NYY vs. TOR

For his graduation present I bought Christopher a pair of tickets to see the Blue Jays vs. Yankees game. Neither of us has been to Yankee Stadium and since this is the last season it was now or never.

School's Out For-ever!

This weekend we celebrated Christopher's graduation from the LLM program at UConn. Congratulations sweetie pie!

The ceremony was in a huge tent set up on the soccer field at the law school. Afterwards the LLM students and their family & guests were invited to a nice luncheon reception at a tasty churrascaria nearby.

Both his parents and my parents came down for the ceremony, so our house was full, but a good time was had by all.

Fried Chicken

I don't want to start any fights with anyone's momma, but I just had the best fried chicken I have ever tasted in my entire life. And it was in Washington DC, cooked by a Frenchman!

Now in my defense, I have never eaten fried chicken in the Southern US so perhaps I have no real basis of comparison (and KFC certainly does not count). But nonetheless, this was probably one of the tastiest meals I have ever eaten! Honestly, I was dreaming of this chicken for weeks after tasting it and if it hadn't been my last night in DC I would have gone right back the next day and ordered it up again.

Central is the name of the restaurant - Michel Richard is the chef. And at $21 the fried chicken with mustard sauce, which comes with whipped potatoes (that taste like an entire stick of butter is melted in them) and a side salad with a light vinagrette, is a STEAL!

When the waitress came to clear my plate, she asked me if I enjoyed my meal. I told her it was unreal how good it was and asked her if she has had it before. She told me that it's the only thing she eats there because it was the first thing she had and she loved it so much.

PS. I also hit up the Amsterdam Falafelshop for some delicious falafel-filled pita while I was in DC. I went out of my way for a second one on my way to the airport and it made me late for my flight home. But it was worth it - yes I am a glutton!

Vote for Tyson!

For those of you who have not had the opportunity to meet him, this is my dog Tyson.

He's a Goldendoodle - half Golden Retriever and half Standard Poodle and I love him to pieces. He is so sweet and very entertaining. I really couldn't ask for a better dog.

I entered him in Bissell's MVP pet photo contest and would love for you to vote for him: http://www.bissell.com/redirect.asp?page_id=47081&Pet=10116

Wouldn't you buy the Bissell Pet Hair Eraser vacuum with this smiling cute face on the package? I would!

Florida 2008

After Vegas we headed to Florida to enjoy the condo that Chris's parents rent each January in Longboat Key. Last year I was sick as a dog during our visit. This year after several late nights of Texas Hold 'Em in Vegas Chris was the one who needed some R 'n R.

During our week-long visit I finished a really great book that Chris's mom gave me for Christmas, The Other Boleyn Girl. I have already put the follow-on books on hold at our local library, and I can't wait to see the movie!
We also enjoyed some wonderful food. Some notables were: Chocolate croissants from the C'est La Vie cafe in downtown Sarasota, soft-shelled crab at Barnacle Bill's, and the Star Fish Company for grouper sandwiches and fried oysters.

Christopher's parents have quite the social circle down in Florida. One of their friends is a volunteer at the Mote Aquarium and on a rainy afternoon he took us on our own personally-guided tour. I was really impressed with the variety of the exhibits and actually took some pics (which is rare for me, but I am trying to train myself to take more pictures of things).

Hoover Dam!

Unlike the Grand Canyon, Christopher and I had both seen Hoover Dam prior to this trip. So we didn't feel the need to stop, other than to take this one picture:

Grand Canyon

After CES we decided to check out the Grand Canyon since neither of had ever seen it. Chris actually thought he had already been, but upon later confirmation from his parents that turns out to be untrue. Interestingly enough his brother thought the same thing, even recalling identical memories of cave-dwellings.

The Grand Canyon was absolutely spectacular. Way larger than I imagined and words and even pictures cannot do justice to its beauty. Since it was January it was very cold at night, but it warmed up during the daytime. However, the tops of the trails into the canyon were covered with ice and snow and the guides recommended crampons. But then he asked us where we were from and when we told him Connecticut he said that we'd be okay without them. I can only imagine what he would have said if we told him we were Canadian!

