Mr. Bones feels rattlin' - that's a good one!

As I've said in the past, there is really only one Christmas album to listen to at this time of year: Bing Crosby's White Christmas. It's. The. Best. For the most part, I do not listen to any other Christmas songs. Bing and the Andrews Sisters singing Jingle Bells is awesome! So when Margaret suggested I watch White Christmas, starring Bing Crosby et. al., I was shocked that I'd never even considered watching it before.

Well, I watched it yesterday. Check out the gem of a joke at 1:20 - pretty macabre!

My Top 5 Favourite Christmas Movies!

In no particular order:

Uncle Buck (1989) - though not technically a Christmas movie, it does take place in the winter and you can catch on CTV around this time of year.

It's A Wonderful Life (1946) - One of my all-time favourite movies. I'll be honest though, it's not the same watching it without Dana. I haven't watched since she moved to Australia!

Elf (2003) - The funniest Christmas movie; it has so many great lines in it.

The Holiday (2006) - The best Chick Flick Christmas movie.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) - Classic!

Awwww!

I have taken some really great train rides. Many years ago, I travelled 1532km on the Ghan form Adelaide to Alice Springs, Australia.

http://rac.com.au/Travel/RAC-Travel-eNews/2009/April-09/Ghan.aspx

I also travelled 730km on the Southern Spirit from Adelaide to Melbourne, in Australia.

http://www.news.com.au/travel/holiday-ideas/uluru-and-eastern-states-linked-by-rail-cruise/story-e6frfqd9-1225829575384

I also travelled about 200km from Greymouth to Christchurch in New Zealand on the TranzAlpine which passes through Arthur's Pass National Park, beautiful!

http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/tranzalpine-train

And leaving on January 1st, 2011 I'm travelling for my very first time in a sleeper on the Canadian from Toronto to Vancouver!

http://www.canamerica.ie/holiday.php?id=263

Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee

, coffee, coffee, coffee

, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee

It's all people seem to talk about! Me included. I've given up coffee a few times and loved the freedom from it, but missed it's warmth, flavour and energy jolt. The last time I gave it up, Mark's birthday rolled around and he was gifted* a fancy burr grinder and espresso machine, bringing the number of coffee machines in my home to more than I can count on one hand.

The scent of freshly ground coffee beans, freshly pressed coffee and beautifully frothed milk was too much and I've been drinking at least one every day. But this weekend, I have conquered my addiction once again! No coffee yesterday, none today....let's see how long it lasts!

*I never thought I'd use the word "gifted" but it seems to be all the rage!

Gaz Métro has recently improved their "customer environment" for me! I'm not sure yet what this means, but so far, I know that I no longer have to look up my account number every time I want to log in, I can now create a username! This is great, because it was a hassle to have to find my account number somewhere so I can see how much my bill is.

However, creating a username is as far as I can get. You see, to attach my Gaz Métro account to my new username I need my Gaz Métro account number AND the number of my most recent bill. But I can't get that number because I can't access my bills because I can't complete the registration because I don't know the number of my most recent bill because I can't access my bills and so on.

Gah!

I like Bell's system more. They don't attach or include my bill in their emails every month, but they do include how much my bill is in the email, so I all I have to do is pay it.

Boy, this is a boring blog post. Wish I was in Bali like some people.

Mark and I took a stroll through Parc-nature du Bois-de-l’Île-Bizard the other day, here are some photos!

Have you heard of.....THE NOSE PAD KING? I almost never wear my glasses, so that pair that I have that you've never seen me wear, I've had for a good 5 or 6 years. As you can well imagine, the nose pads were wearing thin, as they do. One of them broke and fell off! I thought to myself, "Now's my chance to get some fancy new glasses!" but I just couldn't do it. I don't wear them enough to merit spending hundreds on new ones so I did the next best thing: I ordered a couple of 13mm HD asymmetrical 'D' shaped silicone nose pads!

I had no idea nose pads could be such big business and there is a King of nose pads running the show! You got your plastic nose pads, plug-in nose pads, round nose pads, slide-on nose pads, rimless nose pads, teardrop shaped nose pads, titanium nose pads, asymmetrical nose pads, symmetrical nose pads, the list goes on and on.

I love Bircher Muesli! When I was in Australia in August, my sister introduced me to Carman's Natural Bircher Muesli which I just loved. I bought a box to bring home, but I finished it long ago.

What is Bircher Muesli? Wikipedia wasn't too much help when I did my own research to figure out the difference between regular muesli and Bircher muesli. But I think Bircher usually has dried fruit, toasted nuts and honey. The traditional method of preparation is to mix the 500g box of Bircher muesli with 1000g of yogurt and a grated apple.

Edit: I actually mix all this together and keep in the fridge the whole week. I take out the amount I want each morning for breakfast and maybe add a dab of peanut butter and some cinnamon. By Friday, the mixture is really tasty and the texture really pleasing.

At my sister's place, we prepared it as if it were oatmeal (in hot water with a mashed banana) and it was delicious. When I got home, I decided to prepare the box I had brought in the suggested way, with the yogurt and apple. It was just so delicious!

