I might stroll over to the hospital on Thursday to watch the show. I’ve certainly put in my time listening to all the practice guitar chords – I think I deserve to hear the finished product … plus I’ll get to hear the rest of the “group” too.

Does your workplace have an annual holiday event? Do employees put on any kind of talent show or anything like that? That’s one of the things that I like about the hospital – there’s this Christmas performance every year, but there’s also a talent show usually in June or July I believe and that’s always fun.

Sometime next week, my husbands brother and his youngest son will be driving from Chicago to Ontario to see my husbands parents and then to stay with us in Toronto. Shortly after their Toronto visit my husband, his brother and our nephew will be driving to Brockville because our nephew is trying out for the NHL farm team there. Gosh I hope he makes it!

All in all it’s going to be a hectic week!

One nice thing to look forward to about my brother in laws visit is that he almost always brings gifts with him. When he called us the other day it was partly to tell us about his upcoming visit and partly to wish my husband a happy birthday. He said something about bringing my husband a bottle of his favorite alcohol and some morgan dollars that he’d recently purchased. I guess he’s been investing in coins.

The following week I believe one of my brothers is coming for a visit and then the next week my mother in law coming to stay with us for a few days. I don’t know our guest line up for August yet, but I’m fairly certain that we’ll have guests most every week. That’s just the way it seems to go around here.

Do you get a lot of house guests in the summer? Do you like it?

Since it’s supposed to rain we probably won’t end up doing this, but sometime soon I think it would be great to get our bikes out, attach the hitch bike rack to the car and drive to one of the great bike trail areas of the city and go for a big bike ride. Obviously since it’s Spring I haven’t done that for quite a while but it would be nice to do, especially at this time of year when everything is just starting to green up and begin to bloom.

Toronto has some wonderful, long, bike trails. A few of them are close to where we live, and they go quite a distance through the city. As I said, I have to pull out the bike and start using them again. Apparently one of the tails near us can take us all the way to the west end of the city.

I vaguely remember hearing that back in the late 50s and early 60s Hefner had a TV show called “Playboy Penthouse” and on it he featured quite a variety of entertainers. In fact he it seems it wasn’t uncommon for him to have black jazz musicians or mixed musical groups playing on his TV show. Now this was a national broadcast and mixed race bands just weren’t promoted on TV in those days … so this is really quite amazing. Whatever you think of Hefner and his Playboy magazine he has done some good in this world it seems and by watching this movie I’m learning quite a bit more about this very interesting man.

Certainly … Hef being in his 80′s and about to embark on what, his third or fourth marriage .. well I don’t think he’ll ever be collecting SSDI. Not a chance! Anyway .. if you get a chance to check out this documentary/ movie do take a look, it’s fascinating.

I’m a nurse so my alarm bells are ringing for him … but I have to say he certainly kept his cool when his children were taken away the other night by the police. If he were having a mental breakdown I don’t think he would have been able to stay so calm. Heck .. if someone were talking away my kids or even my dog I’m not sure I could have stayed quite as calm as he appeared – so good for him. I’ll give him that.

There’s an amazing amount of smoking going on in Sheen’s house too! I just quit smoking a few months ago and I can’t imagine being around that many smokes, or davidoff cigars.

What do you think of everything that’s been happening with Charlie Sheen?

She’s literally tossing the pieces from her mouth so that they land on his chest. He happens to be lying down on the couch so her aim is pretty good from where she’s standing.

It’s hilarious.

When she’s not throwing the cardboard at us, she’ll chew it up or roll around on her back while she chews on a piece, or she’ll chew a small piece in her mouth like gum.

Now she’s throwing pieces at me … LOL the piece she threw at me says Téléphones cellulaires I guess it’s from a cell phone box.

Does your dog do silly things or have an obsession? My dog, Midnight, literally comes running if she hears us opening up a box or sees us getting ready to throw away something made of cardboard.

We’re going to meet downtown for lunch and then we all have appointments for facials at a spa. Sounds good? Uh huh. Then if we aren’t too relaxed after our time in the spa we’re going to go down to the fashion district and shop till we drop!

I just have to try to keep one of my friends out of office furniture supplies stores! LOL She just got a new job managing an office -actually setting up the business – so I’m sure she’ll have work on her mind since she’s responsible for buying all the furniture and supplies they need to set up shop.

Once we’ve finished shopping we have reservations at a fantastic french restaurant. I haven’t been there for a long time so I’m really looking forward to dinner. Then we’ll see how the rest of the evening goes.

I have a feeling I’ll be sleeping in on Sunday!

We’re going to have a barbecue tonight. I marinated some steaks this afternoon and prepared some vegetables for the grill. All I need to do it make a salad to go with dinner and then get my husband to heat up the barbecue.

I think we might even eat outside tonight. We haven’t set up the patio table and chairs yet so I guess I’ll try to find our outdoor cushions and we can just have a little picnic on the patio.

The next few days are supposed to be nice so I have a feeling we’ll be spending a lot of time outdoors. Hmmm Maybe we’ll even take the dog to the beach this weekend. She’s a Labrador Retriever and she loves nothing more than a good swim in the lake (and cookies) and we love nothing more than a tired dog. LOL

What are your plans for this weekend? Are you barbecuing and spending time enjoying the nice weather like us?

Honestly …

Ok sometimes I like it. You know on those rare days when you go into a store and you find some beautiful clothes on the rack and when you try them on they actually fit correctly and look fabulous on you? You can’t lose on those days, but those days are too few and far between for me. Or maybe I’m just too picky. LOL

Earlier today my husband and were out shopping in a few stores and as far as I’m concerned shopping on a Saturday is the worst. I hate the crowds and I dislike rude people that

1. try to skip ahead of you in line,
2. walk into you or bump into you with their shopping cart
3. Get to the cashier and suddenly pull out their change collection to pay a 75 bill.
3. Sales people that either try to sell you things you aren’t interested in, or that really could care less because they hate their job and you because you’re making them work

I could go on, but you get the picture.

We were in a store earlier today and pretty much all of those things happened to us within 15 minutes! LOL This man was in Costco and he was buying some product – something the cashier had to call out over the mic for a price check like “I need a price on ls2208 at cash 8″ several times. Then when the cashier finally got the correct price the man pulled out change to pay for it! A lot of change!

Hopefully my next shopping trip is better … maybe one of those really good days where you want to buy everything because it’s all perfect.

What do you hate most about shopping?

I’m home most of the day usually I only see young kids and teenagers early in the morning and between three thirty and four thirty in the afternoon. Well at least in large numbers!

The weather’s been so nice here this week that the kids are out ALL of the time! Parading around in their new urban clothing, skateboard, rollar blading, and bicycling.

I guess if we were having our typical winter I’d barely see all the kids … I mean, usually we have a foot or two of snow and there’s usually one or two snow and ice storms! This year however it’s like Spring in Toronto. It got up to 16 Celsius today (60 F) and it’s supposed to be warm all week!

Oh and my plants in my garden are coming back to life! My chives and several other plants (maybe early irises?) are bursting out of the ground and many of my roses have tiny leaf buds! This doesn’t normally happen until April.

I’ve even seen quite a few people walking around in shorts!

Yes we Canadians are optimistic! LOL I think it’s still a little cool for shorts, but when you think about it, it’s usually well below zero at this time of year so hitting 16 C (60 F) really is like early summer.

So … is it march Break in your area too? Did you make any plans? Holidays? Or are you home with the kids trying to keep them busy?