Being New Year’s Eve, the office let me go early today, so a co-worker and I decided to hit LCBO at The Atrium On Bay to fill up on the new year’s eve need. All I wanted was that fun Absolute Vodka bottle made out of mirrors… but no luck. My co-worker was luckier and found what he needed/wanted.
We line up and all of a sudden, the guy in front of us, reeking of alcohol and smoke, arms full of liquor bottles, turns and goes:
Drunk guy: I gotta say this… I’ve never been in a line up with so many gay people… Like you (to some skinny effeminate guy), and you (his equally effeminate friend), and you (to my co-worker)… and you (to me) Skinny effeminate guy: Thanks! (with the attitude you know a drag queen would give) Me: Don’t know about that, but I remember the last time I was in a line up with idiots… oh that’s today. Drunk guy: I’m not an idiot, I’m just saying…
(silence for a bit) Drunk guy: All I’m saying is it’s nice, see, I was married for 23 years, and obviously I’m not anymore, but my wife always said “go get wine”, she never came with me… but you guys, you come together, it’s nice, couples that do this together. Me: Are you sure about that? Drunk guy: huh? Me: Maybe we’re just co-workers who like to drink? Drunk guy: oh…
(silence for another bit) Drunk guy (to the guy in front of him): Blarhg blahrfghh blarhgghth
And he went on about some other merry tale…
I’m glad this shitty year if finishing on this note… 2009 will be MUCH better… it is a year we’ll visit Disney World after all.
It’s Boxing Day, we just got back home after our festive early morning run of HMV, Future Shop, BestBuy and World’s Biggest Bookstore… We’re $360.25 poorer, but so much richer in Blu-Ray and Playstation games… YEHHHHHHHHH
Best buy? Little Big Planet for $29
Most Looking Forward To Use Buy? Fallout 3
Humm… that surprise dessert didn’t turn out as great as we thought… but it was still funny as hell:
This is how it all started
This is what it was supposed to look like
This is what we got
And the funniest part was when we started cutting it, it totally fell into pieces because there wasn’t enough buttery cream to cement it together…
Live and learn I say, the next one will be perfect, this was practice only… (Plus I’ll buy the William Sonoma marzipan cake decoration set for the next one)
This year, my Christmas is different than any other ones past. We wanted to spend time with Da before he leaves us for South America for the Winter, especially after all the hard times he went through this past Spring and Summer, I felt it was important to have a great Christmas time with him. So we rescheduled everything and drove to Quebec to visit my family last week and this week is all about being here for him.
We started the celebration by going to the MCC Midnight Mass celebration at Roy Thompson Hall with him:
Here we are, dressed in our finest, on our way to meet him. Do not be jealous of the scarf, get your own. (My sister will knit you one too if you ask nicely)
And here we are at the Hall
It was a great service and I found myself singing along with all the carols. MCC does put up a great show and again, I found myself closed to tears at moment. There are moments in time when you miss the departed more than others.
After a majorly cold walk to the subway and the ride home, we plugged in the lights on the tree and decided to give each other our gifts instead of waiting until Christmas morning. YEH.
Here is the tree with the wrapped loot
DR surprised me with a stocking, I had no idea so I had nothing waiting for him… how sad:
Now… let’s go back in time to 2 months ago. DR and I were making our halloween costumes and swearing out loud because we were both very poor at sewing. How nice would it be to have a sewing machine and how much nicer would it be to know how to use it. So one day, while shopping, we saw this Shark brand sewing machine on special, it looked really fun with the Shark logo on it and it boasted that it could sew through 4 layers of jeans… perfect for halloween costume… We put the idea in the back of our heads.
A few weeks later, still shopping, we went into a store that was advertising sewing lessons. The prices were very reasonable and they had lessons all through the Winter months. Perfect. Let’s sign up.
Now, back to the week before Christmas. DR comes home with a big box and goes hide it… then after closer inspection, he swears out loud and calls me in the bedroom. There’s a big box with a sewing machine in it… It’s going to be my Christmas gift… but although he took great care to choose a box that wasn’t damaged, he ended up choosing the wrong sewing machine, he didn’t get the Shark one after all as the different brands were mixed in the “sewing section”. He will go and exchange it… but the more we look at it, the more we notice the selling features are exactly what we need and want for Halloween, including sewing through very thick material. So we decide to keep it. DR wraps it and puts it under the tree.
As I’m looking at the size of the box, I realize it is the exact same size of the gift he has been asking for… I get a splendidly fab idea…
Without him knowing, I wrapped his gift with the exact same paper, I took the sewing machine, hid it and replaced it with the new surprise gift… Now I had to find a way to make him open it. So I came up with this lame plan that I wanted to act “fake” surprise when opening my gift and he should film it for me to post on my blog, and then I kept saying that with his “improvisational and acting skills” he would do a much better job at being faked-surprised and he should open it while I filmed, but he didn’t buy it… So I had no choice, I’d have to open his gift while he filmed… and here’s what happened:
I totally got him… I got him good. Although he kept asking for one, I kept saying that we’d be crazy to buy one before Boxing Day, there would be some on special somewhere… ahah sucker.
