Moving, Denise's birthday

OK, it (again) has been a long time since I've wrote. My best excuse is that I had a hard time getting the internet set up here but I can always write from work.

Anyway, as you know, we moved on June 1st. Our new place is quite nice, it a one-bedroom apartment on the ground floor of a house: one bedroom, one nice living room, laundry in the basement, nice big kitchen, a little sun-room and a little garden. We obviously went planting immediately, some morning glories, sage (MARVA) mint, begonias, basil, thyme, rosemary, lemongrass and some more. This was fun until the squirrels started digging everything up and slashing the plants for no reason. They seem to really like this area because they are everywhere! Denise even caught one on camera while doing it. I was a bit mad at them and went on to set some traps but Denise violently objected and we had to surrender. Well, I guess. I still hate them but I'm not doing anything to harm them, just let them be and ruin my garden without retaliation. Here are some pictures of the garden before the squirrel-attack:

Our landlords are a gay couple Frank and Franco. We live in the Village, or the gay neighborhood, in Toronto. It is a little strip of a few blocks where the gay community is very prominent. We moved here because the place is nice and close (oh, we also have a private parking spot which is a nice bonus in Toronto) but also because we wanted to try a new neighborhood. It is very comfortable here, many convenient stores, coffee shops etc within one-two minutes walk (which we didn't have before).

The move itself was not that bad. It was hard to combine all our stuff, we have too many things! We tried to give away whatever we didn't need but we still have a lot. Moving it was easy though, as the place was empty and we moved it a bit at a time. A  pictures packing won't hurt. Take a good look, this is the last of Trinity!

So what happaned over the last two weeks... Hmmm... I'm trying to finish writing my thesis. It is going very slow because I can't sit my self down and simply do it. I really don't like it by now and I find out how little I really learned over the last three years. But I don't really want to dwell on it too much right now. I've also started running. Denise has been following this program for a few weeks now and a few people in the lab are training for a half-marathon, so I decided to try as well. I really don't enjoy running all that much I have to say! But it's going ok. We'll see how long I survive.

Denise's birthday was on Monday. We had a BBQ for friends on Sunday which was good, it was a gorgeous day, sunny, not too hot and perfect for a BBQ. Unfortunately, our garden is not that big so there wasn't much space for people but it was fine. A friend of Denise, Maxim came with his wife Elizabeth and two kids. The kids were extremely cute and well behaved, played with each other and kept themselves busy. Elizabeth brought her guitar and towards the end, when most people left, she played and sang along with my friend Avital. He played some old Israeli songs for us which made me even more homesick than usual. Some pictures:

Oh! Before that, on Friday we were at Dani and Debbie for kidush. We celebrated 1) Aviva graduating from university 2) Tricia (Debbies sister) graduating from Teacher's college 3) Tricia's second marriage 4) Zuza's birthday 5) Debbies step-father birthday and 6) Denise's birthday. Needless to say, it was a full house with lots of food and fun! I don't have pictures yet but I will hopefully get some soon.

I've also had my first baseball practice Tuesday. It was fun, but I think there are to many people on the team which means every individual won't get to play much since only about 9 people are on the field at any moment. We'll see.

OK. It is Saturday noon now and Denise's parents are coming for lunch so I going to clean up a bit.