Yule

A brief summary of the last 9 days or so.

Last monday : Started coughing at work, Alice had stayed home from daycare because she was poorly
so I knew something was afoot.
Tuesday : Sick as a parrot. Stayed home with the munchkin the both of us feeling very sorry for ourselves
while we both declared ourselves to be 'malade'
Wednesday : "Feel better!" - I did. This is what people say to you when you are ill in canada I have discovered. Odd, its like an instruction to get well soon!  I managed to get through the day while
spending half of it at the warehouse.
Thursday : Feel Worse, I managed a half day at the office feeling genuinely crummy, coughing plenty and
headaches and body aches. Decided to cut my losses and head home.
Friday : Made it to the mall while the house was being cleaned. Came home and stayed in the house
for the next 3 days!
Saturday : Watched films/Tv and cooked a nice big turkey. Alice was very grumpy all day having stayed up
late the night before (The first time I missed the family xmas eve bash)
Sunday :  see above
Monday : Feeling better. Had some inlaws over and ate and drank some, still coughing like a bastard all day long though.
Tuesday : Inlaws, feeling better, still coughing.
Wednesday : Snowboarding - good day out on the slopes with Julie and her brothers. Got home at 8 and watched Un Prophet : A great great film, loved it a lot.
See below for some footage of the flying threesome (me not included)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9qvoctHu_Y

Thursday : Today... feeling better still, had a hair cut and tidied the house.

My life is hardly blog worthy - that I know.

The Christmas Party

This week (Thursday) we had our annual Christmas party.

At the age of 35 I have been to a few of these, obviously, but this year I was hoping for something
a bit different than your standard hire a hall, feed people and give away some prizes kind of affair.

And so it proved to be.

We spent several hours at the Academie Culinaire making a variety of dishes while working as a team
to impress the judges.  This was a good idea and I totally enjoyed the atmosphere. It gave you a chance
to engage with your colleagues in a different way than normal and it really brought groups together. After
making lunch we ate our end products and then took the rest of the day off.

The evening was spent at a restaurant called Otto in the W Hotel which was very enjoyable, if a little
fancy for my liking. Still, I must have drank a lot of booze as I was somewhat wayward on my journey
back home.

The next day I lost count of the number of times I heard people complaining at how slow time was dragging
and there were a few folk that stayed out till 3.30 or so.

All in, best christmas party ever.

Film reviews

Some time ago I noticed from a reference book we have called Halliwell's Essential Film Guide that I had not seen a large proportion of Mr Halliwell's 4 star (top graded) films.

I set about to try and change this by joining a mail order movie club in addition to watching films from my local  DVD rental store. I joined up with cinemail.ca and I started to watch the 'classics' in alphabetical order.

Now, in that last few months there has indeed been a few shall we say dubious choices starting with Alexander Nevsky a 1938 Russian black and white job about an even older soldiers battle to save his city or something.

Verdict : A piece of crap. I watched about a third of it before deciding life was too short.

The dubious choices may have finished last night with Atanarjuat : The Fast Runner. If anything this was worse, I can't believe this is a 4 star film, my personal opinion is that its a 1 star mockumentary, it was TERRIBLE. Really who can stand watching this rubbish?

Anyway, I think on the back of this tripe I will switch from watching Halliwell's classics to things I know I will like, such as British films and TV series I have missed or would like to watch again. This makes a lot more sense to me, as my subscription to cinemail will be more useful and I don't have to waste my evenings watching old nonsense any more.

Ashes. 2nd test

Earlier this week England thrashed Australia at cricket. In Australia.

These are words I havent had the chance to utter for some time if ever. We don't play Australia
in cricket too often, in test Match cricket even less so and even less often in Australia. Once
every four years to be precise and pretty much for my entire life we've been shit at cricket and
gotten thrashed by the Aussies.

The shoe is now on the other foot cobber!

Im not crowing yet though. One more victory in the next three tests and we retain the ashes, this
is practically unthinkable. Especially seeing as on our last tour we lost 5-0 in tests.

