OK, it seems I haven’t blogged anything since Friday afternoon. Lots to catch up on.

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Nellie, T-Bone and I had Friday evening reservations for The Strand, and were really looking forward to it: we’ve noticed it walking to our condo-in-progress, and T-Bone had it on her list of places to try. There was, however, a small hitch: a message waiting for me when I got home informing me that they were having some complications with their liquor license. I guess they were in the midst of removing some of the old brewpub gear (it used to be Growler’s); anyway, the manager informed us that he wouldn’t be able to serve us alcohol. Happy Friday the 13th. We hemmed and hawed for a while, considering other options, but decided to keep the reservation. We had a drink and made our way downtown.

Apparently not everyone was as flexible as we, since the place was empty. And I mean empty; save for one other couple, who didn’t end up sticking around to eat, we were the only customers in the place. There were no servers, only the manager. But he was nice — he even made a Shirley Temple for my giggling wife — and the food won us over. We all had steaks, and while nothing was mind-blowing or spectacular, it was a very good, very satisfying meal. We’ll definitely go back, especially once we’ve moved to the neighbourhood.

Still, we needed a drink to wash that down. We took a cab to College Street and ordered a bottle of wine at Sotto Voce; after many rounds of psycho gunman (it’s a curious feeling to find out that your wife thinks Chewbacca is sexy) and a final drink (Nellie: grenache; T-Bone: espresso martini; me: 12-year-old Macallan; Finchy: lager) we hopped into cabs and went home. Nellie and I couldn’t help ourselves, and watched another episode of Veronica Mars.

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The warm weather we were having earlier in the week seems to have disappeared, replaced by chilly temperatures and arctic winds.

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I heartily agree with much of what Ben Rayner said in yesterday’s Toronto Star (which I can’t seem to find online). I endorse his cries of death for:

• Saturday Night Live (except for Tiny Fey and Amy Poehler)
• David Jason Howie James John Jack Gray Mraz Day Blunt Mayer Johnson (or, put another way: “secretary rock”)
• Pat Robertson
• 50 Cent (BR: “C’mon, world. Wake the f— up.”)
• The Arctic Monkeys
• Radio, satellite or otherwise.

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The Canadiens fired coach Claude Julien yesterday, then thumped the San Jose Sharks 6-2 last night. 4 points from defenseman Andrei Markov, including 2 short-handed points, helped bump me back into a slim lead for first in my hockey pool.

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I watched Fubar (imdb | rotten tomatoes) piece by piece over the last week. It had some funny moments (“Woman is a danger cat” being one of the funniest sentences ever written/spoken/cast into HTML), some of which only because I recognized the behaviour of people we grew up around. Ah, skids. They’re a good time. Giv’er.

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Last night friends of ours had us (and M²/H²) over for dinner. They made a fantastic meal (rare beef, two nights in a row…mmmmmm…), showed us their beautiful home (which we haven’t seen since they first moved in and there was a frog mirror in the upstairs bathroom) and let us hang out with their hilarious son. Now *that* was a happy kid! It was good to see them, and good to catch up and compare notes on former colleagues. It was also good to actually have a glass of wine with dinner.

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The plan for today: Whole Foods, grocery store, laundry, Raptors game, economics textbook, The West Wing and the 24 premiere. Hopefully there’s time in there somewhere for eating and exercising.

Sadly, this has happened to me. At my old company I had a VP that demanded I keep track of my time in 15 minute increments. Not surprisingly, I quit shortly thereafter.

Mmmmmm, Green & Black’s organic dark chocolate…

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A Conservative government is looking quite possible. I find this unsettling. Fiscally the tories and liberals are practically twins, so I find no relief there, and am left only with the thought of a prime minister who would’ve surely taken us into Iraq, who probably would’ve blocked same-sex marriage, who almost certainly wouldn’t have instituted a firearms registry and who will likely weaken the economy. Lest any conservatives out there are still naive enough to think that a Tory government leads to means a stronger economy, go do some research.

