I'm back from England after a mostly restful but all good holiday. I stayed with my grandmother (near Gatwick in a little village called Cuckfield), my grandfather (Chandler's Ford, outside Southampton), my uncle and aunt (Michenhampton, near Bristol), and my old friends Anne Dutton and Andrew Sedman (and their almost-three-year-old Owen). I went to Winchester Cathedral for the carol service, had a few holes of golf in light drizzle with my cousins, and ate and slept a lot. Typical Christmas, in other words.

New Millennium's Eve! My resolutions for the new year: more action, less procrastination, and greater generosity of spirit. I hope you have had a wonderful holiday, and you enjoy 2001.
posted by Tom at 7:31 AM | link | (0) comments

Really fast note from the airport to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas and I look forward to seeing you in the New Year! Yours, Tom.
posted by Tom at 8:29 AM | link | (0) comments

What a week! Work, work, work, work, work.

Ok, I'm back in town briefly. The concert last night was great, and very well attended. Exultate was written up in the Star yesterday, and I'm sure the publicity was a big reason we had so many people come. The choir did a great job, with a program made up of a lot of short pieces from around the world.

I'm off to England on Monday, which will be lots of fun. Looks like I'll crash in London on Monday night, then go down to my Gran's for a couple of days in West Sussex. Then off to Chandler's Ford (outside Southampton) on Thursday, and over to my uncle's place on the weekend and stay there over Christmas. Still working on the rest of the plans thereafter. I'm coming back on the 29th.

New Year's party is at my place, but I haven't done anything to organize for that yet... Yikes.

Happy holidays to you and yours!
posted by Tom at 11:10 AM | link | (0) comments

Here's the link to the Exultate concert details: www.exultate.on.ca/concerts.cfm. Hope to see you there!
posted by Tom at 8:35 PM | link | (0) comments

Wednesday. Why is it always the case that the week before the holidays is the busiest week of the year? It seems everything needs to be finished this week. We scrambled yesterday to prepare a discussion document for a new client, and I'm working on finishing some project profile reviews for my team today. Tomorrow we'll spend the whole day in a design session with an Interwoven consultant, where we expect to be reasonably far ahead because we already know what templates we want and what the workflow should look like. But it's still scheduled to take the whole day, so I switched my flight to Toronto back to Friday so I wouldn't miss anything. Now I'm going to get out of the airport and zoom home and then have to scramble up to St. Thomas' Church so I can man the doors for the Exultate Christmas concert.

If anybody's reading this, and you're in Toronto, you should come to that concert. It'll be great.

Anyway, along with the piles of work this week we got some good news. Looks like I may have some work in the Toronto area in the new year. And there was Great Rejoicing.
posted by Tom at 8:32 PM | link | (0) comments

I'm back in Seattle. It's cold and damp, but unlike Toronto there isn't a thin, clammy layer of snow outside so it's an improvement of sorts. I am, however, deeply envious of my teammate Ivy who is at this time in Bali. Where am I going? England. Whoopie.

My weekend was supposed to be spent writing Christmas cards, doing Christmas shopping, and otherwise getting into the holiday spirit. However, I *actually* spent it playing a computer game. I think I can justify this because I have a cold and I didn't want to drag my weakened constitution through the soggy city streets. However, it doesn't change the fact that I haven't mailed any Christmas cards yet, despite having bought a batch over a month ago. To top it off, I left them in Toronto yesterday so I've got to go buy more today anyway.

I'm loving Blogger! Click on the button to the left to find out how to get your own.
posted by Tom at 12:52 PM | link | (0) comments

Time to get some links up: My old home page
posted by Tom at 11:46 AM | link | (0) comments

Ok! Looks like the blog is in business! Ok, back to life.

Stayed up way too late playing No One Lives Forever last night. The world gets a bit surreal at about 5 am. I'm stuck at what appears to be the first jumping puzzle of the game, which isn't bad considering I'm multiple hours into it. It's a bit frustrating because messing up = death and death = 20 second reload sequence and the timing is very tricky. Great game, though.

Did I say life? Better back up a bit.

For those who may be visiting to get caught up on where I am, I'm in the process of wrapping up an assignment in Seattle. Hard to believe it's been nine months already. While the first month Seattle lived up (down?) to my weather expectations (endless rain), it's been very pleasant since then. It's now turned cold for the winter, but to everyone's surprise the rains haven't really kicked in yet.

Seattle's a strange city. Actually, I like the city proper quite a lot, from the few times I've seen it. It has interesting topography, a beautiful harbour, some wonderful restaurants, a very well funded arts community, a pleasant sky line, and a great market perched on top of a cliff. Unfortunately the traffic to get into the city is brutal, and I live and work in Bellevue, a wealthy but deadly dull suburb to the east across Lake Washington. Since I've only spent a couple of weekends in the area in the last nine months (weekly commutes home to Toronto for the weekend) I haven't been downtown as much as I'd like.

My work in Seattle/Bellevue won't finish completely until March (at the earliest), but as of the end of this coming week I'll be part time on the project, with only one team member left full time on site. It remains to be determined what I will do with the rest of my time, but I'm hoping for something in the Toronto area as I've been travelling a lot recently, and have basically been on the road for a year and a half.
posted by Tom at 11:13 AM | link | (0) comments

Still got a cold. And the fog delayed the plane. Bzuh.
posted by Tom at 1:09 AM | link | (0) comments

Cloudy, foggy day here in Seattle. I hope my plane isn't delayed. It's my second-last trip home for the year, and I'm feeling under the weather (cold, achy head, sinus congestion) so I'd rather not spend a lot of time at SEA-TAC. Plus, if the plane is late I'll miss my connection at Vancouver and won't get home to Toronto until midnight at the earliest.

Inter-time zone commutes suck.

Last weekend the whole team went up to Whistler. The weather was great, and it dumped snow on the mountain the day we were driving up, so we had a terrific time. I rediscovered muscles in my calves and thighs, and learned that I really need more lessons. Clearly, the one I took last March (how to turn on the bumps) didn't stick.

My home page still isn't up, but hopefully I'll get it running tomorrow and this blog will start going live! Very exciting...

Code id by dose. Bzuh.
posted by Tom at 2:17 PM | link | (0) comments

(initiate)
Blog. Blog blog. tomleslie.ca is on the air.
(end)
posted by Tom at 2:38 PM | link | (0) comments