I made my way to Kingston yesterday for the Holiday celebrations at my sister’s, and the weather was unseasonably warm. It was about 4 degrees outside, with no wind, and felt just balmy. This is not winter weather in December, especially because it’s officially winter now (we passed the solstice early Friday morning.) I had to go out to shovel a bit more of my sister’s driveway to make room for my vehicle (she’s only got the one car, and so understandably doesn’t shovel more than she has to.) And I realized as I shovelled, that the snow was p-a-c-k-i-n-g snow. I mean, the make-a-stash-of-snowballs-for-the-war-that-should-have-been-happening-later-on-between-all-the-neighbourhood-kids type of packing snow. It was just too good to pass up.

So I picked up the shovel and started making a pile in my sister’s front yard. And shaped it, and piled some more on top, and then shaped some more. Till I had this:

Took me about 45 minutes to get this far, as I was extremely out of practice. It’s been almost 20 years or more since I made my own snowman, but I just couldn’t resist. He came up to my shoulder, which was pretty good for a solo effort without snowpants (it wasn’t cold enough to merit digging them out.) I had lots of fun playing around in the snow though, and ended up with this for my efforts:

Oh, and even though you can’t see it, he had a face on both sides. Although with the torrential rain we’ve had all day today, he’s already been decapitated by Mother Nature. Barely lasted 24 hours, which isn’t bad, considering we’re supposed to be above zero degrees Celsius all week. *sigh*)

Happy Holidays everyone!

Ah yes birthdays. They happen every year on the same day, and some years we want to celebrate them, while other times we don’t. This year I wanted to celebrate, especially because my beloved Montreal Canadiens were playing the dreaded Toronto Maple Leafs ON MY BIRTHDAY. Oh yes, I thought this was a perfect thing to celebrate. To make matters even more fun, the game was in la Belle Province (that’s Quebec for y’all non-Canadians), and as I hadn’t been to Montreal in over 8 years, I thought this was the perfect opportunity.

To start the celebrations off, I went to the Irish Embassy Pub in Toronto on Friday night for some drinks with some colleagues. Here’s me & Shannon at the beginning of the evening:

(That’s me on the right.)

 Next there’s Clint, Paul & Matt mugging for the camera:

I tried to be good and not drink too much that night, as the next morning I was off on the train to Montreal, but of course we all know that didn’t happen. Although I was good and drank vodka-based drinks, as I know they cause less of a hangover (and let me tell you that less is most definitely a relative term here), I still wasn’t feeling as fresh as I could have on Saturday morning. BUT, I made it to the train on time to meet up with the girls, and off we went.

Strangely enough, only Melanie was in full form, as I was battling the hangover, Jana was getting over a nasty cold and Christine was having some sympathy nausea for me, but we all managed to rest a little on the train, and we in decent form by the time we got to the hotel. Where we were greeted by this view from our 16th floor hotel room:

This is the view from the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth hotel, one of the grand dames of Montreal.

The best part of this room and hotel is that the Queen Elizabeth is directly over top the train station. All we had to do is take an elevator, and we were in the hotel (or train station, depending on your perspective.) This was an important fact to us, since we were taking the 09:40 train Sunday morning, and we wanted to maximize our sleep time.

So now to the main attraction: the game. We walked over to the Bell Centre and purchased some scalpers tickets for the Molson Zone. We found these are at one end of the arena, and each section is assigned a player. If your player scores a goal, then one row is chosen to win free beers. Not bad at all.

Here are Jana & me at the game. 

You’ll note that Jana is still smiling even though she’s wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs shirt…this was before the Leafs got trounced 4 - 1 by my Habs! YESSSSSSSS! She still had fun though, enjoying all the raucous fans and all.

Next we have some photographic proof of Christine’s fraud: she’s really a Senators fan, however in the spirit of the day, she wanted to wear one of my Habs jerseys. I told her she could wear her Sens jersey, and in fact her husband was going to lend her his, however she declined, much to Jana’s chagrin.

In the pre-game festivities, the Bell Centre people did a historical retrospective on the Canadiens teams of the past, flashing up some interesting pictures and stats  on the ice as they did.

So the game got underway, we had a few beers and pizza slices, and the chanting began “Let’s Go Habs! Let’s Go Habs!” Followed by the equally fun “Leafs Sucks, Leafs Sucks” (you have to remember we were in Montreal, and those francophones sometimes add extra s’s to words. ) There was an undercurrent of “Let’s Go Leafs” occasionally, but then we’d drown them out. See, Christine was right into it…

See the blonde in the referees shirt? She was handing out free beer tickets to fans who were wild & crazy, and Christine was wild & crazy enough to win!

