Not Your Average Butcher

Fast Fact: The average butcher has 7.3 fingers. Actually, I made that up, but I have all 10 of my fingers, so that's saying something... or is it?

Monday, May 30, 2005

Whine Making

On Saturday, we had our first experience in wine-making! Well, not exactly wine-making, more like wine-bottling. My parents have been bottling their own wine for several years now. It's a very simple process: they got to the Shops, order the kind of wine they want and the people at the store make it for them. Six weeks later, it's ready for bottling and Mike and I went to help with this part of the process. Basically, one person fills the bottles, another puts in the corks (with a nifty little machine, at that!), someone else puts the covers on the corks and then a last person sticks on the labels. It was kind of time-consuming but enjoyable, I suppose! Mike also put aside his first batch of wine and we will bottle those in another six weeks! Then, we'll have to wait another 4-6 months before it's ready. We'll be drinking Cabernet-Shiraz, Valpolicella and Vieux Chateau du Roi by Christmas!

After that, we went out for dinner to the Imperial Palace for some Szechuan and Thai. Food and service was good, despite the confusion at the end of the meal...! The waiter came with our bill which appeared to have a total of $39.90. There were $6.00 in taxes. Since the taxes equal 15%, we gave the waiter $46.00 as payment plus tip. He asked us if we wanted change. We answered no. While we were finishing our tea, he came back with a dime on the little black tray the bill came on. Why was he bringing us a dime back?! Anyhow, we forgot about it and then left the restaurant. As we were walking across the parking lot, we heard someone yell, "Excuse me!" We turned around and sure enough, it was our waiter, holding the bill tray with the dime on it. "Was there a problem with the service?" he asked. "No, it was great, thanks," Mike answered. The waiter, obviously confused, gestured with the little tray: Then where's my tip? he seemed to be asking. Catching the waiter's meaning, Mike said "Our bill was $39.90, we gave you $46.00." The perplexed waiter said "Oh... ok" and retreated back into the restaurant. As we were driving through the parking lot, I did some quick addition in my head and quickly realized that we had, in fact, not given the poor guy a tip! "How could our bill have been $39.90 if it costs $19.95 per person?" I asked (this had been clearly stated at the top of the menu). We instantly realized that the bill had probably not stated the full amount, but only the subtotal. Sheepishly, we got out of the car, went back into the restaurant and gave the waiter another $6.00. He was nice about it, but we were still pretty embarrassed!

Wow, that turned into a long story!

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Keeping Up with the "Star Wars" Hype

I found this cute spoof on Star wars this morning. Go and visit (Grocery) Store Wars staring Cuke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Cannoli!

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

A Waste of Time

This is why my school is inefficient: I paid off my Concordia account at the beginning of May. Anyone graduating had to have an account balance of $0.00 by May 18th or they (I) would not be considered for graduation. Fine. I paid off my remaining $40.24 no problem. On May 19th I received a statement in the mail saying I owed $40.72. I didn't think too much of it, I just figured that the statement had been created before my payment was processed. I did think it was pretty dumb that I received my statement only after my payment was due. Anyhow, I checked my account a few days ago, just to double-check. My account was at $0.48. Great. That meant I'd have to go into school just to give them 2 quaters so that I could graduate. And where did this $0.48 come from, anyway?! So I went to the students centre at my lunch break and forked over my quarter, 2 dimes and 3 pennies. The girl told me it was residual interest on my $40.24 that had not shown up on my account earlier because the online system is not updated often enough. Ack! Update it, then! What a pain!

I know I'm not the only one that has complaints about the school's inefficiencies...

Hey! I'm still waiting to hear back about grad school! Why so long?!?!

Campfire Stories

Hmm, blogs seem to be pretty stagnant lately. I was expecting to have to do some catch-up reading after the long weekend of camping, but I returned home to find that no one had written anything!

OK, so, lots of stuff happened... First, a bunch of us went to see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith on Friday night. I'm not a huge fan of the movies, but I do enjoy them. Anyway, it was very good. I wasn't looking forward to sitting there for 2 1/2 hours, but it actually went by really fast.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday were spent camping at Voyageur park, just on the other side of the Ontario border. Good times, despite the intermittent showers. Luckily, it never poured, we just put up with a lot of drizzling! We were 8 people, so it made a good party. Oddly enough, we were surrounded by West-Islanders and we spend part of an evening at this one campsite where we later found out that some of the people had even gone to the same high school as many of the people in our own group. Small world! Other memorable events:

  1. getting the keys locked in the Civic (I wasn't there, but apparently some random guy came out of the woods and coat-hangered the door open. This guy said he used to work for Honda and knew how to get the doors open, despite their additional protection against break-ins. So much for CAA!).
  2. the subsequesnt run-in with the OPP (yeah, you know me!). Again, I wasn't there, but it makes a good story!
  3. Kim jamming the vending machine with a stick.
  4. Danny: "Take the picturrrrrrrre!!!... What are you waiting forrrrrrrrrrr!!!"
  5. my own claim to fame: "four calls paddle!"
  6. "G-g-g-g-g-g-G Unit!"
  7. "PJ Katie's Farm, PJ Katie's Farm!"

I don't expect people who weren't on the trip to understand the above comments, but maybe I can get a chuckle out of some of the people who were there...! Despite the fact that the park wardens kept telling us to shut up (and threatened us with eviction), it was a great time!

