This is just ridiculous, it is the twenty-first century and Canada is a modern country. We have got to vote the Canadian Alliance out of Parliament. This party should NOT EXIST. Firing an MP won’t make it, they have got to go.

Thank God it is Friday. It has been a hell of a week, with the computer-breaking-down ordeal and the condo-buying thing I am just exhausted. Last night I went to Greg and Clarissa’s with my computer in a suitcase. It was so heavy that I think the suitcase is not going to be around for much longer. We watched football and had dinner and then Greg installed the new hard disc and Windows. I haven’t installed the computer at home yet because it was too late when I got back home, but it is running fine again.

Yesterday I had the flu shot. I have to confess that I was a little scared, but everything turned out to be fine. I didn’t want to go alone so I went to the 8th floor with Joe and Kim from Office 12 (I am on Office 9), they came and picked me up and we all went downstairs. I am feeling fine, but my arm feels as if someone punched it really hard.

I’ve been meaning to go see this great movie The Barbarian Invasions, I thought it was just going to be playing this week at the Cumberland and I would miss it. But it is Friday now and it will be playing at least for another week. I might go see it during the weekend, because I won’t have time during the week again. December hasn’t even started and I already have 3 Christmas parties and 1 Hanukkah party, and counting.

Tonight I am going with Charlene and Teawna after work for dinner and then we are going to see 21 Grams, the new movie by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. I wanted to see it even when it showed in the Toronto International Film Festival, but of course it was sold out. I am looking forward to it but don’t know how depressing it is going to be, apparently it makes Schindler’s List seem like a Disney movie. We’ll see.

Tomorrow there is this really cool event in which the Christmas Tree is going to be lit, the Christmas market is going to start, and also the skating rink is going to be ready for the season. Last year it was on a Friday, I think, because I remember getting off work and going to Nathan Phillips Square with Christian and Jorge to see the fireworks. I might just go, apparently it is going to be snowing and it could be fun.

Ernest just called. Everything is under control. We need a thing called the Status Certificate from the Condo Board or something, that could take up to 10 days, the offer is conditional to my lawyer reviewing it and making sure everything is in order. After getting the Certificate we have 3 days to review it. Also, I have 5 days for the bank to approve my mortgage and give me an acceptable rate, but they are so low right now, 4.85% or something like that. It’s just such a good rate.

I went to see Master and Commander yesterday, I was not expecting much, but it was great. It’s one of those films that will probably be nominated for the Academy Awards. Russell Crowe is such a good actor, and the movie is real, it doesn’t have a made-up happy ending like others. It just ends in a real way (they all die!). I recommend it a lot. After that we went for dinner to a creperie. I wasn’t very hungry due to having eaten lunch at 3:30, so I just had salad.

This evening I am going to put my computer in a suitcase and drag it all over town to bring it to Greg’s again, I bought a hard-disk yesterday and Greg is going to install it. I bought an 80 GB 7200 RPM IDE hard drive. So now I will have space for music, pictures, and lots of things. I really want to get a digital camera (this is the one I’ve been considering) (or maybe this one) (OK, now I am confused, they are all so cool), anyway I think it’s time. I haven’t had a camera for 10 years. My Pentax camera broke down in the middle of a trip to France back in 1993. I bought a disposable camera to finish that trip and I never got a new camera after that. I had actually bought a really cool digital camera as a present for someone in September, but I gave it back. Maybe I should have kept it. After I finish this condo-buying ordeal, my next purchase might just be a camera, so I’ll be able to take my own pictures and post them on my yahoo pictures account.

So, I just bought a condo. It is on (CENSORED). I was in a meeting this morning with Linda deciding on Christmas gifts when my cell phone rang. Really, no one ever calls me, let alone on my cell phone. So I figured it have to be Ernest. So I picked up and it was him telling me that the sellers had accepted my offer and now I owned a condo. I was so excited. So the only thing that is missing is to negotiate the best mortgage deal. I might be moving on February or March. That could change and I’ll know for sure by next week. But apart from that, I am now a home-owner.

And this is just one of the reasons why I am scared of the Gardiner

My computer broke down again. I was downloading my usual amount of porn when suddenly….. juuuuuust kiddiiiiiing. It was exactly when I was posting last night’s entry to the weblog that it started to slow down. I was also looking at Tridel.com, researching for condos, at the same time. So I managed to turn it off normally, it took some time but it turned off and even made that little Windows song, not after actually making a click sound from the CPU. Then I tried to turn it on again and got this message: No boot device detected: system halted. I inserted the Windows CD and it booted the machine, but when I pressed R for repair, it said that no hard disk was available. Then I went into the BIOS (didn’t do anything to it, I know better than to mess with it) and looked for the devices installed and it did not recognize the hard disk.

I spent a good amount of my night awake worrying about it. I guess I will have to buy a new hard disk, that appears to be the problem and it seemed to be that even since last time.

So I passed from being furious with Rogers to freaking out about my connectivity from home. Also, I cannot believe that people from Dell called me back in May to ask me if I wanted to extend the warranty for another year, but I said no, what for, the computer is perfect, it is a piece of art, it has never given me any problem. ME AND MY BIG MOUTH! Now I don’t know how long it will be, but I will have to log in to my email (and my weblog) from work, just during business hours.

So I had to run from work because the cable guy was going to come and install digital cable. I already installed the premium channels about 8 months ago, but for that I didn’t need to be here, they just came and did it directly from the box on the street. This time I ordered the digital channels, which I don’t even think are so great, but I was not going to pay that much more anyway, and since I already have my Internet with them it seemed like a good idea. The thing is that they got me in a good mood last week while I was walking in the middle of the day (that’s what we business women do) through First Canadian Place.

