Happy New Year! Here is a picture of Katherine and I getting ready to go... nowhere! We decided to get all dressed
up for a night in with our parents (my mom, and Katherine's parents and Grandmother, that is). Well, I hope that you're night is miraculous, and that you haven't broken any resolutions already! 
Well, as you can tell by my long absence from my blog, it has been a very busy holiday season! I’ll try my best to fill you in on what’s been going on over the past little while – now that everything is started to get back into the old routine, I will have time to post much more regularly again – woohoo! I just jotted down all the things I wanted to talk about in this post, and I came up with a list of 14, no 15 topics (sorry, none of them are weird websites this time). It looks like this is going to be one long post, so sit back and make yourself comfortable. I just typed that last sentence in MS Word, and it recommended that I change the word “yourself” to “you” – so much for Grammar Checkers.
Okay, so what has happened over the past little while? Remember a few weeks ago, I said that I was now officially bilingual? Well, it appears as though I jumped the gun a wee bit. I looked again at my file, and I still need to improve my official writing mark before I can earn the “bilingual” badge. I’m scheduling a writing test for early in the new year to confirm that I know how to write well enough in French.
Today was my first day of work since December 23rd. It’s been wonderful having so much time off! I can’t remember when the last time I took so much time off. It was well needed and well appreciated – Work wise, November was a busy, busy month, and before the holidays I had never fully recovered from it. Now, I feel like I have. 
During my time off, Katherine, Jacob and I kept VERY busy. We had a wonderful Chanukah party my mothers house with her and about 30 of her closest friends. It was a pot-luck type party, and everyone was asked to bring one of their favourite dishes. I brought Katherine. Actually, we stopped off at the Ottawa Bagel Shop and brought three dozen bagels. Believe it or not, they were all gone within an hour. I guess people just can’t get enough bagels. Jacob has been opening his Chanukah presents every night after we light the menorah. Family members all over the globe have sent him presents -- some of the highlights include gelt (money), books, trains, and clothes. Thank you to everyone who has sent gifts. Katherine and I really appreciate it, and so does Jacob. His favourite time of the day lately seems to be opening gifts.
In fact Jacob has been doing a lot of gift opening lately -- what with eight days of Chanukah and one day of Christmas to contend with. For me, Christmas morning is still relatively a new phenomenon. When I was much younger, I had a few pseudo Christmas mornings at my fathers house, but they always seemed wrong, and made me feel sick. 
What Katherine and I are doing with Jacob feels a lot more comfortable to me in every way. The only reason he might feel sick is because he’s had too much chocolate. Neither of us are denying, hiding, or skewing our own beliefs, we’re simply exposing him to what we both believe in. For Katherine, that means presents on Christmas morning. For me, that means a present every day of Chanukah. For Jacob, it means a whole wack of presents, and exposure to two of the world’s great religions. I’m pretty sure that it’s a win/win/win situation.
During Christmas, Katherine’s “aunt” and “uncle” (Bob and Murrilla) stayed visited from Prince Edward Island. Katherine’s grandmother was very happy to have the company of her nephew and niece – I’m pretty sure that they played cards for the entire five days of the visit, and I’m positive that more alcohol was consumed during the five day visit than is usually consumed all year long. Oh well, I suppose that’s what the holidays are all about.
The day after Bob and Murilla left for home, Katherine’s grandmother walk walking from the bathroom to her chair in the dining room (where she spends most of her time reading), when she lost her balance and fell over. It was a pretty scary time for everyone in the house at the time, but thankfully she seems to be okay. She has a rather large bandage on her arm where she scraped herself on a chair leg, but other than that she’s fine. When she fell, I was entertaining (or trying to, at least) a friend visiting from Toronto. In the time it took me to peer around the corner, Katherine and her mother had already zoomed to grandma’s side to help her up. Thank goodness for those two!
On a brighter note, Katherine and I decided to take a day to ourselves a few days ago – we brought Jacob to daycare, and then headed over to Wakefield to the Edelweiss Ski Resort for some… you guessed it: Tubing! If you’ve never gone tubing before, 
I highly recommend it – you take a chair lift to the top of a ski hill (one with no turns, that is), and go down the hill on an inner tube. Depending on the hill, you can pick up some pretty good speed. In total it takes about 15 seconds to get to the bottom of the hill (I timed it), and about 15 minutes to get to the top. Those 15 seconds, are definitely worth the 15 minutes, though – and besides the view on the way up was wonderful, and the company was even better.
The whole time we were at Edelweiss, I was feeling guilty about leaving Jacob at the daycare, and Katherine was feeling VERY guilty. We kept reassuring ourselves that it was okay to have a day to ourselves. And besides, we’re paying for the spot in the daycare, Jacob might as well fill it. Right? Right? Well, near the end of the day, when Katherine was in the washroom, she saw a little girl who looked at her and smiled. Katherine thought the girl was someone from brownies until she asked “Where’s Jake-y?” Well, it turns out that the girl was actually someone from Jacob’s daycare centre. Boy did we feel guilty! To ease our guilt, we kept him out of daycare the next day, and we all spent the day together.