Here’s the opened loot:
PS3
Disney Dossier Book
Wall E Blu-Ray 3 discs edition
Sewing Machine (not Shark… )
Bear throw cover
Wii Fit (Yesssssssssssssss)
Rodgers/Hammerstein musical collection
The Car (Cat pooh)
And here’s GeorgeHamilton, bored, nothing for him…
Now, let’s prepare for Christmas dinner, DR and I are in charge of the dessert, it will be a really fun surprise… stay tuned for pictures tomorrow.
This past weekend, DR and I packed up the rental car with lots of toys and goodies and drove to my mom’s just south of Montreal to meet up with my sis and her family as it was the only time we could all be together this year to celebrate.
Unfortunately, the timing sucked as it turned out to be snow storm central with one huge hit on Friday when we were scheduled to leave and another even bigger one on Sunday when we were to returned. I grew up in Quebec, I’m used to snow, so what the hell, we didn’t cancel, we braved it all. And although it was a very short visit, it was totally worth it to be together.
Here’s a little rundown of those 36 hours:
- We drove a total of 14.5 hours in blowing snow
- We saw 17 vehicles spun off the roads
- We took 4 pee breaks while on the road
- We went to the mall once
- We slept for only 5 hours
- We made one snow angel
- We ate way too much (twice)
- We played one “intense” game of charade
- We spent more than 3 hours opening gifts
- We woke up to -29 Celsius (with windchill)
- We skipped breakfast to get on the road earlier (crazy idiots)
- We now own bed sheets with sharks on them (my sis rocks)
- We had an amazing time
This morning, as it is custom after purchasing my coffee, I made my way to the Shoppers Drugmart and bought a 1 Litre bottle of water. The Life brand is only $0.89. Bargain. And much healthier than pop.
So I waltz in, grab the bottle from the shelf (I like mine at room temperature) and zig-zag my way to the cashier’s line-up, there’s only one person in front of me, bonus. Then out of nowhere, this mid-thirties mom with a pram full of Shoppers Drugmart stuff and a sicky-coughy toddler in tow zooms to the cashier, the line-up was not good enough for her apparently. At least, I think she zoomed there as I had not noticed her before, but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she was waiting on the side all along, she seemed determined to go in front of me… So she starts putting her items on the counter one by one, using just one hand the other tucked in her coat pocket. She’s buying an awful lot of crap this morning, a lot of it over-the-counter whitch medication for the toddler’s cough, but also some christmas candy thingies. After everything is finally loaded on the counter, the cashier, who’s IQ I’m guessing is less than the cost of my water bottle, starts scanning items gently (by this I mean so fucking slowly) and when she finishes, she announces the total amount owed and proceed, to my utmost dismay, to ask if the customer has an Optimum Card (the Shoppers Drugmart reward programme card). Of-fucking-course she does. And she plunges into her purse and fishes out a wallet the size of Montreal and proceeds to look for the damn card… all the while with a 3 yr old asking for his candies and by asking I mean, he’s whining and I can see tears forming in his sick eyes. She’s still looking for the card, he’s still whining for his candies… no, wait a minute, he’s now crying…
I just look at the cashier and gently slam my dollar on the counter and start walking away. The cashier yells that she has to scan the item, I can’t just leave… So I return to my place in the line, there are now quite few people behind me, I pick up my dollar, I hand over my bottle of water and retardo-cashier just stands there. With just one look, the cashier now understands that I will rip her to shreds and feed her inside to a mean hungry pack of dogs while marking my face in paint war design with her blood. I think she might actually do something good. The mom says: “go ahead, serve him, I’m gonna be a little while”. I turn to her and say: “yeah, I noticed”. The cashier takes my bottle, walks to the next cash register, two steps away, scans my item and says: $0.89. I give her the dollar back and walk away without waiting for the change back, who cares at this point. As I walk away, the mom says out loud: “Wow, it’s going to be a merry christmas at that house”. I just stop, turn to her and reply: “At the rate you’re going, you’ll be celebrating christmas on December 28. My christmas will be a very good one but you’ll still have to deal with this (pointing to the crying child who is sugar crashing now, tears and snot running down his face).
Last year, while at Kensington Market, I purchase an old police uniform winter coat, it was in total decent shape and was only $20, couldn’t resist and god knows I “needed” another coat.
Flash forward 13 months and here I am putting the coat on after dinner with DR and Da. I then strap my work bag on my shoulder and felt something weird under the strap. I start feeling for it and realize that there is something inside the coat pocket. I reach in and pull out 2 small keys and on rich bank slip… Is this like my own Amazing Race? Should I get on the train to Ottawa and try the keys in a safety deposit box at that bank and be rewarded with the sum indicated???
