Isn't It a Shame?

It's true. Yonny is married! Can't believe both Yonny and Ali had such "good" luck in terms of the weather...raining within an hour of the ceremony, and things working out just fine. Also, good eats, good drinks, good music...what more can you ask for!

Simon, Jess, Laura and I went camping in Algonquin for 3 days after the wedding. Lots of fun, and again good weather. We scored a super sweet site, had terrific weather, and managed to keep out of trouble. As a bonus, Jess is stellar!

The past week or two I've been heads down polishing up Laura's dad's wedding photography website. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Bonus feature: lots of pictures of Laura and I!

We're off to New Brunswick next weekend, then California for 2+ weeks at the end of the month. Beyond our flight, we've hardly planned anything at all...time to get serious!

I've had two "firsts" this week.

1) "Powered" razor (read: vibrating razor). In addition to smooshing about 15 blades onto a razor, Gillette now makes vibrating "powered" razors. I think in theory having the blade vibrate makes the hairs stand up more and gets a closer shave. Other than it feeling kinda funky, no meaningful difference in shave closenss has been observed.

2) Homemade tortillas! Following Karen's example, I tried making homemade tortillas on the weekend. They were a fair bit of work (like 1hr all in maybe), but pretty delicious! Some recipes called for shortening, others used water+milk, which I opted for. They were a bit less fluffy/airy than I like, but might have been because I used 1/3 whole wheat flour...think I'll try entirely all purpose next time.

Got a good chuckle reading this about North Korea hiring Chinese "fans" to cheer for their team, since actual North Koreans either couldn't afford to go to the world cup, or would have had challenges travelling outside the country. Talk about international cooperation. If THAT isn't what the world cup is all about, I don't know.

I've also driven past Jewels & Java a few times lately and gotten a good laugh. The premise seems to be a bakery/cafe and diamond store mixed into one, although the video makes it look more like a full out restaurant. Who knows.

Also, Laura and I locked and loaded on plane tickets for California! Need to actually PLAN stuff now - we're flying into/out of San Fran, and have 15 days!

I was looking for a song that's in a car commercial that goes something like "something somethign something makes my heart go beep", and sounds kinda like noah and the whale, and I came across this video that cracked totally cracked me up. Also, the girl looks like Chloe from Smallville which is an added bonus.

Can't believe I just finished watching the last episode of Lost. Laura and I have plowed through all 6 seasons in the past ~8 months or so, basically one episode a night, every night.

I admit I was pretty skeptical originally - when the shows were airing, I saw a couple here and there and though the whole thing seemed completely pointless. Oh, how I was wrong. I don't think I've been so addicted to a show before.

The grand finale was a bit of a reach, but a did a pretty decent job of pulling everything together.

If nothing else, I'll always have this quote: "I don't believe in a lot of things, but I do believe in duck tape."

Labels: Lost

Had a weekend where I watched a bunch of tv/movies that made me really wonder how badly messed up we are as a collective society.

Blood Diamonds: movie about the illegal diamond trade, focused on Sierra Leone. Child soldiers, rape/pillage/destructions of villages, and complicity by the major diamond companies. Conclusion: Happy I gave Laura a "pre-loved" engagement ring.

Nature of Things: Exxon Valdez - Watched the Nature of Things last night, which focused on the environmental and civil impact of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. Mostly looked at one fishing town in Alaska that was (and continues to be) devastated by the spill, with beaches that are still oily, and salmon and herring runs that have never recovered. The thing that shocked me was that Exxon was able to clog up the legal proceedings against them (a $5 billion punitive damages finding) for 15+ years...ya, 15 years, during which they were collecting almost 300million/year of interest on the $5B. And here's the real shocker...the supreme court eventually reduced the damages to $500m, less than 5 days worth of profit from Exxon (who profits > 40 billion / year). Yay Justice.

The Cove: Similar to Sharkwater, this is a documentary about Japan's capture and killing of 23,000 dolphins a year, mostly in a small town called Taiji, and the inaction of the international community to stop the slaughter. It's really pretty upsetting to see how cruel and inhumane the whole thing is, and how Japan's government defends/ignores it. Makes me second guess Canada's seal slaughter, and is yet another movie in a long chain that makes me think twice about even just eating meat.

I've been out in Seattle this week (got back from NYC on Monday night with laura, flew out to Seattle on Wednesday). Spent most of my time in Bellevue, which is one of the suburbs, and am hanging out with my friend Kaiser from UW this weekend in Seattle.

