1. I tried a new President’s Choice product tonight:    Thai Green Curry cooking sauce.  Yowza!  It was delicious.  I sauteed some pepper and onions, added shrimp, and then the sauce and some leftover green beans. Served over rice, it was a terrific quick meal.  Available across Canada at Loblaws and stores where President’s Choice products are sold.

2.  My brother and his family arrived in Canada on Tuesday.  They have moved here from Berkeley CA and will move into their house on Saturday, so have been spending a few days with us.  They have three children:  two boys (almost 4 and just over 2) and a 3-month old daughter. Needless to say, this has been a stressful move and they’ll be happy when they’re finally settled in their new house.  It’s been lovely having them here, and I’ve enjoyed having young children around the house!  Wilson (our terrier) has been exhibiting some strange herding behaviour with the boys, running after them when they leave the room and generally keeping an eye on them.  It escalated to a little nip today when I was out of the room, and I felt badly about that.  I am keeping a sharp on him now.

3.  I just finished reading my first book as a Thomas Nelson Book Review Blogger.  Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership was a great read, and I’ll write my review over the next day or so.

4.  My copy of The Pioneer Woman Cooks arrived today!  It’s gorgeous and full of the recipes that I’ve come to love.  She is one of the funniest bloggers around, a phenomenon, and I pre-ordered the book as soon as it became available.

5. Michael is heading to Queen’s late this afternoon to visit Alex in his dorm.  He’s taking the bus:  I’ll take him down to the bus station tomorrow afternoon and he’ll travel on his own.  When he gets there, he’ll grab a cab to the residence and spend a couple of fun days in Kingston.  The Football finals (Queen’s v. Western) are this weekend and that should be a highlight and demonstrate the Queen’s spirit in full form!  They’ll take in a movie and do some other fun stuff, I’m sure.  He returns Sunday evening.

6.  The Times Talk with Stephen King on Tuesday night was really fun and inspiring.  He was interviewed by Janet Maslin of the New York Times and the interview was broadcast live in HD to theatres all over the US and Canada.  The theatre we were in was virtually empty.  King is a very modest man, plain spoken, and clearly loves his craft.  About half of the interview was about his new (huge) book, Under the Dome, which sounds really interesting (and I’m not a big Stephen King fan) and the rest was about all the other projects that fill his time.  I’d definitely like to start reading some of his work.

7.  It’s day 13 of NaBloPoMo and I’m still going strong!