When can I retire?

I've lost 10 lbs!

2011-10-01T13:14:00.000-07:00

And I have the saddest dog in the world. She just go spayed and she won't eat anything but pigs ears. She won't have her medicine eventhough we covered it in peanut butter and she won't eat her normal food either.

it's melting off...kind of

2011-09-28T17:33:00.001-07:00

so far i've lost 8.5 pounds... since June...how cool is that?

A glimpse into the garbage dump in trujillo, Peru

2011-08-24T18:17:00.000-07:00

For those of you who went through my Peru pictures, you'll notice that I didn't have any pictures from the garbage dump experience. But luckily, one of the people (we call him Chris from Seattle) who we spent time with in Peru was invited to spend the night at the garbage dump and you can read his experiences in this article found in the Sammammish Review.

Fan expo this year now includes

2011-07-19T19:35:00.000-07:00

Speed dating. No joke.

This makes me cringe, but at the same, I applaud the boldness of this move.

Yay, it's working!

2011-07-08T18:49:00.001-07:00

The title works for this post. The weight watchers is working, and I'm going to talk about work.

I'm a down by 3 lbs (and it's a consistent 3 lbs, not a fluctuating one).

I cut out juice and soft drinks, and I'm drinking water instead. I reduced my portions, and I was trying to be active - until I started doing extreme overtime work.

So cool stuff at work - they called everyone into a meeting (including the new hires and the co-ops) and the owners gave all of us a $500 bonus for the good work we've done (the co-ops and PHd students also got the bonus, as did the people who only started working this past week) . Our revenue basically grew by 248% this past year so that was pretty crazy (and put us more than 5 years ahead of our original sales targets), and the owners basically want to signal to everyone that they value their employees and is looking for loyal dedicated people. I thought it was a nice gesture to give it to the co-ops and new hires, and the PHd students. So this is a new thing for the company, the sharing in profits, and I hope we can continue doing that.

Then they surprised us with a loyalty rewards program for the employees. So once you've worked here for 5 years, you get a real Montblanc pen with your name engraved in it. after 15 years, we get a choice of a Rolex, Breitling, or Omega. One employee worked here for 25 years and today, the owners surprised him with a $10,000 cheque (on top of the $500, the pen, and the watch) and he was in absolute shock and was speechless.

Frank told us we have to spend the money on our families and then report back at the company BBQ next week on how we spent it.

Started my new position as Production Manager. The owner that takes care of the production side of the company approached me and bsically asked me how I would feel about joining "The Dark Side" - at the time, he hadn't told his co-owner (my boss) that he was going to invite me to join his team. Luckily, my boss was supportive and said "As long as you think it's the right decision for you, then I will support you".

A few things that I considered:
-Will I get respect as a Production Manager from the people in production I have to look after (especially since I was in Sales and Marketing, and historically, production people hate sales because sales places unrealistic demands on production)
-compensation.... (I wasn't sure what I was getting into so I might as well be compensated for my troubles)
-female empowerment (rare to see a female production manager, especially in a male dominated industry. Even more rare is a young female minority as a production manager).
-how would it look on my resume (right now, my resume reads like a sales and marketing resume. I thought it would be a good opportunity to add some variety - in particular something in a totally different direction, therefore giving me an overview of running the company as a whole with the sales experience and production experience)
-my personality - does it suit the role? (I knew that i wasn't suited for sales, I dislike dealing with customers. I'm more of a sit-at-my-desk-spreadsheet type of girl)
-can I do the new job. I asked the owner of the company if he really believed that I can do the role and he responded that I'm the most capable person in the company to do the role and he has no doubt about it. However, I negotiated with him a 3 month probation in which I can try the role out for 3 months and if it doesn't work out (i don't like the role, or he doesn't think I'm doing a good job), I can go back to my old job.
-in changing the position, would it help the overall company move forward. A few days before this job offer, we had a sales meeting and in the meeting all of us salespeople were in agreement that we need "buy-in" from production to push orders through in order to meet on-time delivery. By changing positions, my old sales people now automatically have "buy-in" from production because I'm approaching production from a sales perspective. I told my sales boss that I think that helped soften the blow that I was leaving his team. I was like "Hey Tom, if you want buy-in from production, what better way than to have a former sales person take the role. It's better than hiring someone from the outside to take the production manager role in which sales people will have to suck up to the new person to get it out."

I accepted the job. So I've been working long days of 7:30/8:30 am to 8:30 pm, take an hour break to get home and eat dinner, and continue working from 9:30 pm to 12:30 am. Last night, I started working after work from 10 pm to 2:30 am, tried to go to sleep but I was stupid and had drank a chai tea latte at 10 pm so i was kept awake, and so i resumed work at 4:30 am to 7:am, drove to work and got there at 7:30 am and I decided to leave early today at 4:30 pm. When I got home, I was beat and fell immediately asleep. The funny thing is that I don't mind doing the overtime, it's my body that's making it difficult, the idea of the necessity of sleep).

One night, I got home and Dennis was working on his desktop and laptop computer (this is probably want we will be doing tonight on our Friday night). So I set up my laptop beside his and there we were, for the next 3-4 hours on a weeknight, working on our respective projects. We said to each other "we are the most boring people that we know because this is how we spend our worknights". It also helps that there is no good TV on right now, and we both enjoy our jobs.

After talking to Malina and Amanda, I realize how good I have it at my job. To have supportive boss(es), job security, and have the chance to have big responsibilities while still being young, is something that's pretty rare in today's market.