I've been waking up at ~5am Seattle time in the mornings, and starting my days early which is really nice (back to my swimming days!). Got up early this morning and took the bus over to kaiser's. Went out for a driving tour of the city - this place is NICE. Feels a bit like Ottawa, but more lush and mountainous, as well as richer and more hipster. Then we went out for lunch (pho!) and played racquetball with Arlen.(What a strange game...kind of like squash, but WAY bouncier, and with smaller racquets. On the first point of the first game I wailed myself in my mouth with my own racquet - way to go Roderick!)

Anywyas, fly back to TO overnight tomorrow, stopping over in Vancouver for an hour. Really loved the views of the mountains on the flight in - the Rockies are friggin imprssive.

Labels: Seattle

I'm in New York this week with work. Was at a bar tonight with a bunch of guys from the office. Had THE strangest bathroom experience ever.

There's only a single washroom(guys/girls mixed), with wall of individual stalls. In and of itself nothing all that unusual. But the stalls? Ya. they have a completely see through door. ie from the "waiting area" you can actually completely 100% see into each of the stalls - the door is completely clear glass.

Umm...sorta uncomfortable much? Not really a fan of everyone watching you go to the washroom?

So here's the cool thing. When you go into the stall, the doors like magically "fog up", so they're completely opaque (well 98% opaque).

Check it out! Bar 89 Bathroom Doors

Labels: new york

Alison posted this link on Facebooks: Reported TTC salaries, which includes salaries of people making > $100k.

In fairness, the TTC has 11k employees, and only 500 who make > $100k - so ballpark 5% of their employees. Obviously the big honchos, the shift supervisors, the lawyers, etc are going to make some big coin. The thing that gets me?

- 21 Station Collectors at > 100k, some making as much as $125k.

- 19 Route Supervisors @ > 100k, one making $132k. I'd assume these are the guys who stand around at Spadina Station with little notepads, or that stand in the middle of the street drinking coffee.

- 60 "Operators" @ > 100k, 20 of whom make > $120k. I can only imagine that operators is a fancy word for drivers. You absolutely have to be kidding me that streetcar drivers can be raking in $130k/year!?

Cause here's the thing....you really can't hire competent station collectors for $40k/year? These people sit in a booth, reading books and making change. Not saying it should be minimum wage, but honestly, a cashier at Loblaws is a WAY harder job, having to remember all the codes for the different vegetables, knowing how to bag things properly, etc. Certainly seems to me like $20/hr would cut the mustard.

Drivers? Listen, I respect them an awful lot...especially during rush hour, there's a lot of crap to put up with. You've got people's lives in your hands, get hassled by rude jerks, and you presumably need some kind of training and license to drive a streetcar/subway/bus. But, I did some digging, and an average social worker in Canada makes $28/hour while the average nurse makes $32. (Truck drivers make an average of $19). So given that nurses make ~$60k/year, I'm real curious to know what those 20 drivers are doing to rake in twice that (I'm assuming they worked a lot of overtime, but still...and if you're regularly paying people time and half for overtime, why aren't you just hiring more drivers that you can pay at "time"?).

Anyways, just seems to me when you're running an organization that doesn't nearly cover its costs, and keeps having to jack fares and look for bigger handouts from the government, that you've gotta look at ways to cut the fat. And all those collectors and drivers at > $100k? Seems like there's plenty of fat to trim.

Labels: TTC

Just got back from doing a "mystery shop" with Laura chez Cineplex. Watched Avatar, and honestly was totally blown away. This is the first 3D movie I've seen in a decade, and couldn't believe how far the technology has come....completely different movie watching experience. Didn't hurt that the plot and characters were actually quite good, and the computer graphics were literally jaw dropping.

Down in Waterloo tomorrow for coop interviews, and hopefully to sneak onto the UW squash courts to play with Dave...in case I forgot to mention it, I actually BEAT Dave the last time we played. My 2009 New Year's resolution of beating Dave twice in a row never materialized and has been renewed with increased ferver and ardour. Here's to hoping.

Labels: Avatar, Squash

Laura and I have gotten by since we moved in together with a $14.99 "Shark" mini handheld vacuum. Not exactly high quality, but mostly gets the job done since we only really have 10 square feet of carpet.

However, the Shark has sucked it's last breath, and the birds have brought our cleaning needs to a whole new level. We're looking at stepping things up on the vacuum front, and are thinking about buying a serious 5 year+, quality vacuum.

