After an unbelievably busy week at work last week I had a nice relaxing weekend. Saturday I played tennis with Dave and then gingerly went back to the weight room (last time I was in pain for a week) to try and get a routine started. Saturday evening Molly cooked for the Usual Suspects -- pork medallions, baby lemon potatoes, and yummy pasta salad, followed by a baked berry dessert, all extremely delish. Sunday the trip crew met up at Loblaws and we bought and packed most of the food (all of the non-perishables) for the trip next week. Then I went home and went back to trying to finish $%^& Starcraft (I'm on board 6 of the final Zerg boards in the expansion set, and it's Really Hard). After an evening game with Dave we went for a jog, my longest yet: up University Ave to Harbord, across to Bathurst, down to Front Street, back to Simcoe, and home. Took about 40 minutes, I think... (I wasn't watching the clock. It FELT like an hour and a half!) Dave dragged me through the last 15 as I was (apparently) not breathing fast enough for most of the run, and therefore starving my muscles of energy. (That was his theory, anyway... All I know is that I felt like my batteries had run flat.)

After that relatively strenuous weekend I'm not feeling too back this morning, although my walk to work was a bit slower than normal. Still, I think the last month must be doing me some good; the first time we went for a jog (and it was about 2/3 that distance) I was in pain for a couple of days.

Kate is going to come to Ontario on Labour Day, but will be spending most of that week with friends. However, she might stay over for a couple of nights the following week, which will be really nice. Also, Mom & Dad are flying back into town on the 6th and will be staying overnight with me before taking their car back to Guelph. It's turned out to be really handy having wheels and I'll be sorry to see it go. Still cheaper to get taxis everywhere, of course.
posted by Tom at 9:45 AM | link | (0) comments

I had a wonderful weekend up at the cottage of Rob and Anna Kennedy, two choir members at St. Thomas's Church. I drove up with Heather Fitzgerald and her husband Jeremy, who is a graphic artist. (I plan on following up with him to see if I can buy a print or two -- he showed me some of his work and it's great!) The Kennedy compound (I kept wanting to call it Kennebunkport, after the home of the American royalty, but the web tells me I was wrong, it's in Hyannisport) has three cottages on a very nice lake, and we swam, ate, sailed, windsurfed, ate, swam, chatted, and ate all weekend. The weather was fantastic.

Highlights:
- variable winds pushing me all over the lake on the windsurfer (I hadn't windsurfed since high school but it came right back)
- Andrew turning out to be the Energizer bunny of swimming (unbelievable distances, basically never stopped)
- Dierdre's boyfriend Greg telling us all that the gifted program for kids was created so that the government can track potential troublemakers
- hummingbirds duelling with little tiny lightsabers over access to the sugarwater birdfeeder
- stopping randomly during the drive at a tiny diner with ridiculously low prices... in BOTH directions
- singing along with Manhatten Transfer on the way back
- realizing that I'd crispy-fried my shoulders (ouch!)
- tasting the baked potato with garlic butter

I'm LOVING this summer. Just two weeks until Algonquin Park!
posted by Tom at 10:19 AM | link | (0) comments

Visions of Max Payne are pirouetting through my head. Max is the hero of a wonderful new videogame I bought on Sunday (and promptly lost the rest of the weekend to). Other than taking a couple of hours off to play Dave some more tennis, I stayed indoors and sent Max after the bad guys with John Woo-like deadly grace. Fabulous game, wonderful graphics, will no doubt become the inspiration for a few more schoolyard shootings by troubled teens...

The project has been getting more and more busy. I'm already worried about my camping trip, scheduled for the last week of August. It's in the plan, it's extensively documented, but my team is understaffed, and so... I'm grimly hanging on to my belief that I'll get to go, but gearing up for a major guilt trip from Hermes, the overall tech lead for the project.

Current plans for the FlexLeave (my favorite topic):
- home for October and November
- December in England, back for New Years in Toronto
- January skiing (maybe some of February, too)
- March, April trek around the Meditterranean
- May, June in Toronto (lovely spring!)
- July choir trip to St. Petersburg
Back to work in August.
posted by Tom at 6:21 PM | link | (0) comments