"A million monkeys banging on a million typewriters for a million years will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare."

Well, I'm all packed for my trip. The Contiki tour is taking me to four countries in Europe: Italy, Monaco, France and Spain, and on the way back I've extended my stopover in Amsterdam for a couple of nights.

My flight leaves Pearson tomorrow evening and I'm back in two weeks. I hope I don't have a repeat of a trip to Trinidad where they decided not to load my luggage on the plane. As I found out later, it was right before Canada 3000 went belly-up.

I'll see y'all in two weeks. Arrivederci!

I just went and swapped some Canadian money for some Euros. You know how well our dollar is doing against the Greenback? Well, not so well against the rest of the world. It's the U.S. dollar depreciating rather than ours gaining value. I bought my Euros at 61 cents on the dollar. Ouch. Next week's bar tab is really gonna cost me.

One thing I found out today is that their currency comes in different sizes, depending on the denomination of the bill. Cool... though not as neat and tidy in a wallet. Click on thumbnail to enlarge.

This morning I dropped my parents off at the airport for their flight to Trinidad, where they'll be vacationing for a month. That means until Friday when I myself go away, I'm going to have to arrange dinner, do my laundry, make my bed and pack my own lunch, and when I'm back it will still be another week or so until their return.

Aw man... I enjoyed being taken care of. What's a guy to do? Does anyone know the number for Molly Maid?

While flipping channels this evening my remote landed on TVO, which was showing a nature show about animals eating other animals. I don't normally watch this type of stuff, but something about the baboon bounding through the swamp and waylaying an unsuspecting flamingo combined with the African drums beating in the background had me mesmerized.

By the time I looked at the clock again, half an hour had somehow passed. It's a good thing I'm not out in the wild fending for myself. A few drums and the soothing voice of some BBC guy and I'll be some animal's lunch in no time.

Today being Rememberance Day, I got the day off work as indirectly I'm emloyed by the banks. I hadn't spent a weekday home in a long time and I'd forgotten how much daytime TV sucks. I had also forgotten that during the day all of the homemakers, nannies and seniors take to the roads in the afternoons as if they're behind the wheel for the first time.

Oh well, small price to pay for the opportunity to sleep through the morning on a Thursday.

I found a new restaurant today. A group of us from work went to The Host restaurant for some Indian food. This place was across the street was work and I just found out about it today. Very good, and not too spicy for my paler friends.

Back in May I traded in my wonky Taurus for a shiny new Acura TSX. I love everything about my new wheels... except the gearshift knob. The brushed metallic trim looks really good, but as we're approaching winter it feels damn cold when I have to get started in the mornings.

This is a perfect example of form over function. Those Japanese engineers should know better. They have winter over there, don't they? At times I've actually considered driving to work the whole way in first gear.

I guess I'll be looking for a pair of driving gloves pretty soon. In the meantime I'm gonna have some fun and find a kid dumb enough to lick a flagpole...

I'm in the middle of pursuing an accounting designation and part of the requirements is suffering through six weekend-long sessions where they cage us in a hotel conference room and supposedly train us to become better strategic leaders

This weekend was the worst yet. The material on Saturday was totally irrevelant to anything I'll ever encounter in the real world and for the entire morning today each of the five groups had to sit through their peers' presentations... all on the same topic.

The only high point of the weekend was going out boozing with my group on Saturday (one quick drink turned into five hours), although a couple members don't know when to call it quits and we were worried they weren't going to be there to present this morning.

It's pretty bad when you don't call your wife to let her know you'll be out and she's so worried that after calling your friends to try to locate you she ends up driving up and down the highway at 2 a.m. looking for a car accident.

I think I see a florist in his future.

Uh oh... first snowflakes have appeared in the forecast. Bad weatherman. Bad!

Not three hours after taking my 7-year old cousin out trick-or-treating, the first Christmas ad invades my television.

Next year I'll start handing out candy canes and save myself a trip to the store.