Courtesy of the hundreds of Dyson tv ads we've all seen, I think that's probably the brand most people would recommend for a high quality vacuum. Thing is, Dyson's cost SERIOUS money ($500-$700 sorta thing), and seldom if ever go on sale. So the question really is, do you need to spend that kind of money to get a good quality vacuum, and if you're going to spend that kind of money, is Dyson really the best value/quality you can get?

I've done a few hours of reading, and it sounds like Hoover, Kirby, Miele and Sebo are all also quite good vacuums. In the "upright" world, it sounds like the $99 Hoover Whisper (sadly only available in the US) is as good as any of the Dyson uprights. On the canister vacuum front, it sounds like Miele is the best quality, but similar price to Dyson.

Has anyone done serious vacuum buying research? What does everyone own? Are you happy with what you have?

Labels: Dyson, Vacuum

The birds are working out better than I feared. They're mostly quiet, and fairly playful! Hawk is definitely more comfortable with us than Pip (Hawk will stand on our hands to eat food, whereas Pip is always scared of us). Pip "escaped" from the cage last weekend, and flew around a bit before ending up in the kitchen -- was "fun" trying to get him back in the cage....I ended up distracting him enough for Laura to grab him.


Hawk is white, Pip is blue.







I'm in New York this week (Wed - Fri). Flight on Porter this morning wasn't too bad - a little late because of the weather. Going bowling with work tomorrow which should be fun, then back to TO on Friday night.

Aside -- went to see High Fidelity the musical in TO last week and LOVED it!

Labels: Birds, new york

Well, it's done. The birds are in the cage - and that's not spy code word for anything....literally, the birds are in the cage.

We just got back from the breeder's, and we chose two really nice birds. One mostly sky-blue (named Pip), and one that's white and blue (named Hawk). So far they've VERY quiet and just starting to explore a little.

As some of you know, Vik's latest business venture is called SOHO Computers (Small Office, Home office). Driving back from the breeder's, we passed a car from, I kid you not, HOBO Computers. (Home office, business office). If only Vik had beaten this guy to the punch.

Labels: Birds

There's been a couple "food challenges" at work in the past week: the "6 Cracker Challenge" and the "Cheeseburger Challenge". The cracker challenge seems like it should be easy - 6 soda crackers in 1 minute, while the cheeseburger challenge (10 McD cheezburgs in 1 hr) is just plain gross.

Surprisingly, our marketing writer successfully took on the burger challenge, while the cracker challenge was was too much for a dry-mouthed colleague of mine. (and yes, there's been money on the line).

In a personal quest to prove my eating related prowess, I bought a box of soda crackers on the weekend, and have been practicing - typically 2 attempts per day at the soda cracker challenge. I've tried a few different techniques (1 at a time, 2 at a time, 3-2-1, etc) and have gotten down to 1:20...but still a far cry from 1:00. Who woulda thought this would be so hard!?

Labels: 6 Cracker Challenge

You know we live a slow and sheltered life when both Laura and I had dreams about spider solitaire last night (I was even apparently talking about it in my sleep). That being said, my current win streak has been extended to 4...on the advanced level!

The apartment is currently in turmoil. The upside is that I've most likely convinced Laura that we don't actually need to move in order to accommodate birds. The bad news is that we don't actually need to move in order to accommodate birds -- ie. there's birds on the horizon. Laura is a woman on a mission, and I'm the kind of guy who for better or for worse keeps his promises.

My friend Ryan from work and I bottled and picked up our "U-brew" beer this week. The upside is that it's remarkably quite good (we did a batch of Belgian Blonde, and a batch of Irish Red). The downside is that I now have 3 cases of beer that need to be kept cool, and are now occupying 1/3 of our fridge.

After picking up the beer we did dinner at Red Violin, Toronto's version of the brazilian steakhouse (the all you can eat meat, where they come around and serve the different meats right off the skewers). I had enough steak to last me a month.

It's been a full month since my last blog post...I've been busy!

I started November with a 2 day trip down to NYC. Just so happened that was the week the Yanks won the World Series, and the parade went right in front of our office. I was meeting up with people in midtown for lunch, and had quite an adventure trying to get there, as the crowds for the parade were insane. We also went to this cool german beer garden on the friday night.