Its a real pleasure to watch a winning England team. Most young people watch and care about
one day cricket and 20-20s as it gives them a result in a few hours. Me personally I love the
test match game, 5 days of cricket that may not even give a result. This is the man's version of
the game. Any old cricketer can get in and swing the bat a dozen times for a quick fire 50. It
takes real reserves of mental concentration, skill, determination, stamina and strength of character
to bat for a whole day of cricket. Something Essex's Alistair Cook has just done several times.

While Petersen got the credit for his double this week and Swann won the match by bowling
out the Aussies, for me A.N. Cook is the man of the moment for his extraordinary batting feats so
far. He is simply incredible the length of time he is spending at the crease, they cannot get him out.
I read if he gets a duck in every innings from now on he will average over 50 for the tour. How about
that?

Anyway, I love cricket and I love beating up on Australia. More of the same please!

As cold as

From as ... as...

As cold as a well digger's arse 
As cold as a witch's tit 
As cold as any stone 
As cold as blue blazes 
As cold as charity 
As cold as ice 


All of these sum up how I have felt being outside the last couple of days. Maybe its the
windchill, maybe its my Britishness, perhaps Im not wearing enough warm clothes, or I
a simply a big girls blouse but I feel really cold right now.


Still. Enough of my grumbling.


This weekend went well, I spent the evenings watching England thrash Australia at cricket
a pleasure that to me knows no bounds. I went out to a funny restaurant called Biron : 
http://www.restaurantbiron.com/ where the ambience was wonderful, the waitress was great, 
the beer and wine was tasty but the food was rather odd to put it mildly - white chocolate soup
for dessert anyone? 


Afterwards we too in a band at a local pub, the blah blah blahs. They were great, but the pub
wasnt very cool. Still, it was pleasant to have a night out and about, even if it was Freezing bloody
cold. Yesterday I took the munchkin to see Tangled, the latest Disney film about the Rapunzel story,
my review is here .


Carry on.

Last day of Movember

Tonight the tache gets it.

I wrote an email today to friends, family and colleagues as follows :

Over the last few weeks some of you may have noticed that I have been growing some facial hair above my mouth.

Then shortly after some of you have asked just why I would be doing such a thing. Most of you now know that I am

not making a retro fashion statement but am doing it in essence to raise some money for cancer research. 

This Movember, the month formerly known as November I’ve decided to donate my face to raising awareness about prostate cancer.  

My donation and commitment is the growth of a moustache for the entire month of Movember, which I know will generate conversation, controversy and laughter.

I’m doing this because 4,400 men die of prostate cancer in Canada each year and one in six men will be diagnosed during his lifetime.

This is a cause that I feel passionately about and I’m asking you to support my efforts by making a donation to Prostate Cancer Canada.

To help, you can either:

*  Click this link http://ca.movember.com/mospace/338942/ and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account

* Write a cheque payable to Prostate Cancer Canada, referencing my name or Registration Number 338942 and mailing it to: Prostate Cancer Canada, Suite 306 145 Front Street East, Toronto, ON M5A 1E3, Canada.  

Or simply  donate to me in person - I will do the rest and ensure you receive the receipt by email.

All donations are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.

For more details on how the funds raised from previous campaigns have been used and the impact Movember is having please visit: http://ca.movemberfoundation.com/research-and-programs.

Thank you in advance for helping me to support men’s health

-------------------

This year I have raised over $500 for cancer research and might top last years effort. Together our team has raised $1640. An amount not to be sneezed at. 

Obviously I have some vested interest here as my Mother died of bowel cancer when I was 21; 

Cancer is nobody's friend and the search for the cure is one of the finest ways that we can improve living standards and lives for humans that I can think of. 

Growing a moustache is a fun way of doing practically nothing while being able to ask for funds. If i had to walk or run a marathon Im not sure I'd be able to do it, but not shaving a portion of my face for a month? easy. 

Still, Im looking forward to shaving the bloody thing off tonight.

Dollarama

I went to the dollar store at lunch aka Dollarama.

Its awesome.

I don't care what anyone says, this place has everything you need all for ridiculously low, straight
from the chinese factory prices. How they manage to sell all this crap and still make money is utterly
beyond me. Their margins must be tiny and the wages terrible. Whatever, its retail mecca as far as
I am concerned.