We did the South Kaibab Trail day hike down to Cedar Ridge. We were totally unprepared. Not only did we not have crampons, but both of us had on sneakers and I was carrying my purse! In my purse were a couple of granola bars, half a tube of pizza flavoured Pringles (my fave), and one small bottle of water. Definitely poor planning on our part, but at least it was wintertime. If it was summer we would have been in trouble!

CES 2008

Every job has its perks. One of the perks of my job is that I get to go to Las Vegas for 3-4 weeks each calendar year. It's kinda crazy when you add up how much time I spend there - good thing I don't have a gambling addiction!

R2D2 remote-controllable webcams and projectors

This year, my division was exhibiting at the Consumer Electronics Show and I got to attend. And since Christopher's winter semester doesn't start until January 23rd, I thought it would be nice to bring him along in celebration of his 30th birthday.

I saw lots of neat things at the show - too many to list really. The Creative Technology booth was a frenzy of activity as they had some pretty good giveaways. I saw two guys battle it out on Guitar Hero on Expert level and was thoroughly impressed. They also had a professional gamer on their booth beating the pants off everyone even though he as playing handicapped (one hand, with 75% of his screen covered, etc.) At the Sony booth they had Sony-BMG artists in for live performances and I got to take in a Natasha Beddingfield concert one afternoon. That was a fun treat.

Larger than life Transformer on the Dolby booth

It was funny seeing little independent vendors selling their plastic Wii controller accessories or CD scratch removing tonic next to behemoth CE companies like HP, Samsung, & LG. And gaming chairs - there were SO MANY booths selling gaming chairs. There is no way to decorate a nice room around a gaming chair - it is not possible.

Ringing in the New Year

While we were driving back to Connecticut after spending the holidays back in the motherland I decided that this would be the perfect year to ring in the New Year in Times Square. The animals were being watched by family members back home in anticipation of our upcoming trip to Las Vegas and vacation in Florida. And weather-wise you really couldn't ask for anything better in December- high of 42 F and no wind or precipitation.

When I shared my great idea with Christopher he seemed less than thrilled (he was just getting over a cold and is not fond of crowds). But, being the good sport that he is and seeing how excited I was about it, he got online and managed to pull off a Priceline miracle - $205 for the Hyatt at Grand Central Station, only a few blocks from Times Square!

So we took the train into the city and walked over to the hotel to drop off our stuff and meet up with my friend M who was also planning to hit Times Square for NYE. We worked our way through the various checkpoints, debated the differences between handbags and purses (handbags are not allowed into Times Square for New Year's but a purse is...), and then stopped for a slice of pizza and our last bathroom break of the night before joining the revelers in the "pen" at 51st and Broadway.

I really enjoyed the experience of spending New Year's in Times Square. It's one of those things that I've always wanted to do. That being said, there is a reason why everyone else we met that evening had never done NYE in Times Square before. There is also a reason why we were glad that we hadn't driven all the way from Washington State to be there that evening, like a couple of others in our pen.

Animal Antics

Immediately after Christopher replaced his laptop keyboard with the new one I gave him as an "Advent Present" (see previous post) the cat suddenly decided that this would be her new favourite perch. She had never sat on his old laptop keyboard before.


Bizarre - does anyone else's cat do this?

Advent Presents

For Christmas and his birthday this year I am treating Christopher to a trip to Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon & Florida in January. This left me with nothing to leave him under the tree for Christmas morning. And for someone like me who LOVES to buy gifts for people I was completely distressed.

So I decided that I would surprise him with Advent Presents (they're not Christmas presents). Starting on December 1st through the 25th, everyday I presented Christopher with a little something. Nothing fancy since I had promised him that I wouldn't spend any more money on him over the holidays. But just a little treat - here is the list:

