I went to Jorge and Edmee’s Christmas Potluck party on Friday. It was a lot of fun, everyone brought a different type of dish and we all indulged in the season’s spirit. I was too tired, though and left just after 11:00 (early, by their standards).

Last night we went to the Reservoir Lounge, it was so much fun. The music was great and we did a lot of people-watching. I had a lot more fun than last week, when I went to EAU (11 dollar martini, anyone?).

Now Johnny is preparing my stay in Cabo, he is receiving me at the airport with the red carpet treatment (after all I haven’t been there since 1997), and apparently we are going to go clubbing and dancing like crazy, I’ll have a chance to compare the differences and similarities.

I also went to the Quail and Firkin earlier yesterday, I always have a lot of fun playing NTN Trivia and the Firkin’s chicken wings are among the best in town.

Two more days until my trip to Cabo, my airplane leaves at 7:00 and I have to be at Pearson two or three hours before my flight. I didn’t think of that when I bought the ticket (I didn’t have much choice anyway). I’ll have to wake up at about 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning to go to the airport, and I’ll be in Cabo by 10:30 their time. And it’s Christmas eve, so the party/dinner/gift-giving is going to be that same night, meanwhile I’m going to be all tired, plus it’s two hours behind in Baja, so even if it’s only 10:00 PM there, I’m going to feel as if it’s 12:00 (not taking into account that I woke up at ungodly hours). I hope I have a chance to take a nap before that.

I have a saying, not only mine, but not less true because of that: We in Toronto are hostages of the garbage people. It is incredible how city workers have us threatened to the knob.

Last year, on January 6th Pamela asked me if it was the day we were supposed to put the Christmas tree down. Instead of thinking about the Epiphany or any other tradition, my answer was: it depends on when your garbage night is. Yes. There is only ONE DAY in the year when you are allowed to dispose of your Christmas tree. And that is not all:

One, and only one night (or day) a week is your Garbage Night and you may not put out your garbage any other night (or day) under risk of being fined a hefty amount of your hard-earned dollars. Also, you have a limit on the amount of bags and how they should be prepared.

For me it is Wednesday night.

Only certain kinds of bags (and garbage) can be put out on the curb: “Up to six items of garbage will be picked up weekly from each household, each weighing no more than 20 Kg. Broken glass and other sharp objects must be placed in a clearly marked, sealed container. Garbage put out in small shopping bags, cardboard boxes or cartons will not be collected. Please use garbage container no smaller than 30 litres and no larger than 125 litres or a standard garbage bag strong enough to hold 20 Kg.. Please remove all tie downs (i.e. bungee cords) prior to collection” (this statement is literally taken out from the Garbage and Recycling Calendar, a brochure published by the City of Toronto).

Why do they just pick it up once a week? Even in Mexico City (which is a mess in every other aspect) has daily garbage pick up. It is not as if it was cheap to live in Toronto!

Some people have backyards or garages where they can store the garbage all week until Garbage Night/Day (this has been blamed for the proliferation of raccoons and other pests). That is not my case. If I eat anything that produces garbage (like rotisserie chicken) I have to be very careful when disposing of the left-overs (I usually eat everything and if I have a guest do not allow them to leave anything uneaten, but it is impossible to eat a chicken’s bones), I have to dispose of the garbage as neatly as possible, double bag it and tie it in shopping bags (so that it does not get smelly for during the days I have to keep it) and finally, on Wednesdays, put it out on the curb in a big garbage bag. Small shopping/supermarket bags will not be collected. I have seen with my own eyes how city workers (A.K.A. the Garbage Police) pick up bags that have been left out on non-garbage nights, open them, examine the contents and take polaroids of them. Then they fine the owner of the bag, if they do not know who it is by the contents, they will fine the owner of the dwelling where the bag was found (hence the polaroids).

