Just a quick note to say Happy New Year to everyone... I hope you have a wonderful 2003!

2002 was very good to me. I'm giving thanks this year for many things, but chief among them my wonderful girlfriend Anne, who's been making my life very happy for the last few months. I'm also grateful to have had the opportunity to travel in the past year. And to have great friends, and a wonderful family.

May you be as blessed.
posted by Tom at 5:55 PM | link | (0) comments

We're back! Anne and I got back to Canada on Friday after a wonderful week in England. The photos are here.

We started out on the 20th by picking up our rental car, a lovely little Peugeot, and driving to my grandmother's place in Cuckfield. There, we settled into the tower room in the house at the top of the hill, before walking down to Gran's to meet my parents who had just driven up from Chandler's Ford. Sadly my father had come down with some sort of stomach flu (Mum had had it a few days before) so he quarantined himself upstairs for practically our whole stay to avoid giving it to Gran, who's quite frail.

On the 21st, my cousin Olga came down from London for lunch. She's been working in England for the past few months, but moved back to New York on the 22nd, which worked out well for us. Mum cooked up a Christmas feast, with turkey, potatoes, brussle sprouts, etc., and it was really, really good. My Dad's cousin John Murray ("Jumrie") Leslie also joined us, and after lunch, Olga, Jumrie, Anne and I went for a nice amble through the village and stopped in at the local church, where some cherubic children were rehearsing their Nativity play under their parents' guidance. We nipped into the local pub for a quick pint on the way back.

The 22nd my Grandfather came down with the stomach flu, so my Mum changed her plans and drove back to Chandler's Ford to help him out. Anne and I had a quiet day with Gran, played some Scrabble, and went for a short hike north through the outskirts of Cuckfield. As with most of southern England there are excellent public right of way hiking paths through many of the nearby fields, but with all the rain that had been falling recently there was an awful lot of mud. We trudged back to the tower and changed into less muddy clothes before dinner.

On the 23rd we drove down to Chandler's Ford, stopping in Arundel to have lunch. Arundel's a lovely town with a cathedral and a very impressive castle, sadly closed to visitors for the winter. We pressed on and got to Chandler's Ford, where we stopped in briefly to drop off our things and pick up my mother to head up to Winchester for the carol service at Winchester Cathedral. We arrived early enough to get great seats, and the service was magical. I've been lucky enough to attend every year for the last few years, and it's become an important part of Christmas for me.

The next day we left Chandler's Ford to drive up to my Uncle's in Gloucestershire. The original plan had been for us to take Grandpa, but as he hadn't fully recovered from the flu he stayed behind with Mum. This saved us from a logistical nightmare of fitting him and his luggage into our little car on top of Anne's and mine. We drove up past Stonehenge, which was unexpectedly (and rather severely) closed, with three guards to prevent us from using the car park. Undeterred, we parked in a lane a bit further along and walked back to take photos from over the fence. Afterwards we pressed on towards Salisbury, stopping briefly at the much less impressive Woodhenge (which has concrete stubs to mark where the wood used to be).

Just past Salisbury, we stopped at Figheldean to have lunch with Anne Dutton and her children (Owen & Sybilla) -- Andrew Sedman, her husband, unfortunately had to work so couldn't join us for lunch. Anne served us a lovely soup and a great selection of cheeses. Owen was very excited to have us there, and Sybilla, initially very shy, soon opened up and showed off a charming smile.

Onwards we pressed, stopping at Avebury to see our final Henge of the day, a very impressive one that goes almost all the way round the village. Then we completed our drive to Burleigh and arrived at my Uncle and Aunt's just in time for a light dinner.

Christmas morning we went to church in Michinhampton, then opened presents back at the Howe. I got a number of lovely books, including a great anthology of humour from the New Yorker from Anne. The two of us received a pair of cookbooks from Olga and her family, which we will have to figure out how to share between us. Kate gave me a beautiful little tea set in a wicker basket. As we were opening presents, my Mum and my Grandpa drove up, and were able to stay for lunch and the afternoon before setting off back to Chandler's Ford. Kate called, and Anne called her parents.

In the evening I went with James and John to the Michinhampton tennis courts (floodlit) for a few games of two on one. James wiped the floor with us.

On Boxing Day, Anne and I drove down to Bath. We'd hoped to see the famous Roman Baths (after which the city is named) but they were closed. Instead, we looked through the magnificent cathedral and did some Boxing Day sales shopping before wandering back through the town's lovely Georgian streets to the car.

Finally on the 27th we said goodbye to my Uncle's family and got on the road to Heathrow. We had a pleasant trip home, with no rush, and have now basically got ourselves back onto Canadian time.

This afternoon we're off to Anne's parents' in Georgetown for a couple of days. We'll be back in Toronto for New Year's at Bruce and Steph's.

I hope you had as wonderful a Christmas as we did, and wish you all the best for 2003! And thank you for visiting my web site.
posted by Tom at 11:11 AM | link | (0) comments

Anne and I are in the business lounge at the airport, waiting for our flight. We got cheap discounted tickets so they wouldn't let me use my upgrades, but I still get into the lounge until February.

It's been a great couple of days! The Lord of the Rings was... well, let's just say you should go see it. Like I'm going to. Again.

