Working like mad here in Hartford. Paul Golding sent me an interesting NY Times writeup on the city from yesterday which goes some way towards expaining why the downtown core dies so thoroughly at dark. According to the article, 30 percent of residents of the city live below the poverty line, and only 61 percent have a high school diploma. 80 percent of babies are born to single mothers. Not that I'd noticed all of that in my time here: absolutely nobody lives downtown. Yikes.

Big news regarding my web site: I'm now an associate of Amazon.ca! That means you can go straight from my book review pages to Amazon's web site, where a small portion of any money you spend will find its way back to the cost of maintaining my site. Yes, there are costs. C$100 for two years for the domain name, US$9.95 per month for the site hosting, and US$35 per year for Blogger Pro. Will I keep it up even with no Amazon revenues? Well, yes. The cost of vanity. Anyway, if you want books from Amazon, keep in mind that you can get there from here, and that would make me happy. And if you haven't checked out my book reviews, what are you waiting for? They're really short and come with a helpful 1-5 scale of goodness.

Last weekend Anne and I made a list of some of the movies I haven't seen, but should. For my future reference (unless somebody wants to buy me DVDs, in which case, for their reference):
> The Big Lebowski
> This is Spinal Tap
> Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
> Blood Simple
> Down By Law
> Drowning By Numbers
> The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover
> Young Frankenstein

The long weekend is coming up next weekend, but as I'm poor I'm not going anywhere. Anne and I are tentatively planning to bike around the Islands, but that's dependent on me getting my bike fixed. (Very flat tire, no doubt because it's still the one that came with the bike, which I bought in 1991.) It's my turn to cook for the Usual Suspects, so I'm going to hit the summer issues of Gourmet when I get home and see if I can find some good barbeque recipies.
posted by Tom at 7:00 PM | link | (0) comments

Hey, I just found Heather Hoffman's web site! She started a blog in July. She and Gene have a baby girl of four months (God, the last 12 months have been productive) and are enjoying the daily mysteries of parenthood. Good times.

What else is new? Well, today's my baby sister's 31st birthday (Happy Birthday, Kate!), so for the next two months she's only one year younger than me. She's far, far away from me on Salt Spring Island in B.C., but I'm thinking of her. Wonder of wonders, I also actually thought of her enough on the weekend to get her present in the mail, which makes me maybe less of a bad brother than before. It's especially miraculous because I got a bit fried at work on Friday (now fully healed) and spent the whole weekend fretting over something that turns out not to have been a big deal at all.

Now back in Hartford, and the project progresses. On the plus side, I'm not going to have any trouble working any necessary overtime while I'm down here, because let me tell you there sure ain't much else to do in this town. (This is why I'm still in the office: the internet connection is my best form of entertainment here. Sad, innit?)
posted by Tom at 7:56 PM | link | (0) comments

A lovely Toronto summer weekend. On Friday I was homebound by the laundry machine, but Anne came around and cooked a lovely stir fry. We watched the Buster Keaton classic "The General" and had a quiet evening. Saturday she went off to have her hair done, and I did some miscellaneous shopping. The plan had been to go over to Robyn & Dave's new place to assist with the destruction of their kitchen and living room, but they were late in the day getting there and with Janet's party to go to we had limited time, so I called and begged off, promising to get to it the next day. Instead Anne and I had a nice patio dinner in Yorkville and walked down to Janet's place in the Bay Charles towers (or "Ray Charles Towers" as they are apparently known by St. Michael's College grads like Anne). It was a lovely party, with a small but friendly crowd of Janet's friends from grade school, university, and her choirs. We ended up staying until late late, and consequently slept in very late on Sunday.

Sunday we stopped at Loblaws and did some heavy lifting of groceries back to my place, including the necessary supplies for a barbeque. By the time we got back and unpacked everything into the fridge it was already 2pm. We hooked up with Robyn and Maddy (once Maddy's nap had ended), went out to Roncesvalles, and walked up to their place, a nice semi-detached two story on Ardagh Street. Inside was a scene of organized devastation: the living room floor was gone (though the subfloor was still in place) and the kitchen was half-full of broken tile and splintered wood. Anne helped Robyn keep Maddy entertained, while I joined Patrick and Dave in continuing the destruction of the kitchen. We eventually had the outer walls down to the brickwork, though since there wasn't any insulation (!) that didn't take as long as it should have. Anyway, it was a greatly theraputic afternoon. I haven't used a crowbar in longer than I can remember...

Back at my place, after showers we regrouped and I fired up the grill. We sat on the patio, drank wine, and chowed down on kebabs, baked potatoes, and grilled veggies. Then... I got up at 5 am and went back to Hartford. Woo hoo...
posted by Tom at 12:07 PM | link | (0) comments

Just back in from Hartford. The city centre is all of eight square blocks, and everything shuts at the end of the business day except a couple of restaurants and the hotels. Not much to do but work. Still, it's not so bad: there's some lovely colonial architecture, we're right across the street from the client and a block away from an art museum whose impressionist collection is supposed to be fine, and the Trinity College (Cambridge) choir is coming to sing in September. Plus the project is very large and the team seems nice, though my role (as pedantic bugbear) will probably not make me the most appreciated member thereof.

Anyway, it's only three nights a week and from the looks of things I'm going to need to work pretty late those three nights. I'm hoping that come September there won't be any problem in me switching to an earlier flight home on Thursdays which could get me home in time for the second half of choir rehearsals... or at least the pub part afterwards. :-)

Lots of socially stuff coming up: Janet Stachow's 30th birthday party on Saturday, Robyn & Dave's happy kitchen floor destruction party earlier in the day, then the following weekend up to the Snymans' cottage. Plus as much time as possible with Anne, of course!
posted by Tom at 10:27 PM | link | (0) comments

Well, what to say? I've had a wonderful, wonderful weekend with my new sweetie Anne Macdonald. She's amazing. I'm SO happy! Yesterday we had a great afternoon at High Park with Craig and Susan. I picked up a Frisbee and a soccer ball and we alternated tossing the 'bee (and sweating like mad, it was really hot) and lounging under a tree chugging water. Craig & Susan fed us pesto pasta for dinner and I went home to pack.

Yes, I'm back on the road. Before I even started work again last Thursday there were two projects fighting over me. The one that won is in Hartford, CT., where I am at the moment. They wanted me down here last week but my visa application materials didn't get to me until this morning and it was touch and go whether or not I would make it down here today at all. I waited in U.S. Immigration for a while, but fortunately the lineup wasn't too long and they were satisfied with my docs. I blazed through to the gate but actually had a few minutes to spare there before boarding started for my 12:45 flight. The little Dash 8 took just an hour and a half to get to Hartford, though the last few minutes were pretty bumpy (and apparently that's normal for the Hartford Airport, wheee). By 3pm I was downtown. Here, I'm going through masses of project materials trying to make sense of it all. I'll probably end up working late this evening, if only because the project lead has been over at the client site all day and I haven't had a chance to check in with him yet.

So, new beginnings all around. Oh, happy day!
posted by Tom at 5:31 PM | link | (0) comments

The choir trip photos are here! I've lumped them all into one category: sheer laziness, I'm afraid.

Having a great lazy weekend, in preparation for going down to Hartford next week to start my new project there. I went with Anne to the Bellevue Diner in Kensington last night, a great restaurant run by her friend Vicky Poulakakis. We ate like kings. Highly recommended. Due to a couple of delays with the Relocation team in the U.S. I'm not going to be able to go until Tuesday, so (darn) I guess I'll take the Civic Day holiday on Monday after all.
posted by Tom at 4:47 PM | link | (0) comments