Yesterday I headed into Toronto with my wife and six close friends to see the Rock of Ages musical–and WOW was it a ton o’ fun. Seriously. Like, totally rad.
It’s also not for kids, which means it was EVEN BETTER. Lots of swearing, sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. So really, how could it go wrong?
Rock of Ages has been on Broadway for over a year now, and it just officially opened in Toronto a few weeks ago. Needless to say, I’m a sucker for a good musical, and one that features big hair rock of the 80s? Yeah, totally sold.
And it’s funny. Really funny. Add in the fact that they serve alcohol right to your seat, had an awesome live band, and an amazing soundtrack (Sister Christian by Night Ranger? Um, yeah, rock on!), it was the best musical I’ve seen in some time.
If you have the chance to check it out, do so. You’ll have a blast.
Also, I should have dressed up in my Halloween costume again (Vince Neil circa 1987), but I didn’t.
On Sunday I went to the Canadian International Autoshow as I do every year with my father-in-law. We hit the show as the doors opened, which is great as we can pretty much run through the North Building rather quickly and have easy access to all of the vehicles without crowding. The show was also scaled down this year with no mods and the Rogers Centre completely removed from the program–which I liked. With keeping the show to only the North and South convention centre, it made for a more compact and focused show. I hope they keep this scaled down approach for subsequent years.
There was a lot to see, as always. I was very much looking forward to the new Ford Fiesta, having followed it’s development lifecycle for a few years now. However, once I got into the car–which would indeed make an ideal commuter–I was a little disappointed. I realize it is an entry-level car, but I guess I was hoping for more from it in regards to polish. I guess I’ll have to take it for a spin before I can make any real conclusions.
Wow. Talk about bang for your buck. Solid manufacturing, gorgeous lines, fully-equipped for a very attractive price–with lots of interior room. Right now, I am totally sold on this as my next car–something I will be in the market for shortly. Can’t wait to take one of these out for a spin.
Things have been pretty busy lately (when aren’t they?), but Erika and I were able to get away this past weekend to Niagara Falls–sans kids!
And it was a wonderful break from reality. Saturday we went shopping in the States and bought all sorts of stuff (kids clothes) and even more stuff (kids clothes) and purchased deals galore (stuff for Erika) and even more stuff (more kids clothes and cool edible items we don’t have in Canada) until our trunk was jammed. We then came back to the homeland and checked into our hotel, where we had an amazing view of the Falls (below), two king-sized beds (because one obviously isn’t enough), a jacuzzi tub the size of Lake Ontario, and a safety-comes-first electric fireplace (still wish it was gas).
We hit the town, had an awesome dinner at The Keg Steakhouse overlooking the Falls, and then went back to our hotel and got really silly-drunk on sangria.
On Sunday we got up, was treated to a fantastic breakfast buffet on the hotel, and then went off to Niagara-on-the-Lake to poke around our favourite shops. The odd thing was, it started to rain while we were there–in January. So no, I hadn’t packed an umbrella or anything water repellent. Our trip there didn’t last too long, as ducking into and out of the shops to avoid the rain grew rather tiresome. But we did manage to get some tasty treats from the local bakeries.
After leaving Niagara-on-the-Lake, we headed home but stopped off to watch The Blind Side, which turned out to be rather enjoyable. I’ve always liked Sandra Bullock, and she sure didn’t disappoint in this film.
Anyways, it was a great weekend escape. Something we could actually do close to home, and still feel refreshed going into another busy week.
Had a wonderful weekend with the family, one of those lazing about weekends where things actually get done, time is spent with the kids, and where I head into a busy work week rested and energized. Yeah, those weekends don’t happen often, but I think I’m starting to figure out how to manage weekend family time better, and that is lending to a more relaxed and manageable me.
Erika decided to tackle pre-cooking a ton of wonderful food this weekend, making everything from cream of broccoli and potato squash soup, to stuffed pasta shells with spinach and ricotta, to easy lasagna tubes (so good!). She also made a huge batch of homemade pasta sauce to freeze as well. I helped by washing dishes. Yes, I’m actually pretty good at that.
While entertaining the kids, I also got caught up on some web-related stuff and watched a bunch of NFL wildcard games.
On Sunday morning, after Erika whipped up an awesome breakfast of spinach and feta omelettes, we decided to take the girls to a local park that had an ice rink poured where the summertime splash pad is located. Charlotte got skates for Christmas, and prior to Sunday, had never been skating before.
I on the other hand can’t get a skate around my right ankle since I shattered it playing highschool football (unless I get expensive, heat-molded skates), so Erika took Charlotte out onto the ice. I think all of Charlie’s gymnastic and dance training helped with her balance, as she picked up skating like a charm and barely fell. She did amazing for her first time out–and had a lot of fun too.
I spent time taking Claire and Maddy tobogganing, and dragging them around the park. I sure got a good workout from that. The twins also spent a lot of time “excavating snow stones” and placing them in their sled. Actually they did this for a very long time, totally content in digging up chunks of icy snow and stacking them up.
After Charlotte was done skating, she joined her sisters in snow demon making (I don’t call them angels).
Afterward, we treated the girls to lunch and then headed home to warm up.
Here is a really quick video I shot with our camera of Charlotte on the ice skates for the first time, and Claire and Maddy excavating “snow stones”.
It was a very busy Saturday in the Molata household. The girls had a Halloween party at their dance studio in the afternoon, so Erika busily got them ready into their costumes. It was nice, as we were able to drop them off and have 2 hours to ourselves–which involved a rather tasty lunch. After the party we picked them up and headed home where we ran around like decapitated zombies getting things ready for the evening festivities. Erika’s parents came over and we had dinner, and then once again got the kids ready for trick or treating fun.
