Another busy month, with a lot of activity. We had James Alliston, my cousin from the UK, to stay with us for a few days. He was up from the US where he's working as an apprentice rider and stablehand at a showjumping stable. He needed to get his visa renewed outside of the country, which (despite our family's collective fear and loathing of the process) turned out to be pretty straightforwards at the US Consulate on University Ave. While he was here we went around the zoo, which was cold but pretty fun -- it's a bit run down, but the baby Tigers, naked mole rats, rinoceroses and warthogs were, well, cute & playfully aggressive, blind and urgently spastic, huge and sleepy and just plain ugly, in sequence -- so a good time was had by all. We also played a lot on the XBox, and he was whupping my hide at Top Spin (tennis) in no time.

Last night our new dining room table finally arrived. It's our wedding present from Anne's parents, and it's gorgeous! The wood is a similar colour to Anne's piano -- very dark -- and it's large enough to seat eight when the middle leaf in inserted.

Planning for the wedding continues sporadically. We checked out a couple of reception halls and selected George Brown house, a lovely old historic building near the art gallery and not too far from the university. The only problem with it is that it's not huge, so we're restricted in the number of guests we can invite. Anne's arranged for 20 rooms to be reserved for out-of-towners at the Chestnut Street student residence. It was recently a hotel, so no need to panic about the rooms, and the chef is superb, plus, it's right downtown so walking distance to pretty much everything there is to see. And close to the university and George Brown house as well.

Next up is the invitations, then rings. Anne's got The Dress to buy at some point -- which will follow an exploratory "mocking of the bad dresses" wedding store crawl which she and Susan have been gleefully planning for months.
posted by Tom at 12:30 PM | link | (0) comments

A happy New Year to everyone! Hard to believe it's 2004 already, and the vacation time is almost over... It's been a wonderful and relaxing holiday! Highlights included visits from Anne's parents, having my sister to stay for a few days, seeing the ROM's excellent Art Deco show, and lots and lots of video games... Santa brought me an XBox so I've finally descended to the depths of console play. It's not too bad, actually... Anne and I are having great fun playing Top Spin (a tennis game) and I've devoted numerous hours to Knights of the Old Republic (a really cool Star Wars role playing game).

We've substantially finished setting up the house now... Big milestones passed successfully included getting a shed built in the back yard by the wonderful team Ron & Don, getting closet organizer people to come in so we can actually hang stuff in the closets (yay!), getting a big storage thingy for the office, and taking yet another car load of stuff to Goodwill. (Six or seven carloads in total so far!) We have yet to take some of the furniture to Georgetown for longterm storage, and clean up the basement so we can (finally) start looking for tenants.

It's going to be a really busy couple of months coming up. Exultate's holding our annual fundraiser on March 6th (please please plan on coming) and I've got a couple of projects to manage to conclusion at the same time. Plus we're moving ahead with the wedding planning (June 19th in case you haven't heard yet).

I feel tired already!
posted by Tom at 4:28 PM | link | (0) comments