Forgive me Internet, for I have Slacked

It has been 365 days since my last blog post.

Where to begin? Well, I’m still alive. Although this blog has suffered from neglect, I have continued to record my life online, but in a more divided way. Running and exercise has been recorded on Daily Mile. Knitting projects and stash are faithfully catalogued on Ravelry. I’ve been Tweeting. I will now sum up the past twelve months in less than 1000 words. Here goes…

Plenty has happened since last May, with the most significant change being my father’s death in February 2011 at the age of 78 after a long and difficult struggle with Alzheimer’s Disease. I am grateful for the peace and dignity of his passing, but he is sorely missed.

Chronologically speaking, D and I finished our renovations last June and moved into our new condo near St. Lawrence Market in mid-July. At the end of July we took a short trip to Montreal, and drove out to meet D’s extended family at a place called Magog in the beautiful Eastern Townships of Quebec.

In August, I did the Midsummer Night’s Run again, and we had a slightly longer holiday, this time to Croatia, where D enjoyed scuba diving and I ate lots of pasta in cities whose names began with Z.

In September, I ran the Scotia Half-Marathon. After that, it’s all a blank.

In October, D got his full motorcycle license and I started an Editing Principles course at George Brown, taking up my Thursday evenings. We made our first batch of homemade wine, a tasty Malbec called “Drunk Robot”. We also did an ill-advised trip to Canada’s Wonderland for the Hallowe’en Haunt (never again!!), and went for a cheesy romantic 2nd anniversary dinner at La Maquette. I knit a lot – two hats, two shawls, a shrug, a cowl and a tea cosy.

In November, we went on a road trip to Stratford and Port Dover to visit friends and play board games. We also got stuck in an elevator during the Annual General Meeting for my condo – not fun. As usual, we had an incredible American Thanksgiving dinner with our American peeps. Yum. More knitting shawls, a baby jacket for my cousin’s son, and some more cowls for Christmas.

December was a lot of holiday parties and a total birthday party fail, followed by a madcap Christmas Eve trip to upstate New York to visit Darren’s mom for Christmas. We had a beautiful drive through postcard-perfect snow-covered mountains and enjoyed fine hospitality at her fire-heated cabin in the woods.

January 1st was a triumphant day – I finally completed my audiobook recording of Susanna Moodie’s “Roughing It in the Bush” for Librivox. 18hrs 48mins total OMG. I started my Grammar for Editors course at George Brown, eating up my Tuesday nights. My good friend Nona did her thesis defense, so I got to see her after a long absence, and we went to our friend Emma’s housewarming. I also knit a toy crab. Fun.

February was a bit bleak – D went on his long-term goal trip to Thailand to dive, soaking up sunshine and eating delicious spicy noodle dishes, while I huddled in our apartment in the frozen tundra we call Toronto. I did manage a few outings: one brunch with my friends Adam and Jenny, one ladies night with my girls that had some marvelous hot tub fun, one fateful trip to an antique bookstore and also an archery store in Toronto to look at bows with my friend Zeena… but otherwise all I remember is a lot of cold, stormy weather. My Dad passed away peacefully on February 26, and I’m grateful that D was home to support me as I helped my Mum through the arrangements.

March was quiet. D and I bought recurve bows and did some shooting at the outdoor range near the Ontario Science Centre. I caved to peer pressure and bought an iPhone – my first personal smartphone. We visited our friends Amy & Paul at their home in Newmarket and saw their sweet daughter.

In April, D tested for and got his G2 license, allowing him to drive without me in the passenger seat. We celebrated by driving Zeena to the Bow Shop in Waterloo, furthering the archery frenzy. I realized I had missed most of my Editing for the Web course at George Brown but pulled a hail mary and passed the course by scoring 100% on the final exam. We flew Porter to New York City to visit Lara and Aaron, and went over the bridge to Brooklyn to join the wonderful Bill and Heather in Park Slope for Easter dinner. We enjoyed Central Park and Chelsea and Alphabet City and touring the United Nations, and I bought a small laptop while drunk after a great night at P.D.T. Good times.

And now it is May. We held my father’s funeral on May 14, where I reconnected with my lovely godparents from Philadelphia and their many children and grandchildren. I started a new course at George Brown in Copyediting, eating up my Monday nights. D sold his motorcycle, and we are making plans for our staggered upcoming leaves of absence from work. I have one month left in my job here at Cabinet Office before heading back to my home position at the Attorney General. In September I will be taking a year off work, where I hope to buckle down to some creative writing at long last. D will follow me, taking his year off starting next summer, so we have a few months of overlap, possibly for some traveling time together.

