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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!

With all the activity we’ve been up to over the last while — work continues to be busy, and the new house is keeping us hopping — it’s been easy to ignore the holiday looming up on the horizon. No cards have yet been written, and few gifts have been purchased. The Christmas muzak in the stores and the decorations all over the office buildings haven’t even made an effect this year. I think it’s because most of them went up at the beginning of November, when thinking about Christmas was clearly ridiculous. It being December 4th, it’s no longer ridiculous, but now starting to get a bit scary — there’s not a lot of time to get ready!

On the plus side a lot of things have been falling into place in the last week. At work we finally have the go-ahead for the next phase of work, which is a huge relief. Now we’re in the fun “design” phase of the project, which is where we have the most opportunity for creativity and to come up with workable — or maybe unworkable — designs which will carry us through the next few months. I’m building a new project plan which is complicated but actually kinda fun as well in a perverse kind of way.

At home things are good as well. Anne turns out to be a total expert at the whole installation-of-blinds thing. My skill lying in other areas — setting up the home theatre being the point in question at the moment — I’ve pretty much abandoned the blinds stuff to her, and with minimal fuss though some muscle pain she’s come through in spades. We are now able to change clothes without flashing the neighbours, which makes a nice change, for them as well as us.

We knocked a couple of other tasks off the list last weekend as well. First, we made the decision to keep the slightly oversized fridge we’d purchased for the basement. With a restocking fee of 20-30% (depending on who you spoke to at Home Despot) it was going to be expensive to get another anyway, and a kind friend pointed out that all we needed to do was switch around the hinges on the cupboard door (or remove the door altogether) and the not-being-able-to-open-the-cupboard-because-the-fridge-is-in-the-way problem would magically disappear. Big win. Second, we also drove out to Georgetown as planned and ordered us a dining room set. It should arrive sometime in January, which will be great!

‘Tis the season to be frazzled….

Busy week, but we’re continuing to see less of the house as a big pile of boxes, and more as a place to live. Oh yes, and there was a lot of work, too…

Tuesday I got flattened by a brief spell of the flu. I had a fever when I woke up in the morning and felt extremely woozy, so I stayed home, slept, and watched some TV. Anne picked up the Extended Edition of the Two Towers for me — just out that day — and we watched it that evening. Very good, though I have to admit I fell asleep for some of it.

By Wednesday I felt better enough to go back to work, which was good as there was lots to do. I felt successively better through the day.

Thursday night, Calvin choir recorded a few pieces for the CBC Choral Competition at St. Mary Magdalene’s. (Steph decided that recording in a church without heat — Calvin’s boiler’s been busted since September — wouldn’t work so well.) It was really weird to be back where I’d sung for ten years, but felt good to have the wonderful reverberating rich tone of the building again. Unfortunately it was a bit of a frustrating session as the tuning kept going flat. Very irritating. Still, we got through it and Steph sent an email raving about how well it went.

Yesterday was nothing but work, though Anne cooked a fabulous pork roast for dinner which was excellent. She’s currently off having her hair done while I raked the leaves — 5 big bags full and only halfway done — and we’re going shopping for blinds next. No rest for the wicked! Well, except Tuesday.

Wow, what a busy week we’ve had! The weekend was another whirlwind of boxes, this time involving cats as well. The week has been long and hard for me, and although Anne’s taken the week off work, she’s been working hard on the house for most of the week as well.

The house is great, though we’ve had a couple of minor teething issues. The first thing was that the boiler was turned down to the minimum setting so our showers were, shall we say, tepid. More importantly, yesterday we discovered that the second floor bathroom tub wasn’t installed perfectly, when a leak started coming through the plaster ceiling into our kitchen. The plumber fixed that problem today (we’ve had extremely good service karma throughout this process, by the way) but now we have some holes in the drywall that need repairs.

Ah well… The cats are happy, and despite the minor issues, so are we. It’s a beautiful house, and when we get it set up properly (whenever the heck that will be) we won’t want to leave it.

Not much to comment on other than how happy it is not to have another house move on the horizon any time soon!

Another Hallowe’en come and gone. We went out for this one, and saw the 1920 black & white movie Nosferatu at the ROM, accompanied by live music courtesy of the Toronto Sinfonietta. We got there early and got great seats. Not the world’s best movie, but it had a couple of creepy bits. Our favourite part, not creepy at all, was when Nosferatu got to Bremen and walked through the town carrying his own coffin! You’d have thought the guy could rustle up a couple of undead servants, or something…

We moved all my stuff out of storage into the new house on Saturday, and my muscles are still a bit stiff. But it was Good… We slept over in the house on Saturday night and walked to the local coffee shop on the way to choir Sunday morning. It’s going to be just great. This week we’re in packing mode — Anne’s apartment is full of boxes, mostly full — and Saturday the movers are coming for Round 2.