Happy New Year to all and Happy Birthday, Hilary

We were in Vancouver for a few days taking it easy. We watched DVDs: Away From Her — beautiful little movie if quite sad, with a memorable performance by Julie Christie; and The Nanny Diaries, for which the word “slight” might have been invented — very decent cast, though, and it was interesting to see Laura Linney playing a less sympathetic character than usual. The clichés abounded, though, and hyperboles quickly become tiresome to me.

We also ate out cheep-and-cheerful style: All-you-can-eat sushi one evening at Tampopo on Denman — Paul really gets the value out of this, especially since they offer unlimited tuna and salmon sashimi. He also fills up on rolls, prawn tempura, gyoza, and chicken karaage, not much bothering with my edamame or sunomuno, tobiko or tamago sushi! We had the best gyoza ever at Gyoza King on Robson where I also had a fabulous serving of Kimchi Chahan and Paul had a great bowl of Udon. And one day we took his parents and Bronwen and Adam to lunch at Shao-Lin Noodle House on Broadway — or, at least, we intended to treat them, but Adam scooped the bill and paid it before we noticed! If this is a new trend, well, bring on the New Year!

And we wandered and chatted, one morning walking through Stanley Park’s pathways surveying some of the damage of last year’s windstorm, then checking out the ducks at Lost Lagoon, another day doing errands downtown but avoiding any lineups in favour of extra reading time back on the couch.

We got back yesterday afternoon after stopping by Frontrunners for me to get fitted (expertly — I was very impressed) for a new pair of runners. Last night, the plan was for us to enjoy a protracted meal together while watching DVDs and then to head to a house party on the island where we would visit for a while, join in for the countdown, celebrate for a short while, and head home. Well, we progressed through salad, roast squash, tagliatelle with Paul’s fresh pesto, and a lovely Filet Mignon, very rare, all accompanied with a bottle of a great Chianti that Joey and Zach gave us for Christmas, and we watched DVDs — instead of Lost, Paul decided to check out Angel, beginning in Season 4, just after Jasmine appears, and he got hooked! — surprisingly, we went through 5 episodes — perhaps not as surprisingly, we decided to pass on getting changed and heading to the party, and instead kept our New Year’s greetings close to home.

This morning, we started the New Year with a run (mine was very sluggish, but at least I did it!), got the software for my new camera (a Nikon D40X) loaded onto the computer, and started getting the house back in order. So now I’m ready to wish you all a Happy New Year, and to wish my sister, Hilary, a very Happy Birthday!