Sickness

Starting on about New Year's Eve I began to feel a cold coming on.  Over the next few days things progressed rather nicely and before I knew it I was in the midst of suffering through a full-fledged cold.

By Monday and Tuesday of this week things were in such full swing that I stayed home from work.

By Wednesday, though still present, the cold was beginning to taper off.

Thursday wasn't great, but it also wasn't that bad.

Today's been pretty cough and phlegm filled but otherwise pretty good.

Of course, just as I was starting to get a little better Jeannette began going in the opposite direction.  Now that she's a few days in, Jeannette's just about where I was at the beginning of the week.

Kind of a disappointing way to ring in the new year.

A Few Quick Notes 594

-At -3 it's as warm as it's been for quite a while in Regina.  Amazingly, the current forecast suggests that the temperatures will remain above -10 for much of the week.  Weird.  I wonder if this means that if it's sunny we might even start to see some melting?

-One of the aspects of this Regina Winter that I've really enjoyed so far is that many of the trees seem to be completely enrobed in snow/frost.  Consequently, most trees have turned white - so they look like those white fake Christmas trees (an effect I didn't know was real until I saw it with my own eyes).

Of course, the photos I've tried to take of the effect don't really do it justice.  It is incredibly striking.

-I'm not sure how it came about, but last night Jeannette and I decided to head to a movie.  I guess because New Year's Eve is such a popular party/bar night I assumed that the movie theatres, if they were even going to be open, would be empty.

Turns out I was way off.  I don't think I've ever seen a busier movie theatre.  Not only were there few parking spaces available, but once we got in we found that the movie we hoped to attend had a long line-up outside the theatre.  By the time they finally started letting people in and we were able to grab seats the theatre was close to two thirds full (though we managed to snag satisfactory seats).  Maybe even weirder is that almost everyone in attendance seemed to be between the ages of 50 and 60.

I guess this last fact about the audience composition is a little weirder when you consider that the movie we were there to see was Django Unchained, a Quentin Tarantino movie about a bounty hunting slave violently securing the freedom of his wife.  Though as far as I could tell the audience seemed to like the film, though I'm not sure exactly how much they like it.

In case you're curious, Jeannette and I were both quite underwhelmed by the movie.  We both had the impression that the script needed a few more trips through the editing cycle, if not a few major story adjustments.  And Jeannette might disagree, but I thought the cartoonish violence didn't really do the story/historical reality justice (but I guess cartoonishly gruesome violence is kind of Tarantino's trademark).

-Oh, and for no particularly good reason I decided to make a batch of English muffins this morning.

Aside from the size (they were much too small) they turned out quite nicely and were easy to make.

Pretty much as expected

Our New Year's Eve plans proceeded pretty much as I outlined in yesterday evening's post. The major alteration of plans was that instead of finishing the second movie and heading to bed we decided to pause The Trotsky and then catch a few minutes of the festivities taking place in downtown Halifax.

The switch from the movie to local TV coverage probably wouldn't have been my first choice, but it wasn't too bad. It was particularly nice to seen that local TV coverage in Halifax is comparable to local TV coverage in St. John's, and certainly not much better. The other consequence of this decision was that we were able hear and see a few of the fireworks. Fortunately we did not have a neighbour or neighbours blasting them off nearby.

Another notable feature of our New Year's Eve celebrations was the relatively low level of alcohol consumption. My sense is that Neil and Rebecca each had one drink while Jeannette and I both did not consume any alcohol. Sadly, I did replace excessive drinking with excessive carrot consumption. Fortunately for me, the after effects of overindulging in carrots are much less imposing than the after effects of overindulging in alcohol.

Hope everyone else had as good a time as we did.

NYE Festivities

As usual, I have done my best to avoid strenuous NYE drinking related activities. Unlike past attempts to avoid such activities, in this case it appears that I may have been successful.

This year the plan is for Neil, Rebecca, Jeannette, and I to hang out in our apartment and watch a few movies. We are starting with the modern classic Despicable Me. This will be followed with The Trotsky.

Presumably these movie-related activities will bring us close to midnight. I guess if we aren't already in bed at midnight we might do some well-wishing and whatnot.

If I am not back before midnight, I hope everyone has an enjoyable New Year's Eve.