christmas with the fam

I don't know about you, but I spend Christmas with my family and it always yields a few good stories. Here are the highlights from Christmas 2010 in Ottawa.

• Watching my mom balance her chequebook. She keeps all of her receipts, uses the ledger at the end to add and subtract, and then compares it against the printed statement that arrives in the mail. To the dollar she does this. Just to make sure she knows what she has spent and to ensure that the bank is not cheating her of anything. I happen to be know her bank manager and am seriously tempted to tell him that she doesn't trust his system. And then, when I wanted to return a sweater she gave me for Christmas (because it happens to be pretty much the exact same sweater she gave me last year ... from the same store) the receipt is nowhere to be found. Great system mom.
• On my first night home, we had a lovely meal. Sadly, we sat down for dinner at 7:30, which happens to be when Jeopardy starts. Now I love Jeopardy as much as the next person, but my parents feel the need to scream the answers at the tv. And they know a lot of the answers (or questions I guess?). Between the two of them, they could be the next Ken Jennings. While annoying, it also explains a lot about where I got my nerdiness/ability to remember random pieces of useless trivia.
• On Monday night we went to a cocktail party being hosted by family friends. It was quite lovely. Lots of good food, good champagne, and good conversation. Then the party went sideways. The young people, which for some reason included me, decided to go out on the town. Now I didn't expect this party to turn into a big night out, so I didn't even bring my purse with me. So I had to hit up my dad for 60 bucks to go out drinking. Yep. I'm 34, and I'm just that much of a skid. The party continued at the bar. When I decided to leave at about 2 am, one of the guys said to me "you can't leave ... it's the last day of summer, we can't stop drinking yet." Two problems with that sentence. A, it's December 27th, not labour day and 2, the bar has stopped serving alcohol, so we have to stop drinking. Anyhow, I made it home. Barely.
• An interesting post script to this story is the fact that somehow my mom made it home with only one shoe. It only really makes sense in the context of a Canadian winter, whereby you wear boots and bring shoes to wear inside at the party. She figured out it was lost when they drove another couple home and the shoe fell out of the car when she got out of the back seat. When she emailed said couple to enquire about her lost shoe, the couple was very confused because they were so drunk, they thought that they had gone home with another couple. Or a cab. They had no recollection of my parents driving them home. At any rate, the shoe was found 2 days later on the driveway. All that to say, it was a good party.
• The next day I had a full Bridget Jones/sad single moment when I went to a baby shower hung over. I'm pretty sure I still smelled of booze and stale cigarettes.

There were plenty of other memorable moments, but really these are the ones that stand out through the haze of champagne - which I had every night. Of course we had turkey, christmas pudding, and lots of leftovers. I somehow managed to get about 10 hours of sleep every night ... might be related to all that turkey. All in all, a great Christmas. On to NYE!

shopping fail

So on Sunday I ventured out to do some Christmas shopping. Instead of getting what I needed to (i.e. gifts for other people) I bought myself these ski boots. They are rad. They have this mechanism that allows them to inflate and deflate. Kind of like those old school Reebok pumps. Not sure if the "air shell" technology is just a gimmick or not, but they have to be better than my old Head boots that crush my feet and have resulted in permanent trauma to my nailbeds (thanks to CG for the medical diagnosis).

And then I went to Holts and bought this dress (incidentally it looks just as good on me as it does on the model). Unfortunately they can't be worn together.

So I have evening wear and weekend wear, but still no Christmas presents. Awesome.

December 10th-19th

A quick gander at my dinner choices for the past 10 days. And I wonder why my pants are too tight.

• Friday - frozen pizza while babysitting adorable 11 month old named Gibby.
• Saturday - vietnamese noodles while dogsitting devil dog Shasta.
• Sunday - lovely pasta with italian sausage and fennel, homecooked with love by SS.
• Monday - tomato and pineapple pizza with HC and aforementioned devil dog.
• Tuesday - Life cereal.
• Wednesday - defrosted turkey burger (originally made by me) and salad.
• Thursday - lamb flatbread at Thompson's before going to see A Christmas Carol.
• Friday - lovely roasted chickens with vegetables and scalloped potatoes courtesy, again, of the lovely SS.
• Saturday - mushroom and prosciutto pizza with SS after plan for risotto fell through thanks to false labour (don't worry, not mine or hers).
• Sunday - Christmas burger dinner at District with JM and KA.

There were other things too. On Sunday I made 7 dozen chocolate chip cookies for a cookie exchange at work. I think I ate at least 6 on my own. Then I got six dozen cookies to bring home with me. Because that's exactly what I need. I also re-attempted the prize winning pie to go with Friday's chicken dinner. Once again the pudding did not set and I had to freeze it. Recipe is obviously flawed, but it still tasted great. Friday was my goodbye party at work. It involved wine and cheese. I discovered something called black truffle cheddar. Dairy goodness indeed. Brie and figs. Yum. Oh, and the wine of course. You can never go wrong with wine.

Did I mention that it's not even Christmas yet? This does not set a very good precedent. Good thing it's almost 2011 and I can make some resolutions.

addiction and 90s tv

Anyone else watching Celebrity Rehab this season? I've already mentioned my love of Dr. Drew, which is one reason I watch. The other reason of course is that I love a good trainwreck. On this season, the size of Rachel Uchitel's lips intrigue me. I'm not sure how she can talk really. I also call bullshit on Jeremy London's story about being kidnapped. Not sure why he's still sticking to his guns. It's quite sad really as I used to love him on Party of Five. I so wanted to be Julia Salinger dating Griffin . I loved Party of Five period. While it was a good show on it's own, my love of it probably also comes from the era in which it was broadcast. It was on while I was at university and along with Felicity, it was appointment viewing - first in residence and then in various living rooms off campus, always with a group of girlfriends who loved it as much as I did. In fact, I think the only reason I stuck with Lost through all 6 seasons because of my love for Charlie Salinger aka Jack Shephard aka Matthew Fox.

no more sweater vests for Harper

Last night at the Conservative Caucus Christmas party, this happened. So our fearless PM might have impressed his conservative colleagues and may even win over some of the electorate, but his wife is not amused. Laureen's reaction is priceless (at 1:54 minutes). As much as I echo her reaction, he does have Iggy beat on this one.

memories of kellermans

Friday night was my work Christmas party. It's now Sunday morning and I think I've finally gotten over my hangover. It turned out to be a really fun night, with everyone taking full advantage of the prosecco on hand. There was karaoke involved. We all remember how much I love to karaoke. RB and I kicked it off with a memorable version of Time of My Life (the original, not the really bad Black Eyed Peas version. They should be ashamed of themselves for co-opting such a great song. Sorry for the rant, now back to the story at hand). It went a little something like this ... we even attempted the lift!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpmILPAcRQo

(for some reason it won't let me embed. annoying. but I suggest you follow the link. it's awesome)

I actually own the Dirty Dancing DVD. My mom gave it to me for my birthday a few years ago. It's a bit of a joke in our family because when the movie came out, my mom wouldn't let me see it. As it had the word dirty in the title, she figured I was too young (I was 11). But then, we went to her boss' house for dinner and his daughter, who was a year younger than I was, had it on VHS. My mom couldn't say no, because it would look bad, so I finally got to watch it. And of course loved it. Still do. I carried a watermelon is one of my all time fave movie lines, and I use it whenever there is a watermelon present.