Doing homework, looking sexy
This month has been a rollercoaster.
John’s work spent the last several weeks trying to convince him he should drop out of school and work full-time. Needless to say, he refused. Of course, rather than accepting his decision, they proceeded to try to schedule him to work as many as six days each week, even though he is going to school every weekday between 9 and 3:30. Fortunately, my boy has a backbone and was having none of it (gotta love him!). Now they are scheduling him for two to three days a week, which is what he wanted (and what he told them he could do when they hired him).
Johnny has been enjoying school so far. He spends most of his free weeknights (when he’s not at work) doing his homework and studying. He’s very excited!
First dance
Earlier this month was out friends Jen and Jeremy’s wedding. They had it at Atlantis at Ontario Place. The views were amazing, both of the city and of the lake. The ceremony was held up on the roof looking out over the lake, and the reception was down inside in a beautiful ballroom. The food was good, the cake was amazing, and Jen’s smile got bigger and bigger every time I saw her.
John and I are still looking for a DJ for our own wedding, and we were waiting to hear how the DJ at Jen and Jer’s did (one of the DJs we are considering is from the same company as Jen and Jer’s DJ). We are supposed to meet with him next week, hopefully. We have met with one DJ already, a fellow named Justin from Indie Wedding DJ. We met him at a wedding show that the Gladstone Hotel hosted last winter. John and I both liked him, so we’ll see how this other fellow does next week.
Coming up in October we have our engagement photo shoot. I am excited to have these pictures taken! The wedding is coming closer!
Unfortunately September also had a really sad event — our friend Kim Lausch, passed away last week. Kim was a really special person and a really great friend for both of us. We both miss her a lot. Here are some of our favourite pictures of her:
It’s been a while since I last posted, but there’s lots to share!
Yesterday was the first day of our fourth year together, and we celebrated pretty simply: I made a lasagna and we had a nice dinner and some cake. Last year we had a bigger celebration, because we had just gotten engaged and then ended up both going to San Francisco right afterward, and this time next year we will be getting married having an even bigger party, so we decided for this year to keep it small.
John enjoyed himself at the Corso Italia street festival in July.
John has been getting a lot of hours this month, and especially this week, at his job at Pusateri’s, since he’s basically at the bottom of the list when people take time off, but for the most part he is enjoying it. He’s been focusing on booking things for our wedding over this summer, since in the fall he will be starting school full-time and working part-time in the evenings and at weekends. So far we have booked our officiant and have just finishing booking our photographer. Next up: the DJ!
As some people know already, I’ve been looking around for a new job for the past couple of months, and have had several interviews and even some job offers. However, I had not (yet) found anything that really appealed to me. A couple weeks ago, though, my old company, NeoEdge aka Blue Noodle aka Kinitos aka GWN Software, was torpedoed by one of its investors. It’s now sort of gone (I say “sort of” because its complicated and there are Issues that are still unresolved that I can’t post about here), and everyone is now out looking for new jobs.
Fortunately, as I had already been looking for a while, I was is a good spot and actually had just gotten some additional job offers. I was interested in one of them, at a company called Maintenance Assistant, and I’ve accepted that offer and am now working there! So far it is going great — the people there seem really great and are very friendly and helpful. My only problem is that a couple of these guys smoke, and are often out on smoke breaks, making it hard to ask them things (and when they come back they smell like cigarettes, which I find really disgusting). We’ll see how that works out, I guess.
I’ve been spending my first days at this new job getting my machine set up and getting into the code — it’s written in Java, which I’m not too familiar with yet, and I’m still getting used to Eclipse and my new Mac keyboard, so it’s a bit slower going than I am used to for myself, but those problems will shortly pass, I am sure. However, it is nice to be using a Unix-based system again, especially now that I’ve got MacPorts installed and can easily install all the various GNU and other open source tools and programs.
Lots more stuff happened this past month as well: we went to the Corso Italia festival, and the Pride Parade, and to Keizo and Crystal’s Wedding Pool Party (which was a lot of fun, thanks Keizo!). It’s been a busy summer so far!
Last Friday, John had all four of his wisdom teeth removed. I took the day off to get him home and look after him. After going to the pharmacy to get his various prescriptions (along with some ice cream and jello), I took him home and got him set up on the couch with an ice pack. He was still groggy from the anesthetic, and wasn’t able to talk yet (especially with the gauze still in his mouth), but he was already feeling the pain starting.
Not a happy camper
On the Thursday before his operation, John had spent the afternoon making homemade chicken soup. After boiling a whole chicken and making the broth, he took time to cut up the chicken meat and the vegetables into really small pieces so that he could eat the soup without chewing it. He ended up with four mason jars of (very delicious!) chicken soup.
Unfortunately, at least at the beginning, even his careful dicing didn’t make the soup edible for him. Luckily for Johnny, I came to the rescue with a food processor, and he was able to enjoy some pureed homemade chicken soup. After that followed several days of pureed soup, ice cream, jello, and pudding. John started to crave something solid, so on Monday I made him some pasta with ground turkey, carefully cut into small pieces. The next day he was able to eat some salmon and couscous, and by the end of this week we had some homemade pizza for dinner.
He’s done his antibiotics now, his stitches have started to come out, and though he still needs to be careful with food getting stuck in the holes, Johnny is doing good and is almost back to normal. Which was good, because this weekend we helped our friends Rob and Janet move!
