Friday, September 17, 2010

Didja miss me?

Stuff happened in the 21 days since my last post, so here's a quick recap of life in the fast lane:

  1. On Auguat 22 we had a mass said for Zou's mom in Montreal at the Syrian Catholic Church (St. Ephrem).  The following week was full of appointments, lessons, and various back-to-school type things for Michael and Alex.  I went with Zou to his pre-op appointment at North York General.
  2. Got Michael off for a week at National Music Camp up near Orillia (Camp Wahanowin).
  3. Got Alex back to Queen's and into his house.  He's sharing with five other students in a house in a great location...close to the main drag and five minutes by foot to campus. Did some shopping for him and then we had dinner at Le Chien Noir.
  4. Headed up to Ottawa to hang with my mom for a few days.  Saw my sister and her family, and had a lovely lunch with her at Taylor's Genuine Food and Wine Bar in her 'hood.  Took my mother to visit my father's grave and had lunch with her at Bella's.  Had lunch with my good friend Ian at Infusion Bistro and then headed back to Toronto via Kingston to drop in on Alex again and ate at Atomica.  And I wonder why my trousers don't fit.
  5. On September 5, Zou and I headed up to Music Camp to hear Michael play with his ensembles.  It was a great day and wonderful to hear him play!  He worked with William Carn and Scott Suttie and had a fabulous time at camp.  He's looking forward to next year already!
  6. School started for Michael on September 7th and he is really happy with all his teachers.  After a little timetable fiddling, he got all his requested courses (Enriched Math, Science, Canadian History, Civics, Latin, English, and three music classes: Band, Vocal, Repertoire).
  7. On Friday the 10th, Zou went in to hospital to have a big kidney stone removed via percutaneous nephrolithotomy (through-the-skin-stone-removal, literally). It was a big one, and very hard to break up, but they got it out. They did the procedure using a scope, so the incision was tiny.  He was in hospital for five days and is home for a few weeks to recover.  His surgeon advised him to treat this like a significant kidney injury, to lay off the exercise and take it easy.
  8. I got an short extension on my summer online genealogy course and finished it up with another 100% exam.
  9. The Toronto International Film Festival started on the 9th and I ended up getting single tickets for four films the first week as I figured I wouldn't have a date (and I enjoy attending these types of things on my own.)  Zou and I will attend three films this weekend if he's well enough (which is looking good at this point).  We've also got the Toronto Palestine Film Festival coming up next month.
  10. Michael auditioned for the Jazz.FM91 Youth Big Band last Saturday and got accepted (on bass trombone)!  He is thrilled, and will start rehearsals this Saturday down at the station.  Saturday morning, he's also auditioning for the Hannaford Community Band (on tuba).  So far, it looks like he can do both without a problem, so if he's accepted there, he'll be a busy boy!  He'll be in at least five ensembles at school as well. He's starting to talk about a music career...
  11. I've joined a GoodReads book group and am participating in the Fall Challenge.  It's going kinda slowly, but I'll pick up steam soon.  My reading list by task category is here....I'm hoping to get through a lot of things on my bookshelves so that I can give them away and make room for the piles that have not been shelved as of yet.

I hope to be back in my blogging form going forward.  It was just one of those things that had to drop over the past three weeks as I was kind of overwhelmed with life.  I have a couple of new courses in my genealogical studies that have just started, and I need to pick up my quilt again.

Talk to you soon.  Promise.

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