30 November - Winter is coming!

Hi again all,

Sorry about the length of time between posts, life's fairly busy around here at the mo' with both me and Caren working a bit of overtime, and life being generally busy :)

We haven't had much of a chance to get out of the city since the last post, although we did get out to Mississauga (which is kinda like the Manukau of Auckland) to catch the Pixies in concert!

The Pixies are/were Caren's favorite band from the 80's and early 90's, and are long considered the true beginnings of Grunge music....and they haven't played together since like 1992 or something, so it was a once in a lifetime chance for Caren to see 'em!

I must admit , I wasn't particularly eager to go along as I didn't know any of their music, and Caren's music tastes vary quite significantly from mine, HOWEVER I must say that it was an Excellent concert!

The Pixies played superbly, considering they are all in their 40's by now (no offence to anyone intended!), and the crowd REALLY appreciated it.

Interestingly the concert was opened by the Datsuns from NZ, so that was a treat for us too :)

No photo's, as no camera's allowed, but it did snow on us on the way out (our first Toronto snow) as we waited for the bus home!

Other than that, we've both been working hard, and shopping.

Shopping, it seems, is our major pastime...and not fun shopping either!...crappy boring Clothes shopping and Food shopping! (dammit, where's my flatscreen tv ?? :/).

It pretty much takes us an entire day to get out of the house (on a Saturday for eg.), buy some needed things, get food, have lunch and get home again...we've never missed a car so much, but ah well, such is the life of the car-less.

(A Picture of the city from one of our shopping expeditions last weekend)

We have been learning to Ice Skate!

Don’t believe us?..well here’s pictures to prove it!

Caren carving up the Ice

Craig bumbling and stumbling along!

It's great fun!

we both are enjoying it so far (having had a grand total of 3 hours on the Ice so far)..Caren decided to sign us up for lessons, so we do that twice a week down near our work places and the out-door arena pictured above, which is cool.

We'll get some night shots, as it looks pretty cool all lit up, as does Toronto as a whole (makes a fantastic night cityscape)

Anyway, turns out we are both fairly natural skaters! (hard to believe I know, but honestly).

Within 1/2 an hour ,we were not only skating confidently forward/stopping etc.. but Caren was even skating backwards!

The instructors said they have never had such quick to learn students! and already consider us "advanced learners" after 3 lessons. An Aussie couple we are doing the lessons with are just as good, however the Canadian folk in the class still can't even stand up on the ice without assistance!

Hard case I say

Caren especially has really taken to the ice...doing forward to backward transitions and reverse cross-overs already..really quite amazing!

We've also got our first game of Ice hockey coming up next weekend, as some of the lads from work are renting a rink out for fun, so that should be interesting ;)

I'll try and remember to bring the camera, if even just for photo evidence of my demise..

This is a picture of the place I work, Scotia Plaza in downtown Toronto.

It's a 67 story skyscraper (2nd tallest in Toronto)...I'll try and get some shots from up top, as the view is quite amazing.

This is just a cool shot of Caren and the CN Tower (ie the Sky tower of Toronto) because I know you all have bandwidth to spare, Dave ;)

Ok, well, I'll sign off for now....I think there’s a "festival of lights" coming up, which should be a good photo op..

I must say Toronto really puts it's best foot forward in regards to Christmas...each and every big building downtown has some sort of multi-thousand dollar decoration going, and it really does feel like a "proper" Christmas somehow.

Looking forward very much to spending Christmas up in Quebec city with Caren and Dad (who is flying over from Aus for a holiday!).