All of Toronto’s trash gets sent to Michigan, since there are no more landfills left in the GTA. Now, there is a big mess down in the US because, of course, citizens don’t want anyone else’s trash, but we pay them and they are happy to receive the money, plus it is totally legal.

For our benefit, I shall say that Toronto is a much cleaner city than London, where every night you can find, in any given street, garbage bags left out for collection since about 7:00 P.M., even in the fanciest/most touristy streets.

Not very attractive.

Longer than normal commute this morning. The geniuses at the TTC decided to close King Station at about 8:40 AM. Really, about 200,000 people get there every morning, what’s the deal with the TTC closing the stations just like that in the middle of the morning rush hour? So the Yonge line was closed, but I was lucky enough to hear it on the radio before leaving home. I took the Dundas streetcar from Broadview station and saved some time (thought the trip takes longer by streetcar). Connie had to walk all the way down from Bloor station to Dundas and got to work at the same time as I did, so I guess I made a good call by taking the streetcar.

I just came back from Red Lobster. We all had the lobster, plus I had crab and shrimp, even Chuck came (he is CEO of one of the competing firms). Later I went back to the office because I had a pizza in the fridge and Clara (2) took it for her boyfriend. Tomorrow we have another Christmas lunch so I won’t be eating it. My book club meeting is tomorrow, the book is just amazing, it is called The Secret History. It is one of the best books I’ve ever read. It kept me hooked to it even when I was so tired I only wanted to sleep, I couldn’t because I was reading it. It is so well written everyone should read it. It is amazing. I’m going out with Christian on Wednesday, he is bringing some tortillas so that I can bring to Jorge and Edmee’s Christmas party on Friday, I am cooking adobo chicken. It will be fun and I have a present for them (I made it myself).

I went to Danielle’s party last night. It was a lot of fun, there were latkes and timbits. At about 11:30 I left and went club-hopping on the King Street strip. After about 2 hours of going in and out of clubs and people-watching we ended up at this place called 606. Really really cool and great music. It was a long time since I had been clubbing, sometimes I think I’m not up to it anymore, but I had such a great time. I was saying that for sure most of the people in the club were nine-o-fivers. So I started asking everyone: “excuse me, are you from Toronto?” and they mostly said yes, and when I asked “from where?” they started saying: Etobicoke, Scarborough, Mississauga. Ha. That is NOT Toronto, they are nine-o-fivers! I had a blast.

I just found out that Keiko died. I am really sad. I saw him a lot of times in Reino Aventura (now Six Flags) before they “freed” him. We will miss you Keiko.

So, according to my sister I need a cyber-cleansing. She might just be right. My computer at work went bust yesterday, I called Dell support and apparently it was doing fine, well it didn’t even last one day. Thankfully I had backed up all my files including emails. So after 2 hours on the phone with Dell support, after I had begged them to please send someone for on-site service they finally agreed (meanwhile I had passed from a state of hysteria to just total depression). He might be there tomorrow or on Monday! So that’s why we pay next business day service for? So they may come tomorrow but they may not? And I lost all day on the phone, my hard disk is now corrupted and I have to finish this report for Monday. Yeah, my weekend is probably going to be worse than last weekend. Work, work, work. Good thing I have Danielle’s Hanukkah Party on Saturday, at least I can get out of here and party for a little bit. Anyway, tomorrow I have to wait all day for the Dell guy to come, but he might take till Monday to get there. Good guarantee we paid for!

I went to Mr. Greenjeans with Clara (2) and her boyfriend, I had a great time, they are both really smart and nice. Also, she might join my book club next month (there’s no time this month to do it, the meeting is on Tuesday). I also invited her to our “company Christmas celebration” (we are such a small company it’s just going to be like 5 people, at Red Lobster of all places), it’s on Monday and I’m sure we’re going to have a good time, plus free dinner!

Yesterday I went to a documentary with my cousin, The Kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt, it was really interesting, but I got really disturbed because of all the whole kidnapping issue. I just get very upset by that stuff. After that there was another documentary (Held Hostage in Colombia, or something like that), I didn’t even stay for it, I just left, I couldn’t bear it any more.