By the third period, the score was:

The crowd started to get really rowdy, including a group of nasty Habs fans a few rows ahead of us. They were taunting a group of Leafs fans with some nasty, personal comments, which really wasn’t necessary. Security came up sometime in the 2nd period, but you knew something was brewing. These were the type of guys who go to bars looking for fights. Sure enough, at this point in the game, somebody stumbled while walking up the stairs to his chair, beer was spilled, words were exchanged, and then Hab Moron #1 lunged at Drunk Leafs Fan #1. DLF #1 threw his beer on HM#1, which pissed him off, and they started grappling as all of us ran for cover. Security was up there in no time and had separated everybody and diffused the situation.

But THEN, DLF#1’s friend (DLF#2), tried to climb over us girls to help his buddy. We were all concerned that he was going to dump his beer on us, so I pinned his right leg, Jana pinned his left, Melanie grabbed him by the waistband, and Christine, who was on the aisle, started yelling at him. She got right in his face and let him have it. While I appreciate his willingness to help his buddy, there was no point since Security was there and was going to toss everyone out anyways.

Finally the situation calmed down, all the DLFs left with their banished brothers, (and one sister), and then we watched the rest of the game. Jana left in disgust with a few minutes left in third, as she had to go buy some Habs paraphernailia for her father, who is a Habs fan (good man!), and she missed the lone Leafs goal! That was funny.

We next headed out to the Sir Winston Churchill pub up on Crescent street for a few drinks after the game. We met up with some funny guys who worked at Molson’s. Melanie was having quite a fun time with them. And then suddenly, it was past midnight, and my birthday was officially over for this year. It was time to get back on the train and head back to Toronto.

If you want to see more of my photos from the trip, go check out  my Flickr page. Melanie’s going to put her photos shortly, so I’ll be linking over to those too, so stay tuned for those too (Melanie’s much more of a shutterbug than I am.)

And with today’s shopping dear readers, I have finished my Christmas shopping. Yes, I picked up the last couple of presents this afternoon, and I-am-done. Hell, I even found a couple of presents for my relatives in Italy, whom I normally don’t buy for, however I found a couple of things that I just couldn’t resist. Picked up a birthday present for my friend’s daughter too, as she turns one this week. We’re having a party for her next Sunday, which should be fun.

The mall even had a parade for Santa, as it was his first day on duty at the mall. They had a full marching band and ballerina-fairies, plus Santa’s elves and a giant toy soldier on stilts! He was tall. I was a tad confused at first though, because I was walking around in the mall and heard the music, which I thought was a little loud for being indoors. But then I saw Santa, and thought it made sense. I still think the music was loud, but at least then it made sense.

Now I’m in the middle of doing laundry while I figure out a new knitting pattern to work on. I think I might just have to ring up my seester to get some help, cuz I don’t understand the pattern. haha. I’ll be working on the Everlasting Bagstopper from Knitty.com. My sister’s made a few and says they’re quite nice and easy, plus they’re good for stocking stuffers or whenever you need one type presents.

It’s true, I’ve started! For some of you this is late, for others it’s early, but for me it’s about on par with my usual schedule. I work for a company that produces lots of retail gift items, and we get a good discount on stuff, so I put in my order, and it arrived today. I couldn’t pick it up yet because I didn’t have my chequebook (they only take cheques), so it’ll have to wait till tomorrow. But I’m pleased to see that out of all my items, I got about 90% of them, which is good. Sometimes items run out, or are back ordered, but my list seems to be pretty good. (I got to scan it quickly when I went to see how much it was.)

Now I’ve got to start up my Xmas list…for those of you interested, check out the sidebars here, as I’ll be posting some things that would be nice, if you’ve got no idea for me. *wink*wink*nudge*nudge*

I can’t wait to see what’s waiting for me in those two boxes at work!

I just realized that I’ve been blogging here at Loose Knits for over two years now, so I thought I’d take a look back and see what was going on at various times back in tha’ day:

A Year Ago:

• Knitting Machine
• The Great Pumpkin is Coming!
• Ahoy Matey

Two Years Ago:

• The End of Ultimate
• Use Your Blinkers!
• Fall Has Arrived

Interesting, n’est-ce pas?