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Gone Camping

Happy long weekend! I'm going camping... I think it's supposed to rain all weekend. Should be interesting!

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Come to the World Beer Festival!

The World Beer Festival is coming! It's happening from June 1 - 5 and Mike and I are tentatively planning to go on the Saturday, June 4th. I'm mentioning it here because anyone that wants to come along is totally welcome! This is what you need to know: it's at Windsor Station (right beside the Bell Centre) and is open from noon until 11:00 pm from June 1 -5. Tickets cost $1 each and each tasting costs between 1-5 tickets. If you want more information, go and see the website. Anyone that's interested in coming along, let me know ASAP! It'll be a party!

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Entering the Lawbreaker Vortex - Naw, I'm Exaggerating!

The internet connection at my house is intermittent at best, so my lack of internet connection has gotten rather frustrating. As a result, I am unable to post as often as I would like. Additionally, my Cuba journal has alo been put on temporary hiatus. I am at work as I write this and regardless of the fact that I have nothing else to do right now, I still feel guilty blogging during my working hours.

Anyhow...

So I'm going to continue with more illegal activities that I have participated in as of late. You may recall that last time I wrote we had broken into Mike's house. On the weekend, five of us visited a park at about 1:00 in the morning. We wanted to play soccer. Anyhow, most people are aware that parks close at 11:00 pm and if you get caught at a park after 11:00 you can get a $150 ticket. Well, we were being pretty loud and after a while - lo and behold!- the cops showed up! Anyway, apparently we're a rather charming bunch (sans ID, luckily) so we didn't get ticketed. It also helped that we didn't have any drugs or alcohol on us... that always helps! Other things that help: playing dumb and pretending you don't know that parks close at 11:00; blaming the noise on someone else. These methods also helped in avoiding a total of roughly $750 in tickets between the five of us!

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures

Yesterday evening, Mike and I met up at the shops to pick up / trade photos from our trip. Upon returning to his house, we found ourselves locked out. Mike hadn't brought his keys because his brother had been home when he left the house. However, said brother had left for the gym by the time we got back. The family has this tricky little way of hiding successive keys to access the house in this type of situation. Unfortunately, the final key was not in the key holder so we could not get inside. So we set up a camping chair in the garage, I sat on the stair and we exchanged our photos. After a while, it began to get cold and we were getting tired of hanging out in the garage. Suddenly, Mike looked up at the door leading from the inside of the garage to the house. He noticed a small hole in the round doorknob. "Hey, if I stick something in that hole, will the door unlock?" he asked. I momentarily flashed back to when I was a kid and I would lock myself in the bathroom to get away from my dad when he would tickle me. He always outsmarted me and unlocked the door from the outside with a skewer. "Yeah, that should work!" I exclaimed. I tried the old movie trick of using a bobby pin. Yeah, don't bother with that, it doesn't really work. The bobby pin was too short. Mike found something else but it was too wide. We were about to give up when Mike found a spool of steel wire. He stuck the end in the doorknob, jiggled it, turned the knob and sure enough... the door opened! The look he gave me was absolutely hilarious: a mix of amazement, despair (perhaps because it was that easy to break into his own house?) and pride. Yes, it's a proud thing to be a lock-picker! Anyhow, Mike ran to the front of the house to turn off the alarm before we could set it off. After that, we were home-free!

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Time to Face the Facts

I already wish I was back on vacation! The best part of being away for a week was to be able to temporarily ignore all of my responsibilities. Now that I'm back, I have to face all of that not-so-fun stuff that regular people deal with all the time. The moment I got home I payed some bills. My next task will be to schedule a bunch of appointments: doctor, optometrist, dentist, SAAQ... and I have to renew my Medicare card. So much to do! I want the beach back!

Well, one good thing about being back home is that I get to sleep in my own bed! And I started back at work today. What I enjoy about going back to work is all of the attention I get: "Oh Nancy, you look so tanned! Did you go on vacation?!" Ha ha! And then there's one of my coworkers who keeps telling me I look "disgusting" whenever she sees me. She's just kidding, though. "You're cute but you're still disgusting!" she says, "You know what I mean, your tan looks great!"

On a completely different note, Mike started his new job yesterday! It sounds really great and I'm so excited for him! He's a career man now! What's the most exciting part about the new job?: "I got my own plaque with my name on it!" he says. Yup, I'm jealous. I work in an office and I don't get a nameplate! Of course, that's because it's a shared workspace... not nearly as cool. Anyhow, I guess seeing your name up there for everyone to see must really make you feel official, huh?

Monday, May 09, 2005

Canada is a Cold, Cold Country

I feel like I'm so far behind! I've just spent I don't know how long catching up on everyones blogs and it seems like there's some pretty exciting stuff going on: new houses, new cars, moving across the country... I feel like I've been gone for ages!

Anyhow, Cuba was great, we had a wonderful time! I'm not going to say too much about here for a couple of reasons. First of all, the internet isn't working at my house (again) so I'm at the library and I only have a short booking on this computer. Also, as per my usual, I kept a journal during the trip and I will (eventually) be posting it online so that - if you feel like it- you can read every last detail of our trip to Cayo Coco. I'll also be printing all of my photos and assembling them into a scrapbook, again, as per the usual. Just so that Kim can look at them...!

Hope to see everyone soon, it's been a while!

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Adios

I'm off to Cuba in 1 hour!

Have a great week, everybody, and I'll see you when we get back!