1. Advent calendar
2. Double chocolate muffins
3. Set of drill bits
4. Caprese salad (his favourite)
5. New keyboard for his laptop
6. Chocolate chip granola bars
7. Pizza from Harry's Pizza, the best pizza joint in West Hartford
8. Gift card for a Java Chip Frappuccino from Starbucks
9. Shoelaces (to replace the one he had broken the day before)
10. White cake with chocolate chips & chocolate icing
11. Rubber feet for the laptop (to prevent it from sliding off the table)
12. Winter gloves
13. Dark chocolate bar
14. Tickets to Warren Miller's Playground
15. 3 new shirts from Jos. A. Bank (they were having a Christmas door-crasher and I couldn't help myself - they were such an amazing deal)
16. Dinner from his favourite wing place
17. 25 ft. RCA cable to connect his subwoofer with (handmade by yours truly!)
18. New Order CD - Singles
19. Ski gloves
20. Gift card for a McDonald's hot fudge sundae
21. IOU for FATBURGER in Las Vegas
22. UCONN hoodie
23. IOU for pizza @ Grimmaldi's in Las Vegas (supposedly the best around)
24. Book (Now I Can Die in Peace) by Bill Simmons (aka ESPN's Sportsguy, one of his favourite sports columnists)
25. Wii rental for 5 days + 2 games to entertain us over the holidays. This sure was a hit with my cousin's kids!

Trees

Trees are nice to look at and picnic under. But it wasn't until we moved into this home that we realized how much work they are!

Raking: Never in my life have I raked so many leaves! Every weekend in the fall both Christopher and I would spend an entire day raking leaves. You have to in order to stay on top of things. I think this fall we must have raked enough leaves to fill 80-100 30 gallon yard waste bags. At an average of 30lb per bag (they are to hold a maximum of 60 lb each) that's 1.6-2 tons!

DISH: Tired of over-paying for cable, when we moved we decided to give satellite a try. However the large trees on our property have precluded this for us. The installation guy was up on our roof trying to find the signal, but had no luck. Comcast owns us!

Arborists: The trees on our lot were in desperate need of trimming since they had been neglected for many years before we came along to give them some TLC. These arborists don't come cheap: two guys + 1 chipper = $1000 for a day's work.

Branches: After an evening of freezing rain, a very large tree branch broke off and crashed through our phone and cable lines. We're lucky it didn't take out our electricity! Kudos to AT&T and Comcast for getting everything back up and running within 48hrs though. I thought it would have taken longer.

Mouse Hole for Cat

This weekend's special project was to cut a hole in our basement door for the cat. We used to leave the door ajar for her, but our basement seriously lacks insulation. So we need to keep the door shut to keep the hot air upstairs and the cold air down (I'm trying to pre-empt a potential heart attack from an oil bill for $1000!). However her litter box and food is in the basement, thus our need for the mouse hole.

I borrowed a jig saw from a coworker of mine (thanks A) and we went to work. For my first time using a jig saw, I think I did a pretty good job (especially since we didn't have any scrap wood to practise on).



Bango really likes her door. She likes to hide behind the door peeking out from behind the opening. It took all of 5 minutes and a half-dozen Whiskas Temptations Savory Salmon treats and she was trained. Smart kitty!

Next I'm going to work on making a little flap for the hole with the cutout wood for further energy savings. Now I'm putting my handiness to the test!

Giving Thanks

Since we live (sorry USCBP - "temporarily reside") in the US we now celebrate Thanksgiving in November instead of October. Oddly enough, we have spent every American Thanksgiving in Canada though. But you're supposed to spend this holiday with family and friends we headed North since that's where ours are.

Each year our list of things to be thankful for grows a little longer. Hera are two new additions for 2007:

• NY Bar Exam: props to Christopher for passing the NY Bar Exam this summer (Christopher - I don't say it nearly enough, but I'm super proud of you. I have no idea how you have the patience to memorize even half of those crazy Bar/Bri mnemonics). Is it really effective to expend precious brainpower trying to remember the made-up mnemonic AND all the rules themselves? I guess if you spend enough time griping about how ass-backwards it all is, something ends up sticking in your brain.
• Friends with Toys: since we don't have a system of our own, we have to leech off of our friends with the latest toys. On Thursday night after dinner at the pub we kept S up way past his bedtime (on a school night!) playing Halo 3 on Xbox Live. And after the 3 hours of Rockband we played with M & C on Saturday night we couldn't stop talking about investing in a system of our own!

Hoagie Haven

I am a huge fan of the independent sub shop. I think it started with the heated corned beef subs I would scarf down after my Saturday morning French lessons at Alliance Francais on the way to my piano lesson. (Don't laugh - this was my Saturday routine for 12 years of my childhood. Which meant that my Friday evenings were spent doing French homework and trying to cram a week's worth of piano practising into one night.)