I have encountered one difficult in which apparently I'm overseeing someone who may have hoped to be the new Production Manager. So I was met with resistance when she was told by the owner that she would be reporting to me and she first had to go "take a walk" and a few days later she actually went into the owner's office and started crying - apparently she thought I was going to be an overbearing boss - there might be some truth to that. Malina confirmed with me today that I can be "direct" and that I tend to "get the point across" so I think that's something I need to work on. I prayed about the working together situation and this morning, things changed completely and we were working well together and laughing together. Praise the Lord!

I can smell change at work (the dismissing of some people, the hiring of other people). I think our owners are applying the Good to Great principle of getting the right people on the bus. I completely support it. As i told my boss recently when he wanted us to hire someone and myself and a few other people were against it, I said "We just dismissed some people. I don't want to replace them with mediocre. We have to hire only exceptional people". I hope he takes my advice.

Experiment

2011-06-25T19:44:00.000-07:00

This past week, it was my first time stepping on a scale in a long time and I weighed in at 139 lbs and now I'm wearing a size 8 instead of a size 4. This means that at some point, I gained about 29 lbs in the past 6 years.

That was my wake up call to start eating healthy, and do more exercise again. In addition, I need to make sure I can fit into my bridesmaid dress for Em's wedding.

My coworker told me that she had done weight watchers before and it worked so I signed up on Wednesday night for the three month program (the online version).

I think my problem is portion size. I found that at some point, I got really lazy and started buying fast food for lunch. Since fast food portions are so big, it must've stretched my stomach over the years and now, when I finish a meal, i don't feel full. So, my goal is to manage my portions, get off of my butt and do more "exercise" and get in the mindset of a healthier lifestyle.

I started doing squats, and some jogging/walking. I also did some Dance Central today.

I've been eating more fruit and salads, and we no longer cook with red meat in our house. (the outcome is softer stools and I find that I'm poo-ing more often).

I had to cheat today because I had to go for "high tea" for a friend's bachelorette and I also ate a slice of cake for a friend's birthday yesterday. However, I said "no" to timbits. Yay! On a sidenote, I came home on Thursday and Dennis had bought and finished SIX donuts from Tim Hortons. He said it wasn't so bad because two of the donuts were honey crullers.

Let's see where this goes.

Boat Trip - for real

2011-04-25T18:41:00.001-07:00

You know that really bad movie with Cuba Gooding jr in which he get's booked on a gay cruise? That happened to us on Friday. I was on expedia trying to look up hotels and read the summary for a hotel and it had normal stuff written and it looked like a good deal. 4 star hotel, good area, internet access, free parking, free breakfast. Gays welcomed.

We booked it. Then I decided to look up the hotel on the internet. I see two words.... "EXCLUSIVELY GAY" and i'm not talking about being a lesbian .....when you look at the photos, it's all men (the guests are all male, the staff are all gay males...no females in this hotel). Their advertisement looked like a calvin klein ad with a guy coming out of the water shirtless, ripped. The photos of the guests had a lot of shirtless, ripped, hairless, well oiled guys in tiny swim trunks/speedos. For the few that weren't ripped, they had on mesh shirts, or wifebeaters or sleeveless tops. There was also a photo of a guy cannonballing into the hotel pool, naked. On my vacation, I don't want to be surrounded by naked guys. I don't want to be the only girl!(Dennis didn't want to be left alone while I go get breakfast, either). Dennis was like "we would have go in and out of the backdoor...literally".

Management at the hotel was understanding and let us cancel without charges.

cool things that i've discovered

2011-03-21T14:51:00.000-07:00

Our library opened so now we go every week and it has a great selection of audiobooks. The other library nearby has better selection since it is in a more affluent neighbourhood but it is harder to find pa arking space.

The park near our house has outdoor skating....unfortunately we discovered this as the rink was melting. I also noticed it has a splash pad. A splash pad!

We were discussing how our neighbourhood reminds us of A Winter's Bone in that every house is unique and it looks as though people like to lay "junk" outside for everyone to see. Example, I've seen a cannon, inukshuks, coke vending machine, bird shrine(?), Man-sized angle statue, and drink fridges with the clear doors that you see in the corner store, in front of people's houses.

Other stuff, I find that people in the neighbourhood don't do things 100%. Like, they have enough money to tear down an existing house and build a large one on the lot, but for some reason the new house is esthetically ugly. Same with the add ons on existing houses. People have the money to build an add-on, but they don't have the money to make it look nice. I think that's the reason why every house looks different.

Pho places are popping up...one is within walking distance but Dennis is afraid to go because the outside looks dirty. We went to a really clean one the other day and I saw this older white lady walk in with two young guys (one white, the other black) and I whispered to Dennis "Four Brothers."

We also started going to this other restaurant and I guess we are the only asian people who go. The first time we went, the waitress remarked how cute we looked and asked if we were newlyweds. We showed up the next week and even though the waitress wasn't supposed to work in our area, she came over to say "you guys came back!"

There's a mouse that got into our house so we had to buy traps but we got the kind that traps the mouse in a box so that I don't have to touch it with my hands or deal with blood.

plagued with a twitchy eye

2010-12-13T15:07:00.001-08:00

As of yesterday, my right eye lid has been twitching and I did a self diagnosis with the help of google search.

