WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 1-7, 2002.
This week started off great, and ended great! Mike and I spent Sunday visiting with my mom and her husband, hiking in the woods, climbing some rocks (to my mom's obvious dismay), and enjoying a beautiful sunset. Then we spent the evening playing cards and had lots of fun until we went home. (At 2am!) On Monday, as if we hadn't done enough hiking last weekend, we went for a walk in the ravine, and found a new path... one that ended up with a smooth, almost vertical climb (or so it felt to me). Then we took a short walk to the video store and rented Amélie. And that was a fun movie!

Wednesday was practice night, and Saturday found us on the water. This weekend was the big Dragonboat race that we've been working for all summer. And we did pretty well, all things considered. Although our first race was too early in the morning for any decent human being to really be alive, we kicked some serious butt in our second race.

WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 8-14, 2002.
Sunday was the conclusion of the Dragonboat season for us. This was the race to end all races... or at least to end this weekend's race. And we did pretty good in our races today - and we won the last one, the one that really counts. Yay team! :)

Nothing much happened the rest of the week, or at least that I'm willing to remember, until Saturday. Mike and I went to visit my cousin and celebrate her husband's birthday. We took a nice long walk through the park, and revisited some memories of days gone by... and played on the swings like a child. What a rush! Oh yeah, did I mention that these are the kind of swings where you can lay down and let your head hang over the other side of the swing, so that the world looks upside-down? Yeah, I'm glad I don't suffer from motion-sickness.

Saturday night we went to an art show. Opening night. I've never been to one of these before, and I can't say that I ever will again, but it was interesting and I'm glad I had the experience.

WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 15-21, 2002.
Monday night we went to a potluck dinner, hosted by one of the ladies on our Dragonboat team. There was more food than we all could handle, and it was all so delicious. Even the dish that was created by accident - the sort that happens when you forget your reading glasses. (Next time you make hummous, try subsituting romano beans for half of the garbanzo beans. It's very flavourful, and a nice surprise.) I also realized that I'm starting to like smoked salmon.

Thursday - Survivor Thailand begins... Yaaaaayyyy!!!

Friday night I went out dancing with some friends. The music was loud beyond control, as usual, but we had fun in spite of our deafness.

Saturday.. Woe is me, I got sick. Not a hangover, but the illness I've been fighting off for the last week or so finally caught up with me. With a vengeance. It never pays to stay up til the wee hours and follow that up by not eating properly. On the bonus side, I got to watch four hours of the "most shocking moments" of rock and roll.

WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 22-28, 2002.
Sunday... Still sick. Possibly even worse. But we managed to get the laundry and groceries done. However, keeping food down became a battle for me today. I won. I think. And somewhere in the background of my sick misery, there was some award show on the telly. It should have been the Emmys.

Monday... I tried to go in to work today, but ended up coming home sick. This usually happens when you have trouble keeping your lunch down. I won, though. I think. And I curled up on my couch with my arctic fleece blanket and my teddy bear, and watched Shrek. And then I watched Titan A.E. And then I rested while listening to a bunch of crappy music that I'd borrowed from the library (I was sick, remember?) until Mike came home and saved me from myself. Thank you Mike!

Tuesday... Guess what? I'm still sick. How'd that happen? When I got back from the doctor's office with my prescribed drugs, I took a nice long hot bath and listed to some relaxing music. And finished my book. And decided that I didn't really like the book after all. Then Mike came home sick (surprise, surprise) and, since he was now the "newbie" sickie, I let him take control of the couch. So I went online and wrote a novel-sized email to a friend who probably forgot about me, it's been so long since I last kept in touch. Perhaps I should have wrote less, but to more people. I'm hopeless when it comes to keeping up with my email. Arrrggh!!!

The rest of this week went better. I slowly recovered (although not totally) from whatever flu-like illness I got. So now I vaguely resemble something like a human again. Oh yeah, and we got a rainstorm that used to be a hurricane (but, thankfully, was nothing like a hurricane by the time it came our way). That doesn't happen often here.

WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 29 - OCTOBER 5, 2002.
This week started with Mike and I getting locked out of our storage locker. Well, although (or because) we were optimistic yesterday about getting better, we ended up feeling worse today. So we stayed home and decided to rest. And this is when the weather was starting to get colder, so we had gone down to the storage locker to get some of our fall/winter stuff out. Mike was bringing some stuff out to the garbage, and I had gone out into the hall to open the other door for him, when the storage-room door swung shut behind me. "Ummm.. Mike... You have your key, right?"

"No."

"Oooops!"

So we went and did our groceries and came back to the apartment and sulked for the rest of the day, and wrote a nice little note to our superintendent to beg for an extra key for the storage locker. And pray that no-one else needed to get their winter stuff out that day too. As it turned out, someone else did need to get to their locker, but kindly just shoved our stuff out of their way. Whew!