So the guy talked me into it, I thought “what the heck” and signed up for digital cable. Since you need the special digital terminal, I had to wait for the cable guy today. Well I waited and waited and after 8:00 PM I realized he was not going to come. So I called Rogers and asked what had happened. Apparently my appointment was not for today but for tomorrow. Well, I can’t wait for them tomorrow, I have my Book Club session tomorrow, plus I didn’t want digital cable in the first place since I might be moving soon. I decided to tell them to cancel the order. I will just keep my regular service.

Speaking of moving soon, I am placing the offer for the condo on the XX floor of (CENSORED) tomorrow. They might not accept it because it is lower than what they are asking for, but that is all I can afford. If they don’t want it, I can wait for another condo that I can afford. We’ll see.

Toronto is a relatively small city if you do not count the suburbs, but why should you? The Toronto life is different than the suburb life, which compares to suburb life in any major city in North America, it is dependent of the car and if you are taken there with your eyes closed you could probably not guess where you are.

Toronto is different than most cities in that people not only work downtown but actually live there.

I live in the city, but not actually downtown, I am in the east side, East of the Don Valley, which is the de facto downtown boundary. To the west the boundary is mainly Dufferin Avenue, to the south there’s Lake Ontario and to the north some people consider Bloor Street the boundary, though others say it is Eglinton Avenue. Here is a map of downtown Toronto so you can see the boundaries yourself.

Toronto is a city of neighbourhoods in that areas are delimited and each one has a special feeling of it. There’s The Annex, Cabbagetown, Riverdale, Queen West, King West, The St. Lawrence Market, St. Clair West, Yorkville, Little Italy, China Town and many many more.

I live in an undefined area, it is close to The Beaches but it is not quite it, some people call it the Upper Beaches, I call it “The Beaches for the poor”. It is on Danforth Avenue but it is not in the neighborhood called Greektown on the Danforth, it is farther away from Greektown than it is to The Beaches and the lake.

It is easy to find one’s way in Toronto by the cross streets, and some neighbourhoods are called by the names of such streets, like Yonge & Eglinton.

I live on Danforth and Woodbine, The subway stop is Woodbine, just 5 stops before the end of the Danforth line. I live half a block from the subway stop and it is really convenient. The supermarket is on the North East corner of Woodbine and Danforth, and my bank is on the North West corner.

I take the subway every day to go to work. I change lines on Bloor/Yonge Station and head downtown to Dundas. From there I don’t even have to go out on the street because Dundas Station is directly on Eaton Centre and I work on the 25th floor of the Eaton Centre Tower on Yonge and Dundas.

The whole ride to work takes me about 20 minutes and I read the newspaper on my way to work.

I uploaded some of the pictures from Cleveland in Yahoo Photos, to see them click here. More pictures will be coming. I don’t have a camera, so I have to rely on others for that. I am seriously thinking about getting a digital camera. Probably soon.

On Monday I went to a chocolate-making class at Loblaws. Originally, Sam and Clarissa had signed up to learn how to make their own chocolate truffles to give as Christmas presents. I joined them, really without any intention of giving chocolate as a gift. I don’t give those many Christmas presents and I was not really excited about the chocolate, actually I think sometime I had already taken the chocolate-making class. It all sounded familiar, though I don’t remember well if I really took it. The class was from 6 to 9 on Monday and I had a nice time, but I had a little problem with the cookie dough. It was too floury and my cookies ended up too thin and kind of broken. I made a little teddy bear who was missing a hand and a foot :(. But after baking the cookies turned out fine. While I was fighting with the cookie-dough Sam and Clarissa were learning how to actually make the truffles (the ball-making part) and I paid no attention to that. I wasn’t really interested and it was sad that they had all drank hot chocolate with whipped cream and I wasn’t able to because of the milk. So I spent my time with the cookie-dough.

We left and each of us took a little cellophane bag with some truffles, some cookies and other stuff.

The next day I was really hungry and took a bite of the truffles… What a pleasant surprise to find out they were actually DELICIOUS! And I know how to make them. Although I did not pay attention to the ball-making part of it and Clarissa told me that it is the most difficult part. So I’ll probably be giving them out for Christmas anyway. They are just sooooo delicious it’s unbelievable.

On Tuesday I went with Beverlee to an event, I really had no idea what it was all about, but it turned out to be fine. First we both forgot the address and had to actually go to an Internet cafe on Queen Street to see it on my Yahoo account. In the event two very interesting people talked about their careers and it was fine. I miss those activities, just going somewhere attending a conference or a book presentation. I used to do it all the time. I think that is how my interest in vampires began, after attending a certain talk about vampires I became a fan of the undead. I think this is the first time I attend this kind of event it since I arrived to Toronto almost two years ago. I think Beverlee had a good time too and it’s a good start in this type of things.

After that, I worked late the rest of the week.

This morning I went to see an apartment that came to my price range in that building on (CENSORED). It is on the 11th floor and looks west, it has a really nice city view, you can actually see the CN Tower, and if you look out the window to the left you can see the lake. It is really neat. I told Ernest, my agent, to find out if these people will accept my price, I cannot really offer what they want, but I can offer good money for it. I don’t know what will happen, but keep your fingers crossed. I am a little scared since last time the other people did not accept my offer because it was too low, that apartment was on the 7th floor but had a locker and a balcony (though it looked north to the courtyard, not very bright).

Today I left work at about 6 and just went down for chicken wings and came back home. It’s been a good and productive week.