Common causes of eyelid twitching are:
short-term stress
eye strain, such as from lots of computer use or hours of small focused hand work (such as threading a needle over and over), and from straining the eyes when reading a book without proper light or magnification.
squinting a lot, such as from the sun, reading or other things. (The muscles essentially tire out.)
Consuming too much caffeine
exhaustion; lack of sleep
anxiety or temporary panic fits and nervousness which can be easily relieved and recover naturally by rest and relaxation.
Causes of more severe forms of eyelid spasms are mentioned below.

Eyelid Twitch
This is the most common and minor form of eyelid spasms. The cause of minor eyelid twitching is most likely caused by some of the sources listed above. A slight spasm of the lower eyelid or even both eyelids is common and harmless. These generally can be treated like any other muscle spasm in the body: the muscles should be rested and relaxed.

So I was pretty embarassed because I had to interview two people today and my eye kept on twitching.

business travel

2010-12-10T13:12:00.000-08:00

is brutal when you've had less than 3 hours of sleep the previous night.

Recently, I had to start driving at 4:30 am to get to my boss' house and then we got into his car and drove for 5 hours to get to michigan and boy was it brutal. luckily, i got to take a brief 1 hour nap in his car.

So during the drive, i found out he has to take a one hour call from a lawyer (looking over business agreements) and he asks me to drive his car...HIS CAR...which is a Porsche Cayenne Turbo so it's a lot bulkier than my civic. I didn't even know how to change the mirrors. Thank goodness I didn't get into any accidents and it didn't snow when I was driving. As soon as he was done with his call, I immediately pulled over to the nearest service station because i didn't trust myself to drive more.

the meeting went well. before the meeting, i told my coworkers it would be as fun as cutting my arm off with a blunt samurai sword. it turns out that despite telling my customer we are going to be late on crucial orders, we still came out of the meeting with over million dollars on an order, and they wanted me to quote another two million dollars in product. Crazy eh? We had provided GANTT charts to the customer but he ended up giving it back to me which I guess is a good sign because I guess he trusts us to be open.

Boss said I did a phenomenal job when I fielded a lot of the detailed questions and knew the orders and quotes better than the customers themselves. Example, we would be talking about an order with the customer and the customer would be asking themselves "where are we putting this product again? Which plant?" and the customers would go into their computers trying to find the info and I would say to them "I believe you are putting it into ______ plant". He's asked me to take Dennis out to a nice restaurant..... Hello French Food!

I think I'm going home for two days in Dec. Yay!

A collection agency called me asking for Zafar Q Zirani or something. I've been getting calls for the past 5 years for this Zafar character. Why can't Zafar pay his debts/stop giving out my phone number???

business trip this thursday

2010-12-07T19:31:00.000-08:00

it will be brutal. Need to wake up at 4 am to meet my boss, then drive for 5 hours...cross the border. I want to return on the same day but that would mean driving back for 5 hours on the same day..... :(

I suspect...

2010-10-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

there is LARPing going on near my place. Today we drove by this abandonned dealership and we saw a lot of trailers and Dennis joked that maybe they were filming a movie or something there. When I passed by it again at night, there was this sign that said "Master of Universe Playverse Set" written in marker. Weird.

So we went to Coles and I bought a coffee table book about Infectious Diseases such as the Plague, Syphilis, SARS, but Dennis ended up reading it. I was like "hey, we bought that book for me...why are you ready it?!"

My Ken Follet book is getting really good. We saw one that was 50% off at Coles but the list price is $40.00 so it is still too expensive. I will wait until it is soft cover and available at Costco.

we got netflix

2010-09-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

we watched the legend of chun li and decided it was really bad. Watched An Education and that was really good. Watched The Class (Entre Les Murs) and it was good. Got dennis to start watching the Lives of Others but he didn't finish it. I started Wasabi but my internet went down so I couldn't finish it (but i liked what I saw).

So I was looking up horror zombie films category and found one that was japanese and it's about a schoolgirl that kills zombies and i figured "wow what a great combination". it was such a bad movie that i stopped watching within the first ten minutes.

We also tried a bollywood film called I hate Luv stories. we couldn't finish it.

crazy busy this week

2010-09-24T15:26:00.000-07:00

so i'm finally getting a handle on things but i'm still incredibly busy. I watched Hawaii Five O show and recognized the filming locations. Yay!
Tuesday I had to pick up dennis' parents from the airport but in the end someone from their church also showed up to pick them up so then i drove all the way from the airport back down to downtown to pick up dennis.

wednesday, we had important customers so i had to go out and have dinner with them. Originally we made reservations at Canoe so i told dennis i would drop off my car downtown on my way to Canoe but then we cancelled the reservation and relocated to Oliver's. I still ended up driving downtown to pick up Dennis but then he's in one of those buildings where you need a pass to get into the building and then you need a pass to operate the elevator or to enter each floor from the staircase. His phone wasn't working and my battery died. Yeah, not a good situation. I managed to get someone to let me in, and these two guys told me they were going to a party in the building and asked me to come and I was like "I already have plans. I'm here to pick up my husband." I found out that there were two parties going on in the building. One was an event for interior designers and one for haircutting?!?! Not too sure. I figured out why Dennis' area is full or trendy people who ride one speed bicycles and who carry around the lululemon bags...turns out his building is near TAXI (the ad agency).

So I went to oliver's for dinner and it was really good and the best part is that it was free. yay! good food for free balances out the fact that it was mandatory socializing.

I think the new girl that I hired is possible a Christian. She was asking me what church i go to and i found out that she mentors 13 and 14 year old girls for her church (Reformed church). She's like me - watches TV shows during the lunch break and my boss likes her.