This week was also the first week of my autumn aerobics class, which I missed because I was still feeling too "under the weather" to be that energetic. I stayed home and did some work on my homepage... I created my Bruce Trail Blogs, or at least the framework for it. (Check out my Bruce Trail blogs...) I watched a bunch of TV, and conspired to get someone a very special surprise gift. (No, I'm not gonna tell here... you'll have to wait, I'll write more about it when the gift is delivered.)

This week was the season premiere for a number of my favourite TV shows, like Dawson's Creek, which happened to be at the same time as West Wing (second episode, but still important). So I taped one, and watched the other. Or so I thought. When I went to watch the West Wing episode on Friday night, I was surprised to learn that I forgot to set my VCR to the right channel. Bummer!!!

I did take one day off work this week, and the timing couldn't have been better. Work was particularly stressful this week, and being sick on top of that (and being on Gravol, which apparently doesn't come in "non-drowsy") certainly didn't help things. But the rest worked wonders, and everyone commented on how much better I looked when I returned. And I felt pretty good, too. Finally.

On Saturday, Mike and I made applesauce. There's nothing like good-old homemade applesauce. Especially hot off the stove. I like mine chunky, not like that pureed baby-food applesauce you buy in the store. I guess the chunky stuff reminds me of apple pie, and I don't get apple pie too often, especially since I have never baked any. But applesauce isn't all that hard to make, and it's great with ice cream. :)

There's one particularly nice moment I want to share with you. I was sitting at the very back of the bus on the way home from work on Friday (which I don't usually do), so when the bus stopped at my stop, I was the last one to get out. One man dropped his hat just before he got out the door, and the woman who was sitting nearby called out to him, but he didn't hear her. She picked up the hat just as I was walking up to her, I reached my hand out and she passed me the hat. No words were exchanged, but we must have understood each other. I got off the bus and called out to the man. He turned around around and I gave him his hat. And he said thanks. Then... Just as the bus was pulling out, I looked up through the window at the woman. And we smiled at each other...

WEEK OF OCTOBER 6-12, 2002.
I actually started feeling better this week, enough to go to my aerobics class, and even try climbing some stairs again (in preparation for the CN Tower climb at the end of this month). But, as fate would have it, this good health was not to last. I was sick again by Thursday, and ended up staying home on Friday to rest. I treated myself to a nice, relaxing bath and a good book.

One new thing I did this week was to make stew. I've done it once before, but so long ago that I don't remember much from doing it. But one of my sisters had made it recently, so I remembered some of the tips that she'd passed on to me (such as adding beef stock for more flavour). Also, I do have a small collection of cookbooks, and one of them had a couple of good recipes to go by. I like to wing it, so I usually don't follow the recipe exactly - and if I don't happen to have something, I'll improvise.

During this cooking adventure, I've learned one other important lesson about stew (aside from the beef stock): SPICE IS EVERYTHING. I didn't add my herbs and spices until close to the end of the cooking time, and before I added them I wondered why it smelled and tasted nothing like a stew. But when I put in the basil, thyme, pepper and garlic powder, it was like a miracle transformed my pot of beef and vegetables into the delicious stews from my childhood memories. :)

WEEK OF OCTOBER 13-19, 2002.
This week started with Thanksgiving weekend. Unfortunately, we were too sick to get together with our extended families, but since Mike's brother was coming in from out-of-town, we did get together with his immediate family for a day visit. The weather was lovely, so the visit included a trip to the park, and we played on the swings for a bit, with his sister.

The rest of the week was uneventful - we stayed home and rested up, with the hopes of a quick recuperation. (Yeah, right!) At least we didn't get sicker.

WEEK OF OCTOBER 20-26, 2002.
I did some more cooking this week. With the onset of the colder weather, I decided to make my favourite comfort food... CHILI!

I also started listening to a lot of songs from the 50's, 60's, and 70's, in preparation for an Oldies "Name That Tune" game that I'll be playing at my work next week, as part of our United Way fundraising campaign. Of course, they didn't really have to twist my arm to get me to listen to it. I used to listen to a lot of Oldies while growing up, and I already knew a lot of the songs. It was an enjoyable week for me, listening and reminiscing. However, Mike's soon going to be sick from hearing it all so much. ;)

But the major event of this week was climbing the CN Tower in Toronto - I "Conquered the Tower" with some other people from my work. And I did it in just under 32.5 minutes! (Even after not going to my gym classes this week!) Definitely something that everyone should experience once in their lives. Imagine being able to say that you've walked up the tallest free-standing building in the world!

