Tuesday was spent doing more work, and also going to the dentist’s. It’s such a different experience to going to the dentist back home. There, you’re usually in and out in 20 minutes, if that. Here you spend about 30 minutes with a dental hygienist who does a thorough clean of your teeth, and then the dentist comes in for about three minutes to ask if you’re doing ok, and that’s it.

I felt a little sad having to tell them that I couldn’t make a booking for another six months because I’ll be in Australia. This is one of the first time’s I’ve had to acknowledge it in any concrete way. It’s a little sad.

Luckily, I started receiving birthday messages a day early, which cheered me up. This continued intermittently throughout the day, and then picked up more in the evening as people in Australia woke up.

Glen was on-call in the evening so I went out for Julian who spoiled me a lot. I went down to his apartment at about 7 and he’d bought me a cake (a whole cake!) with candles that have flames that burn different colours. He also gave me some Abercrombie and Fitch cologne so now I smell like all the boys. We didn’t get time to eat any cake as we then went down the road to Blake House, a pub on Jarvis St that I’d seen before but never been in.

We had a pretty decent dinner and a couple of glasses of wine and some good conversation until it was time to head to Yonge-Dundas to go see Paddington at the movies. Rather strangely for a kids’ movie, there was a screening at 9:20pm. Unsurprisingly there were only four other people in the cinema watching the movie.

I’d been a little hesitant to see the film as I’m a big fan of Paddington Bear and knew there wasn’t really a way they could translate the books/stories into an hour-and-a-half long movie that would be engaging for today’s audiences. Still, with my expectations set low, I settled in and hoped to be entertained.

I actually really enjoyed it. Yes, the story and characters were modified somewhat, and Mr Gruber didn’t have all that big a role in it, but on the whole it was a lot of fun. I laughed out loud quite a bit (a lot more than the others). It was crammed full of English actors including Jim Broadbent as Mr Gruber, Julie Walters as Mrs Bird, and Peter Capaldi as Mr Curry.

Paddington himself was also quite adorable (and then reading that he was voiced by Ben Whishaw I fell even more in love…though that could be a bit wrong). Either way, I had a great time and left feeling pretty good.

We got home sometime after 11 and I headed off to bed. It was a great birthday treat and I felt very lucky to be so spoiled.