Welcome to 2003!
No, I haven’t set the New Year resolutions yet – I need to talk to Jeanette about it. Basically the deal is, I wanna have both of us fit into clothes we wore when we met. For Jean, this is almost a nothing deal – she’s pretty much the same size and weight she was when we met almost 10 years ago. For me, it’s a bit more of a, uhm challenge.
I have another, much more personal resolution that I won’t be sharing with y’all 🙂
I spent 10 days in Ottawa over the holidays, spending time with my family and some friends.
I got to see someone I haven’t seen in about 13 years, and that was Janet Gil (she’s pictured to the right with my other old friend, Heather). Janet had a daughter this year, and she seems very happy and content (Janet – not her daughter – I haven’t met her daughter), and wow, she looks almost EXACTLY the same as I remember except her hair is longer and a light brown now.
Hanging out with Heather was great. The night I took this picture, Jeanette (that’s my Jeanette, not to be confused with Janet) was sick and unfortunately stayed at home, and I did feel a bit awkward with Janet and Heather because they mainly talked about “girl things” as I sat quietly by and nodded, but I got to spend a few other times with Heather and caught up with each other on a lot of things.
Heather and her fiance Eric brought Jeanette and I to a house party for New Years eve. It was a very, uhm, cozy apartment (read: tiny) with most of the folks at least 5 or 10 years younger than me, but I had a great time. I even got to show an old party trick of mine: I can flip a lit cigarette into my mouth, close my mouth, and smoke the cigarette… then flip the still-lit cigarette out again. I saw it in an old movie (Class) many, many years ago, and spent many a drunken night (and burnt mouth) learning the trick. It’s nifty that I can still do it – it’s been about 7 years since I last tried. There were a bunch of 18 to 24 year old women at the party, and they were seriously impressed with the trick (at first I thought they were being sarcastic, but as we were leaving, one of them came up to me and said “that was the coolest party trick I ever saw!!!”, so I guess they were, uhm, impressed.
The main purpose of my visit to Ottawa, was of course to spent time with my Mom, who has cancer. I did get to spend a lot of time with her, but not nearly as much as I wanted to. We went to the National Art Gallery with her on our last day in Ottawa, and she seemed to really enjoy the visit. I have heaps of DV tape of her walking through the museum, making comments on the art she liked.
Lastly, Christmas day and Boxing day were not fun for me – I developed a massive toothache(s) that pretty much incapacitated me. I couldn’t get to an emergency dentist until the 27th, and I had to see two. One pulled a tooth, the other fixed a broken filling. I still need my second last wisdom tooth pulled though. Grr.
After the dental work, my pain subsided somewhat, but the side of my face ballooned because of the pulled tooth – for a couple of days it was massive. Even by New Years’ eve it was still noticeable.