WEEK OF OCTOBER 27 - NOVEMBER 2, 2002.
Most of this week was spent in preparation for the coming weekend. My family planned to have Thanksgiving Weekend late this year, and arranged for all of us to stay the entire weekend at a Bed & Breakfast. My older sister (Veronica) and her husband (Heath) even flew over for the weekend, and I took the day off work to finish cleaning and packing, and then meet them at the airport.

Friday night was mostly spent travelling, and we all arrived at different times. When we got to the B&B and found our rooms, we discovered that Mom had left us a little "care package". In our room (mine and Mike's), we found a lovely note, some mini-chocolates, some nice-smelling stuff to use in the jacuzzi, and some photos of me and Mike, taken by my mother when we first signed for our condo (our future first home together).

On Saturday everyone just "hung out" together - my nephew (and others!) had fun sliding down the banister in the main stairwell, some of us played games in the dining room, and others just sat and chatted in the salon. Some people went for a walk up to the lake, but it was too cold outside for most of us (even though the snow had disappeared by the time the late risers were out of bed). We had homemade chili for lunch, and had fun taking lots of photos of each other. One of the best photos of the weekend (I think) was a group shot of all of us, taken on the main staircase.

Thanksgiving dinner was lovely - we all sat in the dining room, which was in the old style, with a sideboard and silver/china cupboard, and a high ledge all the way around the room on which there was some very pretty china on display. We couldn't all fit around the main table - although it was very long - but there were two smaller tables on the side of the room, so there was enough seating for everyone. Mike and I sat at one of these tables, in front of the window - it was almost like we were having a romantic dinner for two in a restaurant. We even had a little candle-in-a-glass on our table. :)

After dinner (and dessert) was finished, we played a game called "What Am I?" The object of the game is to guess the item (person/place/thing) taped to your back. We ran into a slight difficulty when the item on Heath's back was something from a cartoon show that he'd never heard of. (Ooops!) But we all had a blast - everyone stayed up until 1:00 AM playing the game - even my grandfather!

WEEK OF NOVEMBER 3-9, 2002.
Sunday morning I actually woke up early and had tea and toast with Veronica and my grandfather. It's so lovely to be awake before most of the rest of the world - everything's so calm and still. Relaxing. We had a nice chat about life in general, then I played Rummikub with Mike and my cousin Lori when they came downstairs for breakfast. This was an easy-going day, and we had many intimate one-on-one conversations (you know, the "what's going on in your life since I last saw you" kind). We all had a sit-down lunch together, late in the afternoon, before people had to start leaving for home.

On Monday night and Tuesday, Veronica and Heath visited with Mike and I (after having spent most of Monday with Mom). The four of us went out to YukYuk's amateur night on Monday evening. It was fun, without being too imposing - and there wasn't much else to do on a Monday night after the end of the summer tourist season anyway, since none of us felt like going to the theatre. Then on Tuesday we went shopping after taking a bus tour around the city, which was great! The bus was one of those cute little trolley-like buses, and the guide was not only knowledgeable but fun. And I actually learned new stuff about the city in which I live. Bonus! :)

The rest of the week was mostly spent relaxing, and finishing up the leftovers from our Thanksgiving dinner. Yum! :)

WEEK OF NOVEMBER 10-16, 2002.
Very bad news this week... Mike got laid off by his work. We kind-of half-expected it, because he works in the technology sector, which has been doing rather badly lately. But we were still shocked by the news.

On the good side, the builder of our condo started digging this month, and we were called in to do our colour selections on Saturday. Afterwards, we decided to have a relaxing, romantic evening at home together, and rented an interesting movie called After Life.

WEEK OF NOVEMBER 17-23, 2002.
Mike's brother Dave was in town visiting his parents, and we decided to do the same on Sunday. We didn't do much socially the rest of the week - we mostly stayed home and/or took care of business.

WEEK OF NOVEMBER 24-30, 2002.
Getting ready for Christmas... I've got a few gifts that I've been collecting over the year, so I brought them out and started wrapping some. Nothing like wrapping presents to bring out the Christmas spirit. :)

Mike brought out the Christmas tree this week (although we haven't put it up just yet), along with the decorations. His brother Dave is in town again, and they spent some time together preparing for Dave's hockey audition on Tuesday.

On Monday night, Mike and I went out with Dave and his girlfriend Melissa to dinner, then joined up with a group of friends (mostly fellow actors) to see a play called The Beard of Avon. It was sort-of a comedy about the rumour that Shakespeare may not have written all his own plays. The actors were generally critical of the play, and I agree it wasn't the best I've ever been to, but it was entertaining. Overall, I had a nice evening out.

