Points update

Well,

Week two of Weight Watchers, I didn't hit it out of the ballpark like last week but I did manage to lose 2lbs. So that's just about 10lbs in two weeks...... 30 more to go!

Points Points Points...

Well folks, after the birth of our baby boy last June our schedule has been upside-down, therefore there's been a LOT of take-out food and a lot of beer ;-) add that to Christmas and a three week trip to Ireland in Jan and you've got one BFF (big fat fcuker) so I'm back on the Weight Watchers wagon. The last time I did it I lost 54lbs. So after week one of it here in Canada (WITHOUT cutting out beer mind you) I have lost 7.8lbs, my second weigh in is tomorrow morning. Watch this space..

The 12 pubs of Christmas - Toronto

Okay - the hard work is done, the pubs have been decided; it's just down to getting the drinking done now!!

Saturday the 4th of December @ 1700hrs Sharp! 

Kick off is FIVE PM sharp and we will be moving from pub to pub at a steady pace. All destinations are walkable.

There's plenty of opportunities to grab food in between venues or indeed in a venue, just send us a text or call us to see where we are if you decide to stay somewhere to eat.
...

The list of pubs in order from start to finish is:

C'est What? (67 Front street at Church)
McVeighs (124 Church St. )
Duggans (75 Victoria Street)
PJ O'Briens ( 39 Colborne Street , behind King Edward hotel)
Beer Bistro (18 King Street East)
Duke of Richmond (20 Queen St. W.- basically the south west entrance of the eaton centre)
The Imperial Pub (54 Dundas St. E. - just behind Dundas Sq)
Queen & Beaver (35 Elm Street)
Duke of Somerset (655 Bay Street, south of Gerrard)
Village Idiot (126 Mc Caul Street opposite the AGO)
Sin & Redemption (Next door to Village Idiot)
Smokeless Joes (125 John Street)


Okay - so let me know via email garthicus AT hotmail DOT com or twitter @garthicus if you'd like to come along and I'll message you my phone number. 

The waiting game

Today is the due date of our first baby......

S/he doesn't seem to want to visit us today! We'll sit tight........

Hurry up, we're excited to meet you!

Homeward bound

It's been a wonderful 2.5 years so far in Canada, I really love it here. We have great friends, great family (the few members that are in Canada) and generally a great life here. However; I haven't been home since we moved here. I'm delighted to report that I'm off home on the 14th of July for 5 days for my best friends wedding (I'm his best man). Whilst I'm delighted to be going home for a visit, I'm sure it'll be a little bitter sweet as I'm leaving behind my wife and our (soon to be born) child.. she's due in a few days and all going well the baby will be only a few weeks old when I head back to Ireland for the few days.

That aside, I'm seriously looking forward to quite a few things that I've been missing! Obviously I'm looking forward to seeing my family and of course my friends but other things I miss are; in no particular order:

Breakfast rolls/full Irish breakfast:

(Minus the blackcurrants!)


A nice bit of batch loaf:

A dozen pints in my local pub - 'The Pound' in Swords:

And of course, news, tv, newspapers etc from home:

But most of all I am really excited about seeing and tasting all the new craft beers that have hit the Irish market in my absence, particularly the cask offerings. I'll be hitting up 'The Bull and Castle' and 'The Porterhouse' as soon as I arrive to imbibe some craft beer goodness.

Hopefully I'll get to finally meet some of the Irish Craft Brewer members, in particular The Beer Nut and Barry Masterson (although Barry is in Germany!) as I've been a member of that site for a few years now and am yet to meet any of them.

So, hopefully this trip will go well, it's my first time flying with Air Transat and I'm on a pretty tight schedule. The Canadian dollar is pretty strong against the Euro too so that's a bonus.

Fingers crossed :-)

    

A month on the dry.....

In response to the thumping I gave my liver and my bank account over St. Patrick's week. I've decided to give myself a break from Craft Beer imbibing for roughly a month (well, actually a day or two more than a month). The carrot on the end of the stick is a trip to Montreal with my buddies Harry and Paul (and hopefully Greg if he can get the time off work) for a weekend of Craft Beer madness.

Whilst a month will hardly repair 12 years of damage, it will give me time to lose a bit of weight and prepare for our first baby which is due on June 6th :-)  The weekend in Montreal is in theory 'a last hurrah' before the arrival of the little one. So, right now I'm 12 days into my challenge and I thought it would be relatively easy until I saw the weather forecast for this weekend (in and around 25 degrees). Seeing as I live slap bang in the middle of Toronto's entertainment district and therefore patio central, it's going to be a bit of a killer.

Watch this space!

Brew round up

It's been a while since I've done a round up of what I've been imbibing lately, laziness coupled with procrastination is not a good trait of mine. Anyhow; some highlights of the past few weeks have been...

Catching up on my Mill Street Brewing ratings... have you ever assumed that you've tried all/most of a breweries offerings only to realize that you're missing out on quite a few? That happened to me the other day whilst at Mill Street when I realized I'd never tried their fabulous Pilsner - admittedly, I'm not the greatest fans of pils in general but this one just spoke to me, tasty and refreshing and with nice mango and fruit flavours that I can't get enough of. That evening there were also four or five other Mill St. brews tried including their one off 'Mocha Java Loco' on cask which was sublime.

A cheeky trip to Montreal with the lovely wife made for a good opportunity to try a few Dieu Du Ciel and Benelux brews that were new to me. Not too many mind you as I wasn't there for beer reasons... but here's a couple of pics..

We rented a car and drove to Old Quebec and man were we impressed, what an absolute gem of a city. Check out out pics over on our flickr site. My better half suggested that whilst we were there I might as well pick up some brews so we headed to Le Monde des Bières - a really neat Quebec beer store, whilst beer is on the expensive side in Quebec (especially the bottle deposit) it's well worth picking some up as most of it is not available outside the province. In this particular store the brewery La Barberie brew some beers especially for them.  Here's what I picked up:

 























So all in all it was a successful non beer trip yet beer trip. A few days later myself and the Toronto Ratebeer gang had our monthly tasting at my place and it ended up being a pretty messy and enjoyable affair. Good friends, good beer and good craic. What else can a man want?