Two weekends have passed since the last blog and that means I'm shirking my duties. And they've been busy, busy weeks, with lots of eventful happenings, too!

The 22nd of July saw the end of an era when Robyn Laurel Kalda married David Marshall Lasby. It was a wonderful ceremony, all of about half an hour, and it all went swimmingly. The bar was over-stocked, the guest list was refreshingly small, and all in all it was a huge success. Congratulations and best wishes to them!

Dave has continued in his campaign to inflict pain on me through exercise. We played some tennis last week, then again on the weekend. Friday we went running. Sunday we worked out in the gym in the condo complex. As a result, I am now in pain and stiffness. Why am I doing this again?

The project is going very well but it's very busy at the moment. I seem to be running in all directions despite all of my best efforts to have everything planned... Still, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger!

Gah. Must blog more often. Omitting important details, but I gotta run!
posted by Tom at 11:52 AM | link | (0) comments

IPO day. The webcast live from New York has transmission and bandwidth difficulties and didn't come up when promised at 9:15 this morning. Result: we switched over to CNBC and watched the ringing of the bell at 9:30 accompanied by some mystified commentators trying to figure out what the work 'Accenture' means. The stock priced near the upper end of the range, at $14.50, and seems to be climbing gently this morning, which is good news all around. No news at all on what, if anything, this means to us plebes, although there are definitely going to be some stocks granted at some point.

In the mean time, the FlexLeave saga continues. I'm now scheduled to start my leave at the beginning of October, and carry it through to the end of July 2002, to allow me to go on the Consort Caritatis tour of St. Petersburg and the Baltics. This means that I can finish my current role on the project, which should be quite interesting. I'm looking forward to a busy but rewarding couple of months of work, followed by ten (10!) months of leave.
posted by Tom at 10:36 AM | link | (0) comments

Confusion reigns. Found out yesterday that HR is loath to promise that I'll be able to start a FlexLeave in September, as the economy may have started picking up by then and their main concern is getting costs off the books right now. So they'd prefer that I started FlexLeave right away, or in mid-August at the latest. The project leadership is trying to talk them into promising that I'll be able to take FlexLeave in September, but if not will let me go (as late as they can). Result: I don't really know what's happening yet, but FlexLeave is 99% a go... sometime.

Gosh life is confusing.

In the mean time, I paid my membership dues at the University Club, a private club that's a couple of minutes from my doorstep and where I've been playing squash with Sean Morley. It's a nice place, and I hope I get better use out of it than I did when I first joined a couple of years ago. They have good events, and there's a very active under 40's club (although unfortunately mostly male).

Robyn and Dave are getting married on Sunday! Ack!!! I'm learning some music to do a brief duet with Kelly while they're signing the register. Ack, ack!!... I mean, it'll be lovely. Yeah. That's the ticket!
posted by Tom at 11:06 AM | link | (0) comments

Well, I made the mistake of being gracious at work. I offered that as I didn't have any concrete plans for my FlexLeave I would stay until September, if that was determined to be good for the project. Silly me. They took me up on it, so now my FlexLeave won't start until the end of the current phase, which is likely to be late September, realistically, although we're shooting for mid-.

Good thing I'd postponed calling the kitchen people to tell them I'd decided not to proceed. Now that I have an extra month to earn my full salary (and hopefully save some more) I'm going to go ahead and launch the reno.

Had a great week last week, with rehearsals and then (seems very short, and in fact was only four days!) a terrific concert to open the Elora Festival. Exultate performed Israel in Egypt jointly with the Elora Festival Singers. It was nice to do more Handel -- felt comfortable, like singing the Messiah, but with the novelty of new music added in. The performance was a lot of fun and quite electrifying.

Saturday I slept in, read the paper, played on the computer, and joined the Usual Suspects at Joyce's to welcome her home from Hong Kong. She's got a lovely apartment with a marvelous view westwards towards the sunset. Very nice.

Sunday I slept in, downloaded some maps from Toronto Parks & Rec, and had a hearty tennis game with Dave. The score shall be kept confidential to protect Dave's feelings, since he's getting married next week. Besides, the games were a lot closer than the sets. Pete, Robyn and Dave came 'round for dinner and we had a great barbeque with expensive bits of beef & lamb (hmmm), vegetable kebabs, potatoes, fresh baguette, pie and ice cream! Yay for summer!
posted by Tom at 11:00 PM | link | (0) comments

In the previous post, I mentioned the FlexLeave programme. It looks 90% likely that I will be approved to take FlexLeave, and I've officially applied for 6 months leave from work. I haven't figured out exactly what to do with the time yet, but I'm getting quite excited thinking about some of the options. Thoughts I've come up with so far include:

- Going to work in Europe for a while
- Travelling through Portugal, Spain, southern France, Italy, Greece
- Getting a personal trainer and getting a serious exercise programme going
- Biking around Ontario, or Canada
- Seeing Toronto as a tourist, visiting all the museums, parks, etc.
- Volunteering
- Skiing
- Taking a cooking course
- Finally doing a complete inventory of my cupboards and boxes and throwing out or disposing of all of the detritus
- Spending some time trying to reorganize my retirement savings plan to try and develop a return on investment of greater than 0

The only downside at the moment is I've decided that, since my income level is about to plunge, I should hold off on the kitchen renovation that I was about to launch. I still really want to do it, but I think it can wait, especially if I'm going to be travelling. Who knows? Maybe I'll decide that I want to move somewhere...
posted by Tom at 11:34 AM | link | (0) comments

Brief note from the Air Canada lounge at Heathrow [amended and appended on Wednesday back in the office]. What a wonderful trip! Chronologically (backwards), I rented a bike yesterday and pedalled 20km north to Edam, a lovely city with a very beautiful church. I managed to catch an organ recital, which was very nice and Bach-y, had an ice cream, and then belted it back to Amsterdam against the wind. (Windmills turning quickly all around.) The Dutch countryside turns out to have canals everywhere so that I imagine there are very few places inaccessible by water. Houseboats, too. It was a beautiful day, but I had no had or sunscreen so consequently am feeling somewhat burnt today. [Peeling today. Yuck.]

Saturday Ivy and I spent the day touring museums & walking the city streets with Katherine Hill. We had a wonderful time: the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum are both packed with wonderful artwork, and Katherine introduced us to pannekoeken, familiar pancakes but with unfamiliar (and wonderful!) fillings. (I had bacon and apple in mine and the ladies had cheese and apple.) We ended the day with a fine Malaysian meal near the railway station, and a visit to the Alto jazz club in the Leidseplein area. Ivy and I stayed for three sets by a wonderful local group, and inhaled way too much (only tobacco, though; despite Amsterdam's reputation the drugs are not omnipresent).

What else? I stayed in a fabulous bed & breakfast for the weekend, the Ambassade. It was rather too expensive, mind you... Still, great location, massive breakfast buffet in a wonderful setting overlooking the canal.

The course: great fun, but I didn't know as much about web servers as I should have to be an instructor, so I had to do a lot of cramming. Teaching it is a very good way to learn the material! The students were from all over, with varying experiences, and I think everybody got a lot out of the experience.

All in all, a wonderful trip and a great break from the project work back in Toronto. Nice to get home to see the cat and my friends, of course.

I'm still thinking about the Flexleave thing. I might take six months off work, but I'll have to work out what to do with my time. Suggestions? Also, I would have to figure out what to do with the apartment... Hmmm...
posted by Tom at 10:05 AM | link | (0) comments