WestJet staff ticket, it’s actually cheaper and faster for her to fly from Calgary than it was for her to visit by bus from Toronto.

The weather was great today so we went to the Market for shopping. We bought some stuff and had lunch at the Empire Grill on the patio. I had an excellent champagne cocktail.

Afterwards at the infamous Trustfund, Jen almost bought an expensive dress. We decided to leave the store and eat a cookie so she could make a clear decision and she ended up talking herself out of it. Even before we managed to find some cookies. We didn’t have time to go to the mall because it was closing for the day, so we had drinks at Second Cup (thanks for the gift card Felipe and Hanita!) and went home.

In the evening Jen took me for a belated birthday dinner at MHK Sushi. Then we picked up a pie from the grocery store and rented The Darjeeling Limited. There’s nothing more classic than pie and a movie. I fell asleep so I’m not sure if the movie was good.

Spuckler Strikes Again

2008-04-24T19:20:00.003-05:00

Kevin and I are going to New York for the May long weekend, so I decided to hire a pet sitter for the bunnies. In the interviews, Kevin wanted me to ask what stuff they would steal while we were gone so we could get extra insurance on those items, but I was too shy.

I found one lady who seems nice, but she’s never looked after rabbits before. I warned her that Spuckler’s pretty dumb so if you hold out a treat she just chomps down without checking to see if there are any fingers in there. She said okay, she’d just put it in the palm of her hand. This morning I started to wonder if that was a good idea, so I tried it out. Spuckler smelled the treat, ran over, clamped down on the first finger she saw (which by bunny deduction would obviously be food) and started yanking as hard as she could. She let go when I started screaming. The cut was kind of bad but Kevin had already left for work so I had to stay conscious and band-aid it myself.

I guess I’ll have to send a follow-up email to the pet sitter. “Just throw the food over the baby gate and run. Wear oven mitts.”

Garage Sale/Party Weekend

2008-04-19T23:19:00.002-05:00

Kevin and I went to a group garage sale today at Lansdowne Park. It mainly sucked. The only item of interest was a bar set that packed up into a little suitcase – perfect for bring your liquor to work day. Or to children’s birthday parties. The park. And so on. But I refrained. One man tried to sell me on a hat by saying that it was the same style worn in the King Kong movie. He must have suckered a bunch of stylish women with that line. I too want to look like I hang out with gigantic monkeys. It’s what all the cool kids are doing. Yeah, so no garage sale hat for me.

In the evening we went to our friend Tricia’s 30^th birthday party. To honour the milestone, we gave her a home bingo set and some wrinkle cream. She had an awesome cocktail bar and the Wii came out towards the end of the party. Kevin beat me up in front of everyone. Gosh darn you Wii boxing!

Beaten Down by Frisbees and a Bunny

2008-04-11T08:13:00.001-05:00

I went to an ultimate frisbee clinic last night and am feeling it today. Surprisingly, my throws were still respectable despite a good 5 years off playing, but after lunging and throwing for 40 minutes my thighs were burning. I've been running 3.5 to 4 miles twice a week on the treadmill for the last 3 months so I thought I was going to be awesome. I guess I wasn't built for lunges. Just lounges.

Injuries noted today include bruised left palm, some broken nails and two bunny bites on my left shoulder (Spuckler apparently wasn't ready to go to bed last night).

I'm only planning to play some pick-up games this summer or play as a sub, rather than joining an ultimate team, so hopefully my old body can handle it. The minimum age for the masters (i.e. seniors) league here is 35, so I've got 3 more years to suffer with the young folk.

Hep-Hep, Hep A

2008-04-07T22:59:00.000-05:00

I had my last shot for Hep A today so I'm officially immune from Hep A and Hep B. Bring on the contaminated shellfish and unsanitary spa tools! I am invincible!

I also returned a vase we got at HomeSense over the weekend that didn't match, and they ended up giving me back my fiddlin' $15 gift card! I was carrying it around for 3 years and thought I finally got rid of it. Argh! Shopping spree attempt 2 to be scheduled.

Spree!

2008-04-06T21:16:00.002-05:00

Kevin and I decided to have a shopping spree day. We gathered up the bundle of gift cards that have been collecting and went downtown to see what fun stuff we could buy. We spent some time at Rideau Centre but didn't even make it to $100. I guess we suck at sprees.

Kevin even tried on about 30 hats at the Bay and didn't buy anything. He claims if I laugh when I say a hat looks good, I can't be trusted. But plaid old-man hats both rock and are humorous. They're not mutually exclusive characteristics.

I did get some spree mojo back after the mall. I couldn't resist the lure of Trustfund again and bought a very fancy tanktop. The owners not only recognized us this time, but also remembered what we bought the last time we were there and that we had just had our birthdays.

With shopping done, we tried a Mexican restaurant called Ahora. It was very authentic, the margaritas were excellent and the food is cheap. A good way to end a spree.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2008-04-05T23:59:00.002-05:00

Today I'm celebrating the 11th anniversary of my 21st birthday! I had a lazy morning watching t.v., then Kevin took me to the Running Room to get new runners. The new shoes have awesome reflective yellow stripes so if I kick you, you'll really see it coming.

We also went to HomeSense to try and use this $15 gift card I've had for about 3 years now. I bought new pillowcases for the basement to replace the ones Spuckler chewed holes in, and a pillow with some type of copper technology that's supposed to make face wrinkles disappear. The perfect purchase when you're 32. And pillows with copper that fix wrinkles? It's so plausible, how could you not believe?

We also made a quick trip downtown and then headed off to Urban Pear, my favourite restaurant, for dinner. Oh... mah... gah. I had an amazing salad with a cosmopolitan, duck entree with a peartini, and crème brulée with iced pear wine. Fab!

Since we weren't able to move after eating so much, we came home and rented American Gangster. We both fell asleep but it was still pretty good. Naps are important at our age!

Birthday Eve Party

2008-04-04T23:59:00.002-05:00

Less than 24 hours until the big three-two and the partying has begun! First we had some beers in the office at the end of the day. Friends Nick and Ken from the nearby IBM office also paid a visit to help celebrate.

Then Kevin surprised me by inviting some friends over for cake. But not just any cake - a raspberry mousse from Swiss Pastries with a pink marzipan bunny on top. He even drove to 2 shops to make the magic happen.

Tricia, Bogdan and Felipe had some cocktails, and we made some fancy mocktails for Hanita, who's 5 months pregnant. Kevin makes fun of the fact that I stock 2 varieties of maraschino cherries, but clearly the passion fruit cherries are necessary. As if you can't totally taste the difference.

I also forced Tricia and Bog to look at my Cougardom Kickoff scrapbook so Tricia could get some ideas for her upcoming 30th. Kevin and I will be going in costumes even if there's no theme. Finally - a chance to get that tutu out of the basement closet. But what should I go as?

Yay birthday eve!