So my boss asks me to go get his car and drive it back to the company. he couldn't leave the company as he was expecting the very important customers to show up at any minute. I hesitate because I don't want to wreck his car but in the end I say okay. i get into a car with this guy who is driving me to the garage and he's like "so, are you ready to drive a Porsche?" and i thought he was joking because I didn't realize that my boss drove a porsche cayenne turbo (the funny thing was the previous night I was watching a show about ferrari versus a porsche 911 turbo and the host was talking about how great it was to drive the porsche 911 turbo and i was thinking to myself how i will never have the opportunity to drive a porsche). I was so nervous getting behind the wheel of the porsche and all I could think of was "it's a short distance...i won't get into an accident or hit the curb....." success..i made it back to the office in one piece. The only thing i did wrong was that the first time i pressed the brake, i pressed to hard and it made this wretched sound. The car still ran okay after that, so i assume i didn't break anything.

Last night, I got a chance to see a free advanced screening of Never Let Me Go which I have to say is a movie that left me depressed. I didn't watch the trailer so I didn't know what the movie was about and was surprised when it took a Sci-Fi twist (which is apparently very evident according the trailer). It was one of those Slow-as-Gosford-Park films that will get nominated for some Oscars. By slow, I mean the camera focuses on a clock for 5 seconds, and then it will pan over objects on a table for like 10 seconds before focusing on the people in the room. The camera spends a lot of time on stuff other than people. The subject matter was really heavy. The theatre was completely quiet except for the random sobbing behind us. Dennis really liked it. Thank you Amanda for my date night with Dennis to see the saddest film on earth (I didn't cry though). Carey Mulligan did a great job. I'll be surprised if she doesn't get nominated for a best actress. Apparently the book is heartbreaking and people cried while reading the book as well. i liked Inception more.

I discovered a Christian book store in Oakville. GREAT!

I'm reading ken follet's book that follows Pillars of the Earth and it's just not as good. No weddings this weekend. Hurray!

hawaii - check off my list

2010-09-06T08:08:00.000-07:00

When i was a kid, I really wanted to go to Hawaii (and Australia). Last weekend, I had the opportunity to fulfill that desire. Yay!. With one knapsack each, we boarded continental and flew to houston, then honolulu, then maui. Continental, unfortunately, has the worst entertainment flight system. Imagine only have a few channels with movies. These movies are repeated every 2.5 hours. What this means is that if you switch channels, you have no choice but to start watching the other movie right in the middle of it. The upside is that you don't get the Air Canada commercials. Also, the seats are smaller than Air Canada.

We arrive in Hawaii and rent a really nice car with a sun roof but the price was pretty cheap. we check into Hale Kamaole in South Kihei (no AC but it's pretty big, like a 1 bedroom apartment equiped with a fully stocked kitchen). We see a sign for "Office" but we accidentally enter someone's apartment. Oops. Later we drive south of the island. We pass golf clubs, well manicured lawns, huge trees and we see the sign for Open House. Oh yes, we stopped by an Open House. It was one of those houses with a walk out to an outdoor kitchen, outdoor pool, infinity pool. Did I mention the house is like $9.5 million?

Onwards, we hit the lava rock area i guess? We take a short hike and test the water out. The sun starts to go down. I'm in Maui! We grabbed dinner at Longhi's for seafood and then we go to Foodland for groceries. Little did we know, Dennis' Seattle friends were in the same plaza having Japanese food for dinner followed by a karaoke competition. However, we were super tired. So we returned to the apartment and slept.

Road Trip to NYC

2010-08-04T19:33:00.000-07:00

It was long weekend so what better way than to plan a road trip. New York City is where we went, with a stop in Scranton so that we could take a picture of the Paper building seen on the opening credits of The Office.

We escaped the law - I had packed white peaches and plums for the road trip but I forgot to eat them before crossing the border.

Customs guy: Where are you going
Dennis: NYC
Customs: Are you bringing anything
Dennis: Just clothes and stuff................................to wear.

We took the extra long route to avoid paying tolls and drove through "Every-American-Town-Main-Street" - that is, the towns looked like the set of Gilmore Girls. Plenty of signs for antique shops.

Went outlet shopping and bought shoes, and more shoes because there were 2 for 1 deals.

Hit NYC traffic as we tried to get to the Holland Bridge - the worst urban planning ever. We went to Brooklyn where we checked into the Sleep Inn which is in the industrial side of town. I was disappointed with our bathroom as the TV remote control didn't work and the toilet seat had yellow crusties on it. It did, however have a king size bed that was super comfy. Oh yeah, we almost got our car towed.

That night, we decided to check out a ramen place that's called Ippudo at 8th and NYU stop. It's supposed to be pretty good and Zagat says "A mecca for mouthwatering and handpulled ramen". A lot of trendy asian people there. The ramen was expensive ($13/ramen bowl and $7 for appetizers such as avocado with caviar). The regular ramen was more flavourful than ajisen however I don't think it was worth the $13 or the 40 minute wait. Dennis gave it a 2.5 out of 4. The cool thing though is that everyone was yelling out japanese just like at Lick's...Including the restaurant manager who was speaking full sentences in Japanese and he was clearly not Japanese.

The next day, we took the subway (I was mistaken for a local as a Chinese lady asked me for directions in Cantonese) to Cadman Plaza Park where we saw men playing soccer. They were speaking all kinds of languages and I think the only time I heard English was with a thick Jamaican accent. We saw dog owners meeting dog owners, just like in the movies. We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and noticed that most of the people who were biking on the bridge were these black men wearing spandex on racing-type bikes. That was Unexpected.

