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We're embarking on our first ever Christmas vacation (those trips up Highway 2 from Calgary to Edmonton don't really count as vacations, of course) tomorrow, and I am quite pleased that I can just plug my iPod charger, my camera battery charger, my mobile phone charger, and the charger for the portable DVD player into electrical outlets here in SE Asia, in Europe, and in Canada without needing a transformer. Gosh, dual-voltage appliances are useful ...
Four hand-woven baskets, three hand-carved wooden doves, and one nifty swimming fish sculpture. I can't even imagine what I would have paid for similar objects in Calgary!
There are very few culinary things that I will not attempt to make more than once. Slow-cooker cacciatore and peanut chicken are on the list, and now, fudge is on the list. Last night I embarked on a four-hour journey to make maple fudge for the Canada booth at the international school's food fair, held today. It seriously took four hours for the whole process, from melting the ingredients to deciding the the soft ball stage had finally been reached to cooling down enough to be put into a well-greased pan. What I pulled out of my fridge this morning was toffee. Not fudge! Even worse, the 250 ml bottle of maple syrup that I used for the recipe cost me the equivalent of $15 Cdn ...
I usually think of Sundays as our "lazy day". Saturday is a working day for our driver, so we usually go into Bangkok for part of the day, but Sunday is a different story. We stay within the gates. For excitement, we'll walk to the coffee shop and take Madeline to the playground at the international school.
This past Sunday was a little different. Chris and I were walking home from an emergency trip to the grocery store, and noticed that the swimming pool in the community plaza looked much warmer and more appealing than the one in our apartment complex. A plan was hatched, swimsuits donned, and we snuck down to the parkade where our company car waited. The car never sees any action of Sundays because we're not supposed to drive it (though a surprising number of Chris's co-workers do). Insurance issues or something like that. But we took the car because walking home soggy would not have been any fun.
The trip took about eight minutes, three more than normal as Chris wasn't used to driving the vehicle, but we were quickly in the water watching Madeline show off her new swimming skills. About ten minutes into our swim Chris realized that we'd misinterpreted the regulations about access to the swimming pool - technically, we should have bought a semi-expensive membership to the country club to use the swimming facilities. Ooops. We had no idea!
We did have a good time in the pool, so we probably will invest in a membership in the new year. I'm just quite glad that we weren't thrown out of the pool!
It's occured to me, lately, that my iPod just may be the best Christmas gift that I've ever received. I can't think of what else I get so much use out of. Initially, my iPod sat in it's box for several months, but when we moved to Newfoundland last year, that's all that we took with us, music-wise. Our iPods and our iHome dock. I have too many playlists to count, though I really only listen to three of them regularly.
My iPod is a steady companion. When we go out to dinner in Bangkok, the iPod comes along, as an episode of The Backyardigans can help my kid settle in for a peaceful ride back to our apartment. When I go power-walking around the lake in our community, iPod is there, letting me listen to CBC Radio One podcasts so I miss home a little less. Today, I actually felt okay about mopping our two balconies (oh, there is no chore I dislike more than mopping) as I could tuck my iPod in my pocket and listen to The Vinyl Cafe whilst removing layers of dirt. Suddenly, there was tranquility about ...