Last week we went to see "Where the Wild Things Are". Definitely cool costumes and beautiful scenery, but not the best plot / movie. Sounds like the "New Moon" was a huge hit this weekend, and apparently 80% female attendance.

Volunteered with Second Harvest again this year at the Food and Wine expo at the convention centre. Like last year we were gathering people's glasses as they were leaving (Second Harvest gets $1 / glass, and the organizers don't need to buy all new glasses again next year). I ended up working 11:30am - 11pm, although Laura came down around 6 and we toured around the booths for a an hour or two trying some of the food and wine. Yonny: Apparently Magic Oven on Queen St does all you can eat pizza on Wednesdays for $13/person! There's 5 kinds of pizza to choose from, so probably not the super fancy ones, but still!

Went out for a bike ride yesterday - hard to believe it's so nice out still and is almost December! What's the weather been like in Ottawa? Here it's still +8 or higher most days, and yesterday was gorgeous! I'm always surprised by how much crappy, dense, run down housing there is in Toronto (and the fact that it probably still costs $300k+ for said crappy run down townhouses) but what really blows me away are the number of massive, gorgeous mansions effectively "across the street" from the crappy neighbourhoods. I discovered this 'private enclave' right near where I live!. It's about 40 or so big, wooded lots, nice old cottagey houses, and they even have a big pond and private tennis court. Ali - if you're looking for something in the 1-2 million dollar range, I'm sure you could find something smaller in here that you'd really like : )

It's the work Christmas party this coming weekend...but Ryan and Trevor are both over in Dubai, and won't be back for the party, so it's not going to be as much fun as usual. Ah well, still good food and good fun!

And before you know it, it's going to be Christmas! Need to sort out plans for Ottawa!

Oi! It's been a few weeks since I last posted...just chugging away with work mostly.

In the past two weeks I've:

- bought a new computer! Whisper quiet, super fast, Windows 7 upgrade coming in the mail, and all for the rock bottom price of $299. Hard to believe computers used to cost 10x that!

- Volunteered with Second Harvest at a cool "chef's day" thing at Yonge-Dundas square. About 14 booths set up with different chefs making different treats at each. You`d buy $1 tickets, then each booth`s stuff was 2 or 3 tickets, and my job was to help collecting the tickets at the booths. I helped at a booth serving glass noodles with thai curry and shrimp, as well as one doing pulled pork sandwiches!

- Did some high speed go-karting with work peeps

- caught up on the latest seasons of Fringe and Smallville

- watched Battle of the Blades, which is surprisingly addictive.

- organized and written up the blurbs for our honeymoon pictures!
Our pictures up on flickr!

Last few days of the trip! We spent the night in Cordoba, and visited the Mezquita this morning, an massive building which has alternated between a church, a mosque, and now a huge cathedral. Really interesting blend of catholic and muslim influences in the building.

Hope to get postcards sent before we leave madrid...hopefully!

Haven´t had internet for almost a week! Writing from a little (read cramped and busy) internet cafe in Granada. We really enjoyed Lisbon, and also visited Sintra and Cascais which were fantastic. Next two nights were in smaller towns, staying at gorgeous Pousadas. We stayed one night in a CASTLE, and another night on an estate at the top of a mountain with a stellar view on all sides, including an ocean view from our room. Dinners at these places were also fantastically good.

Did a few days at beaches in different areas, ranging from small beaches with cliffs and little islands, to multi-mile long super sandy beaches. Perfect weather every day.

Next we did Seville, and enjoyed walking around all the pedestrian shopping streets downtown. Saw the Cathdral which is the 3rd largest in the world. This is probably the 10th massive and incredibly ornate church we´ve seen. Had a really yummy dinner, including a venison stew.

Yesterday we drove through the mountains (and literally mile after mile of olive trees, I´ll have to post pics), and stayed in Granada. Didn´t get around to wandering around downtown until after 8pm, but stayed out until almost 11, and had dinner on a nice patio in a square. We went to see the Alhambra today, but got there too late to get tickets to go inside...we´d intended to book online in advance, but didnt get it done, so settled for walking around the outside which was still nice.

Off to Cordoba tonight, Toledo tomorrow, and finally back to Madrid on the weekend. Hard to believe it´s been two weeks, but we´ve seen SO much! Laura´s got us up to something like 800 pics...thank goodness for digital cameras, or we´d be spending a fortune on film!