After the bridge, we went to Century 21 to buy me some shoes because the pair I was wearing was cutting into my heel and basically took off some skin. I ended up with these super comfortable house-type slippers which I'm sure looked super weird but I didn't care because I was in a lot of pain. We walked to the Financial District, took some pics in front of the NYSE, found the Bull.

We then walked to Ground Zero and I had already prepared Dennis by saying that it just looked like a construction site, nothing impressive. I had visited Ground Zero 4 years ago on Safeway Tours and I remember it not being much to see. Well, nothing much has changed except that they've started construction on a new building. I reminded him this is the second time in which I had to do something AGAIN and forewarned him that it was going to be boring. The first was watching Aviator a second time because Dennis hadn't seen it. The second time was going to Ground Zero.

We went to Battery Park and Dennis checked to see if any of our ancestors were on the memorials. No surprise, there weren't. But when I spotted a STARRED name (CIA agents who have died are listed as a star, instead of by name) he insisted it was his relative.

We walked to Chinatown (eventhough Safeway Tours 4 years ago said it was too dangerous to stop the bus and let us wander around) and we went searching for Joe's Shanghai which is supposed to be known for their Shanghai soup dumplings. They placed us at a table with these gay guys who were telling us how they didn't know how to eat the soup dumplings. They also talked about COACH bags and how you should be careful if you shop at CANAL street. This time we compared it to Asian Legend. I can't remember what we decided but the prices were decent and the service was quick. The place was full of a mix of asians and tourists. It was also hard to find. By the way, we saw Ajisen Ramen.

We walked to Little Italy, found the restaurant furniture district (a street with stores that only sell restaurant equipment), the indian restaurants street and made our way to Lulu's Sweet Apothecary which I guess caters to trendy people who like to eat organic, do yoga, and ride their bicycles. I ordered a ginger ale float with orange creamsicle and strawberry. I thought the guy behind the counter was going to use regular Canada Dry but he pours out some organic ginger ale and it actually tasted like ginger. I just went on the website and it talks about being vegan free and gluten-free. As I said before..it's for the yoga organic food people. Not the best ice cream I've had. The best still goes to Daintree Ice Cream in Australia.

From Lulu's, we took the subway to the Upper East Side, Park Avenue type area and headed towards the Guggenheim where Dennis declared, "This is where they filmed When in Rome". I didn't know that. We took a walk through Central Park where I would say "this is the area where the Nannies take the rich kids". The bathroom was pretty clean in the park. We walked all the way to Times Square because we needed to catch a musical called In The Heights which was the 2008 Tony Award winner for Best Musical. This musical features Corbin Bleu who plays Chad from High School Musical. He doesn't do much singing but he does a lot of rapping. We had second last row but I could still see everything since no one was sitting in front of me, and I was able to move up a few rows during the intermission. It was an enthusiastic audience. Dennis said it's like Avenue Q, but the songs are catchier. Or, it's like Rent, without the AIDS. I guess it's the PG-13 version? We missed some of the jokes as some of it was in spanish but that's okay. It was a fun musical. Below Wicked, above Evita. Equivalent FUN-ness to Mamma Mia.

Afterwards, we walked around Times Squares where there is this cool Forever 21 ad where they have a huge screen and you can see yourself on the screen, in Times Square! How cool is that? We walked over to Rockefeller where Dennis made me do the "Diamonds in the sky a la Roc-a-fella" pose. I was the only one doing it. I asked him if he could pose like that so I could take a picture but he said he was too ashamed to do it.

We went to this super expensive deli and ate cheesecake, and Reuben and a Jackhammer. Oh yeah, there were these two, well built shirtless black guys standing by the intersection and they had resistance bands and one of them was doing chin ups on the "walking signal sign". So I look at them and the one guy smiled and gave me the thumbs up. I think the guys were trying to get discovered for an exercise video because they didn't have a tin or anything to collect money for showing off chin ups and resistance band workouts. Then we headed back to the Inn.

Next day, we discovered the gentrified part of Brooklyn where we bought NY style bagels (yum) and then we also went to the costco in Brooklyn so that Dennis could get his cash-back which he could only redeem in the US. Good thing he got the cashback because we needed the money to pay the tolls on the way home. It tooks us 11-12 hours to drive home, mainly because of the ridiculous traffic to cross the border. We were in the worst line. For every car our customs guys let through, the other people were passing through 3 cars. Our guy didn't ask us how much we spent. He just asked us where did we go, where did we stay and to open our trunk (I suspect he was opening everyone's trunk - maybe it was his first day on the job? no one in the other lines had to open their trunks). I think he took one look at my trunk and decided there was no point wasting time going through the trunk because it was so messy.

Got home and passed out. The next morning, I threw up twice and Dennis did not feel so well but he can't throw up so he still went to work. He missed work today though because he still wasn't feeling 100%. We attribute this to the bad fries we had a McDonald's.

Dolph Lundgren - you're my hero

2010-07-28T19:14:00.000-07:00

I was watching a really bad movie called Showdown in Little Tokyo which featured Dolph Lundgren, Brandon Lee, the Mortal Kombat bad guy, and Tia Carrere. Dennis tells me that Dolph Lundgren is supposedly really bright. I was like "yeah right" cuz the dude is built like jean claude van damme and also acts like him too.

