Trilobite

Christmas for me was not that great this year. I was very stressed about my poor term at school, and was probably not very much fun to be around. Sorry, everybody. I’m doing better this term and I plan to graduate soon. Depending on the courses UofT offers this summer, I hope to earn my degree by August. Just a few more months to go!

In Montreal we celebrated Peter’s birthday. A couple days later it was Christmas Eve, which was pretty much business as usual. Grandma received a funny bird feeder. (Note the Pokemon wapping paper.)

One day Joan made a pot of goulash and brought out some Hungarian hot pepper paste. I thought it would be like sambal oelek and put two or three big spoonfuls in my bowl. But it turned out to be the saltiest thing I have ever tasted, except for pure salt. Apparently, the proper way to use it is to put one tiny smidgen in the whole pot!

Pittsburgh was a little more relaxing for me and I played a lot of snowboarding on Peter’s Xbox. One night Christine, Mom, and Gina went to see the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre perform The Nutcracker. (Peter and I played a martial arts fighting game on the Xbox that night.) A few days later Gina’s sister Rita came over with her two sons.

There was a huge earthquake in Indonesia this morning and I was quite worried about Celine until I called home and spoke with Gisele. She reassured me that the quake itself was thousands of kilometers away from where she is staying, and that she would be safe from the tsunamis because all of Sumatra is between Jakarta and the epicentre. Wow. Very nerve wracking.

On Saturday I made the beigli while I was waiting for Peter and Gina to arrive. I had trouble, as usual, with the poppy seeds. I borrowed mortars and pestles from both Christine and Rheni but neither one did a good enough job. I’ll try again in Montreal, where they have a real poppy seed grinder.

Sunday we spent the morning relaxing, and Banjo and I enjoyed spending a last little bit of time with Celine before her big trip. Later we drove to Victor’s house to celebrate Dad’s 65th birthday. Victor lives in an old red brick schoolhouse out in the middle of nowhere. Photos: Dad & Victor, gambas al ajillo, Peter & Gina, piled on the couch, birthday boy, morning espresso.

Celine left yesterday for Toronto, the first stop on her way to Jakarta. She spent the night in a hotel and then woke up at 5:00am to go the airport. She called me a couple hours later, while she was waiting to board the plane, to say goodbye again. That was nice. Have a great trip, Celine!

The basement at the house was left unfinished to save money, so there is still lots of work to be done down there. Mohamad has started by painting the floor.

This is the last post I’m going to make about the construction of the house. I’m sure many of you would like to have seen more pictures, and even more of you would like to have seen less. For those of you in the first group, don’t worry, there’s still landscaping!

Yippee! The holidays are here. I am going to spend some time relaxing on a whirlwind five city tour of family gatherings. Celine is going to Indonesia to attend her cousin’s wedding. Today Peter and Gina are driving up from Pittsburgh, and I’m going to make some beilgli. I think I might even post some old photos and try to bring the blog up to date!

If anybody out there is geeky enough to know what it means for a web site to be syndicated, then rejoice! Our blog is now Atom enabled! The site feed is at http://michael.lehotay.com/trilobite/atom.xml

Well, the construction of the house is finally finished and Celine’s parents have moved into their new home. Welcome to Kingston, Gisele and Mohamad!

Dad came to Toronto for a conference. After it was over we drove to Kingston and picked up Christine, then went on to Montreal to visit Grandma and Mesh. I was a bit sad to see the convenience store around the corner, which had been there since I was born, had been turned into a day care.