I just got home from work. I stayed there until 10:00 finishing that thing that I couldn’t finish in the weekend and couldn’t work on yesterday since I had to go to Halifax. I had a trip to Ottawa planned for tomorrow, but I told my boss I just can’t make it. I have another whole report to write for Friday and I just finished this one. Also, I got to work before 9:00 ready to sit down and not move for about 8 or 9 hours, but even before 9:00 I had to get out of the office to go all about town delivering Christmas presents. They are lovely and it is nice to get out of the office, but especially today I was swamped. Anyway, I didn’t get to the office till about 12:00 and worked non-stop until just now.

So just my luck, the only day that I am sitting there alone, in one of the top floors of a downtown Toronto building the fire alarm goes off, the worst thing is that if you’re not paying attention you can totally miss it and get stuck there or something (it is so non-intrusive/low-volume that if you have loud music on you just won’t hear it). So a loudspeaker is telling us to remain calm, that the fire department has been called and the elevators have been shut off. Holy cow! Miraculously, there were 2 more guys in my floor, working late, and they speak Spanish! So I went to talk to them to ask them what they were going to do, and they said they were just going to wait. Good thing I was not all alone there, because knowing me (I get scared of shadows and I am usually just to freaked about these things) I would probably have gone directly to the stairs and tried to go down like 25 floors or something. Imagine me there, going down the emergency stairs at sub-zero temperatures in the middle of the night. I did it for the drill and it took me about 25 minutes to get down. So after about 15 minutes, while I was just expecting to find smoke, thinking where I can get a towel to get wet and use to breathe, imagining the power would go out and I don’t have my mini-flashlight with me; all in all, developing a bad case of heartburn (it is me, after all), the loudspeaker goes on again saying the building has been examined and the whole situation has been cleared. The alarm went off again about half an hour later, but this time I got a little bit less worried about it. Just in case, I saved my report on the Internet, I don’t want the building to burn down and all my work to go with the burnt computer/hard disk, I’d rather be cautious about it.

Everything is fine and I am home now.

So I am in Halifax, sitting in the airport pub, minding my own business and waiting for my flight when I see on TV that a building collapsed in downtown Toronto, a movie theatre that was being demolished fell on a school of English. So of all the schools of English in Toronto, my cousin goes to one on the corner of Yonge and Bloor. I called him but he was fine, it was actually the school next door to his, and he stopped attending about a month and a half ago. It was a really sad tragedy and pretty scary. I especially got scared because I saw dogs sniffing for people among the rubble, it brought back some memories of 1985, but of course it had nothing to do with it. It’s just that the dogs reminded me of it.

I have been working all weekend and still I’m not done. Plus I won’t be going to the office tomorrow because I am going to Halifax, so I have to finish as much as I can today. If I thought last week was hellish, it was nothing compared to this week that just finished. I had a lot of things to do and meetings all the time so I couldn’t sit down and do actual work, that’s why I’m working right now, but I’m not sure I’m going to finish by tonight. I also have to sleep early since my flight leaves at 7:30 in the morning. I’ll be back in the evening and will probably sit down and keep working. I might go to Ottawa on Wednesday. So this weekend has just been sleep+eat+work, not your best weekend ever, eh?

I had 4 parties last week and they were a lot of fun, on Thursday I actually party-hopped, I had 3 parties but just went to 2 of them. Great business networking and a lot of fun with delicious food!

Next week I have one party scheduled for Saturday, and I hope I have time to finish all the work I have during the week or I will have to work all weekend again. I have to finish 2 projects before Christmas and I thought one of them would be a piece of cake, and it’s not difficult, but it takes long to do, meanwhile I haven’t done any of my Christmas shopping. I don’t know how many presents, and to whom, I’m going to bring to Cabo San Lucas.