Did some research, he has a Masters in Chemical Engineering from the University of Sydney (I don't know if that is a good school) and got a Fulbright Scholarship to go to MIT.

Here are his other accomplishments:
-Team Leader of the 1996 US Olympic Modern Pentathalon Team in Atlanta
-Won a lot of martial arts titles - he is very "fit-looking"
-Has only had one wife and has been married to her since 1994 (wow...so far 16 years married)
-Can speak three languages

Funny anecdote: three guys broke into his house and tied up his wife and they were there to burglarize the home. They saw a family photo and realized they were in Lundgren's house so they fled.

If you really knew me...

2010-07-27T09:05:00.000-07:00

I watched the first episode of MTV's If You Really Knew Me on my lunch break last week and I was crying like crazy at my desk and it was so embarassing because I didn't want people at my workplace to ask my why I was crying and I didn't want to have to explain that I was watching MTV and "the show made me cry". I think I was crying because I saw people on screen crying, not necessarily because the stories were touching (which they were). The show made me realize how grateful I am to have had such an awesome high school experience and that I'm glad I grew up in a medium sized town in Canada as opposed to a small town in the States.

Comic Con - The Walking Dead

2010-07-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

Although I'm not at Comic Con I was reading up on someone's review for a new TV show called The Walking Dead about a police officer versus zombies while looking for his family and it looks really good. I went on youtube and I guess someone broke he rules and filmed the 5 minute long trailer. It looks really good. Too bad I don't have AMC.

I saw Inception last night

2010-07-17T13:02:00.001-07:00

and I liked it. However, I wish there were subtitles for Ken Watanabe as I only caught 50% of his lines.

Leonardo is doing really well playing people with two realities.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt - how did you become so cool?

If mom saw this movie, she wouldn't get it, and she would think that Lukas Haas and Cillian Murphy are the same person.

It's a movie where at the end, it leaves you thinking "what the ______?" but not like in The Departed where you end up ranting for an hour out of frustration. Inception leaves you with the same feeling that you get after Shutter Island where you have to go read the imdb message boards for an hour to make sure that you caught everything and that you understood everything.

Arcade Fire

2010-07-11T14:59:00.001-07:00

Dennis just bought us Arcade Fire tickets. I've wanted to see them live since 2007 and told myself I would do it before I die, but never got the chance. They are on a few lists of top bands to see live and since I don't get to go to concerts too often (most recently, we had tickets for the U2 concert but it's been postponed due to Bono's back problem) we like to choose carefully which bands will get a share of our wallet.

I have a chance to go to the concert but the problem is that it is sandwiched between a wedding ceremony and reception. Luckily the concert is at 4 pm so hopefully, it will end before the food comes out and that I won't smell like weed when I go to the wedding reception.

hello good deal costco

2010-07-08T14:50:00.000-07:00

we went to costco and bought a fancy shower head - Pulse Shower Bonzai
http://www.pulseshowerspas.com/pulseshowerspas_bonzai.htm

How awesome is it? It's pretty awesome because you can have any of the two shower settings running at one time.

we are the neighbour that brings down your house value

2010-06-30T10:56:00.000-07:00

We have the worst lawn in the neighbourhood. I found out from my neighbour that while we were away in japan, someone from the City asked my neighbour when we were coming back because our lawn looked really bad with all the dandelions.

Last night me and dennis spend like 2hours pulling out weeds and trimming tall grass. I hate the thorny weeds. I have to remember to pour some boiling water on them tonight.

movies on Air Canada

2010-06-03T12:39:00.000-07:00

I recently went to Japan and I was eagerly anticipating my selection for movies. There wasn't much to choose from so I settled on Book of Eli (I knew it was going to be bad but I didn't think it could be THAT bad if it had Denzel), Percy Jackson Lightening Thief (which I've pestered Dennis since it came out in theatres to watch with me), The Young Victoria (I want to buy this movie), the Disney Frog Princess film (which by the way, I discovered that if you pick 'family movies' on air canada, they won't show you any commercials).

On the way back, I watched Daybreakers, Youth in Revolt, From Paris with Love (I can't remember the name but it's got Jonathan Rhys Myers with a really bad american accent), Alice in Wonderland, How to Train a Dragon, and something else but I can't remember so it probably wasn't very good.

Notable stuff I need to get off my chest:

Book of Eli - this is one of those really REALLY bad films. First of all, the villains didn't really have a good reason to be collecting books and as to why in particular they were after the Bible is beyond me. The dialogue was sprinkled with biblical verses used out of context such as "The truth shall set you free". That verse didn't make sense in the scene even if I took off my Christian hat. I guess the ending was clever. Oh Denzel, why did you agree to do this? At least I saw it for "free" but I still feel robbed.

Youth in Revolt was surprisingly funny. You come to a point where you feel like Michael Cera is always playing the skinny awkward boy who can't get a girl but this role works very well for him. It would've worked for Jay Baruchel as I see them as interchangeable. Dennis and I were talking about how everyone's going to think of Canada as being filled with awkward skinny guys. Dennis was laughing out loud in the plane for some parts of the movie.
You can see the trailer here.

Daybreakers is a fun movie. I liked it!!! It's hard for me to say no to vampire films. I felt closure by the end of the film. a few characters make tough decisions, not always the right ones. it's nice to see willem dafoe as a good character, not an evil character.