Labels: Honeymoon

The past few days have been super busy, but lots of fun. We drove from Braganca across to Porto through the Douro valley, one of the biggest grape growing regions in Portugal (home to all the grapes grown for Port wine). This has to rank among the top 5 drives of my life, easily comparing to the Rockies in terms of beauty. Crazy mountains and valleys, all with terraces carved into the sides of them, for miles and miles, growing grapes and olive trees. Nutty beautiful.

We stopped in Regua, one of the main towns along the river, and visited two wineries. We did a tour at one of them, and saw them stomping the grapes by foot - we even could have done some stomping ourselves, but were behind schedule.

The drive into Porto was...an adventure. The road systems here are very different from back home, especially in towns. Roundabouts and 5 way intersections are the norm, and there´s no notion of a grid-based road network...everything just winds and twists...roads are all very narrow, and people drive at breakneck speed(150-160 on the highway is pretty normal, as the speed limit is 120). We´ve been navigating via a combination of google maps directions and a GPS, to mixed results. The GPS is fantastic for getting us through the mazes of tiny streets in town, but has led us astray a few times getting IN to town. Porto was the worst. By far. We ended up very very lost on these extremely tiny streets, with stone walls on both sides, that were "two way" streets, but barely wide enough for one car, going up and down steep hills, and crazy windy....as the sun was setting. We FINALLY made it into Porto by around 10pm, totally exhausted.

Our hotel room in Porto was very tiny, but in a great location. We managed to get out and see most of the big sights by early afternoon, including lunch right down on the river. The afternoon was spent doing Port wine tours/tastings across the river...we only actually visited 5 of the 16 or so Port Houses, but probably had an average of 5 large samples per place. Port is fortified red wine, so pulls in at 20% alcohol, so by the end of the day we´d each had probably the equivalent of 10 plus shots of booze. We stumbled home along the super hilly, cobbled streets, sobered up a bit and had a really nice dinner at a place called Cafe Majestic.

Yesterday we drove from Porto down to Coimbra, home of the oldest university in Portugal (started around 1350). They´ve got a GORGEOUS library and chapel, and strangely all their students dress in uniform, which includes a cape. Seriously.

Last night was our second night staying at a Pousada, this time we stayed in an old convent high up in the mountains, with an AMAZING view, miles and miles in every direction. Played some tennis, went for a swim, and had a fantastic dinner (I had veal and portuguese sausage, followed with a sweets/pastry buffet!)

Off to Lisbon today!

Labels: Honeymoon

We picked up the rental car yesterday, and did a 5+ hour drive from Madrid over to norther Portugal, to a town called Braganca. Our car´s actually quite nice, a Citroen C4...and most importantly, it´s an automatic!

The drive was really gorgeous, very dry, rugged terrain. We saw lots of solar panels and lots of wind turbines. We made a pit stop in this very small town...probably about 200 stairs up a cliff to a castle, and a whole little town inside the castle walls. Really well kept and very cute.

The last leg of the drive was through crazy twisty up and down mountain roads (we were doing between 20 and 50km/hr to give you a sense). Finally arrived in Braganca, at our Pousada: Sao Bartolomeu. Man, what a hookup! This place is absolutely gorgeous, and has a fantastic view of the castle, and rolling hills for as far as the eye can see.

Dinner last night was terrific...I had rabbit. Like a WHOLE rabbit. And it was amazing. SO much meat, and so tender and delicious. We also had a really nice local red wine, and a bunch of little tapas-type dishes.

Breakfast this morning was also amazing, lots of breads with a whole slew of choices of locally made preserves and honeys. There were also cheeses and 4 different ham-type choices, then a choice of 5 different fresh squeeze juices (and champagne to made your own mimosas!).

We head off today to Porto, driving along the douro river, one of the biggest wine and port regions of the country! The grapes are grown on the banks of the river, and the wine and port are produced on site, then shipped down the river to Porto where they are cellered and aged. Two nights in Porto!

Labels: Honeymoon

It´s been a really hectic 2 days in Madrid, but lots of fun! We´ve managed to get all sorts of things done, and minus a small hiccup last night meeting up with my aunt and uncle, things have gone quite smoothly!

Yesterday our flight got in around noon local time, and we took the subway to the hotel, which turned out to be gorgeous and super conveniently located. Went for a walk and saw an egyptian temple, a huge park with a rose garden, twin churches, the royal palace, a big cathedral, the opera house, and another big park. After a quick nap we took the subway to meet my aunt and uncle for the leonard cohen concert(by the way, it`s a super complicated system here...just getting over to meet my aunt and uncle required 3 subway connections!). Unfortunately our google maps directions got us lost and we ended up taking a taxi to their hotel. We went out for a really nice dinner, then were blown away by the concert - leonard cohen literally played three and a half hours, including FOUR encores. The concert didn´t end until almost 2am, a little ridiculous!

