First signs of autumn

More color in trees

It's official: Summer's over. Temperatures dropped from 20 degrees (Celsius) to around 10'ish from last Wednesday to Friday. Trees have started to change their color and I got a first impression what power the notorious 'wind chill factor' has when walking across the street from one heated building to the next. It's not yet winter (obviously), but it's surely not summer anymore either.

Daft as I am, I underestimated just how much the temperatures might drop over here at night. So, when I visited friends on Saturday, I boldly dressed in jeans, t-shirt and a jumper - ergo, neither coat nor jacket. Considering that people were walking around in shorts and t-shirts just last week, I thought I had my basics covered. Well ... let's just say, I was very lucky getting the bus back right away. Another 5 minutes waiting and I might have turned blue.

Raining heavy

Anyway, I arrived in town around midnight in a subway full of people. As I soon learned, the so called 'nuit blanche' was happening. There were big crowds everywhere. Hence I assumed there must be something really interesting going on. Well, if there was, I didn't get it. I spend an hour asking people, reading leaflets and stopping by at marked points. I still have no idea what got all those people into downtown. I'll ask around at work tomorrow, maybe some of my colleagues can enlighten me.

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Black Friday

I've tried so far to keep tech out of my blog. Despite all of my previous effort, I decided to break with tradition for this entry. Recently, I bought a MacBook Air which is slick, stylish, lightweight, surprisingly fast and definitely on the pricey side. Actually since it matters for this entry, I have to be a little more precise. I bought the laptop mid November. My old one is almost utterly useless since it gets hot as hell when you 'sleep' deprive it for more than 10 min. As I tend to do, I payed up at once and forgot about the expense almost just as quick. Now, for the next part I have to explain something that not everyone may be aware of. Thanksgiving is a much bigger holiday here in North America than it was in Europe. There is turkey dinner and pumpkin carving and costumes and other traditions that Europeans just don't do, even though at least Germany has the holiday ("Erntedankfest") as well. The date when this happens is a different one for the...

Years beyond

Many, many years later I'm finally willing to put some time into this blog again. I saw the last post was about a car I bought 3 or 4 cars ago. So it's been a minute. Today life is different from then. My "firsts" are mostly experiences with the kids, not purchases. Canada as an experience has become tamed and normal for me. Mind you with small kids I have not explored Canada as a whole as much. As with COVID-19 I'm bound to my office at home - similar to many other office workers. So the kids have become a great source of distraction. I will admit that I'm not missing the commute from the suburbs of the GTA in my daily routing. I like to think that this gives me roughly 90 to 120 minutes back in my day. However considering that I'm crowded every time I want to grab a quick coffee upstairs it probably is be much less. And yes, I'm in the basement. The coolest and quietest of all the places in the house. Unfortunately, it's also the ugliest and d...

Munich short trip

I made it to Munich for the second wedding in Germany and back. I was only there for less than 5 days again, so the jetlag is really impeding my focus right now. However, I felt like I should keep the blog going nevertheless. So here we are, I'm back in Toronto. The weather is a lot nicer than it was in Germany. Everything is coming together quite nicely. A new bookshelf for the office should be arriving end of next week and the couch hopefully arrives mid August. It'll be nice to get organized and have a place to chill properly. The couch delivery was a long time in the making; 2.5 months to be precise. Which even in hindsight sounds like a crazy long time. But even after extensive search for alternative furniture the decision was easy since there was no equal when it came to quality or style. Okay, I'll keep this entry short since despite all the coffeine I consumed throughout the day I'm about to fall asleep resting my head on the laptop.

To Canada and beyond

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