At 9am on Saturday, we went to Janet’s apartment, where we met up with Matt and Matt, and packed all of Janet’s things into the truck Rob had rented. Janet has a lot of plants (including a very large planter full of basil!), and we ended up packing all of those into the back of our hatchback. It was pretty awesome, and the basil planter made the whole car smell strongly of herbs.
Plantcar
We then drove to their new house in the east end and spent the rest of the morning unloading the truck. After a great lunch courtesy of Janet’s mom and dad, it was back to moving. Rob’s sister, Christine, had arrived by this time, and so we all headed over to Rob’s apartment for the second part of the move.
We loaded up the truck again, and then headed back to the new place to unload. John and I had brought along a birthday cake, since Janet and I share the same birthday and we figured we should celebrate it when everyone was around, but by the time we finished it was 6:00. Both Matts had had to leave (Matt L had a dinner date, and Matt P had to catch a train back to Burlington), so it just John, myself, Christine, Janet, and Rob at their new house. Nevertheless, we had a dinner of the leftover burgers and sausage from lunch, and then had some birthday cake. It was a delicious way to end a long day! Then John and I said goodbye and headed home.
On our way, we dropped by Matt and Kim’s house to give them a chunk of the leftover birthday cake. They were all outside in the backyard relaxing in the nice evening. We stuck around for a while and chatted, until we had to head home (John and I were still pretty sweaty and smelly from moving all day). It was great end to the day!
Last week Patrick and Toni were both here in the city, so John, Rob, and I decided we should throw them a party. That way, they’d have a chance to see a lot more people who they might not otherwise get to see.
We had to throw the party on Wednesday, which is a school night, because Patrick was only here during the week. I was worried that that might keep many people away, but apparently either I am more persuasive than I thought, or Patrick and/or Toni is/are extremely popular! (or perhaps it was their adorable little girl, Kiera, who was so popular…)
Anyways, lots of people showed up. Probably more people were in our townhouse than we have had in it at once before. There were definitely more babies in it than ever before: prior to the party the maximum concurrent baby magnitude was one. On Wednesday night, we reached a MCBM of at least six!
Unfortunately, I was too busy hosting and schmoozing to take any photos. But maybe one of my more attractive readers will offer one or two sweet pics from the night for me to post.
Last night was so nice, we decided to go up to our roof and relax! I tried to take a picture but my Sony point-and-shoot is sadly not really up to the task. This is the best I could do:
Try to ignore all the hundreds of lens flares from the strip lights.
On Saturday, we got up early and drove to my parents’ house. My mom’s Uncle Graham, who was up from the US, so we all went over to my Grandma’s to visit.
I got to see lots of folks we haven’t seen in a while (many of my mom’s cousins and uncles were there). Even better, John finally got to meet my Aunt Jan and Uncle Jeff, who live way up in Kapuskasing, and my godmother, Karen.
It was great to see everyone again; being in Toronto it is harder now to go to all the family get-togethers these days.
I’ve moved my blog over to my new domain. It’s now at http://blog.cmjdp.com — thanks Patrick for letting me piggyback on your Dreamhost account!
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and lots of stuff has happened. Where to start…
Well, first, John is going back to school! He’s currently taking night classes at Oakwood Collegiate, which is just down St. Clair from here (convenient!), to improve his math and English. His goal is to go to college and improve himself, and I’m doing my best to support him all the way. He still isn’t sure what he wants to do, just that he wants out of the food industry (and I can’t say I blame him).
While going to school, John was having a hard time seeing the board. A trip to the optometrist later and — voila! — Johnny has glasses! He picked out some nice ones too. They make him look pretty hot, I think:
John's New Glasses
Also as part of going back to school, John is looking for a part-time job (during the day), so that he has time to go to class and do his homework. Any connections would be appreciated!
On New Years Eve, John and I were having Matt and Kim over for a small New Years party. Since Johnny had gotten me a pasta machine for Christmas, I decided I would make homemade pasta for dinner that night.
After cleaning and preparing the pasta machine (you have to run some throw-away dough through it first to clean the rollers), I got ready to make the pasta dough. Johnny had gotten me a bag of semolina flour along with the machine (and a great book too!), but when I opened it it had bugs in it — ew! Yay random vendors in St. Lawrence Market.
After a quick trip to Consiglio’s for some new flour, I was able to make the dough. I let it sit for a bit, then cut it into small chunks and started putting it through the rollers. The machine has varying thicknesses, from 7 (thickest) to 1 (thinnest). Johnny and I took the pasta sheets down to a four for this first try, but I think next time I’ll go thinner.
Once I had all the dough into sheets, I started cutting it into fettucini. I know the machine has a special roller for making wide noodles, but I wanted to make this the way my nonna does (she cuts the noodles thinner than the rollers do, and they end up all slightly different sizes as a result). It took me a little while to get the hang of cutting the noodles thin enough. The ones below were my first attempt and ended up much wider than I wanted.
While all of this was going on, Johnny was busy making some tomato sauce. Once Matt and Kim had arrived, I also made some ground turkey meatballs. The end result was an all-homemade dinner that was really really yummy! I can’t wait to make more pasta!
John loves going to High Park in the fall, so a couple of weeks ago we spent an afternoon there, just walking around.
Here are some shots that Johnny took:
Had a pretty laid-back weekend. I was sick on Friday and so I just wanted to relax. I managed to spend some time up on the terrace on Saturday though, which was nice.
Today John and I made home-made hummus. It turned out pretty good for a first try!
