Year: 2006

Ticket to Ride, plus others

Back in November James held one of his SF Symposiums, where he gets his friends together to watch movies on a particular theme. This time the theme was ‘Mind/games,’ so Martha and Chris brought along a few of their favourite board games, which seemed appropriate. We played Ticket to Ride Europe and even though it was baffling the first time through, we couldn’t wait to play it again (and again). Now we play that and a bunch of other games that James and Mike have come across. It seems as soon as we show these games to others, they have the same reaction to them as we do. It’s like being kids again! (Only these games are even more fun than the ones I remember from childhood.)

Unexpected treat

One of the great things about my French classes is that they are downtown. Getting there takes me about 20 minutes door-to-door on foot, but there is enough time for me to come home to my apartment for lunch time. This is such a treat! I’m used to buying lunches at work, so it’s really a novelty for me to be able to eat my own food at home. I also really like seeing my apartment during the day (I’m used to missing most daylight hours there!). A bonus is that it seems there is a musician living directly above my unit. During lunchtime, I get to hear a practice guitar session, which I really like. Not something I hear where I’m there at night!

Labour Day in NYC

I went to visit Shelley in New York! Really neat to see where she lives. Awesome location, so close to central spots I’ve heard of. We were able to walk just about everywhere. I went shopping on Broadway, and talked Shelley into seeing a show in Times Square. We also met up with one or two people that I knew from university, which was fun. Shelley showed me the area where her office is and we went shopping in SoHo 🙂 Nice break away from French classes.

Slight break from everyday work

Finally! I got to start full-time French lessons. My office managed to get me on the list for classes, which run from July to March. It’s pretty intense, though. Not that the content is more challenging than what I’ve done before, but it is really strange to be back in a classroom setting. And studying a language from strictly a work-vocabulary perspective…very different. Also strange for me to be sitting at a desk from 8:15 to 4:15 everyday, with the same people the whole time. Anyway, very pleased to actually have this chance. Hopefully I’ll get the results I need.

BiblioTravel redesign

Well, I’ve really slowed down on writing things in my blog – life in Ottawa has been pretty hectic for the past two months.

The latest news is that BiblioTravel, the book website James and I run, now has a new design! We’ve been wanting to update the look of it for some time, so it is very exciting to have this version up and running. I think James will be tweaking a few things over the next while and we are interested in seeing what sort of feedback we get from the site’s users. We were pleased to find an Ottawa area web designer who has been great to work with on this project.