We made some Winterlicious reservations today: beerbistro, Noce, and The Strip House. We’re still working on Canoe, of course*. Put these together with our upcoming (non-Winterlicious) visits to The Strand and Luce, we’ll be eating pretty well for the next month.

* For those of you who don’t know, Canoe is like my white whale. We always try to make reservations and it’s always booked; the one time we managed to get a table I had this work thing come up and I had to bail at the last minute. I don’t actually believe that Canoe exists anymore; I think it’s just a phone number and a website, both created to taunt me.

Rogers finally managed to turn on the few digital specialty channels I’ve been asking for: BBC Canada, BBC World, the Independent Film Channel and the Documentary Channel. I couldn’t remember what the fifth channel was supposed to be; feeling the pressure, I got the NHL Network.

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Last night’s debate was a bit of a snoozer. Nothing we didn’t already know (except maybe Martin’s promise to get rid of the federal not-withstanding clause…it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out). They were all their usual selves: Harper was vaguely creepy, Martin was bumbly, Layton was ineffective and Duceppe…well, one wonders why Duceppe is even on the stage for a national debate? Anyway. I have to applaud Paul Martin for demanding an intelligent debate as opposed to character assassination, but I suspect that was defensive posturing rather than genuine moral outrage since he’s the one being assassinated.

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Basketball’s back on tonight. Good; I need to work off some of the holiday festivities.

The “‘Assoc. of Hard Working & Decent People of the Greater Toronto Area“? What fresh hell is this?

[via TOist]

The main headlines on the issue of Toronto Life that arrived in the mail today are “Lust”, “Food”, “Politics” and “Condos”. I want to marry this magazine.

I finally got my mark back for the last course (the one that finished in November). Yeesh; build tension much? Not that I was worried — it was the IT course — but it would’ve been nice to know.

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Still on the MBA: As you can see by the counter over there on the right, I’m now officially 1/3 done.

For the last month or so I’ve been trying to decide which charity I should give money to. I decided against the humane society — both my wife and I give them money each month (though I urge anyone out there who loves animals to give what they can) — but that left me with the tough decision of where to put the money. I couldn’t decide between a local problem that doesn’t get enough attention or a global problem that…well, doesn’t get enough attention. In the end I settled on one of each.

Half of my money went to the Stephen Lewis Foundation, the other half to Autumn House, a shelter for abused women near where I grew up. I was able to make both donations at once — surprising, given how different in scope and resources they are — using CanadaHelps.org.

Rick Segal (via Scoble) shares a very cool story about digital life.

Vince Carter, wonderbitch.

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Hooray for c|net for getting into the whole “is gif pronounced ‘gif’ or ‘jif'” thing. People seem to be on the ‘gif’ (hard g) side…good; the ‘jif’ people drive me nuts. Now, to work on the “irregardless” folks…

I’m watching The Thin Red Line as I write this. I always forget how many good actors are in this movie: Sean Penn, Adrien Brody, James Caviezel, Ben Chaplin, George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Elias Koteas, Jared Leto, Dash Mihok, Tim Blake Nelson, Nick Nolte, John C. Reilly, John Travolta, Kirk Acevedo, Nick Stahl…geez. Nick Nolte especially; he’s amazing. “I’ve eaten, oh, untold buckets of shit to get here!”

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This is really interesting: the New York Times is reporting that author J.T. LeRoy is…well, someone else. At least, the person who appears in public as J.T. LeRoy. It’s a weird story about a mysterious person. My wife and I saw the premiere of The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things at the 2004 TIFF, and if there actually is a J.T. LeRoy…well, then I guess the story has gotten even weirder.

Today’s Daily Dose of Imagery is a picture of a park very close to where our new condo is being built. And if you don’t read DDOI regularly, add it to your bookmarks / feed subscriptions now; Sam takes a better picture every day than I’ll ever take in my life.