Shopping Marathon

I dropped Anth, Shane and Josh at the airport on Tuesday morning, they're off to San Fransisco for a few days before returning back down under. It was fantastic to have them with us, even if only for a few days and I think that they had a great time here. In ten days they toured Toronto, went to Ottawa, Montreal and the fabulous Quebec City, then stayed at the Sheraton Niagara with a view of the falls from their 17th floor room.

Anth and I played golf with my mate Shyam on Saturday morning and we were the first to play the course this season according to the marshall. As if to prove this fact we came home with about 25 more balls than we started with. When the snow melts and the fall leaves blow away it's amazing how many lost golf balls appear, they really stand out. My bag is bursting with balls... hmmm that didn't come out quite right. Moving on...On Sunday we planned to satisfy Shane's shopping fix by cruising across the border into New York state and hitting an outlet mall just past Rochester. It took just less than 3 hours to drive there and we arrived in perfect shopping weather, it was pouring. How we managed to shop for around 5 hours with the kids in tow I'll never know, they were great. We came away with heaps of stuff and I was probably the winner with new shoes, pants, sports/golf gear, casual stuff and close to the buy of the day, a leather jacket marked at $160 and charged at $20.99. Now that's a discount. No vinyl either baby, soft cow hide all the way. I say 'close to the best buy' because when you get stuff free it's hard to beat, a pair of jeans for Cam cost $0, a mistake, they should have been $15, oh well. So the outlet shopping in the States is pretty awesome, you just have to be ready to drive to get a good deal. The other thing you have to worry about is crossing the border back into Canada as the limit for duty free is very low when you've only been across the border on a day-trip. It helps to err on the low side when asked 'And whats the value of the goods you plan to bring into Canada?' by the customs official, and then hope they don't ask to look in the trunk (sorry, boot for you Aussies).

That's not the only shopping bargain we've found recently, our wheeling-and-dealing on eBay continues. During our Aussie trip our poor old JVC digital video camera finally gave up the ghost. It's taken so much video in the five years we've had it and been through a lot. Now it simply wont record or play tapes and likes to pull the tape out of the cassette more often than not. I might be able to get it fixed, but seriously what a great excuse to by a new toy, I'm not passing that up. Mmmmm, shiny! I had started pricing a new camera even before our trip back home, I guess the JVC knew that I was being unfaithful (I was reading the menu and planning to buy after all) and perhaps it died of a broken heart. Anyways I knew what I wanted and what I might pay and ended up with a brand new Sony HC5 for about 65% of the RRP. The HC5 is a pretty awesome camera, smaller than the JVC and high-def (1080i) too, I can't wait to start getting some real footage happening.Speaking of which I have a surprise trip planned for the family in a few weeks. They don't know where we're going and I'm not gunna tell them, they'll just have to work it out as we drive there. The only hint I've given is that it's about 8-9 hours drive away and we'll be staying there 3 nights in a hotel (and yes kids, it does have a pool, the eternal question answered). You can find out when they do, I'll post from the hotel when we arrive.

It snowed last night, just a cm or so and Easter is a or so day away, winter is refusing to release it's tenacious kung-fu grip. I get the Friday off but not the Monday and we have a very busy schedule at work at the moment so things are not very holiday-like. The Easter treats are not as over-the-top here as they are back home. Less chocolate and more 'fake' eggs to hide in egg hunts. I assume that this is because the North American 'candy' holiday is Halloween, so Easter takes a more low key approach here. Back in Aus Easter is the only treat-style holiday so it's no surprise that the eggs are in the stores in January and seem to come out earlier every year. We did bring some Easter treats from Aus with us so I'm sure the kids will be pleased.

Enough already. One other piece of info, I've loaded a selection of our older Canadian photos into Flickr, probably more interesting to our family than our other dear readers, but there you have it. Check for the new sets like 'Canada in 2005' etc. Oh and of course if we saw you when we were back in Aus it's likely there's a photo of you in the 'Aussie Family and Friends' set, enjoy.

Andy, out.