Halyma

@wtl { aka Tom} and i have been going to Sunday morning brunch at Patty Boland’s for around 7 or 8 years – it’s been so long  we’ve kinda lost track.  It started as just the two of us, then gradually we let folks in on our little Sunday morning ritual.  And this weekend, in trickles of rumour and haphazard information we’ve been informed that the restaurant will no longer be open weekend mornings to serve breakfast.  We knew things had been slow this fall, and with many factors to consider, I am sure it’s the right choice business wise for them.

2 questionable choices:

1 – Why not go ahead and serve breakfast for one final weekend  on December  17th and 18th?  We knew the place would be closed on the 25th and Jan 1st anyway, so one more weekend would not have been the end of the world, would it?

2 – Why did you not tell your regulars personally in an email/ Facebook announcement/ Tweet?  We totally would have rocked the place this morning if we had known.

But hey, life goes on, and we’ll still frequent the place on Fridays and Thursdays when possible.

A look back:

Admittedly the best years were when Mike Libbos was our server.  He had it covered. Our table became the  testing ground for servers after he moved on, but we loved ya Mike!

Birthdays, homecomings, and socializing that might not have happened without the weekly knowledge that you could always join us for Sunday brunch have been part of our lives for so many years, change will take a bit of time.

So, 2012 will bring some new approaches.  We could just show up for lunch at noon. But that doesn’t have the same feel to it for me.  I guess it’s time to try something new and check out many of the other amazing brunch options Ottawa has.

T/H

Every once in a while, I need to look beyond the “hobbies I’ve made into businesses”.  This past weekend gave me mulitple opportunities to do this.  We’ll call it a long weekend, as things really began on Thursday.

Thursday was kind of a transition into exploring beyond my boundaries – sort of.  I don’t often go out on a weeknight.  I don’t often go see live bands anymore. Heading out to see Delhi 2 Dublin was really an exploration – honest.

The fact that we are using a D2B song for my Bellywood with Halyma class routine this session, and will tweak it for Bollywood For Fun 2012 usage, is besides the point.

We went out for sushi first to make it more of an adventure and had a blast! Seeing Bellywood students of mine there and attending with some of my BFF troupe mates is again, besides the point.

Friday is date night, for the most part, so it was a quiet evening at home with the hubby – resting up for the next two days of fun.  no photos –

Saturday took me back to exploring my celtic roots.  Attending the Ottawa Storytellers encore of the Kymera’s Voice production:  The Warrior Queen: Chasing Boudicca was an intimate evening of seeing old friends { who just happen to be previous belly dance students}, hanging with present friends { who just happen to be my BFF troupe mates}, and meeting some new folks who have great stories of their own!  I loved the idea of just sitting and listening to these creative folk tell this wonderful story, and I hope to make time in my busy life to do this sort of thing again!

And then came Sunday. Final day of one friend’s 3 day birthday weekend, so it started with brunch as usual but with added folk at all ends of the table!  SO Happy Birthday Erika!

And then the next adventure began.

Theruvial Milltall drawn by me.

Once again, with familiar and new faces surrounding me, practically hand-holding me through this afternoon of ethereal adventuring, I embarked on my first AD&D, 2nd ed gaming session in the guise of Theurvial MillTall, the halfling Cleric, created for me by my good buddy, Andrea, who along with her hubby Rob, our DM, were hosting this afternoon of chocolate eating fun!

OMG I have never seen that much Halloween candy consumed over an afternoon! We fortunately also had an amazing selection of healthy veggies, and a fabulous supper, so yay for yummy food, laughter and good energy galore and making my brain hurt from thinking so hard!  With one side of the table being totally noobs and the other folks being totally patient, it was a blast. Thanks for your patience folks!

One major victim was our friend’s table – that was uber unfortunate and hopefully won’t be too hard for them to get repaired. Rule # 1: Never have two people lean on the table at the same time. But it was taken in stride, dealt with quickly and the game resumed with careful gusto!

All in all, having great company along the way, I really enjoyed developing some new interests and hope that I can make the time to enjoy them more in the future.  I just have to make sure these new hobbies don’t find a way to become new businesses!

I guess I should touch on why I find it important to have other interests, but you folks are all pretty smart right?  So you get it already!  And this is really just a reminder to me to make sure I stop working all the time, and being such a strong creature of habit!  You can choose to pay attention to that advice too, or not, as to whatever works best for you!

T/H

Halyma and WTL, a photo by Halyma on Flickr.

Click photo to see more…
Okay, another fabuolus Halloween bash extraordinaire!
Tom and I were part of the costume judge crew and had a great time with Auz and Marianne as we sought out the best of the best to bring them forth on stage and doll out awards for the efforts made.
It’s not easy.
There are a lot of great costumes!
For more pics form other folk, be sure to check the Witches Gathering Flickr group!