Category: Personal

A Capital Idea

This weekend, Brooke and I are embarking on a little getaway trip to our nation’s capital, Ottawa. We’re taking the bus, which means a five-hour trip each way (lots of time to read!). Our main reason for going is the National Capital Marathon. No, we’re not running it (yet!), but we’re going to do the 5K race on Saturday, and then watch the marathon on Sunday morning.

We’re also taking the opportunity to dine at one of Ottawa’s newest and most-acclaimed restaurants, Beckta. The nicest thing is that it’s being paid for by my employers, as a sort of thank-you for all the work I did on our big tasting event a few weeks ago. We’re also meeting up tonight with one of my colleagues (our Ottawa sales rep) and his girlfriend for a more casual meal.

Hopefully, we’ll also find a bit of time to explore the National Gallery of Canada, check out Parliament Hill and maybe do a couple of other touristy things. We’ll be back Sunday and I’ll try to post a picture or two.

What a Week!

I’ve been pretty scarce online lately. What have I been so busy with the past week? Well, how about:

  • seeing a dozen documentaries at the Hot Docs festival.
  • running my best 10K time by exactly two minutes (52:30.9! Yeah!) in the Sporting Life 10K.
  • rocking out live to the hyperactive geek sounds of the Apples In Stereo.
  • wrapping up several months of preparation with what amounted to a 16 hour workday as we hosted 19 winemakers from seven countries (and four continents!) at a huge tasting of our entire portfolio of wines. More than 600 people attended.

So, what have you been up to lately?

Christmas Letters

Now, before I get started, I need to apologize in advance to my friends. I mean you no disrespect. Try to see the humour!

Among a certain crowd of my friends, a new “tradition” has taken hold. It’s the annual Christmas letter. Tucked into the Christmas card is a photocopied letter, usually on cheerful stationery covered with snowflakes or snowmen or holly or Christmas lights. Since it’s from the whole family, the letter is usually narrated in the third person, which makes it sound weird. I mean, who’s narrating this thing? And since this is sent to everyone from family to close friends to acquaintances, there isn’t much detail. There are usually three themes: property, employment, and offspring. So here’s one from Brooke and me:

Dear Friends,

Peace and joy to you at this blessed time of year. We’ve had a very exciting 2003, with lots of crazy stuff happening all the time. However, we can only talk about some of it. Just like you, we had good times and bad times, and a lot of kind of boring times, too. We got a little older, hopefully a little wiser, and a little further down the road trying to figure out life, the universe, and everything.

Brooke:

  1. wanted us to buy a house but also wanted to travel, so we decided not to buy a house. Not that we could have, anyway…
  2. continues her job at a fabulous FASHION magazine (which shall remain nameless), though still not a convinced fashionista.
  3. still dislikes OPK™(other people’s kids) and therefore remains ambivalent about having any of her own.

James, meanwhile:

  1. remains blissfully ignorant about mortgages and property taxes and how to fix stuff. For a while, there, it was close, though…
  2. wanted to quit his job in February, but lost it in March. In July, he found a much better one, though he makes about 58% of the money he did before.
  3. still has that gleam in his eye, though it’s likely to remain there.

Oh yeah, did we mention that the two of us:

  1. still don’t own a car, and have no plans to buy one.
  2. went to Poland for two weeks in July with our church to teach ESL.
  3. argue sometimes but are still very much in love.

Well, that was our year. We didn’t buy a dog, either. Merry Christmas!

Love, James and Brooke

P.S. That stuff you might have heard about us sacrificing a goat was totally untrue. We’re not even allowed to barbecue in our apartment building.

One Year

Brooke and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary today by running together in the Run For The Cure 5K. We did pretty well. Later, we’re going out for a romantic dinner. Running and marriage have a lot in common. Most of my metaphors are failing me right now, but I’m thinking about our first anniversary being like passing the Mile 1 marker in a marathon. Sure, we’re smiling now, but the important part is to be smiling at the finish line!

Old Home Movies

I spent an hour this morning looking at an old videotape I have. It’s a compilation of a bunch of home movies from 1992-1995. It was fun to see some of the trips I took with my friends back then. There’s stuff from a trip to Montreal in the summer of 1992, and then of a trip to Chicago in the summer of 1993. The number of Seinfeld references we make is astounding, and the soundtrack is also interesting: Stereo MC’s, Tragically Hip, Indigo Girls, Matthew Sweet.

Then there’s stuff from my trip to Ireland in 1995 with Brent. We took the camera into some pubs and just put it on the floor so we could tape the traditional music. So even though there are just long stretches of black screen, the music is phenomenal.

The funniest thing on the tape, though, is our New Year’s 1992 celebration. There’s a bit of Brent, surreptitiously filmed singing along to “McDonald’s Girl” by the Barenaked Ladies. Priceless. Now I just have to get the stuff off tape and onto a more permanent medium.