Back in Toronto I satisfied my sub cravings with Belly Buster (on Yonge, just north of Lawrence). The past 3 weeks I have been travelling to Princeton, NJ for work (which has a surprisingly charming downtown in fact). And what has almost made up for being on the road is this fabulous student hangout that I discovered on Chowhound - Hoagie Haven.

I don't really know what makes I good sub, but here are the things that Belly Buster & Hoagie Haven have in common:

• late hours: key for midnight cravings
• uber-fresh bread: delicious pillowy-soft goodness
• veggies: interestingly enough, both these shops offer the standard lettuce, tomato, onion, & hot peppers, but that is all. Not like the other big franchises that supply a laundry list of vegetables (green pepper, cucumber, black & green olives, etc.). A classic sub shop will focus on what counts not wasting their time on the small stuff
• mayo: it's probably just a bizarre coincidence, but both these joints spread their mayo on with a spreader versus depositing it via squirt bottle

I always try the shop's "specialty" cold sub. In places like these, it's usually the first item on the menu board. Or it is named after the store itself. Top it off with mayo, a little mustard, oil & vinegar, and salt & pepper - heaven in my belly!

I still have not managed to find my new favourite sub place close to our home in West Hartford. There used to be a Jersey Mike's 15 minutes away, but it has since closed :(

Five

Five: pumpkins carved
Five: bags of candy purchased
Five: o'clock was when I left work to get home in time for Halloween
Five: the number of trick-or-treaters that visited our house :(

I love Halloween. I think it's a fun low-stress holiday for everyone to enjoy. Unlike Thanksgiving & Christmas there is no pressure to create some Martha Stewart inspired meal. In fact, if you're one of those people that gives out homemade treats you should know that they are just going in the garbage because parents think you could be one of those child poisoning psychos and/or kids prefer store-bought candy.

Last year we had over 80 trick-or-treaters and I was hoping for a similar turnout. Unfortunately I was let down.

I can even list all the costumes this year (on one hand no less):

• 2 x spiderman
• superman
• cowboy
• some sort of black and grey caped crusader ( I suppose I was too crushed by our low turnout to care at this point)

Good thing Wal-Mart let us return our unopened bags of candy!

Anti-Room Service

I despise room service. When I travel I almost never order it. But the other night I had no choice. And in so many ways it reminded me of why I had made such a point of avoiding it.

The Place: downtown Atlanta
The Date: Sunday, October 21st
The Time: 10pm

Having just arrived into the city I was looking to grab a quick bite to eat and then head to bed. I was just looking for something light and simple. I figured Atlanta was such a world class city (yes I am still habouring a little resentment that Atlanta won the 1996 Olympic bid over Toronto) that it had to have something around to eat, even if it was 10pm on a Sunday (since there is no doubt that I would have a variety of delicious cuisines to choose from on a late-Sunday-night food run in Toronto).

I knew I was sunk when even the concierge had no recommendations for me. Even to grab some take out or whatever. I quickly hit the street to see if I could find anything suitable.

Now I rarely and I mean rarely get nervous walking in large cities alone in the evening. I have gone out for slices of pizza in NYC at who knows what hour of the night and late night Vietnamese in Dallas. I should stop here before I make Christopher nervous... But for some reason, when I was walking around Peachtree & Andrew Young International I didn't like it. So I decided to admit defeat and head back to the solace of my hotel room. So with my only other choice being the , I decided to order room service. Here is a picture of my "Confetti of Field Greens Accompanied by Crispy Potato Crostini"

Yum - salad from a bag topped with ridged potato chips. For $9.50 no less! This was definitely enough to keep me off room service for another decade.

Beat the Bank

The first thing we did when we began our whole home buying process was go to our bank to get "pre-approved" - which means nothing really, but that's a whole other story.

When we went in to the Bank of America to meet with a mortgage advisor we were introduced to the "Best Value Guarantee". In nutshell, if you are approved for a mortgage by the B of A and then decide not to close with them, they will give you $250.

Sound too good to be true? Well I am ecstatic to announce that we received our $250 cheque today! Of course the B of A doesn't make it *easy* for you to collect on their guarantee. But with a little legwork it becomes well worth the hassle, IMHO.