On Saturday we went to visit my cousin Lori and her husband Sheldon, and had dinner with them. Although we did spend some time together during our family Thanksgiving weekend, it just seemed too short. So we all planned to get together this week and hang out, just the four of us.

WEEK OF DECEMBER 1-7, 2002.
After yesterday's visit with Lori and Sheldon, Mike and I were bitten by the Christmas bug. We put up our tree and all our decorations today, and rummaged around to find some old Christmas cards to hang on the walls. Now THAT's the spirit!

I started doing my Chrismas shopping in earnest this week, and discovered the usefulness of the dollar store. My family has a very small price limit on gifts this year, so we have to be more creative in coming up with ideas. On Friday I wasn't feeling well (I had my flu shot earlier this week), so I stayed home and started writing my Christmas cards to my friends and relatives.

On Saturday I was feeling a bit better, so Mike and I went to the mall to do some more Christmas shopping. Then my friend Maja called me to see if I wanted to go dancing. But of course!!! So I went out dancing with Maja, and Mike hung out with his friend Yang for the evening, and they played the sorts of computer games that guys enjoy until the wee hours of the morning. :)

WEEK OF DECEMBER 8-14, 2002.
We stayed home and rested on Sunday, and I'm glad we did because this week was a very busy week. More Christmas shopping on Monday, doctor's appointment on Tuesday, pizza lunch and Kris Kringle exchange with my coworkers (with the head of the company playing the role of Santa) on Wednesday. Wednesday night I visited with my friend Karen, who I hadn't seen in a while.

Thursday I was off-site at a workshop, which was a very welcome change in this hectic season, and then I went back to my workplace for the staff Christmas party ("Festive Season Reception"). They really went all out this year, and it turned out to be more enjoyable than last year's party. I'm not really all that big on schmoozing, I'd rather have a nice time socializing with the people that I work with. Which is how this year's party went for me. No awkward situations where I got stuck having to converse at length with executives that I rarely see. Just a quick Hello, and Merry Christmas, and that was it. Everyone seemed to be having a great time.

Saturday we went to see Mike's brother Dave in the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream," which was put on by his conservatory class as part of their graduation ceremony. We really enjoyed the rendition, and the fact that this was a private performance, for family and friends only. And afterwards there was food and drinks, after which we went out to a local Irish pub with Dave and his classmates to celebrate. Irish curry is delicious!

WEEK OF DECEMBER 15-21, 2002.
This week I continued my preparations for Christmas, and I spent practically every single night on the phone with my sister Jenn, Mom, Lori, or my grandfather, sometimes until nearly midnight. That was great - there are times when I feel so connected with my family, like we're in the middle of this ongoing conversation that just picks up from where we left off, at any time. This was one of those weeks, and it really felt special. This is one of the reasons why I love Christmas.

Also this week I went with a group of friends from school to see The Two Towers (Lord of the Rings, part 2). Some of my friends are really big into seeing certain movies on opening night (they'll even go to the 12:01 am show!), and they usually try to arrange for a large group of us to all go together to see most major movies. I see this as a perfect opportunity to hang out and catch up with some of my friends that I don't get to see often. Particularly since some of them come from out of town for the occasion.

WEEK OF DECEMBER 22-28, 2002.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

We did a lot of travelling this week... Mike's family, my family, and relatives that we haven't seen in a long time. We thoroughly enjoyed it, but definitely needed a rest when the holidays were over. Oh, and it SNOWED on Christmas Day this year!!!!!

I stayed up late every night this past weekend, getting ready for Christmas... Sorting and wrapping gifts, baking and cooking for our family's potluck dinner, cleaning our apartment for when my Mom comes to visit after Christmas Day. On Monday I also did the traditional last-minute shopping for anything I've forgotten - or just to get out of the house. I love the hustle and bustle of the pre-Christmas shopping malls!

My family's arrangement is to get together on Christmas Eve for dinner and to open our gifts together. This is so Mike and I can spend Christmas Day with his family - their tradition is to open presents in the morning (or early afternoon), and then drive up to his grandmother's farm to have dinner with the rest of his relatives.

This year, my family's Christmas was at Jenn's place. Mike and I got there early, as did Lori and Sheldon, and we all hung out with my six-year-old nephew and made Fruit Loop garlands for the tree. Of course, we ate the ones that wouldn't fit on the thread, or "accidentally" broke. :)

While we were all hanging out before dinner, my brother Ken played his guitar for us. He and his friends started their own band a few years ago, and his talent is really starting to show. Way to go Ken!

You wouldn't believe how a camera can occupy a child's attention for long periods of time. My nephew borrowed my camera on the long car trip on the way to visit my Dad this weekend, and he took some pretty interesting pictures. Maybe it runs in the family. Both of my younger sisters are talented with a camera. So is my dad. :)

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