Needless to say we slept in this morning, but still checked out a massive flea market, the train station, plaza mayor (where they filmed the assisination scene from Vantage Point), a fantastic pastry shop, an art museum, the botanical gardens, and a long walk along Gran Via, similar to NYC´s Broadway. My feet are SORE. The strangest thing is that restaurants don´t open for dinner until 8pm or later. Smoking is MUCH more common here, food is generally fairly expensive, but the subways are super cheap (1 Euro!).

We pick up the rental car tomorrow and head to Portugal, with our first night in a Pousada!

Labels: Honeymoon

We leave for the ol' honeymoon tomorrow! Really excited to get it started - we've been planning for ages now, and I'm tired at looking at MAPS of cities, and want to just get there and get started!

First stop, Madrid. We're actually going to a Leonard Cohen concert on Saturday night with my aunt/uncle. Should be interesting!

Aside - I've rekindled my love for the library. I'd been hitting them up trying to secure free museum passes, and have actually really had a lot of fun finding / reading a handful of books in the past few weeks. Knocked out 2 John Grisham's, A Spot of Bother (same guy who wrote the curious incident of the dog in the night), and Ray in Reverse (the same guy who wrote Big Fish). My only qualm...they're computer search is hard to use if you don't know exactly what you're looking for.

Aiight. Off to Europe! Not sure how often we'll have internet, but I'll try to post when I can!

Labels: Honeymoon, Library

The upside of doing our honeymoon well after the wedding itself is that we didn't need to plan them both at once. The downside is that all the past month has been nothing but honeymoon planning...well...

We also went to the Roderick Reunion out in Saint John. Did lots of canoeing, swimming and work around the property, but also did the traditional bowling, BBQ, bonfire and golf for the reunion itself. Weather was FLAWLESS the whole time we were there, which is super uncharacteristic of new brunswick! I *do* love the cottage.

Last weekend we were up at Dave's cottage near Wasaga. Weather wasn't terrific, but still in the mid 20s and not too rainy...not out swimming twice, played volleyball/badminton/frisbee, and played lots of euchre + mexican train (tequilla) dominoes. Big ups to Dave and Sara for having us up!

The honeymoon is only two weeks away. Time really flies. I just finished booking our last hotel - which has been a major adventure. The internet is truly amazing in terms of how much information you have at your fingertips, but it also makes things incredibly overwhelming and time consuming to sort through!

I'm sure I've spent 100 hours+ on TripAdvisor.com, Hotels.com and Booking.com sorting through all the different options. Example - Madrid has almost 500 hotels. Literally. Obviously you can filter them down by region and price, but we're still talking 200+ feasible options, each with ratings, reviews, maps and pictures to sort through.

Given that we're staying in something like 12 different cities over the 16 day trip, that's 12 different hotels, 12 different drawn out decision making processes! Anyways, all in, I'm pretty happy with our choices, and the variety of places we're booked at all across the spectrum:

• uber fancy castle type places
  
• modern chic big chain places
  
• tiny 1-star and 2-star, 15 room hostales (not to be mistaken for hostels...hostales are a notch up the ranks)
  

...AND I managed to very closely hit out target of $100/night average. Go team!

Labels: Honeymoon

So this weekend was truffle weekend. Literally.

My flight back from New York was cancelled / bumped on Friday, so rather than getting out of Newark at 7, it was more like 9:30. By the time I got home, it was after 11, the perfect time to start making chocolate! Got to bed around 12:30 with the first batch of ganache cooling in the fridge.

Saturday I got 2 batches done, and worked more or less straight from 10am (when I got back from another failed mission to the library to get free museum passes...got there 15 minutes before they opened and was already 32nd in line!?) to 11:30pm.

Sunday was two more batches, 10am -> 12:30. Laura's sister was a big help boxing up the chocolates.

The sad part? there's 97 people coming to the wedding, and a few of the batches only made about 90-93 truffles. Oops : ( (especially when most of the truffles were pretty big and could easily have been smaller).

Anyways, I'm DONE with truffles! And frankly, I think they look pretty darned good!

Labels: truffles, Wedding