We had a very operatic weekend: Tosca on Friday and Peter Grimes on Sunday at the COC. Both performances were excellent. Tosca's obviously a bit of a melodramatic chestnut but the famous arias were handled with aplomb and the bad guy was truly evil which really helped. Peter Grimes is a whole different animal, with complex music, complex characters, and an intense plot, and had it had fantastic reviews we might have been disappointed. Fortunately the reviews were bad, so we were very pleasantly surprised. I'm heavily into Benjamin Britten right now as Exultate's doing a concert of his music so I could pick up on a lot of familiar Britten themes and memes in the work. Great entertainment, anyway.

On Saturday we did a site visit to our new home and spent several hours poking around, measuring and looking for flaws. On the one hand, it's too late: we bought it, along with deficiencies. On the other hand, the builders are still finishing a couple of bits so we may be able to get the deficiencies corrected. We came up with a fairly long list but they're almost all very minor, e.g. a bit of missing paint from the baseboards, a light that's out. We also planned out what would go in each room, and for the most part it should fit our stuff very satisfactorily. The only problem is, of course, the cats: with a rental apartment in the basement we don't have an obvious spot for the cat litter boxes to go, even with three bathrooms in the remainder of the house, so it looks like we'll have to put them in the study to begin with and see how that goes.

I'm off to England tomorrow for my grandfather's memorial service. My parents were there all summer and my sister flew over last week, so it will be a full family affair. Mum's done a great job with the memorial service and it should be lovely. I'm picking up my suit from Harry Rosen and packing tonight!
posted by Tom at 5:30 PM | link | (0) comments

First, a sad piece of news. My grandfather died last Saturday. We're celebrating the end of a long life (93!) well spent. Through to his final month he was playing competitive-level bridge, and watching soccer, tennis and golf, his mind as sharp as ever. I'm going to miss him a lot.

Now the happy news... Anne and I found a house on the weekend and successfully bid on it on Monday night. We're going to be homeowners! It's a lovely 3 story with a finished basement apartment in the heart of Riverdale, a popular residential neighbourhood just east of the Don Valley. It's empty at the moment so we take possession almost immediately -- October 24th... And there's really not much to do before the place will be ready to move in! We have to get closet rails installed in the closets, and buy a couple of appliances, but other than that, we're all set. We're thrillled.

So, all said and done it's been a very memorable week...

posted by Tom at 7:06 PM | link | (0) comments

After a good house hunting session last weekend we spent the first part of the week in suspenseful activity preparing to put an offer in on a house. It was a very nice house in the Annex just south of Bloor, with a tiny yard but new electricals, high ceilings and lots of space. By Wednesday afternoon we had seen the place three times including a tour around with a house inspector ($325 plus tax) and were ready to bid.

Sadly, so were three others. We end up losing the house by $10K -- and that's $10K more than the $41K we were willing to pay over list price. So we concluded that we'd fought the good fight and that we weren't sorry we hadn't bid more... just sorry that THEY had bid more.

Onwards...
posted by Tom at 11:53 AM | link | (0) comments

Tuesday after a very slow and relaxing long weekend. I basically did almost nothing. I played a bunch of video games, watched a movie, and basically zoned out. Last night I helped Bruce move my home theatre system out of storage into his and Steph's basement. They've kindly agreed to give it a good home for a couple of months while Anne and I shop for a house. We stayed on afterwards for a barbeque (mmm... marinated jumbo shrimp).

Neil Katz and his wife Asako stopped by last week for a visit and we went out for dinner together. Turns out that he knew Anne from the U of T music programme, but even weirder they were friends and he'd been to a party at the place where Anne and I are still living some years ago. The world is this big: >o<.

Not much else of news, except Grandpa has recovered to the point where he's going to be checked out of hospital soon, but he's going to need ongoing care for a while so he's going into a convalescence home. It's all good!
posted by Tom at 7:05 PM | link | (0) comments