Ooh blogspot has gone all fancy and added loads of extra options for formatting posts!  Excellent.

 

Mark and I saw Rufus Wainwright play for free at HMV the other night – was lucky enough to notice it in the newspaper in the morning on the way to work.  Weirdly there is a CNN story about the gig here with a pic.  Some person has some pics on here.  He played Beauty Mark, Pretty Things, Vibrate, The Art Teacher and Dinner At Eight.  We are going to see him at the Barbican in October too.

 

I have tickets to see Trauma at the National Film Theatre on August 22nd with Colin Firth and Marc Evans (the director) hosting!  Yahoo!

 

Last weekend was my birthday.  Thank god that’s over.  And Friday before I found out that even though I didn’t think I wanted it or would get it, I’ve been made manager of my team at work.  New title: Development Manager, Community Learning.  EEK.  We’ll see how that goes.

 

Still working on the house and the bathroom.  In fact I have been grouting tiles and QUITE enjoying myself doing it.  No seriously. It’s aesthetically pleasing seeing the bathroom look a million times better once you clean the tile adhesive stuff off and fill in the gaps.  And Mark put up those flat halogen lights in the kitchen ceiling which looks incredibly better than the old line of flourescent.  Ugh.

 

My dad will be here in a week with the Scouts, and trying to get some stuff organised for him like randomly picture frames, wood for a display, a cooler, and on line grocery shopping.  Don’t call my mobile July 30 to August 16 as he will have it, not me!

 

Other than that, really looking forward to our holiday mostly just to get away from how busy work has been lately!  We get in to Toronto on July 30th at 10:30am ish after a HORRIBLE middle of the night flight.  See some of you very soon!

I am just much too busy at work lately, and now I have to deal with an all-day assessment on Monday and then an interview Tuesday morning for this manager’s job that I am not really sure I even want! However I had a good talk with my acting-down manager today that I should just go with the experience of it, and so if we get someone external hired who is brilliant, everyone will be happy. I won’t have to do more work for the same pay, but will have the experience of a serious interview process. And the new manager will have to deal with all the BS!

Lots of people are leaving WAES too, people that I like working with, which is a shame. The place is pretty messed up though. We are lucky on our team as I think we are shielded from a lot of the bad stuff.

Mark is avoiding the tiling by doing other stuff around the house. Last night it was doing the electrics and installing a light. We got a huge bargain on a dining room light the other day – £20 for something that could have cost £80+ – and although it’s not pefect it’s not bad to make the place look a little better, and we don’t want to spend a lot of money on stuff like that if we are possibly going to emigrate. It’s sort of like C$cip=12150>C$cip=12153&categoryId=12153″>this. Not as nice as Grace and Jay’s in Kitchener though! Too bad the rest of the room is a pit . Apparently he is back on the tiling tonight though. We’ll see if we ever have a bathroom up and running again…

Weather has been MISERABLE. I like the cooler temp, but the wind, lightening and torrential downpour for the past 2 days has been a bit much.

Better go – have to prepare for a presentation for the interview. I don’t have time! And I have to work on Saturday too! Argh!

Before sliding off to bed, I had to share the cute pics of cute new kids of friends… that’s Samantha’s son (born end of March)and Jean and Michelle’s daughter (born beginning of May).

Tate Vargo with his dad 

Isabelle Cotnoir 

Thank god, after like 2 hours on the phone with technical support today (for a price) I have fixed our internet access at home! Hurray!

And to celebrate, a little test to see if this works…



Hurray again!!!

We had a great Canada Day this week – and turns out they wrote an article about the London festivities in the Toronto Star! Not sure how much longer they will have it online, but it’s here for now. I need to remember to tell my mother – the terrible maple leaf tie she got Mark last year was a COMPLETE hit – even the High Commissioner himself commented on it! Mark got so many people stopping him about it, it was hilarious. We started at Canada House, had cake and free booze (Moosehead and Niagara wine of course), made our way over to Maiden Lane, where we indulged in root beer, dill pickle chips and hickory sticks, and ended up escaping from the crowd in a Thai restaurant. Thankfully I spotted Dena somehow among the thousands and we did hang out for a while.

Not much happening this weekend – Mark has been tiling. Forever tiling. I wasted like most of the day on the phone fixing the internet. I have been consumed by the latest series of Big Brother here – it’s just compelling. I have never understood the interest before, but this year they have a transexual, several gay men, a guy who grooms for like 1 hour a day in the mirror including shaving all body hair, and so much more. Otherwise I hung some pictures, tended to my plants and cooked a big dinner. Tried a Nigella recipe I hadn’t made before – Za’tar Chicken With Fatoush Salad. God I love her summer cookbook. I think between Maria and myself we have made just about everything in that book (and thanks to Maria for bequething me her za’tar seasoning when she moved back to the US!). I have many cookbooks where I have been lucky to make just one of the recipes! But Nigella is a goddess. And her whisk is the best tool in my kitchen

We barbequed the chicken, and so I also got a chance to use my new BBQ frying pan from Lakeland, perfect for grilling vegetables without having them fall through the rack. They went well with the couscous I made too. Summer food rules.

If I don’t go now, I am going to get sucked into staying on this thing all night!

Good night…

Just spending some time at work basically before I head off to Canada House for the start of the evening’s festivities. Not sure if we are going to meet up with Dena, but at least Mark is going to meet me. I am wearing my roots t with CANADA in big letters, and he’s got new Canada flag cufflinks I just bought him (was going to wait to give as a gift in December, but realised they would be useful today!) and he’s also brought this terrible tie my mother bought him but maybe he won’t put it on!

I think first there is some singing and stuff at Canada House, then cake (excellent, always looking for an excuse to eat cake) and then supergarage are performing. There are the normal festivities in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden where the Maple Leaf Pub is, but I also understand there is a pub near Victoria (near my work) owned by a Canadian that is serving kraft dinner and more tonight. Actually that would be exciting except we had that for dinner on Monday as Em brought me some back from Canada with her, and they came down from Wales to London last weekend. Mmm it was good.

Just spent some time before lunch doing a math practice test of all things. There is a push at work to make sure that staff are okay on the numeracy bit as we are trying to do a lot of basic skills teaching (such as literacy but maths too). I signed up to take a proper test on Monday at level 2 which is quite basic, and I just struggled with all kinds of things doing it! No recollection whatsoever how to do ratios or volume! Luckily about 34 of the 40 questions were pretty straightforward. I don’t want to look like a dork when I fail this thing. Although I suppose it won’t affect my job! And hey we get lunch and wine after taking it, so what the heck.