Today I walked away with a bag full of Christmas trash for the price of a bag of tree hanging chocolates
at the Bay (another store I love but for totally different reasons). Dollarama sells Christmas junk and kids
treats by the boatload and all of them for hardly any cost whatsoever. I am truly a fan. In fact I think I
will become a fan right now http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dollarama/112627508803246

The fact that a mere 22 people are fans of this amazing store is in itself laughable. There were 22 people
queuing up at lunchtime already. I suppose its more of a statement about the kind of folk who shop in
dollarama perhaps not having internet access than it is about the stores relative popularity.

Advent calendars for $1? Thats just daft.

Pricing it Right

I've been a Canadiens fan since 2001-02.

That season we had Jose Theodore in goal, he backstopped us to a 4-2 upset over the 8th place Boston Bruins in the first round of the playoffs.

Im going to do a quick comparison of how far the team has come since that year and how much better we are in almost every department.

Of the players in the 2002 team who I would like to see in my 2010 team there are hardly any.
The standout being Andrei Markov who would have played if he had been fit. In short, this is as fine a Habs team in my memory, we are stacked with skillful fast players who can do so many things so much better than teams I've seen before. We are better in almost every department and we're on a 4 game winning streak against some top teams.

The main reason for our success so far this season is Carey Price. He's been outstanding. From a frankly godawful start to the year when he was shellacked by Boston with a SV% of .500 he has got better and better and he's nearly matched his win total from last year already, he's got as many shutouts in 18 games as he's had in his career and he is doing exactly what we hoped he would in stopping as many pucks as possible.

The best thing about this team is we are strong throughout. We can afford to lose Markov to injury and still beat the best teams. We have strength in depth, we can score from lots of places and we don't give up a lot of shots each night. Its fun to be a Habs fan right now and Im enjoying watching where it can go.

Players I would have in my 2010 team are in bold.



2010 2002
 C. Price  J. Theodore  
  M. Cammalleri   D. Audette  
  M. Darche   F. Bouillon  
  L. Eller   J. Bulis  
  H. Gill   A. Dackell  
  B. Gionta   K. Dykhuis  
  S. Gomez   M. Hossa  
  J. Gorges   J. Juneau  
  J. Halpern   C. Kilger  
  R. Hamrlik   S. Koivu  
  A. Kostitsyn   M. Komisarek  
  M. Lapierre   A. Markov  
  T. Moen   Y. Perreault  
  A. Picard   S. Quintal  
  T. Plekanec   M. Ribeiro  
  B. Pouliot   C. Rivet  
  T. Pyatt   N. Sundstrom  
  J. Spacek   J. Ward  
  P.K. Subban   R. Zednik

Brit and Chips

When I first arrived in Montreal all of five years ago I had a craving for fish and chips. This craving was probably arisen from the fact that Fish and Chips is regarded as a peculiarly British dish, a staple of our diet and something that we as Brits did well.

Its also something that is hard to find done well. I remember once ordering it at a local restaurant in my first few months only to receive a dish where the fish was still partly frozen! Other times I have definately eaten some pretty decent attempts at the English Fish N Chips, notably McKibbons Irish pub, Hurleys and La Mer.

Today I visited britandchips - a new fish and chip shop on Rue McGill in old Montreal.

I chose the staple, the classic Cod and Chips. It was so busy in there when I arrived I wasnt sure I could be bothered to wait but after a few minutes it cleared out and so I took my order.

The result ?

Pretty good. Despite the total being $13.92 for a takeaway lunch consisting mostly of chips I thought that the
fish was very tasty. A bit over cooked perhaps and lacking the lovely crispy light yellow batter I was hoping for, but the flavour was all there.

 The chips had become slightly soggy by the time I got back to the office but they
were certainly how I like them to be, not too thin, full of perfectly cooked potatoe and well fried. The container also had a slice of lemon (which I never use) and some tartar sauce that was tasty enough without being spectacular.


Will I go back? almost certainly but I would rather the plaice was a bit quieter and I'm not going to do a
drive out of my way to get there at lunch. In fact it pleased me to see the Quebecers enjoy a bit of British grub so much.