Disney

For today's post Angela will write about her time at Disney.

We went on our first family trip on a plane. We slept in our clothes and got up real early to go to the airport. The plane ride was 2 hours or so which is how long it takes to go to Nona's cottage some times. We had gum and candy for the ride. The ride was smooth but Brian's ears hurt when we were landing.
When we got there we took the Disney Magical Express bus to the hotel. Our hotel was the Caribbean Beach Resort. That day we went to Magic Kingdom. We stayed the rest of the day and saw the night parade and fireworks.
The next day we went to Animal Kingdom in the morning and MGM Studios at night. We went back to MGM the next day as well because mommy wanted to see Indiana Jones. It was scary at first but then we thought it was funny. We even went to see it again another day.
We saw all the parades and all the fireworks at all the parks. We left some things early when they were scary.
My favorite thing was meeting the characters it was fun and Splash Mountain.
Brian liked the Jungle Cruise boat ride or maybe Splash Mountain.
We went swimming at the resort and it had a water slide that was really fun. Even Brian went on it.
See some of the pictures here.

Ethiopian night!

Went to an Ethiopian restaurant last night with some co-workers.
It was down on Bloor St in between Dufferin and Bathurst. I hate driving downtown. The roads are so narrow and even more so with the snow. People darting in front of you to cross the street, others riding bikes in freezing temperatures. Us suburbanites are spoiled..but I digress.

The food was quite good, most of us got either lamb or beef that was seasoned well and the spices were not overpowering. The portions were quite large. You eat without utensils and every meal came with a soft bread used to pick up or dip with. I say bread but it was more like a crepe but thicker and was cold. I found that Ethiopians don't eat pork which according to our Ethiopian friend is due to them being Orthodox (Greek orthodox) but I'm not sure that is the case given I know many a Greek that eats pork. It could be that half the country is Muslim and therefore the whole country just abandoned pork altogether.
There was no desserts on the menu but they did bring out popcorn and and coffee which was very similar to greek/turkish coffee. Supposedly coffee originated in Ethiopia.

The place also reminded me of our old restaurant on Bloor St. Not the decor or the food but the layout. Kitchen in the back, a couple of rows of tables against the walls, a little bar on the side. Our waitress/bartender/chief bottle washer had me thinking about the days I worked in the restaurant. Having more than one person serving in a place this size is not logical and besides a slow start it worked out very well for us and I think the rest of the customers.

It was nice to try something new and learn some things about co-workers outside of work.

Photo manipulation

I played with some photos the other day. In most cases they turned out pretty crappy. It's one thing to tweak a photo in terms of light or colour and such but if the photo is crappy to start off with there is not much you can do.
In this new digital age we all have those shots that we don't print but we also don't delete as you never know when it may come in handy, not to mention it doesn't hurt much to keep them around. I did the same with my prints in the old days. They are all in a box with a bunch of thank you pictures from weddings I've attended. Close family ones you put in an album but what do you do with those other ones?
In this case I had a blurry photo of a Christmas ornament (which is actually a piece of my parents old chandelier) and I put a photo of us in it. Layers, erasing and blending and it covers the blurry spot with a nice winter shot.
I was pretty happy with the result.

ABC's

A little retro family video.
Way back to 2002 for this. I asked Angela to say something to her new baby brother Brino (she couldn't say Brian yet) and this is what she came up with.
Notice how the pitch changes as the song progresses.

Snow Day

Today is a Snow day in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). I'm sure most of you are aware of the concept. Lots of snow therefore schools are closed. Well, schools are open but buses are not working so many kids stay home for the day. Which is something like what we are faced with in the business world these day. We may not be able to get into the office but we can work from home.
What would it take to have a Snow day for grown ups?
Maybe a power outage like back in 2003.


On a similar topic. For a country that gets lots of snow we seem to have a hard time dealing with the white stuff. I think part of it is due to policies put in place. For example, plows don't go out until 4cms are on the ground. In theory this sounds good but if you know the snow is coming and it will be heavy and as rush hour approaches and there is 3cm on the ground maybe it would be a good idea to get the plows out. So what I am suggesting is that a policy is good but sometimes things aren't a 1 or a 0, there are some shades of gray in there. Human interaction (humans saved day for NYSE) is necessary or the policy/program needs to have some items such as this built in to it to accomodate. I find the government is first to follow a rule to the letter.
Here's a great spoof on Toronto's handling of snow.