The Young Victoria - I was skeptical about watching the movie until I watched the trailer and the trailer was so good it almost made me cry...seriously. dennis also admitted that the trailer was really well done but it basically showed the whole movie in 2 minutes. The movie was so good that 9 days later when i finally returned to canada and got internet access..i spent time doing internet research on victoria and albert. Here's the trailer.

From Paris with Love was pretty bad. John Travolta was supposed to come off as a vin dieselesque i play by my own rules agent guy but he seemed like he was trying too hard. jonathan myers should not attempt an american accent ever again. they also did a predictable nod to john travolta's pulp fiction character as he eats a hamburger and declares that he cannot live without a royal with cheese. You can see it coming as someone brings him a brown paper bag and you wait for him to mention it. then you groan (internally, because you don't want to draw too much attention to yourself on the flight).

Let The Right One In

2010-03-12T09:03:00.001-08:00

I really want to see this movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZJUgsZ56vQ

As Dennis described it, it's like Twilight, but with little kids.

It got 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.

From imdb:

Tag line: Eli is 12 years old. She's been 12 for over 200 years and, she just moved in next door.

Oskar, a bullied 12-year old, dreams of revenge. He falls in love with Eli, a peculiar girl. She can't stand the sun or food and to come into a room she needs to be invited. Eli gives Oskar the strength to hit back but when he realizes that Eli needs to drink other people's blood to live he's faced with a choice. How much can love forgive? Set in the Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg in 1982.

Bolivia run down

2010-01-27T17:09:00.001-08:00

We had to pay off the bolivian guards at the border because they wouldn't let us go through because our yellow fever immunization had not kicked in. luckily it only cost us $3 each. We got to La Paz on December 24th. As we were leaving the city, we got into a major traffic jam. Imagine cars taking hostage of all lanes, going in the wrong direction and cars being stuck in intersections for more than 5 minutes.

The bus trip took 12 hours. In the middle of the night, I looked out the window because I wanted to know why the bus trip was so bumpy. When I looked out, it was just all these dips in the "road". It's too much to call it a dirt road. It's like a beach where 200 people decided to dig random 1-2 feet pits and 1-2 feet high mounds. I wasn't sure how the bus driver knew which direction to drive.

We arrived in Uyuni which was basically a middle of no where town. We took signed up for a 3 day tour that would take us around the salt flats and drop us off at the chilean border. We got into an old 4x4 which thankfully did not breakdown (I read a lot about how important it was to get a car that wouldn't break down because we are going in the middle of the bolivian desert and people have waited for 8 hours before for a replacement car when they were stranded in the desert). The salt flats looked amazing. Everything is white. With the water, you've got a mirror effect. Once again, we didn't follow any paved roads. Just a dirt road with hand sized rocks. We encountered a bad rain storm (see the videos below) which made for an entertaining hour of listening to a fellow tourist sing her german songs to past the time.

We stayed overnight in a salt hostel. everything as made of salt except for the toilet and the bathroom sink.

The next day, we saw really weird landscapes like weird mountains, rock formations, lakes with flamingos. Now I know why they call the scenery Dali-esque. We saw guards getting paid off in lollipops. I thought that was pretty funny. We also found out that our driver earns about$145/month for driving around tourists 6 days a week. Cost of living is pretty low outthere. The sun was pretty intense. I mean, eventhough it was cold outside, our lips got burntas did our noses and the top of Dennis' head. That night, we stayed at an adobe mud hut where our kitchen looked like a meth lab. This place was in the middle of no where. I've never felt so far from civilization before. You know what that means? An awesome night time sky. No cities close by, even our place didn't have much light. I got a good view of the milky way. I couldn't fall asleep because hte sheets smelled like vomit and the altitude sickness was affecting my sleep. It also didn't help that someone found hairs on their bed sheets. Our sleeping bags had white stains. I prayed that I wouldn't contract lice. God answered my prayers in a good way and my head was not itchy the next morning.

We woke up at 4:30 am to see the geysers and then we hit up a hot spring. The weirdest thing is stripping down to our bathing suits at 6 am at 5 C, to get into a hot spring, with flamingoes about 30 ft away. I loved it. I think it was especially good since since we haven't had a shower since we were in Peru 3 days ago.

We finished off by going to the green lake and then we got dropped off at the border. We didn't have to pay off any border guards here. I also threw out my wasabi peas because I wasn't allowed to bring in dried food. the customs card said we couldn't bring in any semen. I started laughing. No kidding.

Penguins - slow as a turtle

2010-01-16T07:16:00.000-08:00

There is one really slow penguin at the very end of the video.

Penguins in Chile

2010-01-16T07:15:00.000-08:00

I like this video because of the one penguin that keeps on falling on its stomach.

We can't cross the road because of the rain

2010-01-16T07:11:00.000-08:00

We were in the middle of no where Bolivia, where there aren't any paved roads. Your road is made by whatever the rain and wind decide to give to you. At this point, the caravan of cars is trying to make it to the lodging for the night but we are stopped in our tracks by an impassable flow of water that was created by the rain shower. We wait for an hour until it is safe to pass.

In the meantime, the German Lady in our tour pulls out her guitar and decides to sing us a song. One is about her cat who steals sausages from children who come to visit her indian tent.

videos from the trip

2010-01-11T16:23:00.000-08:00

Potholes on the road from Puno, Peru to Bolivia.

vacation run down!

2010-01-01T16:38:00.001-08:00

very quick run down of funny stuff that has gone down on this vacation. Pictures to show up jan 10th or later. Oh I miss chinese food.

