This isn't going to be very long - I tore part of my fingernail off on my ring finger of my right hand on Tuesday morning, and it's infected now and *very* sore, so even typing with it is painful!
Our lunch on Tuesday was fun - Jenn and Michelle liked my apartment, which made me happy! Unfortunately, it's pretty messy again since then, so I'll have to do more cleaning tonight before Karen and Gill come tomorrow!
Yesterday was Karen's birthday, so we had cake and balloons and stuff, and we all went out for lunch at the Mandarin. Good times! Plus we bought her a tiara that said "Birthday girl" and she wore it all day.
Today was "Staff Appreciation Day" at work, so the office was all decorated in orange and blue (ING colours), our managers served us breakfast and lunch, plus we all got gift certificates for Tim Hortons! Oh, and popcorn. And we got to play with the helium in the balloons. And I won the "Employee of the Month" award, which is actually kinda cool, 'cause there's about 200 employees in the office, and it's the first time they've given it out. I got a gift certificate for the Bay! I think I'm gonna buy a nice bookcase or something with it.
Okay, enough typing for now - I don't know how I'm going to do my musical site update this week! People told me to soak my finger in salt water, so maybe I'll give that a try - I'm afraid it's going to sting though! :-(
Sorry everyone, I didn't realize it had been so long since I'd updated in here! I seem to be very busy lately, yet if you asked me exactly what it was I've been doing, I couldn't really tell you!
Tonight I am working on tidying up my apartment. I'm having a little lunch get-together here tomorrow with some girls from work, and the space is so small here that whenever anything's out of place, it looks really messy. So I've just got lots of little things to put away (mostly around my computer - I just collect junk!).
One thing I have been working on is updating my skating tape list - that should be done later this week. I taped about 70 hours of coverage this season! Plus I'm getting another 40 hours of Europeans and Worlds stuff from a friend in Germany - I bet you that's more skating than most people watch in their entire lives! :-)
I've also updated the Scotland trip page - just a couple of new things added!
Susan is working on her first website too! I'll add a link to it as soon as she's ready for it to be viewed. :-)
Oh! I almost forgot. I played hockey last week! That's a pretty unusual occurrence. :-) A bunch of guys in our office play pretty regularly, and they have a game coming up against a law firm that we deal with. So they asked Karen to play with them, since she's got some experience, and they were practising last week, and somehow I ended up going along too. It was pretty interesting, since I was in my figure skates, and I haven't held a hockey stick in about 9 years. But I did alright - not great or anything, but I did manage to get an assist! And I only got knocked over once. :-) There's supposed to be another practice this week, but Karen and I haven't made up our minds if we'll attend or not. :-)
Alright, enough procrastinating and back to the cleaning! This week should be fun - Thursday is Karen's (from work) birthday, and on Saturday, Karen and Gill are coming down for The Last Five Years - I can't wait for that! Plus, I can finally give them their Christmas presents. ;-)
This week has not been a very good one. That's mostly because of my housing hearing on Tuesday, which was really intimidating, and I ended up getting nothing out of it. It just makes me angry to even think about it, so I'm not going to talk about it any more!
Also, I got my annual "merit increase" (raise) at work, and while this is a good thing, and there's nothing wrong with the amount, I was told that it counts both as my annual increase and as my promotional raise. Does that seem fair to you? Especially since it's pretty much the same as what I got last year, when I didn't have to take on a new job?
And finally, I paid Canada Post to forward my mail from my old address to my current one when I moved, and they have just now started to do it - a month and a half after my move! So anything that was sent to my old address before yesterday was returned to the sender! And I got an email from Peter Spies (the composer of Atlantis), telling me that he had sent me a copy of the 10th anniversary concert DVD (as a surprise!), but he just got it returned to him. Argh!!
Other than that, the weather has finally started to turn to spring - we've had a couple of nice days in a row now. Better than the snow my family is getting out west! On Sunday a colleague and I are going to visit another friend from the place we used to work at her house, so that will be nice. Susan wants to go shopping tomorrow, but I'm pretty broke, so we'll have to see about that.
On the plus side, I got this email as well...I think my work here is done. ;-)
Dear Stacy, I would just like to thank you for reviewing both "Parade" and "The Last Five Years." If it wasn't for you, I would have never known that Jason Robert Brown is an absolute genius. His music is absolutely breath-taking and endearing."
Well, I certainly had a more exciting weekend than I was anticipating! On Wednesday, I found out that Pimpernel was playing in Montréal this weekend, for the first time in French. I've never seen a show in Montréal, or in French, and I hadn't seen Pimpernel in three years. So I decided I deserved to go. :-) I made some very quick last-minute arrangements, and made a very brief but enjoyable trip to Quebec yesterday.
I picked up the rental car at 10:30, and drove straight to Montréal, arriving shortly before 4:00. I parked at a mall downtown, and spent a few hours just wandering around, along Ste. Catherine Street and in Chinatown, and having *real* poutine for supper. I hadn't been to the city for five years, so it was nice to have some time there. It's got so much more character than Toronto does!
Pimpernel was playing at the Monument-National downtown, and I had a very good seat in the orchestra, except for the man beside me who decided my lap was an appropriate place for his coat. The show was naturally quite scaled-down from the Broadway and tour productions, but I really enjoyed it anyway. I won't go into too much detail, since you can read my review on my musical site soon, but overall, it was really good. Definitely worth the trip! I also got my picture taken with one of the bounders, wearing his hat from Creation of Man, so that was fun too! :-) I would have loved to stay and talk to the cast more, but I had to get back on the road!
