Stock pic - will post “real” ones when I get the car.

And yes, it’s bright red. First time I have ever purchased a red car

I made a seperate page for all the specs of the car (way too long for a blog entry) just click here to have a gander

They had a Winter getaway package consisting of 2 very reasonably priced (for a 5 star hotel ;Þ) nights and best of all the 3rd night would be free! Woohoo! Free is always a great price! Oh! But the best part was that if you booked this package before mid-December it would also include a free (love that word) upgrade to their Fairmmont Gold Floor…Wow, I thought! (Little did I know how “WOW” it was.)

So I called the hotel, booked the package and joined the Fairmont President’s Club - have to join all those reward things lol - and waited anxiously for my little getaway.

Off I went on the early morning train to Montreal on the Friday. The hotel is situated directly above Central Station and there are 2 elevators for hotel guests directly in the train station. What a hotel! It’s hard to know where to start and what to talk about. Since I was way ahead of the 4 PM checkin time, I checked my baggage at the bellman desk, then took the panoramic elevator, which is exclusive to the 2 Gold floors. These 2 floors have their own conceirge (2 at all times on weekdays and 1 on weekeends). I was able to get my room early What a view! I don’t think I could have gotten a better view, it was fabulous.

My room was on the 18th floor and there is a gorgeous spiral whilte and gold staircase that connects the 2 Gold floors. The lounge/living room is located on the 19th floor with a panoramic view of the city and the St. Lawrence river. The lounge is superbly appointed with lush sofas, armchairs, coffee tables and intimate sets of 2 chairs and a table tucked into lovely alcoves or snuggled along the windowed walls. Spectacular!

A deluxe (and I do mean deee-luxe) continental breakfast is served every morning. Canapes are served every evening between 5 and 6 PM - a variety fit for a King … or Queen ;Þ Also available all day is tea, coffee, bottled Spring water, soft drinks and my fav, Perrier - all included in the cost of the room. For you drinkers there is a huge cabinet equiped with all sorts of beers and hard liquor (honour system) and let’s not forget that there’s always a bottle of Champagne on ice (half bottles in the mini-bar).

The rooms are awesome, equipped with just about every amenity you can imagine, and if you can imagine more, then just call the concierge and he/she will get it for you The staff, from housekeeping to the bellmen and the concierges are all friendly and welcoming. I have had the opportunity to stay in several 4 and 5 star hotels over the years. Prior to staying at the Queen E, the best hotel had been the 4 Seasons Clift Hotel in San Francisco, but now the Queen E is my all-time fav - absolutely Superb! Not for nothing it’s ranked in the top 500 hotels in the world!

It was a great getaway. Fabulous hotel, awesome concert and I got to catch up and meet up with some old friends. I had a wonderful time!

So I bought my concert ticket, booked my hotel (read all about that in the next post) and off I went. The concert was on Saturday, February 24th and it was totally awesome. I had been wanting to see Rod in concert for a few years now, and I tell ya, I wasn’t disappointed! I had a great seat which I had purchased online. I wish the seating charts were more detailed, but no matter my seat was perfect! 10th row up from the floor and right on the aisle. The concert was in the round and the stage had U-shaped extensions on each end and Rod and the singers and musicians used them extensively. I could have dashed down a few steps and been right at the bottom of the stage, as many fans did, but my seat was so good, with such a perfect view, that I didn’t even bother.

I swear, Rod still has it for a guy in his sixties! He sang a good selection of songs…. wanted more, but one can only fit so many songs in 2 hours. Only thing that was a tad disappointing was that he only came back for one encore despite the fact that 17,000+ fans were screeching for more. All in all it was still fantastic!

Seems like I have been car shopping (or wanting/planning to go) forever… lol. First time I went was in October, 2005… yes, 2005..and again in February, 2006… but once again all sorts of life issues (way too many to enumerate here) have interferred and I still don’t have a new car! I swore I would have it done by March. Thank goodness March has 31 days, maybe I’ll actually get it done this month

Then Spring will be here and I’ll have the outside housework and yardwork to do and yet another 3 or 4 months will have flown by! At least I had an awesome 4 days away from everything…..

