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Happy New Year!

A few more hours to go before we ring in 2007. Unfortunately because there will be a significant amount of freezing rain beginning soon, we canceled our plans to go hang out with Serge and Christine. They offered to let us stay overnight, but we just spent a week away from our beds and are not looking forward to doing it again for a while. So, a low key New Year's Eve it is.

Theo is going to watch the end of the Miami game and then we'll watch a movie or some more episodes of West Wing or something until there's some decent programming on for the celebrations at midnight.

Steveo got us the new Incubus album, Light Grenades, which I've got to recommend.

Incubus - Light Grenades - Sneak Peek:



So far, my fave track is #3: Dig



Also really diggin' #5: Love Hurts



The current single rocks: Anna Molly




Definitely worth checking out!!

We also got the new Brand New album - The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me - also kick ass!



Alright -- enough vids for now! Have a safe and happy new year everyone!

Bonne annee!

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Articles/videos of interest:

Keith Olbermann Proves That Dissent Has An Audience

Big Box Swindle: The Fight to Reclaim America from Retail Giants

Olbermann: 'Civil War' naming is Iraq's Walter Cronkite moment [VIDEO]
"Noting that "it's the media's job to cut through [the administration's deceptive language] and call things what they are," Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford quipped that "If these guys were designing road signs they'd probably want to call a 'dead end' sign 'outlet free.'""

Guide to Less Toxic Products

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(Note to self: Don't post that you are leaving early to surprise someone if that someone reads your blog! - Thanks Mat for not spilling the beans to your whole family!)

I have returned from up North! Because many of you don't know where Kapuskasing is - I have included a map of our journey! (My dad thought that we somehow went through Toronto to get there???) I apologize for the crappy map.

The trip up wasn't too bad -- except the last what should have been 20 minutes of the ride took us about 45 because the freezing rain had started. You know it's bad when the transport trucks are going 30 km/h with their four-way lights on!

Surprised Theo's parents -- both his brothers were out. After nine hours of driving we were ready for bed and zonked out before his brothers got home. It was mostly a nice, restful holiday with lots of video games (Theo and Mat had two XboX 360's and two TVs set up.)

Ate lots of good food -- and too much of it! I can't wait to get back to yoga classes next week. It's just not the same doing it at home!

Santa was very nice to us both -- new duvet, food processor, cell phone, housecoat, Toronto FC tickets and toques, lots of chocolate etc...

Mat made us a macaroni picture of Theo and I -- which we promptly put up on our fridge when we got home!

More photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laura311

[74]

Four more sleeps until Christmas!

And- even better- I thought we would be leaving for our nine-hour drive to Kapuskasing early on Saturday - but now we're leaving tomorrow after lunch!

Tonight we hit up a Christmas party at Jason and Kimya's -- and we get to meet their new baby Eleyna. Afterwards we'll stop by my grandma's house where my parents are having dinner to say goodbye and spend a little time with them before we leave.

I apologize for the lack of posts lately-- but I thought that without any meetings after work I'd have more time to write! Instead I've been wrapping gifts, baking like mad, and spending time with friends.

Saturday night I went out dancing with a few friends at Tila Tequila -- here's a pic of Daniel, Salma, myself and Christine.

Good times!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone -- and I'll tell you all about my first French Christmas when I get back! :)

[73]

I can't wait! Theo and I have our tickets for the end of March -- We Will Rock You in Toronto!

[72]

THANK YOU! I’m so tired of all this hoopla over Second Life. It’s a dumb game, a crappy game, and there really aren’t that many people playing it so can we stop taking it so damn seriously?! Reuters opening up a full-time journalist there, Crayon launching itself, American Apparel… good for you. I don’t care to hear about it anymore though.

It’s like when a radio station with top 40 (which often seems like top 10) plays the same damn song over and over again, and a potentially good song is ruined.

I love social media, don’t get me wrong. But it’s been absolutely exhausting to see every second freaking (PR) blog talk about Second Life, and their meeting in Second Life and I wear this in Second Life and blah blah Second Life… arghhh!

[71]

What? The square brackets are back? It's only because I'm using the laptop and not my computer. I still haven't figured out how to do that on my new keyboard.

*Sigh

It's December 13th and I was finally paid for the month of October today. Sadly most of my paycheque has already disappeared to bills... The rest will soon be dedicated to Christmas presents!

The good news on the money front is that my work is paying for the writing course I took at Algonquin and I should see that money before Christmas. It will go directly to next semester's course.

My Christmas shopping is almost done. Theo's gift (which I can't say what it is, in case he reads this!) and my mom's birthday present. I also have to print some pictures and frame them for my parents and grandma.

I'm super excited for my first French Christmas. Theo's family's traditions, French-Canadian traditions and foods -- I can't wait to experience it. I'm also excited because Theo's parents go to Church, and I never did and am very curious to see what this Midnight Mass is all about.

This weekend my family and I are going out to Thomas Tree Farm in North Gower where we have been going for many years. We'll listen to the Vinyl Cafe Christmas CD on the way there and pack a lunch to eat after we've taken a sleigh ride out to the trees and cut one down. We also get cookies and hot chocolate after the always-tough-picking-of-the-tree. Normally one of my mittens or hats goes on the one we think we want while we walk around to make sure there isn't one that's better. I'm not sure if that's cheating, but no one has called us on it yet! Steve normally cuts it down and we take another horse-drawn sleigh back to the lodge with all the trees on a mini trailer behind us. I know, not as traditional as walking into the forest to pick one out, but at least these guys are planting trees to replace the ones we take!

What are your family's traditions?

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It's been another hectic week. Habitat meeting Monday night, came home and had dinner at 9 p.m. watched some more of season four of The West Wing and went to bed. Tuesday night had class, wrote a PSA on Habitat for Humanity's ReStore Holiday Sale, came home, watched Studio 60 and went to bed.

We've been catching up on West Wing a lot this week and are currently on season five. It's such a smart show -- we love it!

Last night we went to see Apocalypto - which was bloody as all get out, but decent.

Today is Sunday, aka, football day. Bruce, Theo and I went out to breakfast at our usual diggs and now the boys are in the other room watching the game. Trying out a new recipe for dinner tonight.

Lots of e-mailing and catching up to do today, so today's post is short.

Promise to have more later.

In the mean time: new Mark Fiore animation for all the enjoy.

First Christmas party pic of the year!

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Alright ... Theo has replaced my keyboard with a freebie he got from work. It's messing me up! I can't figure out how to do the square brackets anymore (the 9 key has it -- but I don't know what combination of shifts or alts or whatever keys I need to press with it to get it to work... help?) and it has all the French accents on it which would be excellent for spelling his name correctly if only Blogger took accents.

I had some trouble earlier with Blogger, so I didn't post some excellent Olbermann videos and other interesting links I had -- will do that tomorrow.

I was just about to head to bed when I decided to see if this would work finally -- and it has!

Just thought I'd share that I'm getting in the Christmas spirit already -- Stuart McLean's Vinyl Cafe was today, and I received two Christmas party invites today also! There is a box of Clementine oranges in our fridge, as well as egg nog (which is translated to "lait de poule", or chicken milk, in French - yum!) so yes... it must be Christmas time!



I'll post more about Stuart and Christmas and all that good stuff tomorrow when I get home if I'm not too tired from my two-hour and four-hour meetings at work, followed by a two-hour volunteer meeting for Habitat for Humanity....

Bonne nuit!