The show was quite long, it wasn't over until after 11. So I got the car and left the city at 11:30, and arrived back in Toronto at 5 a.m. this morning. After three hours of sleep, I got up to take the car back to the rental office. I should probably be sleeping now, but I can't. Instead, I'm just being very lazy and sitting around accomplishing nothing.
Other than all of that running around, the week was pretty normal. Brenda and I went to The Producers, which was fun, if not spectacular. That review is already up on my theatre site. On Thursday, we had our Easter Egg Hunt at work, and our team did not win. In fact, we weren't even close. :-( We're just too nice, that's all, obeying the rules and everything. Still, we did collect over 180 chocolate eggs, so it's not all bad! Thursday evening, Friday afternoon and this morning were spent in church, of course.
Coming up this week, Brenda and I are seeing Pélagie tomorrow, which should be interesting, and then Tuesday is my hearing with the rental board about my old apartment. Wish me luck!
Also this past week, I read a book that Michelle lent me about the Mackenzie poltergiest in Greyfriars cemetery in Edinburgh. It talks about all of the strange things that have happened on the tours there, which we are planning to go on. It was quite interesting, but I'm still pretty sceptical that anything will actually happen while we're there! Michelle's gone once before, and nothing out of the ordinary occurred.
I'd just like to add I've now seen shows in five languages - English, French, German, Danish and Hungarian! I wonder what's next. :-)
Happy Easter everyone!
Stolen from Gill's site:
1: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says: "The pale deer had gone about a hundred yards into the trees when she"
2: Stretch your left arm out as far as you can, what do you touch? My cat
3: What is the last thing you watched on TV?: The Simpsons
4: WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what the time is: 9:40
5: Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?: 10:11 (oops!)
6: With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?: well, I've got music on - I can also hear traffic outside
7: When did you last step outside? For church at 8:00
9: What are you wearing?: pajamas!
10: Did you dream last night? Yes! I had several really vivid dreams. In one, I was playing poker with some friends, and they wouldn't let me shuffle, so I got upset and threw down the cards and walked away from the table. What does that mean?
11: When did you last laugh? At work this afternoon
12: What is on the walls of the room you are in?: Playbills, pictures of me with various theatre guys, a big painting of the Empress Elisabeth
13: Seen anything weird lately?: Every day, pretty much
14: What do you think of this quiz?: It's a good way to waste 5 minutes
15: What is the last film you saw?: "Goodbye Lenin!"
16: If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?: A house for my mom
17: Tell me something about you that I don't know: I have 6 stuffed bunnies in my apartment for Easter
18: If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?: Eliminate war
19: Do you like to dance?: Absolutely!
20: Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?: Ekaterina
21: Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?: Nikolai
22: Would you ever consider living abroad?: For sure - anywhere in Europe!
I need a break. I got home from work at 3:30, and have been studying my property insurance pretty much none stop since then. I'm starting to feel a little more confident about the exam, but it still needs more time. I have tomorrow afternoon off work to study, so hopefully that will do it!
There's very little of interest that's gone on in the past few days. I ended up not doing much baking at all on the weekend, only making a bunny cake that I took in to work today.
Tomorrow night I'm going to see The Producers here in Toronto for the first time. I'll admit I'm not expecting much in relation to the New York cast, but maybe they'll surprise me!
Susan and I have hung a large map of Scotland by our desks at work. It is providing some much-needed motivation to make it through the days lately!
I've heard a rumour that the Phantom movie contains a sword fight between the Phantom and Raoul. Yes, you heard me right. A SWORD FIGHT. What the snap? Not to mention the dubbing rumours. I truly don't know what they're thinking.
Did I mention winter is back? We had windchill today. In April! Insane.
Wheee, new layout! I hope you like it - I had a tough time deciding what I was going to do. But Zorana was complaining about my "witch layout", and Laurie sent me this great picture of Tiger, so it just kind of evolved.
Should I have been re-designing the site tonight though? Not really, not when I have a property exam in a week that I don't know anything about. Really. It's scary how little I know about this course. So tomorrow night is all about studying, and then Sunday as well.
I did end up going to see "Goodbye Lenin!" on the weekend, though it turned out that nobody else came with me. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed it! It was funny and sweet, and I laughed and cried, and will probably buy it when it comes out on DVD. Thanks to Reinhard for the tip! :-)
After the movie, it was so beautiful outside that I walked home (about a 50 minute walk) up Yonge Street, and it was so nice. I can't wait for summer! Since then, it has been raining constantly, and I'm tired of it.
Susan came over last night and we played around with some web design ideas, and I gave her a little primer on HTML. I'm trying to get together a baking party on the weekend with some girls from work, but nobody seems as excited about it as I am, so I won't be surprised if nothing comes of it. Regardless, I will be devoting my Saturday to making Easter eggs and chocolates and cake and other fun things!
My email has been a little screwy this week, not letting me in all the time. This might have something to do with how far overlimit I am on my data transfer... :-/ I'm averaging around 1200 unique visitors to my musical site every day - can you believe that?! It's great, but it's costing me a lot of money too!
Alright, time for bed now. Happy April Fool's Day! (Is that an appropriate greeting?)