2006 was a very difficult year, I am *SO* glad it’s over!
Goodbye 2006! Hello 2007!

May 2007 bring you Peace and Harmony, especially to my family and all my friends out there. I also wish you good health, especially Mom. May all your wishes and dreams come true.

*hugs* & *kisses*
Love, LA

Merry Christmas everyone! Ho! Ho! Ho!

With the money I saved on the train fare had I gone to Toronto, I splurged and booked a 3 night stay at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel on their “Gold Floor”. Train tickets have been purchased, I just have to go and pick them up at the train station - will probably do that tomorrow.

I’m all set…concert ticket has been purchased, hotel is booked and train tickets have been purchased - now all that is left is to wait until February 24th, 2007 for the concert .. well, really the 23rd which is when I’ll be taking the train to Montreal :Þ I’m so anxious!

The emails kept coming, with those wonderfully random generated user names like kurt54@. I cussed somemore and kept on deleting them. I have several domains, but this spammer is using the domain I have had the longest, close to 10 years now. It’s also the domain I use for my email addy, which I have also had for close to 10 years. Again, I said, it shall pass. Well, pass it didn’t!

Last Wednesday I received an email that was supposedly from abuse@, there is no such addy. Said email included a link whose purpose was to “confirm your e-mail… or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reason.” Yeah, right, like I’m going to click on a link in a bogus email… been around the net for way too long for that crap. But now things were getting to be more annoying so I did some resarch at my webhoster and I called them, got the call escalated to make sure there wasn’t something, unknown to me, that may have been generating this type of email. I doubted it, but better safe then sorry.

Thursday I get another of the abuse emails and now I am getting pissed. In the meantime I hadn’t received a response from my webhosting company, but I am patient and figured I’d give them another day or two before calling back. Friday…. no email (my email is forwarded thru my webhost to my ISP account)…. hmmm…. extremely rare occurance, but it happens and I figured it would happen just when I am waiting for something important… isn’t that always the way?! hehe

Saturday, again, no email ALL day… too weird. I figure I need to do more investigating of my own. So I go thru the headers of the “abuse” email (with it’s forged envelope indicating ), then I spot an IP address that is not like the others (got that song in your head now? ;Þ “…one of these things is not like the others…” lol, but I digress)… Did a dns on the IP and lo and behold it was from an adsl. customer at Tele2 Norge AS ie: tele2.no. I promptly sent off an email, including all the email headers and all the information to their abuse department. It’s now 4 days later and I am still waiting for a reply.

Since I wasn’t getting any email at all and after doing all sorts of test emails, I called 1and1 again (my webhoster) to make sure that they weren’t blocking anything at their end (due to all the spam and crap this ahole was generating). At the same time I got the tech to forward the email from the escalated call directly to my ISP email addy, which was just another confirmation that my email was being blocked somewhere as they had sent it the previous day. It also confirmed that the ‘abuse” email had not originated at 1and1 and that the included URL was indeed invalid.

It’s now Sunday, still no email. With all the info I have I now figure that my ISP is probably blocking something. I call their tech support, explain everything, then I’m told it needs to be escalated to their abuse dept. which is closed on Sundays. So I call back on Monday, go thru the whole story again with the abuse tech - at least he was nice and knowledgeable - who then told me that the problem has to be escalated to the next level. Sent him copies of the emails in question. So now I have explained the problrem at least 5 or 6 times, not to mention the emails I’ve sent out about it as well. Wonder if I’ll ever hear back from the abuse departments. Talk about a freakin’ waste of my time! GRRRRR!

Of course, in the meantime I’m still not getting my email, so I set up a mailbox with my webhoster and forward it there. I set it all up, test it and imagine my surprise NOT! when the first email I got was Spam! (at least it wasn’t from the bastard that’s using my domain) PITA!!!