This story is disgusting, horrifying and tragic. How can anything called an “honour killing” even exist? How could any man be so deranged that allegations of adultery by his oldest daughter would lead him to slit not only her throat, but the throats of his younger daughters (aged four, seven and eight) as well?

.:.
We hung out with CBGB for a bit last night before they leave for a few weeks. We’ve been away for a while and they’ve been packing, so we haven’t seen them in almost a month. Anyway, I think I’ve had too much rich holiday food, ’cause I couldn’t even finish my beer. I need a week of salad just to counter all the chocolate I’ve eaten.

I just finished setting up the Roku SoundBridge that my wife gave me for xmas. It’s so frickin’ cool; I can now listen to my entire music collection (which is in MP3 format on my PC) from my living room with this cool little device & remote. It only took half an hour of messing with my wireless network settings and downloading Windows Media Connect to get it to work. It’s soooooooooooooooooo much fun…

I also got my new MP3 player — a 1GB Sony Network Walkman — all set up and ready to go. It looks pretty slick and it’s only the size of a lighter; it’ll be great for running. Nellie got her Sony bean going as well after a few hiccups.

More recent acquisitions: we did some boxing day shopping where I picked up Revenge Of The Sith, Naomi Klein‘s No War: America’s Real Business In Iraq and Pelican‘s The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw; I also bought The Zephyrs‘ When The Sky Comes Down It Comes Down On Your Head from KarmaDownload yesterday. Nellie bought Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason and picked up the original as well (to replace her damaged copy).

My teams won all three of their games tonight. Barely.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig. Our flight home was uneventful and we arrived around 4:30. The cats are very happy to see us, and haven’t really let me out of their sight yet. Actually, that part’s kinda creepy.

And now…five day weekend! We kicked it off by ordering some dinner and watching a few episodes of Arrested Development; now I’m watching the world jrs (surrounded by cats) while Nellie digs into her Buffy box set. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Apparently my wife has chunks of metal in her jeans, ’cause the metal wand kept beeping around her side. But we got through and found a snack at Tim Horton’s. Funny story: our cabbie knows the guy who runs Florida Jack’s boxing club in Toronto, just around the corner from where we live. Small world.

Okay…gonna vom…

We just got back from dinner at Da Maurizio. We both ate so much that we’re ready to pop and splatter our delicious innards all over the wall. It was every bit as amazing as we remembered, maybe moreso. The shrimp? Sumptuous. The pumpkin-filled ravioli? Absurdly good. The duck? Spectacular. The chocolate custard? Perfection. Even the amuse-bouche they brought us was good, and I don’t like most of the ingredients (salmon, onion, caper, etc.). They even comped the dessert when they found out it was our anniversary. The only thing comparable to the food was the service.

God, I love that place, even if I do feel like a balloon that’s about to pop…

Ahhhhhhh…now *that’s* a vacation day. We dragged ourselves from the cooooooomfy bed around 9:00 and walked up to Cora’s for breakfast. After that we looked around for some boots for Nellie (with no success), picked up some DVDs, books and CDs on sale, grabbed some snacks, bought a few things at MEC and came back to the hotel to relax. We plopped ourselves down on the couch, read some newspapers, watched a movie and just chilled. In a couple of hours we’ll head down the street to Da Maurizio…can’t wait!

Our complimentary Globe tells me that several people were shot (one of whom died) on Yonge Street yesterday, about 3 stops south of where we live.

C’mon, handgun ban.

Update: the garlic fingers were delicious, and Canada is kicking Finnish ass. All is right with the world.