he's coming to town

so we finally went live this morning. I was at work at 6:30 to make sure everything was working okay... and luckily it was.

I'm tired and it's cold in the office today which somehow brings me to what I did yesterday.

Yesterday was the annual santa claus parade in Toronto. I don't think I ever went to this when I was a kid - I think i usually sat at home and watched. I vaguely remember convincing someone (maybe my dad) to go down to Christie Pitts to see the parade set up at some point but as a child I never sat / stood and actually watched the parade in the cold. I think my first time watching it would've been when I was 16 or 17 with Ryan - he'd heard I'd never seen it and decided it was one of those things I just had to experience.

Anyway. I went to the parade yesterday. I bundled up (jamaisian toque, mitts and boots), grabbed my camera and headed off. I should note here that it was snowing as I left. I got to the parade probably about an hour into it (from where I was on the route) and quickly realized that it was really cold outside. And that the parade was not as interesting as I thought it would be. I had looked online to try to find out what time Santa would be making his appearance but I couldn't find that - I could only find the float line-up which I should've printed because once I got there I started wondering how long it would be before he'd show up. As I turned into an icicle I decided I should go and find him (walk up the parade route to both keep warm and speed up the process.)

And then Santa arrived. After about an hour of standing in the cold he arrived. And he wouldn't stop talking about the most stupid things (like the weather and how it rained yesterday but rain won't stop Santa, oh no! ho ho ho!) - yeah it was lame. And I could tell from the expression of the kids around me that they were not all that impressed either.

My pictures turned out pretty lame. Maybe my editing them just didn't work the way I anticipated...

Looking for Santa...


I think their expressions say it all


And who doesn't like an out-of-tune marching band? Actually, the band following this guy was pretty insane - probably 70 or 80 musicians and they were pretty good.


and finally.... the big guy:

a quick visit

So I'm not sure where I left off on this blog here...

I think probably it was some point before I decided to go full-time at work. It ends up that they wanted me to stay on (they asked me to join the team full-time at some point during my second month at work so it felt kind of good - I guess I was doing an okay job after all). The transition over has been a little strange - I keep having to remind myself that this isn't temporary anymore. Also, my role is kind of in-transition and has required some adjustment on my part. (How is it that my roles always seem to be transitioning?!)

We are about to hit the holiday code freeze which of course means a mad scramble and crunch to get our final version of code out into production. It's been a pretty exciting project to work on - very high profile for the company and one that I can actually say I'm proud to have worked on (at least to this point! I don't want to get into further details here - just ask me and I'll tell you what it is.) This week has been particularly bad and it doesn't seem to be coming to an end. It seems like I sat down this morning and next thing I knew it was 5pm! (That can't be a bad thing).

Anyway - enough talk about work! My parents spent the last 7 days with me. It was nice to see them and still baffles me that they choose to drive 3 1/2 days out here! Yeah, I know... I have to admit, I sometimes miss the drive out to Alberta - it seems like that was an annual thing when I was a kid and I really do consider myself lucky to have been able to do that (both travel across the country repeatedly and spend some time in Alberta.) Doing that trip really makes you appreciate the country so much more - it's size, the variety of communities, terrain... and just how boring the prairies can get!

I took a couple of pictures while they were around - it feels like my photography has kind of decreased in quantity over the last couple of months - could be the cooling weather or my other projects that are getting in the way?




Anyway, it was very nice to see them and I wish I could've spent more time with them. Unfortunately work and school were both pretty stressful over the last week and so I couldn't take much time off.

Other than that... I just finished Level 1 of Japanese! Kantan desu ne!? (it's easy isn't it?) Ha... not sure about that yet! I think I definitely need to study and practice speaking more... and so I am taking level 2 in January. It's been a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it. It's a little difficult - mainly because I don't have much of a vocabulary and my memory isn't that great so unless the word has some sort of latin root it takes some memorizing. That being said, I can read and write in Hiragana and I am making it my goal to be able to read in Katakana come January. I think maybe the fact that this is the only "course"-like thing I am doing in my spare time it's making it somewhat easy to focus (and I do kind of miss being in school so it's nice to be in that setting again.)

I find it extremely rewarding to be in situations where I can read something in Hiragana or understand very basic parts of conversations. It makes me feel like I'm actually learning something. On Monday, before class, I was in a restaurant waiting for my burrito to be ready when I realized that two girls sitting next to me were speaking Japanese. I tried to pay attention to their conversation - which was somewhat difficult to follow but I did understand parts of it (times that things started and ended... I kind of felt ridiculous because I honestly didn't know what they were talking about aside from start and end times... but hey, it's a start... right?)

I've also discovered that with my new job I'm developing this terrible addiction to books. I've been buying at least one every few weeks... I managed to read the last one I bought in a couple of days and so had to order myself some more today. I guess it could be worse right?

That's it for now.