Aleen and Michael’s Blog

So after some debating for the last few months (and certain circumstances) we finally went out over the holidays and bought a new car.  After driving the Jetta for the past 7 years I liked the look and feel of a car in that size.  I had a few other cars in mind like the Audi A4 but the price of such cars is just too much at the moment given the house and wedding all in the last year.

I had my eye on a Mazda 3 for the past year as I really like the sporty look of the car.  It had all the extra features that I wished my Jetta had.  I was quite hard nosed on owning a German car always, but aside from a VW there isn’t much to chose from in the price category I was looking at, so I had to make the jump to Japanese.  I would go American too, but they really don’t have any offerings either.

Anyhow, we took a test drive and loved the way it handled.  The pickup when you step on the gas is a tremendous difference from my Jetta, which had a feeble engine.  This engine is a 5-speed automatic 2.3L 156hp.  It has pretty much the same features as the Jetta, except it has 17 inch alloy rims and a sunroof.  And it was much cheaper than what I spent on the Jetta.

Since we’re still on holidays, I haven’t driven that much but when I have it still feels weird driving in a new car.  But I should get over that real soon.

Aleen and I went to see the new Bond film tonight.  We were really excited for the opening but sadly we both came away pretty disappointed.  I own all the Bond films on DVD and they’re my favourite movies. 

I sort of always liked the suave and charming Bond character as well as the glitz and exotic travels that go along with each movie.  The girls aren’t too bad either, but this film just seemed to be different and tried too hard to fit into today’s mould of other action films.

I never considered Bond films to be true action films (the Bourne series fits that genre better), they were more spy based, simple, maybe the odd time unrealistic, with the odd fight sequence and witty humour, but this film is super crazy when it comes to fight sequences and action scenes.  So much so that it actually leaves you tired at points.  Also, it is probably the shortest Bond film ever coming in under 2 hours, which also was a disappointment.

After Casino Royale, which I enjoyed thoroughly and have watched several times, maybe I expected too much from this film.  Yes, I understand that Bond was trying to seek revenge on those that killed Vesper, but I found the plot too difficult to follow and the characters never really made a presence enough to understand them. 

Don’t get me wrong it still has some entertainment value and Daniel Craig did a great job again, but it just feels the rest of the movie didn’t fit the typical Bond mould, and me being a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to Bond films, had hoped for a bit better.

I can’t say I will rush out and add this film to my DVD collection when it comes out.

So Aleen had her laser eye surgery Friday at TLC.  The whole procedure went well and she’s at home resting now.  I have to help her around as she has to wear sunglasses all the time and she isn’t suppose to open her eyes for the first day or so, so I am leading a blind person around the house.

She has like 3 different types of eye drops that have to be administered, some every hour for the next 2 days.  Saturday morning she has an eye doctor’s appointment so he can make sure things are going well.

The joy of the day was being able to watch them slice off her eye flap on a tv screen and then see the laser do it’s magic.  It felt like I was right there doing the procedure!  Anyways, all is well and hopefully soon she will start to notice the improvement and her glasses wearing days are over.

I’ve always wanted to send Aleen flowers, but she always gives me crap about how it’s a waste of money.  Anyhow, I finally found a good reason to do so today as Aleen was at home not feeling too well and I felt bad that I wasn’t in town to take care of her.

I looked online around lunch and noticed that FTD does same day deliveries of certain bouquets before 2pm, and knowing that she likes lilies I thought it would be a good idea to surprise her at home.  The process was quite easy and the selection was pretty good at FTD, I also could get Aeroplan miles so why not right?   I placed my order and was guaranteed same day delivery.

Aleen had mentioned that if she was feeling better she might step out to run some errands, so I even emailed her Dad mentioning to him to expect a delivery sometime today but not to tell her.

The hours passed and it was now 5pm but I hadn’t heard anything from Aleen.  If the delivery came I know for sure she would have loved it and right away called me.  I called FTD’s 1-800 number to ask for an update on my order.  The lady who answered was quite friendly and she put me on hold to contact one of the local florists where the order went to to get an update.  After a minute or two, she regretfully told me that there was a mix up with the order and the florist forgot to fulfill the order, but that they would send it out right away the next day.

I was actually quite disappointed when I heard this as like I said I always wanted to do this and for my first time experience, I can’t say I will use FTD again.  The lady gladly refunded my money as I cancelled the order, but that didn’t satisfy the disappointment.

I called Aleen after I found out the bad news and told her what my plan was, and as I thought she was excited over the idea, but was just as disappointed as me that the order was messed up.  Anyhow, I highly doubt I will be using FTD again.  A bit of a shame as I did think their site was very good for orders.

Even though I couldn’t send her the flowers physically, at least she can always have them virtually to look at below:

This weekend was the Gourmet Food & Wine Show at the Metro Convention Centre.  Aleen and I have been going for the last 2 years and found it to be a blast; decent prices for lots of samples of different wine, beer and liquor.  We make a night of it usually on Saturday, by doing dinner downtown and then making it over for 3 hours or so before the show closes at 10pm. 

This year we made a reservation at Alice Fazooli’s at 6pm.  We just love the fresh bread and seasoned olive oil dip they give beforehand.  Dinner was decent although they decided to bring our salads after our meals so we had to cancel those.  Aleen loves the mushroom ravioli and I went with a fettuccine carbonara. 

We got out a little behind schedule and made it to the show around 7:15ish.  They had some car show there too and it was packed with beats pounding.  As we made it to the back of the convention centre and down the escalators, we saw a huge line to buy tickets.  We got in line and then heard that they were at capacity and were no longer selling tickets at 7:30pm!!  Lots of people were pissed including us as we came down from Markham to take in the show.  What made it worse was we had the option of buying/printing our tickets online beforehand thus avoiding the whole hassle. 

We were pretty disappointed and kind of didn’t want to leave hoping they would change their mind or sell more tickets later, but after a while we decided it was a waste and cut our losses.  Rather than go anywhere else for a drink we just jumped back on the subway and went back home. 

Sour grapes in deed…lesson learned for next year!