Some thank-yous

Well, I am beautiful, according to Christina Aguilera. And right now thats the kind of encouragement that I need.

Still no luck on the job front. Elli's been gathering contacts like a stone gathers moss, but I'm a rolling stone baby. We've each had a couple of close shaves, but no definites. I've gotten a resume to Nortel past two layers of evil recruitment agencies (bent on human sacrifice, world domination, and keeping me unemployed), so that at least is encouraging. Elli has spoken to the MD of NatSource (a company who has somehow combined greenhouse gases and asset managment) , who in turn put her in contact with about seven billion other MDs/CEOs. I have a feeling that when Elli finally gets face-to-face with someone she's a shoe-in.

So, you can deduce what we've been spending 90% of our time doing - jelly wrestling! I mean, job hunting. The other 10% has mostly been spent with Elli's relatives; drinking their beer, eating their food, and just generally mooching as much as we can. Being broke means we can't really do much in the way of exploring or having fun, so it's really good to be able to get out of the house and chill with Elli's homies.

We owe them a huge debt really - especially Alistair and Marlene in Toronto (Elli's great-uncle and great-aunt-in-law), who put us up for a week when we first arrived.

My credit card - our only way of getting money - had unexplicably snapped clean in two in my pocket just as we where about to leave Frankfurt. Lesson learned #47: ALWAYS have more than one way of accessing your funds. While we where waiting for an international money transfer we were totally destitute - I remember walking in to the bank to exchange sterling, Euros, Vietnamese Dong, and a whopping 230 Thai baht (about CA$6). For some absurd reason Elli was at her most generous at this time, giving literally our last dollar to a homeless guy who wanted a coffee.

So, not only did they put us up; they drove us around, took us out to dinner, and where generally very generous.

Marlene, Alistair and Elli at Niagara. At the end of the rainbow is... Alistair's bum!

Peter and Jenny, here in Ottawa, have also been amazingly generous (I think they're Elli's second cousins or something). They also put us up for a week while we were apartment hunting. Most of the furniture we own is theirs, and we are still going around all the time to steal things like hammers and power drills. Peter works for the Canadian Government and has been helping Elli out a lot with advice and contacts, and Jenny treated us to a free Pysanky workshop. My eggs were so much cooler than Elli's (no they weren't, Josh went in a tantrum because he thought everyone in the class had made better eggs than him and refused to put his in the oven for setting, hee hee - Elli). To top it off, they're great fun and we love spending time with them.

The furniture in our apartment that isn't Peter and Jenny's is probably Johanne or Mische's. That's right, more relatives! Without them we wouldn't even have a bed to sleep on. They and Johanne's daughter Stephanie have been great about introducing us to relevant industry contacts, and getting us far too drunk. I think they're aware of how boring our lives are at the moment, and do their best to provide us with a bit of relief every now and then.

Johanne, Elli and Jo's mother Chrissy

But wait, there's more! Elli's great-aunt Chrissy has gotten the idea that we are starving to death, and is constantly inviting us around to stuff as full of food, and then making us take home all the leftovers, a tray of muffins, a bottle of wine, and her kitchen sink. She's got a wicked sense of humour, and her husband was a Russian intelligence agent, so she's got some pretty amazing stories.

Anyway, I'm sure you're sick of hearing about all this. So stop reading! Ingrate.

PS. Also a massive thank-you to my mum, for reasons she will understand. Oh yeah, and a happy birthday to my sister... did you get your present yet?