…bringing us up to today. I can’t honestly say that it will be easy to get back into the swing of blogging again. The combination of being busy and contented with life makes it hard to write consistently. But I’ll do my best to not leave it so long next time. Even if I’m no longer as interested in the “know thyself” aspect of keeping a diary, I do think it’s useful to have an external hard drive for the brain – memories recorded for when memory fails.

Until next time.

I Blame PopCap

For those of you who got really sick of seeing the booties in my last post getting dusty in my blog, and are mad at me for not writing anything about my recent trip to PAX East in Boston, or the purchase of my new condo in the St. Lawrence Market area, or any other little personal things I may have been up to lately, all I can say is: BLAME POPCAP.

My life has been brutally annexed by the game Plants vs Zombies lately. It’s a simple little tower defense game – zombies are attacking your back yard (or roof, or pool), and you have to garden quickly to stop their brain-eating rampage from invading your home. I can’t explain to you why it’s so addictive, it simply is. For those of you who have had hours or days of your free time swallowed whole by the devastation of some of PopCap’s other delectable goodies, such as Bejeweled or Peggle, I hope you understand my predicament. On the plus side, it goaded me into making a nice container garden on my balcony (see above) in case of zombie attack on Yorkville. You never know.

Now that I’ve taken pains to explain why I’ve been such a naughty blogger lately, let me try and make amends.

First, the day to day minutiae. After making a companion stuffed fleece and terry cloth toy dragon (named Lloyd, see above) to follow up on the triumph of my stuffed knitted Linux penguin (Grumpy), I am taking a break from toy making for a while and focusing on finishing my green triangle quilt (also see above). Desperately avoiding the desire to embroider tiny plants and zombies onto it. Knitting a pink version of Ysolda Teague’s Cloud Bolero, and am already off my stitch count (I hate yarn overs!). Reading a bunch of things – just finished a whack of obscure Agatha Christie (The Clocks, The Listerdale Mystery), and am working on re-reading Bird by Bird, Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert (on loan from MintyNinja), and a tentative start on Terry Pratchett’s massive Discworld series, The Colour of Magic, which has been aggressively marketed to me over the years by a series of maniacal fans, including Edwud, Philip and David.

Next, Travel. Pro Tip: if you are flying to Boston from Toronto, take Porter airlines, their service is AMAZING and their marketing is killer, and on top of all that, if you have a mobile phone with Foursquare and you check in at “Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport Ferry” while traveling the 400 meters to get to the Toronto Island Airport, you unlock the “On a Boat” badge. Wicked.

Boston was lovely. Darren and I decided two PAXes in one year was a bit too much, so avoided most of the heavy nerdery to do some sightseeing and sampling of the local restaurants with my friends HA and BW. Things I did enjoy at the con were the retro gaming room, which had a library of classic NES, SNES, Colecovision and Sega games, and the ancient but beautifully preserved systems to play them on. Right next door was the classic arcade room, where you could play free pinball to your heart’s content. I had a go at Dragon’s Lair and a completely bizarre Japanese game where you play pigs with dart guns being attacked by floating foxes held up by balloons (no, seriously) called… Pooyan. *snicker*

In Boston itself, we tried both ways of getting from Logan International Airport to Hynes Convention Centre. Another Pro Tip: don’t bother with the new “Silver” line. It sucks. It’s not even a subway, it’s just a bus that runs underground for a while, then gets insanely crowded, then lets you off at your terminal. Seriously, just take the shuttle to the Blue line, then transfer to Green. It’s WAY faster! We walked the whole Freedom Trail, starting at the Boston Common and going all the way to the USS Constitution. This was my second time walking it and it was every bit as amazing as the first time I did it. Also, the stupid crazy scary rusty see-through bridge between Copp’s Hill and Bunker Hill was still scary as hell, but I crossed it without plunging to my death, so that was okay.

Food-wise, the best place we ate, hands down, was the Parish Cafe on Boylston. Gourmet sandwiches from local celeb chefs all over Boston. Every bite was fabulous, nice patio, and a handsome wooden bar. Emma’s Pizza in Cambridge ran a close second for tasty, with great ambience, nice wine, and thin crust pizza that I could have kept eating all night. The rest of our noms were found on Newbury Street, including TeaLuxe which provided us with some powerful chai and matcha action.

I won’t bother writing about the new condo purchase, since we don’t get the keys until next Monday, and it won’t be much to look at for a while after that, since we need to renovate the bathrooms and kitchen, paint, buy furniture and move in. Hoping to get all this done before the G20 arrives in Toronto in late June.