So, in the last two weeks, I've been experimenting in making my own Bircher muesli: oats, raisins, walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, tons of cinnamon and a few butterscotch chips. It's good, but it's no Carman's.

Carman, when will you make your products available in Canada? Or allow me to order it online?

Outer Great Barrier Reef!

Ooof! I cannot get rid of this jet lag! Adjusting my sleep schedule, avoiding coffee, eating at regular times, sleeping pills, and I'm still waking up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 3:30am!

For Margaret!

Singapore Sling!

Morning...


noon...

and night!

Look who was waiting for me in the Brisbane Botanical Garden today!

Catios! A custom patio for your cat! I don't have a catio, but I don't think anyone would be surprised if I made one on my balcony. Here's Willow enjoying a coffee on her potential custom catio featuring potted chives (she goes straight to them to have a chew as soon as I open the door) and chicken wire to prevent her from wandering to the neighbour's balcony.

Tour la Nuit! We biked the 20km Tour la Nuit last night. We got there earlier than last year and so didn't have to wait in line too long to get started on the actual cycling part of it. It started at 8:30pm, but so many people participate that you must wait among them in the street before you can cross the starting line.

My favourite part of doing this race is all the people who come out onto the sidewalks to cheer the cyclists on. Here is a rundown of the best things I saw:

• a little girl in tutu dancing for everyone
• a full-0n funk band set up on the sidewalk!
• a guy who'd hung t-shirts on his porch...was he selling them?
• about a hundred little dogs hanging out with their owners on porches
  
• a drunk guy warning everyone going by to put lights on our bikes because it will save our lives
• a group of people who had set up a projector to project the internet on a wall?!
• tons of people playing bongos and other drums, fun!

I LOVE all the people who come out to cheer on the cyclists, it's so fun so wave to everyone, to see all the little kids dancing around and telling us "Lâche pas!!!". Mark's favourite joke is to yell out "ça me tente de lâcher!" (I don't know how to spell that properly!), which makes the volunteers stationed everyone along the way to laugh.

Here's a funny video I found from the Tour la Nuit 2008. I think it captures it well, Chris de Chris!

Smelts!

I don't know why, but I've been craving smelts lately. They were popular to eat when I was a kid, but I don't think I ever tried them. I bought some yesterday and coated them in a bit of egg and corn flour, then fried them on the stove. Yum!

My cousin Tina made a list of what she's looking forward to as summer approaches and inspired me to make my own:

• my first soft-serve ice cream of the year
• my first cold coffee from Lili & Oli
• long bike rides along the river
• sitting on the balcony and watching the action on the street
• camping and hiking
• sleeping without sheets and blankets
• icy lemonade
• the excitement in the air at school as teachers and students get more and more excited for the end of the year
• long, long days!

The best line from last night's 30 Rock:

"A smug 40-year old bridesmaid, what a treat for everyone!" - Jack Donaghy

I recently started a Couch to 5km running program! I'm using Robert Ullrey's C25k podcasts to help me out. There are nine podcasts, each one is meant to be done three times in one week so that the whole thing lasts nine weeks. I decided that to keep myself from giving up as I've done so many times before, I will do each session four times instead of three, just to make sure I'm not moving along through the program too quickly.

Dana started a challenge to runners to take photos of their running routes, so here's mine!

I do this loop twice which takes about 30 minutes. First, I run down my street towards a park...

and follow this path...

which veers right, around a big grassy area...

following this path, I pass behind Maison St-Gabriel...

and exit this park, cross the street diagonally to enter another park...

where I follow a series of paths...

enjoy some sculpture...

come out onto the street...

and back onto my street!

Mark and I walked up Mount Royal last Saturday. I ate the second Vietnamese sandwich I've ever had up there. I don't know why I waited so long to start eating these!

The soup was not a success. It smelled wonderful and fresh and green, but tasted awful. I think I'm not used to the flavour and someone who is would like it more than I did. Something about the combination of hemp seed butter, miso and nutritional yeast just didn't appeal to me.

What? I have a blog?

Well, here I am alone on another Friday night because Mark is working for "the-band-that-shall-go-unnamed", going on almost a year to record an album (@#$%&!). Feeling a little teed off because someone stole my garbage can?! Who does that? I know they didn't mistake it for their own because I'm the only person on this street with a metal garbage can.

Anyway, I decided to peruse the new Chatelaine magazine that I just got in the mail today. I was inspired to Tone My Butt in 8 Simple Moves so I looked up Canadian Tire's website to price an exercise ball. But then I felt like I didn't really want to walk over to the store, even though it's just 10 minutes away. So I looked up The Simple Dollar's 100 Things To Do During a Money Free Weekend. I was intrigued by #25 on how to build a simple net worth calculator, so I worked on that for a bit and felt relieved that my net worth isn't as low as I thought it was. But it still prevented me from heading to Ikea to buy some big pillows to lounge around on now that I've gotten rid of all seating except for my sofa.

A blog I like to read is Gena Hemshaw's Choosing Raw. Not because I live the raw lifestyle but because I think she's an excellent writer compared to other food blogs I read. Recently she featured a friend of hers who just had his raw food cookbook published. I bought the online version and am going to make a spinach soup, I believe it's the first recipe in the book. I'll take pictures to post tomorrow.