That evening we decided to empty Jacob’s piggy banks and roll up all the coins. You would be surprised how much loose change adds up over time. In two piggy banks, we rolled up over $130. That is money going directly into Jacob’s bank account.
Hmm, what else? Today was my first day back a work, did I mention that? First thing this morning, saw my pay clerk in HR, and they gave me my November overtime check. Thank goodness for overtime – I’m finally going to open that ING direct account I’ve been wanting to – and I’ll be able to do it with a nice round number. Yay!
Tonight Jay and Chris (my brother and sister in law) are going to visit, and we will play a game of Trivial Pursuit. It should be fun. We were supposed to have dinner with our friend Gen .. err.. Genevieve, but the timing is horrible given that we need to get Jacob to bed for seven o’clock, and I didn’t finish work until five. Hopefully, she’ll stop by for a quick visit anyways before she heads back to Toronto.
This Saturday – New Years Eve -- we are spending the day with my mom (as always), and will be having dinner at a
restaurant near our house. They are having a kids New Years Party with a countdown at 8:00 instead of midnight. Apparently, they’ll also be passing out ‘champagne’. Jacob should love it.
Then, on Sunday, is the traditional New Years Day brunch at Myrna and Morrie’s house. We always look forward to spending time with familiar people, and eating some wonderful food.
Monday is another day off at work, and then everything gets back to normal. Or almost normal, that is. Katherine’s schedule is changing for the better – but more on that later. I really should sign off for now.
Happy new year everyone!
Today is Saturday. We spent the morning with Jason, Christine, and my mom having breakfast and walking around the mall -- oh what fun. No really, it was. Honest.
At the moment, Jacob is having a nap and so I figured I would check out the blog to see if anyone posted any comments. Nope.
I think this afternoon, we are going to go to Home Depot to see if we can buy a light for my mom. Woo.
I just re-read these past few paragraphs, and realized that they're completely disjointed, and have nothing to do with one another. Sorry.
Woohoo. I jut received word that according to [insert my employer name here], I am officially bilingual. What does that mean, you ask? It means that I am allowed to manage people (which I'm already doing), and I get an extra $800 a year....
Here's a neat picture of Jacob running with a stick. Someone we know who's in a garage punk band called "Birtha Does Moose Jaw" (a hilarious band name) says that he'd like to use this picture for his CD-cover one day.. that would be cool.
Well, that's about all I've got for now. I'm off to watch "Love, Actually" and eat popcorn (and I just found out that there's no diet coke.. darn it)!
Oh well, let the chick flick roll.
I've heard of filling up for gas and buying the extra pack of gum to get a few extra air miles, but this is one guy who has way too much time on his hands. 
Apparently, he decided to put 50 days aside, and invest $7,000 so that he could "earn" one million air miles (worth about $70,000). I'm not sure if he was succesfull in the end, but either way, it's a very strange idea. I saw this a while ago on the Canada.com site, but I can't find it anymore (they've since redesigned their site). So, I will re-print it here, on my blog for you all to read and enjoy -- re-printed without permission of course.
Passenger one in a million
Greg Joyce
The Canadian PressSaturday, October 15, 2005
Pilot Marc Tacchi is seeing the country the way most Canadians never could -
- or would.
He is soaring with Air Canada, here, there and everywhere, over and over again.
Tacchi is currently a frequent flyer with the airline -- a very, very frequent flyer trying to accumulate one million air mile credits. He aims to do it before the end of November.
A commercial cargo pilot, Tacchi decided two weeks ago to take Air Canada up on its North America Unlimited Pass offer, which costs the customer $3,500 a month and allows unlimited travel to more than 100 destinations in North America.
"I was in Miami on Monday, I think," Tacchi said last week during a brief layover at Vancouver International Airport.
"I thought I'd have a problem with customs but the U.S. and Canada Customs people just laughed and thought it was a great idea."
He has the whole thing figured out, down to the total number of air points he's racking up each day.
He even manages to spend three nights a week sleeping in his own bed in Vancouver and will have the million points in the bag within 50 days.
"I'm flying about 7,500 miles or points a day," he explained. "But I hold super-elite status so it multiplies out at 2.75. I'm doing 19,000 points a day.
"I guarantee I'll do it. I can do it easily."
The strategy is not a vacationer's dream, but's it's effective for his purposes.
The "trick" is to spend the day flying back and forth between Vancouver and Victoria and Vancouver and Nanaimo.
"They are short trips that last about 15 minutes. They garner a minimum 500 miles."
By contrast, a flight to Calgary also garners 500 points but takes almost 90 minutes.
In the evenings, Tacchi broadens his horizons, flying the trans-continentals to Toronto or Montreal.