Last night we had a client team outing to North 44 for truly excellent food. I had fois gras and the lamb chops, which were fabulous. I filled myself up with dessert, and was barely hungry again in time for lunch today, the University Club's members-only Christmas lunch: lobster, rare roast beef, turkey, crab, and I think I remember a couple of vegetables, then great desserts. No dinner for me today, which works out well for getting my body onto UK time.

Well, this is probably it for my ability to update the blog over the holidays... Won't be anywhere near a computer for a few days. Merry Christmas, everyone, and I hope to see you all in the New Year!
posted by Tom at 10:50 PM | link | (0) comments

Happy Lord of the Rings Day! Enjoy this brilliant cartoon from yesterday's PVPOnline.
posted by Tom at 7:28 AM | link | (0) comments

A quick tip for anybody looking to link to my web site. If you find an entry you want to link to (as opposed to just linking to the current front page), click on the "link" text at the bottom of the entry. That will take you to the permanent home of that entry. You can then copy the URL for that page (with the #number stuff at the end) to get your browser to jump to that entry.
posted by Tom at 1:16 PM | link | (0) comments

Monday, and a cold, freezing day it is too. Sunny and clear, as are all the coldest days in Toronto. Anne took her winter coat in for dry cleaning on Saturday, counting on our warm spell continuing for a couple of days, so she was very worried about turning into an icicle on the way to work this morning. Brrr...

Yesterday I cooked dinner for the Suspects: salad, rice, baked asparagus, chardonnay chicken (with leeks & mushrooms), and strawberry/rhubarb pie with candy cane ice cream for dessert. Yum!
posted by Tom at 1:09 PM | link | (0) comments

It's Saturday, the best-est day of the week. Slept in, did the crossword (tricky one this week, but we cracked it in the end), and had a very high scoring game of Scrabble with Anne. (She won 353 to 337.)

Last night we went to see the new James Bond movie, Die Another Day. It was basically good -- I particularly liked the bad guy -- but had a couple of truly atrocious special effect scenes. Now, c'mon guys. This is the 21st century. Special effects are not supposed to look fake any more, even when they are! Anyway, Halle Berry did a nice job, the plot was middling, and basically it didn't suck as much as it might of. I guess that's an endorsement.

Other than that, Anne and I are gearing up for our trip to England. We leave on Thursday and will be doing the family thing for about a week. Merry Christmas to everyone!
posted by Tom at 3:24 PM | link | (0) comments

And more on yesterday's theme, an entry from inpassing.org:

"The thing with casting and superclasses is like this: all mothers are women, but not all women are mothers. If I have something of a woman type... A woman object, if you will, I can't just cast her to a mother type. Well, not without... hrm."
--A GSI at a review session in Soda Hall
posted by Tom at 8:38 AM | link | (0) comments

A very exciting weekend! Congratulations to Kelly and Paul on the new, safe and healthy arrival of James Edward Asten Golding at 8am on Saturday, about 7 hours after the post-concert party wrapped up at their house following the Exultate Christmas concert on Friday. I went to see Jimbo in the hospital yesterday and he's looking small, red, wrinkled and very tired... but otherwise fine. Kelly and Paul are due to return home today.

Other events of the weekend: the Christmas concert, the Accenture holiday party at the Dow's in Scarborough, singing the second part of Bach's Christmas Oratorio in church on Sunday, attending the Pax Christi concert Sunday afternoon (Poulenc Gloria!) and Madeline Lasby Kalda's first birthday party (complete with very cute party dress and cake liberally smeared everywhere). And a fine time was had by all.
posted by Tom at 9:25 AM | link | (0) comments

I can't believe it's December already. Actually, I can believe it's December: it's been really cold. Still, Christmas is now officially Around The Corner. And guess what? I haven't written my Christmas cards yet! But... I have done most of my shopping! On Saturday the Globe had an article about online Christmas shopping, and so motivated, I fired up the PC and got rid of a good chunk of my Christmas list. Best yet, it's being shipped direct to England so I don't even have to carry it across the Atlantic!

Saturday night the Usual Suspects were round at Joyce's for her ab fab chicken/lemongrass/yummy soup and flavourful chicken curry. Yum!

Sunday we did the church thing and then invaded France. Followed by a trip up to Baldwyn Street for italian food.

The second of my three big client workshops was yesterday, so despite the fun stuff we did on the weekend I was pretty stressed on Monday. Well, not too stressed as I was pretty well prepared, but still... Anyway, the workshop went very well, so I'm quite relieved.

Last night was busy, too. First I met Anne at Kelly's surprise baby shower, which followed the Exultate Christmas Concert dress rehearsal. It was held at Bar Mercurio on Bloor, normally a very nice place, though last night I wasn't too impressed with the waiter telling me that he'd forgotten to place my dinner order ten minutes after he'd previously said he'd bring it out. I was on a deadline, as I had a ticket to the Accenture box at the ACC for the Leafs-Lighting game last night. I made it down about halfway through the second period, which is about the time that the Leafs, trailing 2-0, started playing hockey. They eventually won a very exciting 4-3 game in overtime.
posted by Tom at 6:54 PM | link | (0) comments