casa loma with sara & annie

Went to Casa Loma (it's a real castle, eh?) with Sara and Annie and
Ruth yesterday. In spite of it being a major Toronto architectural landmark,
I've never seen it before. Lots of interesting rooms and staircases and
towers and roped-off rooms with period furniture. The whole place had
been decorated for Christmas already. I took Sara to see one of the plays,
Sleeping Beauty. She found the Scary Fairy too scary and asked to leave after ten minutes ("They were singing far too much, Auntie Debbie. I just had enough."). I wasn't thrilled with the play, either...the songs were sung very fast, making it difficult to understand the words, and it was obviously aimed at an older audience. The dozen or so children in the audience were very young and sat with expressions varying from vague fear to boredom. We joined up with Annie and Ruth, and went to check out the Santa Claus room. Santa was looking a little thin but jolly, and lured Sara closer with a candy cane. Talk about Christmas being a weird time for kids...when else do we encourage them to accept candy from total strangers?

At lunchtime today, I went to First Canadian Place for a free 20-minute concert by the cast of Fame. The music was so-so, but the cast seemed to have a good rapport, and there were some really talented young singers. Cathy and I have tickets to see this musical next month. Bought two more biz-oriented books: MAKE IT LEGAL (What Every Canadian Entrepreneur Needs To Know About The Law) by Margaret Kerr & Joann Kurtz, and THE HOME OFFICE SOLUTION (How to Balance Your Professional and Personal Lives While Working At Home) by Alice Bredin. I read 50 pages of the latter while waiting for the mini-concert to start; interesting book so far.

Officemusic: STUNT, Barenaked Ladies.