"And I do red-eyes, which I'm able to upgrade as super-elite most of the time so I get to sleep in business class."
As soon as he arrives, he gets back on the return flight to Vancouver, arriving in time to resume the daily grind of flying to Vancouver Island and back.
Even more astounding is the fact Tacchi takes 36 hours out of the odyssey to do his job. He works for another airline, flying a 767 cargo jet to Europe once a week.
The one million air miles translates into 10 round-trip business class trips to Australia or Asia.
"It's about a $70,000 value, all for a $7,000 investment," said Tacchi.
"I figure a million miles will basically cover my travel for the next three to four years."
© The Calgary Herald 2005
Another celebrity has surprisingly died. I just read that Richard Prior suffered a heart attack this morning, and passed away.
Wax on, wax off, Mr. Prior. Wax on, wax off.
Hi folks! Katherine here, posting another guest blog.
I don't know if I'm biased or anything, but I think Jake is the cutest kid in the world. That's my kid, right here. I love him and his facial expressions. 
Okay, now it's time for some audience 
participation. Please click on the picture to the right (to see a full size image), and try to find as many band names as you can. Apparently, there are 50 band names hidden in the picture, but I was only able to find three or four. That's where you come in. Post your comments on as many of the different band names as you can find. Have fun! And post as many band names as you can find!!!
Well, it's about 4:20 in the morning, and I'm at work. I've just rebooted one of my servers, and while I'm waiting for it to come back up, I figured I would post something quickly. The weekend was very nice. Saturday, as I've said, was action packed. Sunday was spent at Jason & Christine's house (my brother and sister in law) with my mom, and some family from Montreal (my aunt, uncle, and cousin). It was fantastic to see everyone -- it's been way too long. I always say this after I spend time with family (and unfortunately, it never happens), but we should do this again sooner rather than later.
Sunday was also Lee's (another brother) birthday. Jacob called him on the phone, and sung a wonderful rendition of Happy Birthday ("and many more"). It was cute.
Well, that's about all I've got for the moment, and it's good timing too, because the fans on my server have just slowed down (that means it's just about ready).
Talk to you soon!
Here is another photo taken last weekend at the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau. Sorry, it's not of Jacob. It's actually the ceiling of one of the bigger open areas of the museum. I was so impressed when I
looked up that I had to take a picture. So I did. It might be a bit hard to tell in the photo because there is no reference, but the entire mural is about 50 feet across (or more), and is dome-shaped. It's Much, much, much more impressive in person.
We just got back from the CHUM market media mall in downtown Ottawa. Katherine was on the radio being interviewed by Steve Madely about some fund-raising she's been involved with lately. The interview was brief, but she was fantastic. While Katherine was in the interview, Jacob and I got to rub shoulders with lots of local celebs including: Bob Chiarelli, Domenic Darcy (the singing policeman), John Council, Mike Duffy, Max Keeping, and a whole slew of others that I just can't think of at the moment. John Council (who has one of the baddest 
mullets in radio) and Domenic Darcy kept Jacob entertained for quite a while showing him their hidden animals in their hands -- John had an invisible duck that quacked, and Domenic had a dog. Jacob (although being very shy) loved it. A definite highlight of the morning for Jacob were the free chocolate cookies. He must have gobbled up two or three in the first five minutes that we were there -- mean old daddy had to tell him that was enough. Oh well, he didn't seem to mind. Just before we arrived at CHUM, we all went for breakfast at Zak's, and then Jacob got a chocolate menorah from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.
All that time that we spent downtown this morning makes me want to live downtown again. I loved being close to everything, and experiencing the hussle and bussle (as much hussle and bussle that downtown Ottawa can have on a Saturday morning, at least). Oh well, you never know where we will wind up buying our first home. Maybe downtown, maybe in the burbs. Stay tuned to find out!
Okay, are you ready for off-beat? This very odd flash animation is right up my alley: 
weird, bizzare, funny, and with a catchy tune. In order to completely enjoy this, you'll need to have flash on your computer, but who doesn't these days, right? Right. If you don't have flash, then go and get it. Enjoy, and don't say I didn't warn you. Oh wait, I DIDN'T warn you, did I? George, George, George of the jungle... oh wait, I don't want to ruin it for you!
Google comes to the rescue again! I have found an article that says exactly what is right and what is wrong about single vs. double spaces after a period. Having taken typing classes, I will probably continue to use a double space for the rest of my life. Likewise, having taken design classes, Katherine will probably continue to use a single space for the rest of hers? Can these two conflicting beliefs live in harmony with each other? Of course!
Hi Everybody,
Katherine here again. Jeremy likes to take pictures of me and Jake, but that means he's usually the one behind the camera, and there are few pictures of him.
I took this picture of him over the summer. And I just used the Picasa program to colourize it n' stuff.
Jeremy is a pretty darn good-looking guy, if I do say so myself. There should be more pictures of him.
I love you, Jeremy!
Blog THIS!
