Sunday = Family Day

For some reason today, on such a beautiful fall day, happened to be spent completely with family.

The day started with my pop and I going for breakfast at Chez Cora's. Afterwards, we both wanted to do something but didn't know what that was. That something ended up being shopping because that's what we did. I was interested in buying more mature looking sweaters for work since I own about 7 hoodies and I figure I should look nice at work every once in a while.

I had a chance to visit Old Navy and got to see my former manager Craig, who I hadn't seen since i quite back in May. It was good to see him again.

I ended up at Sears where my dad and I bought matching sweaters (yes we're weird like that, but to quote Will Smith from Men in Black - "I make this look good"). I also got my own sweater for 50%, so yay me.

We had a quick coffee break and ended up back home. I had wanted to watch a movie this afternoon since the weather looked shitty when I woke up but when I returned home it was so nice, I convinced my mom that we should go outside and do something. She suggested we go to Mont Royal and walk around. My dad was tired so he stayed behind.

The mountain was pretty busy but really nice to be at. We parked the car at Beaver Lake and walked around. We walked around the lake and saw all kinds of animals. My mom pointed out a squirrel that was right near us. As I pulled out my camera to snap a photo, my mom tried to move out of the way but the squirrel started to chase after her instead. Luckily for my mom, an infant saw the squirrel and chased after it, thus saving my mother's life. Thanks little dude!

I didn't realize how close the lake was to the summit of the mountain, so after a 120 minute walk we ended up at the lookout. What a view!

I was a little disappointed that the leaves hadn't changed colors yet. At least this means I have a reason to come back again sometime soon.

After dinner, I ended up hanging out with yet another family member, my brother Mark. We played this pop culture trivia card game he got for his birthday from my other brother Lorne. The point of the game is to get 20 points to win. You get 1 point for every right question. I was being clobbered by Mark but ended up winning 20 to 19.

All in all I think I spent ore time with family today than I have in a really long time.

For those who have Facebook, you can find pictures of Mont Tremblant and other things I forgot to upload of things I did over the summer. So add me as a friend if you havn't already or join Facebook if you aren't a member. Get with the times people!

I'm glad that's not me

The other day I ordered a bunch of custom labels from a company in the states. I've dealt with them before and aside from one major problem (I asked for white text and they sent me black text) they seem competent and my contact seems like a very nice person.

When I called this time, she was delighted to hear form me and assured that the job I had asked was a piece of cake and she took not of all the specifications I asked. One very important one, which i failed to ask the previous time, resulting in a last minute panic on my end, was to make sure the colored parts of the label had white in the background. the reason for this is because the labels are clear and if not "backed up by white" the color is too see through and is difficult to notice especially on a dark surface. She told me not to worry and that they can definitely provide me with what i want. I was informed I'd receive them today.

Low and behold they came in today! I excitingly opened them up and discovered that they were perfect!... except I soon found out there was no white behind the color. So I call up my contact and am put on hold for several minutes. The secretary finally tells me she can't find Ruth, then she says "wait, she just walked in". Our conversation went a little something like this:
"Hi Josh how are you!?"
"I am fine Ruth, I hope I"m not disturbing your lunch"
"No, not at all, I just have a CRISIS on my hands that I'm trying to fix"
"Oh.. well... I hope I'm not adding onto it but the labels arrived and you guys didn't do what i asked"
*Long amount of silence*
"Ya... I don't know why we didn't do what you asked... I'll get back to you on that.... Thanks"
*click*
Thankfully I'm not on a super deadline but this does push things back a bit...

The Lost Post - Weekend at Tremblant

It's the Jewish High Holidays and since i had the day off work and not much is going on tonight, I wanted to update my blog and discovered this post I never posted.

Enjoy!

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I'm still under "trial" at work so I'm not entitled to any vacation time at the moment. Instead, Aurit and I decided to spend the weekend together somewhere and under much recommendation, we were up north in Mont Tremblant Village this past weekend.

We left Friday evening and came back home Sunday evening. The weather was beautiful the whole time.

On Friday we arrived around 7pm and checked into the Homewood Suites by Hilton. Let me tell you the hotel was NICE! We stayed in the smallest least expensive room and it was still HUGE!


It came with a kitchen and even ha a balcony. From the balcony I was able to see the Gondola so we were pretty much on the top end of the village.

We checked in, ate home cooked grilled cheeses (made by yours truly) and then hit the town.


For a short while.

We were pretty tired.


Saturday was PACKED with things. We slept in until 9:30am and caught the free breakfast the hotel offered. Then we hopped on the gondola (with free passes given to us by the hotel) to the top of the mountain.

At the top, we got a great view of our surroundings. We then took a trail around the summit. It was a lot more fun then I had expected with parts of it going in and out of the woods. It was FREEZING on top and I was suffering since I had asked the cleaning lady at the hotel if I needed a sweater and she said no.

After our little tour, we went to watch a bird of prey show. It was great! They had an owl AND an owl! (That ones for you Chris Dye)











There were other cool birds to look at, as well, like a hawk and a bald eagle.

We headed back to the city and went looking around.


Aurit got a chance to go shopping and we decided to take a walk a bit out of the city to relax at the beach! NOt beiong prepared to go swimming (and the fact th ebeach was kind of dirty) we made our way to the hotel to get our bathing suits and went to the swimming pool complex (which we also had free passes to) and hit the hot tub. It was SO GOOD!



Afterwards, we went back to the room to eat and grabbed a couple of beers at this bar that was a micro brewer. We had spent a long day gallivanting and were exhausted.

On Sunday, we slept in, got free breakfast and checked out. We decided to spend the afternoon at this zip line/tree jungle gym called Acrobranche. Basically, it was an obstacle course between trees where you had to cross some sort of bridge in high up in the air to get between 2 trees. Along the way were zip lines that were super fun.



All in all the weekend was awesome!