Catching up before the year ends

It's been a while since I last posted so I guess I'll quickly give you the highlights of the last month and a half before the year ends.
So here goes...

My co-worker Annick was on vacation the 2nd & 3rd week of November so I took turns covering the 6:30 shift so it was quite a tiring month at work.
Not bad enough to keep us from going out on a weeknight though. We celebrated Catherine's birthday on the 14th by going to see Me, Mom & Morgantaler at Club Soda. For the uninitiated, they were a Montreal ska band during the early 90's. I've probably seen them in concert close to 30 times and they certainly did not disappoint on that night. Although I don't have the energy to dance like I did back then!
We got our upstairs pretty much back to normal after the repair work except for putting back up some of the picture frames.
We bought some new dining room chairs to replace the rickety uncomfortable ones that we can get rid of now that Christmas is over and we don't need the extra seating. The new ones were 25% off the day we bought them, extra bonus!
Tim went to Charlevoix for 4 days for a curling bonspiel but I couldn't join him this year because my co-worker was away.
Heidi & I went to see The Swell Season at Le National. If you remember me raving about the movie Once, well, they're the two who were in the movie. The concert was amazing.
We celebrated Ysabel's birthday on the 28th by going to see Enchanted. Cheesy is all I have to say!
We went to my office Christmas party, no worthwhile comments to be made! Too bad it was on the same night that France hosted a dinner for our friends Bonnie & Michael who were visiting from Edmonton. We did manage to drop in to see them before and after the X-mas party but we missed out on the great food and wine. Michael is a chef and they had duck among other tasty delectibles.
Survived the first snowstorm of the season.
Spent a weekend in the States to do some Christmas shopping. We left for the cottage on Friday night and headed down to Albany on Saturday & spent the night there and came back to the cottage on Sunday after spending a couple of hours in Lake Placid.
We came home on Monday morning and I got to work by 11. It would have been earlier if we hadn't gotten stcuk on the Mercier bridge for a half hour.
We don't usually go out for supper too often unless it's for some kind of occasion but the last 2 Saturdays we've been out for some very good Asian food.
Remember the old McDonald's at the corner of Atwater & Ste-Catherine? It's now a place called Miso and everything about it was good in our experience. The décor, the service, the presentation and the taste! It's not a cheap meal, but definitely worth the price.
We also tried a Thai place on Mount Royal called Resto Lychee which was excellent and you can bring your own wine.
Survived snowstorm #2.
Went to see National Treasure 2. It was okay (somewhat cheesy) but the first one was better.
Did lots of Christmas cooking and baking in preparation for our dinner on the 25th.
We made cretons, tourtières, butter cookies, date squares, lemon bars, mince meat tarts, fudge, not to mention the fruitcake I had made in November and had been regularly dousing with rum.
We went over to Catherine & Eric's on Christmas eve and opened lots of gifts then it was our turn to host on the 25th. I think we managed to make all 15 of us content with the 23 lb turkey with all the fixings.
I got spoiled as usual with lots of gifts. Most noteworthy is the media player (I'm not supposed to call it a MP3 player as it plays videos & stores pictures too!) It will make the bus rides to and from work a little more entertaining if I can keep my eyes open, that is!
The last three days have been spent mainly relaxing with a few chores in between. Tim had to work yesterday & today but I took vacation days.
We're hosting a make-your-own-pizza night this evening so I will have to report on that later!