And wow, did they have a good time. They got SO MUCH CANDY. Mountains. Really, with 3 kids going out, the piles of sugar add up shockingly fast.
Madeleine and Claire both went as fairies, and Charlotte went as Alice.
After we got the kids to bed, Erika and I started working on our own costumes as we had an “adults-only” Fangbangers party to go to, hosted by Erika’s cousin Marcy and her husband George. And what fun–er, chaos–we had!
I was originally aiming for Bon Jovi circa 1986, but ended up looking like Vince Neil circa 1987. Which was fine by me. It was fun being an out-of-control big-hair rocker. Erika went as an 80s new wave girl, complete with bangles and big hair and crazy-bright neon clothes. She looked awesome!
We made it to the party on time and proceeded to get somewhat (okay, maybe “quite”) inebriated. Marcy and George put on an awesome event, including a bottles of Type A Neg (fruit punch Gatorade), which I quickly spiked with vodka. Why not replenish your electolytes while drinking? Exactly. We ended up staying overnight (planned) as we didn’t go to bed (er, pass out) until 3:30AM.
I haven’t had this much fun on Halloween in a long time. Can’t wait for next year!
It has been nothing but frigid days mixed with rain, rain, and more rain. And like, really frigid. And if it’s not cold outside, it’s raining. Or it’s both.
I mean, come on, where is the hot and steamy July I crave all year? Where is the warm weather that I travel for in the winter months?
This weekend was of the rainy variety. So much so that the streets flooded and people were trapped in cars and homes were wrecked. Luckily we didn’t have any flooding in our basement ourselves, but a lot of people weren’t so fortunate. It was 2 days of solid rain marked by thunderstorms and lightning, with a sprinking of sun showers here and there.
In fact, the closed the highway near my place since it was flooded over, along with several city streets.
I didn’t think we lived in monsoon territory–guess I was wrong.
A week ago we went camping with the kids to our favourite summertime locale–Sauble Beach. But wow, was it cold. We had to pack blankets galore, and long-sleeved shirts and pants and hoodies. On what normally is the hottest weekend of the summer, we froze. Very surreal. The beach was empty, the usually bustling beach-town streets were pretty vacant. Almost to post-apocalyptic proportions. I’ve never seen Sauble Beach that dead in the middle of July.
To give you an idea of how cool it was on the beach, here I am trying to look excited (though that may have been the beer).
Yeah, it was that cold that I had to wear a hoodie over a t-shirt at 2 in the afternoon ON THE BEACH!
Even sacrificing seagulls and drinking their blood did not appease the sun gods.
This coming long-weekend we’re heading back up to Sauble Beach for 4 days of camping and beach fun. I hope that the weather takes a turn for the better being that August kicks off the 2009 season on Saturday. Let’s hope.
But if not, I will not let this horrid summer weather get my spirits down–and will, in fact, drink more spirits to keep me warm.
Not quite sure where the time is going, but I’ve obviously lost control of it somewhere. I even tried pausing time yesterday, and failed.
But it was a hectic yet fun week anyways. Lots of things going on writing-wise, and lots of things going on around the home too. We hosted our annual Canada Day party on the Sunday as having it on July 1st, which was a Wednesday, didn’t make a lot of sense–meaning we didn’t want to host 30+ people and work the day before, so Sunday gave us an extra day to prepare.
Besides the weather being somewhat questionable with cloudy skies in the morning, the sun came out and gave us some warm weather when people started arriving. After dinner the clouds rolled, letting the rain fall for about an hour, but luckily enough they moved along and allowed us to light off our fireworks display without issue.
Then the week folded into day jobbery and running around here and there until Wednesday–Canada Day!
We took the kids to a local park, where a company was hosting a huge bash. We met up with some family (who got us tickets into the festivities), and had dinner and such. The kids had a blast, playing around and getting temporary tattoos. We packed up just as the rain started to fall, making a quick escape.
Here are a few pics of the girls having fun at the park.
That’s it for now. I need to go find where the sun disappeared to.
For Erika’s birthday, I decided to take her to Niagara Falls for the weekend since her parent’s graciously offered to babysit. And what a fun time we had!
We checked into our hotel which overlooked the falls (and had this wicked “window to the falls” jacuzzi) Saturday afternoon, and then headed off to actually see the falls up close. And as usual, I was tempted to re-enact the scene from Superman 2…but wisdom prevailed and I stayed on the “right” side of the railing.
We then acted like tourists and headed into the Clifton Hill area. There we played Dinosaur Park mini-golf–something we played about, oh, eleventy years ago on one of our first day trip dates. It was fun to do it all over again.
After golfing we grabbed a patio seat alongside one of the main roads and chatted and drank beer and cocktails and ate tasty nachos. The weather was gorgeous as we walked back to the hotel and casino, toured around, saw this great bar (must go next time) called Coco’s that was all neon and art deco and pastels, and reminded me of something I’d see in Miami. And they were blaring Lionel Richie. So retro-cool.
Later that night we had a fantastic dinner, hit the casino, drank lots of wine, and just relaxed without the kids around. It was fantastic.
After checking out Sunday morning we headed into the US to do some shopping at the outlet mall, where we filled out trunk full of great deals. Even with the dollar exchange we couldn’t pass up on some of these deals, especially kids clothes. We also scoped out 3 new Doritos flavors that we don’t have in Canada, so zoink, those went into the shopping cart too. (Not that I need Doritos or anything, but yeah, addicted.)
After shopping we headed to Erika’s parents to see the kids and have a barbeque with family etc.
It was such a fun weekend. One of those weekends that you don’t want to end. Fortunately for my bank account, it did.
But now it is back to day jobbery, watering the newly landscaped backyard, and working on more and more writing projects. No rest, I say, no rest!
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