Abstract Random

It was a pretty quiet weekend. Poor Arun had to work so I amused myself by going for walks and doing errands and reading and going to the gym and napping.

I rented Happy Go Lucky for us last night and while it wasn't a bad movie, it wasn't an especially great one. Sure the main character is quirky but there really wasn't much of a story and there's not much of a point in having good characters if they don't really do much, right?

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A building maintenance guy just came into my office to turn on the air conditioning and there is now freezing cold air blasting from the vents. I'm sorry, but it's way too freakin' early to turn on the air conditioning. I realize it's 30° (C) outside today but it's going to be 13 and rainy tomorrow and nowhere close to summery for the foreseeable future. I guess I won't be putting my hand warmers away just yet.

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And about this swine flu thing, could someone please come up with a better name for it? I mean, swine flu. Really. Hey scientists: you need better communications people.

You know how your mother told you not to say anything if you didn't have anything nice to say? Yeah, well, I didn't have anything good to say earlier this week, hence the silence. It wasn't anything really major, just a combination of things that added up to suck. Things have since gotten better, or are at least moving in a positive direction. So, yay.

I'm super excited about the warm weather we're supposed to have this weekend. In anticipation, I broke out the self-tanner last night to take the glare off my legs. For those of you who don't know me, let me fill you in: I am freakishly pale. My skin does not tan, I only get freckles and burn. I use the La Roche-Posay self-tanner because it's the subtlest one I've found. In fact, my "tanned" skin is still paler than most people's normal skin tone, which is totally fine with me because I don't really want to look tanned, I just don't want to look quite so insanely pale and that stuff does the trick.

In other news, I'm going to be doing a reading at a wedding for a couple of our close friends next month. I've been searching around and have started submitting pieces to the bride and groom for their consideration. I think they're cool with one of them but I'd still like to keep looking, in case I find something even better. So if you know of any good, non-traditional wedding readings, let me know.

Hey, it's already Friday! I love short work weeks. (Which reminds me, I should tell my boss that I'm going to take Fridays off for the summer again, starting in May.)

We had a highly productive evening yesterday: we picked up our tax stuff from our accountant, promptly spent my tax return on a new Mac Mini, and then renewed our mortgage for a kick ass rate. I love getting things done like that.

I'm also enjoying the nicer weather, I even ate lunch outside today. The novelty of it being warm will wear off soon enough and I'll revert to my usual avoidance of the outdoors but for now it's a nice change.

You know what else I love? Barbecue season. We'll be firing up the 'cue this weekend. Beer can chicken, here we come.

Wow, I totally needed that long weekend. It was a great four days. In addition to forcing Starla into a pink bunny outfit so we could take pictures of her, highlights include:

- Watching Adventureland, which you should all go see. It's smart and funny and sad and sweet all at the same time and it has a great soundtrack.

- Sleeping in.

- At a dinner with a bunch of people I don't know I burst out laughing when someone said they were going to be "delivering Easter Lilies to shut-ins" the next day. I thought she was joking but, no, she was serious. I still couldn't stop laughing.

- Napping.

- Having family over for dinner on Sunday.

- Lindt chocolate bunnies.

Starla says happy Easter and Passover and long weekend.

I was woken up at 3 on Tuesday morning to the sound of water dripping in our ensuite bathroom. At first I thought our shower head was leaking but then I turned on the light and discovered there was a significant amount of water coming from the ceiling above our shower stall. And, despite our best efforts (our condo property management company was useless and Arun's knocks on our upstairs neighbour's door went unanswered), it didn't stop leaking until 7:30 in the morning. Turns out the water was indeed coming from the apartment upstairs. Specifically, from their toilet. Ick.

So now our entire shower stall and surrounding tile need to be torn out so the insulation and dry wall behind them can be replaced. Nightmare. We'll be able to upgrade the tile around the shower stall in the process so I'm trying to focus on that as the one good thing coming out of this.

In the meantime, I'm so so so thankful we have another shower in our other (smaller) bathroom. 'Til Tuesday* we had never showered in there in the seven years we've been living in our apartment. Now it looks as though we'll be making of up for neglecting it for the next couple of weeks or so.

So yeah, it's been a stressful week. I'm looking forward to the extra long weekend. Hope you have a good one!

*Get it?

This past weekend, like most of my weekends, revolved mainly around food. We made the recipe that's on the cover of this month's Bon Appétit (Beef shank and sausage ragù with whole wheat spaghetti), I had brunch with Tor at the Scone Witch, and we had dinner at Atelier with Craig and Jessica.

I won't detail the 12 courses we ate at Atelier (though I do have notes) but I will tell you it was an amazing meal; the presentation was incredible and the food was delicious. They use a lot of modern culinary technology (sous vide, liquid nitrogen, etc.) so there was a bevy of powders and gels and foams and mousses and some very interesting flavour combinations. And for $75, it's a steal (that's only $6.25 a course!). If you're even a little adventurous with your food, do yourself a favour and go.

When I wasn't too busy eating or cooking, I was reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It's Jane Austen's classic novel but made so much better with the addition of zombies (and ninjas!). I don't know why someone didn't think of adding zombies to the classics before.