For any of you out there who stumble across this posting, here are the steps I went through to get our reward:

• Figure out how to apply for the redemption. Though the pamphlet that we were given at the bank doesn't have any details on how to go about collecting, a quick Google search reveals that you need to phone 800.870.3206 to answer a brief automated phone survey
• At the beginning of the survey they tell you that at the end they will provide the fax number and mailing address to send in a copy of your HUD-1 to prove that you actually closed and closed with another lender (in addition to giving them all the details they ever wanted to know about their competition). Note: write down BOTH the fax number and the mailing address. I planned to fax, so I only wrote down the fax number. But the fax number was bogus so I had to do the whole survey over again to get the mailing address
• Fax Number: 800.272.0562 When I first did the survey I swear the fax number they listed was 800.272.0576 which is disconnected and made me very cynical. However when doing the research for this blog post it seems to have been fixed, so I'm slightly less cynical than before)
• Mailing Address #1 Bank of America Best Value Guarantee, Attn: Pauly Bradshaw, 1375 North Highway Drive, Fenton, MO 63099
• Mailing Address #2 Bank of America Best Value Guarantee, Attn: Pauly Bradshaw, 1375 North Highway Drive, Fenton, MO 63026-1929
• Why 2 mailing address you ask? Well, the curious cat that I am, I was interested in knowing where this Bank of America location was and I looked up Mailing Address #1 on Google Maps. However, I was slightly confused when the zip code came up as 63026. So I looked up the zip on USPS.com and found it listed as 63026-1929 which matched Google Maps. Just to cover my bases I mailed a second letter to Mailing Address #2

And after 29 days of patience, my efforts were duly rewarded with a cheque in the mail for $250 :)

I Like Caulk

Some people look at old houses as so much work - I see ours as a puzzle. I am continually fascinated by the craftsmanship and intricacies of our home. In some instances "they don't build 'em like the used to" is quite true - many of our walls are a very solid lath and plaster and our foundation is a double-thick stone monstrosity. However our 20+ oil burning boiler leaves much to be desired in regards to heating efficiency.

This weekend I gained an appreciation for the double-hung sash window. Save for 7 vinyl replacement windows upstairs, all the windows in our home are original (read: cracked/loose panes, broken/missing sash cords, and painted shut/open). In an effort to keep this winter's heating oil bills to a manageable level (see aforementioned oil boiler) as soon as we moved in we began the first phase of our process of window rehabilitation.

Our windows have an outside track where winter storm windows as well as summer screen inserts fit. These tracks have carefully placed notches to help you get the window/screen in easily. I was probably doing it wrong before, but in every other place I have lived when I needed to remove the screens it was a struggle and usually ended up with me slightly bending the screen to get it in/out.

This weekend we focused on the storm windows, next spring we'll work on the screens (our home repair is definitely on an on-demand basis). We carefully removed 4 cracked storm windows which I will bring in to the glass repair shop tomorrow morning to be fitted with new panes ( I draw the DIY line at cutting my own glass). One of the storms had glass that was in good shape, except its seal to its metal frame had deteriorated. So we set off to Lowe's to buy some silicon caulk to seal it with. Mind you with so many choices found in the sealant aisle we have no idea if what we used is optimal (we didn't really do much research on this project), but it was inexpensive and it seems to be doing the job. I am not one to argue with either of these two scenarios, especially when they happen to coincide :)

For a first-timer I think I did a pretty good job with the caulking gun. I managed to keep the smearing of caulk on the window to a minimum and didn't wreck anything else in the process (of which there was a high potential since I was doing this on our living room floor!) So right now I am enjoying a personal high of DIY prowess, or could this be fumes from the caulk curing beside me...

PS. Thing brings the list of Tools My First House Taught me to Use to a grand total of 3: electric hedge trimmer, reciprocating saw, & caulking gun.

I put some new shoes on...

"I'm wearing my brand new shoes"

Tyson now wears shoes around the house. It prevents him from scratching the hardwood floors. Nancy wanted some sneaker-style ones with flames on them, but I was concerned about the quality of those ones. I have to admit, these ones aren't the most flattering. Maybe he'll get something a little more stylish for his next pair.

Tyson now bears an even stronger resemblance to his favorite toy, Camel.