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A week ago I talked about how my internal mail system delivered a package, opened and two months late. Well, today something even weirder happened. In May 2004 a friend sent me a cheque for some maple syrup he bought from me; it got lost in internal mail and he sent me another one. Since it was only for $16 he didn’t bother stopping the payment. Today he emailed me, telling me that the first cheque — the one sent 19 months ago — was cashed four days ago. This seemed strange, firstly because I hadn’t cashed any cheques and secondly because you can’t cash a cheque that old. From what we can tell, it must have floated around the depths and morasses of internal mail for a year and a half, been opened by somebody (which is issue #1: why is someone else opening mail addressed to me?), somehow been sent to my bank’s processing centre and deposited into one of my accounts. But not my primary account…not even a chequing account! It’s all very, very odd; lots of things wrong with that, obviously. My friend is tracking down how a 19-month old cheque gets deposited at all; I’m trying to find out how someone thinks it’s ok to open my mail. Crazy.

Best. Ad. Ever.

Today’s daily dose of imagery makes me homesick for a neighbourhood that we haven’t even lived in yet. Incredible.

I’m jealous that my brother gets to go to this Mogwai concert and hear songs from the new album. I won’t hear it until March, dad blast it.

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Seriously? iPod-ready jeans? Seriously?

I’ve heard about this, but this is the first article I’ve seen that really lays out the fuss being made over Steven Soderbergh and Mark Cuban’s plans to release a movie in theatres and on DVD at the same time. I can see why studios like it, but it’s pretty obvious that theatre chains hate the idea. Too bad though; customers want it, so it’s only a matter of time.

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I watched Prizzi’s Honor (imdb | rotten tomatoes) over the last week or so, drawn mostly by the fact that it had been nominated for 8 Oscars and was some kind of low-level classic. It was, in fact, shit. Boring shit, to be precise. It was neither dark nor a comedy, despite being billed as both. Maybe it’s just because of my hatred for the 80s, and maybe this is over-generalizing just a bit, but every single human in the world looked ugly/ridiculous/both between the years 1980 and 1989, so I didn’t buy Kathleen Turner as an attractive woman. The whole movie played like a substandard episode of an aging dramedy; you know, when a show’s been on for seven years and they know they’re going off the air so the cast just starts phoning in their performances and collecting their paycheques, not really giving a crap about the quality of their work? That’s what this felt like. And, apparently, the entire Motion Picture Academy was on coke in 1985 when they nominated it for four major awards. Yeesh.

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Speaking of phoning it in, the Habs were awful last night. They somehow managed a 1-0 lead through two periods but then coughed it up with less than ten minutes left. And when I say coughed it up, I mean Radek Bonk, with about 3 minutes left, passed it to a Colorado player in his own zone and then forgot to cover his man (who wound up scoring). Hack, hack.

We’ve just finished booking our weekend getaway to Montreal in April. We’ll be staying here and going to see a Canadiens game. Who knows what else we’ll get up to? Time to brush up on my French, I guess.

It’s 8 degrees in Toronto today, freakishly warm considering it’s the middle of January. Hooray for global warming!

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I agree with this post on Torontoist: people from Ontario are being hypocritical about the hate they have on for this upcoming film about Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. Serial killer stories — many of them based on true stories, as this one is — air on TV or come to theatres all the time, but this one seems inappropriate because it happened here.

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You need to go read this post on Peace, Order and Good Government, Eh?

To counter the Conservative attack ads, which have been running for several weeks now, the Liberals have launched some of their own. Some people are lamenting this advent of American-style politics north of the border, but anyone who thinks they’ve only just arrived obviously doesn’t remember the conservative ad that made fun of Jean Chretien’s speech.

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A bit bruised today after basketball, but not sore. We had 14 16 (thanks T-Bone) people out so there was lots of time to rest. Others weren’t so lucky though; pacman might’ve broken his jaw, t-bone hurt her back, I think I hurt somebody’s arm wrestling for the ball…it was a war of attrition out there. Still fun though.

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I really don’t know why I bother wearing a tie. It’s so warm in the office that I just rip it off the second I get here.