Well, my first week in Philly is over! There isn't much excitement to report, aside from the football fever that has gripped the area. I wish people were this pumped up about the Riders back home! I also wish the Riders were this good ;)

Work was good this week, although next week and for the rest of the time I'm here the workload is going to be super high so I'm going to be putting in a lot of time. For a short engagement such as this that's not much of an issue for me, though, but if this went on for six months instead of six weeks my story might be a little different. I've gotten a little bit of a chance to explore the surrounding area in my search for food, which has been interesting to say the least. Everything here is so spread out, it's hard to find anything without driving for at least five miles. I went to East Side Mario's for the first time in nearby Exton, and the hype about that place is real. Reasonable prices combined with great food and huge portions (so much so that I wasn't even close to finishing) means that this place is good. Yesterday I had a craving for Chinese food so I picked up the yellow pages and there was absolutely *nothing* in the area! I hopped in the Rav4 and went out in search of some, and managed to find a great place called Margaret Kuo's Mandarin about, you guessed it, five miles down the road. Good food if you're ever in the area! It's really not easy to get around here, because between towns they rarely have streetlights whether there is anything on either side of the road or not, few if any of the roads are marked, and everybody is driving at least 10 miles per hour above the speed limit. I haven't gotten in to an accident yet, though (knock on wood!).

At this point I really have to get into a rant about the Rav4, basically a tiny box on wheels. That's not all, though: it's also a very good example of why I will never, ever buy a Japanese vehicle. I am not kidding - every single time I go to unlock or lock the doors, before I turn the key I have to literally say to myself, "opposite". Like all Japanese vehicles, everything is ass-backwards. If the radio had a volume knob to turn, I can guarantee you if you turned it to the right the volume would go down! I hate it, hate it, hate it! I'll trade reliability for common-sense any day of the week! To be fair, I've had a long standing prejudice against Japanese vehicles ever since I worked at a gas station in high school, because in their infinite wisdom, the Japanese seem to think that putting the oil dipstick in between the fan belt is a good idea, meaning if someone got hot in the summer and decided to start the car for the air conditioning while I was checking the oil, my arm would be ripped off. Thanks a lot, boys, let's stick to electronics, shall we?

My dad gave me the number of a guy at his work that used to be in charge of the immigration office in Regina, so yesterday afternoon I gave him a call. The call lasted more than a half hour, and he basically gave me news that I didn't want to hear. It looks like Immigration Canada is basically going to be the ruin of me and Sofi. There is no way that I can sponsor her to come to live and work in Canada unless we are married, because of a piece of legislation that changed last year. We won't be able to start the immigration process until after we are married, a process which currently takes over 270 days to complete. WTF??? The best part of the story is that I only know this after talking to a family friend who used to work in immigration - I had been calling the 1-888 number every half hour of every day for the last three weeks and got a busy signal everytime. Me thinks it's time for the government to get its collective head out of its ass and fix that whole fucking department, because it is literally hurting rather than helping.

I got an invitation this week from my manager's manager to give him a call tomorrow to check out the big game, so that's my plan for tomorrow night. Otherwise, I don't have too many plans for the near future. I talked to Nick this week and it sounds like Jenn is coming to D.C. in the middle of February, so we're talking about making a trip to NYC around that time. Otherwise, my options are open between now and then!

Here is a photo of Vero and Miguel's newborn baby (and Sofi's first niece), who was born on Tuesday night:

Congrats to the happy parents!