About milestone birthdays and bizarre weather conditions.

I embrace birthdays the way I embrace winter: enthusiastically and unapologetically. I have come to terms with the fact that winter is but a memory... a memory from this time last year!!! This has been one strange weather phenomenon. Most people have been embracing it, but I can't help but think about how it's going to shift everything a little sideways!! (and no, I'm not just sulking because I didn't get snow for my birthday!) I see hearty tulip leaves striving for the sky on cue because that's what they do when they feel such warmth in the soil. But is it not a gross miscue? And what about our own ebbs and flows? So much of our schedules are governed by the seasons... as I was surveying my yard to see what else was awakening, my mind started to float towards end of school activities and then I reminded myself 'whoa... that's three months away yet!!' It's like anything else that happens in the universe - we have to just adjust to it - but it sure is the warmest birthday I've ever experienced, and that's even since leaving the land of the snow!

And speaking of birthdays, this one's mine. I emerged into this fabulously complex and wondrous world forty years ago today and I am blissfully comfortable with taking the elevator up to the next decade. I am content with the knowledge that I become stronger and more adventurous with every year of experience that I've amassed and I insist that this just doesn't happen if you're longingly stuck in decade number two! 

At the very least, one's birthday is an easy way to gather together some of those beautiful people you adore the most in the world and proceed to paint an already colourful town red. Because, you know, red's a great colour!!

So on that note, I leave you with some of my favourite images along with some of my thoughts on enjoying life:

Wine barrel at Inniskillin Estate Winery, Niagara-on-the-Lake

See things in a new way.

Steam Whistle Brewing at the Roundhouse - Toronto

Give in to your cravings.

Gooderham Building - Toronto

Seize every opportunity to cross things off your list.

Avalon Drive from Cabot Crescent - Labrador City, NL

Revel in where you came from.

Icewine Festival - Niagara-on-the-Lake old town

Become a tourist in your own backyard.

Child number two! Signal Hill, NL June 2009

Take time to inspect the dandelions.

Child number one! Heartland Forest - Niagara Falls, ON May 2011

Delight in nature's little miracles.

The Godiva store in Times Square NYC 2010

Indulge in all the deliciously good things in life!

Cheers!

~ Christine Mastroianni

Hotel Verite on East 19th Street

as it was in April of 2011

http://www.veritehotel.com/guest_service

It was approaching the lunch hour when Otis Pretorious and his tidy tweed overnight bag arrived at Hotel Verite, his adopted home for the next two nights. He smiled as he looked up at the sheer curtains blushing behind their creamy white frames, and surreptitiously pulled his reservation documentation out of his pocket. Even though he had been generously employed for the better part of a year, his new job was still new to him, and he approached the assumed perk of business travel with all the enthusiasm and gusto of a child being set free on the upper level of FAO Schwarz. He always felt as though he were getting away with something - as if he stealthily figured out a way to go to work from an immaculately decorated and maintained room that required no effort on his part.

Whenever he travelled, Otis always elected to spend the night enjoying the intimacy of a local gem in a charismatic district far removed from the predictable, intoxicating drama and attention seeking screens of Times Square. Don't get him wrong, he has never shied away from 42nd Street indulgence or exploration, but he revelled in stealing away to something unexpected each time he visited the city.

He always strove to engage in a visit or two while in town, with his twin sister or his college buddies. He was endlessly perplexed by the grumblings of his friends who resented having to board yet another jet to perform the latest financial rescue efforts or marketing wizardries that, they argue, could be just as effectively orchestrated from their comfortable office chair where they could multitask in peace. Otis was the type who thrived on travel of any kind, even to a city in which he had lived for many years, and even if it was for reasons of a corporate nature. He figured he had to get up and go to work on any given day regardless... why not embrace the opportunity to do it in a novel, vibrant environment. Perhaps it was because he was still lusciously green in the capricious world of employment at the executive level, but he just loved being asked to board a jet as part of his job.

As he inhaled deeply looking up at the carnation-hued curtains, another employee caught his eye. And so on this day he also resolved to never again complain about a less than attractive assignment he might be given, considering the tasks that some people have to undertake in a day. He shivered at the precarious position of the man in the blue shirt and pants, and proceeded towards the hotel lobby.