elite status...?

I am sipping a chilled fruitopia from the comfort of a leather chair in the "elite status maple leaf lounge" in Toronto. For free, using free internet! Thanks to sharing elbow room on the way here from Charlotte with Christian author and President of Arrow Leadership, Dr. Carson Pue. It's an amazingly small world. He knows many of my Master's degree profs, mentors, and colleagues, and is heading to Calgary in a couple of weeks for meetings at Rocky. Anyway, he got me in as his guest, politely excused himself to do some business, and ahhhhh, I am kicking back with refreshments. I already had a couple hours until my connecting flight, and got delayed another hour... but it was practically good news with this treatment :) I was too snobby to take pictures myself, so these are from the website...

Speaking of taking pictures myself... I didn't take nearly enough on my Charlotte trip (sorry mom!). It was a short but sweet visit... lots of fun. Alisha makes great muffins, both the kids made us the yummiest pizza last night, and Joel thoroughly annihilated us at several games of crash team racing and nitro team racing.

I had a 'speaking engagement' with Alisha's second grade class. I talked about Canada, and about some Chinese New Year's traditions. I gave each of the children a red envelope, with some play money in it. I called on Alisha to tell the children what was usually in the red envelope, and she responded proudly, "Canadian Money!" I clarified to the children that the red envelopes usually contain real money. Joel and Alisha's usually contain Canadian money because it is from us :)

Melissa and I had a sister's day on Thursday and headed into Raleigh. We found a fun Japanese Steakhouse called Kanki; the chefs cook at your table and create quite a show. Then we went to the ballet. At the ballet, the dancers came out for one dance with loose pony tails, and I whispered to Melissa, "I'm surprised their hair is not in buns." A few scenes later, some male and female dancers came on, and Melissa whispered to me, "Now there's some buns." I look at her, and say, "what?!" And she said, "Now their hair's in buns..." I was giggling and giggling, and had to 'fess up to her that that was not what I heard the first time!

I am behind on blogging, and haven't even blogged about the crazy thing I ate at our Chinese New Year celebration. But speaking of eating, I am going to go back to the snack counter for a sandwich and a latte. Stay tuned next blog!