Peru- I was ill the first day I arrived. Not because of the food. It was the Starbuck´s frapuccino that made me ill as I don´t normally drink coffee. We slept in the Lima airport and then we took a plane to Cusco. Cusco has an elevation of 3300 metres/1100 ft above sea level. Why does that matter? 2 words: altitude sickness

Cusco, Peru - everything looks in the state of construction and demolition with a mix of european architecture. Narrow streets, the type where when one car goes through the street, you press yourself against the wall of the buildings. Apparently we lived in a dangerous part of town but that's okay. We had a security card escort us from the taxi to our door which was probably less than 10 feet.

Friendly people. They like to approach you to sell you things and will take NO for an answer. Two funny situations:

1. teenage girls approach us to take pictures with us. first it´s just a few. Then it becomes more than 10 girls. I thought they were going to pickpocket us. They didn´t. They just wanted to take pictures.

2. We are eating and guy approaches us at the window of our restaurant to sell us paintings. We say no. He asks us if we can do him a favour. Of course I say It Depends. He wanted our help with his english because he is taking a course in english and he has an exam/test tomorrow. He wanted to know the correct grammar for "What are your healthy habits" We thought that was funny because no one would ever say a sentence like that in a casual conversation.

We did an afternoon tour to a lot of sites where they guide kept on saying Pachamama which means Mother Earth. Altitude sickness was pretty bad - we were chewing on cocoa leaves like crazy. waking up with headaches. My heart was beating like crazy when I was walking uphill on the sites. Eventually I had to buy pills.

The next day, we went to the better tourist sites such as ollyamtambo and got a chance to take the local train - clean! Oh yes. By the way, I tried to avoid public bathrooms at the tourist sites. The toilets in the restaurants are clean. We ate a bit of guinea pig. Oh yes!

Took a train to Macchu Pichu and we stayed in a hotel right beside this rushing water which made me want to pee in the middle of the night. When to macchu picchu and it was SUPER cloudy which didn´t make for good pics. Dennis felt sick . Ask me in person later if you want to know the details about macchu picchu.

took the train to Polloy and a taxi ride to Cusco. When you arrive at any kind of terminal, be it airport or bus or train, a swarm of "taxi drivers" are waiting to give you a ride. We hopped into a man´s car because he was yelling taxi at the train terminal but his car didn´t have a meter or a taxi sign on it. I guess locals get in on the tourist dollars as well. He was also trying to sell us on some tours. Luckily, he followed all the other cars back to town so we knew we weren´t going to be kidnapped into withdrawing $ from the ATM machine (we read about fake taxis).

We realized we are at the mercy of the travel agents when booking a tour. You never know what you´re getting. I´ve read a lot about bait and switch schemes.

2 engagements in one day

2009-12-15T11:37:00.000-08:00

I found out about two engagements today and one yesterday. AWESOME.

My mentoring girls surprised me with a Christmas gift - totally unexpected. It was also an awesome gift - gift card to Chapters... oh baby!

Slowly getting through Gilmore Girls. Season 2 is sooo good. I just got to the episode where Jess outbids Dean on Rory's gift basket.

Dennis put the two guinea pigs on my head while i was lying in bed. I started screaming cuz i thought they would pee or poo on my face or claw my eyes out.

Need to start packing tonight. We're going to see if we can pack all of our stuff into one backpacking bag and one regular school backpack. This will be challenging, especially since we are dressing for temps that range from 4 C to 35 C.

I charged my camera battery

2009-12-07T19:58:00.000-08:00

Pics of the house after some painting.

Pics of our guinea pigs.

gears of war cured my cramps

2009-12-05T17:32:00.000-08:00

i had really bad cramps and wanted to throw up. dennis suggested that we play gears of war. now, i have no more cramps.

Should be the marketing tag line to reach the female demographic......

By the way, I finished the game too!

So some companies might wonder why their breakfast doesn't attract people in the morning....

2009-11-29T16:04:00.001-08:00

Here's a hint, have your hashbrowns and your coffee ready at 10 am in the morning.

So a few of us headed to subway for breakfast before going to a visitation/funeral for a friend's grandmother, and we figured, it's 10 am - good time to have breakfast. Well not so good when you ask for a hashbrown and the subway worker says they haven't cooked it yet. Then one of us asked for coffee and subway person the coffee's not available. WHAT? Do we not live in North America where coffee is not only a staple drink, it is most certainly a staple breakfast drink. We weren't asking for some obscure latte this, mocha that. It was just coffee! Oh yeah, subway lady also sort of yelled at me to get my attention so that I could tell her the ingredients in the subway wrap but there was no need for her to yell as we were the only customers in there.

Later on that day, post funeral/visitation, McDonald's won our service.... not only with readily available coffee, but the drive thru girl had an awesome personality as did the manager who handled and handed the pack of hockey cards with purpose and care. When he gave the hockey cards, he said "here's your coffee. and your hockey cards".

So, you hear of people who wedding crash. Well yesterday, we funeral crashed. We were going to go to a friend's grandmother's visitation but we weren't going to stay for the funeral service because we were in a rush to return home. We didn't realise that the visitation place was a different place from the burial. So we show up at burial location and guy was like, "are you here for a chinese woman?" and yeah we were but the weird thing was that the funeral service had already started. The guy hands each of us an envelope and we open these giant double doors for the funeral service in session. It was in cantonese. I hear the word Jesus or God in canto so I assume we are at the right place because our friend told us his grandmother was a Christian. We look around and we don't see our friend, nor do we see our youth pastor. Other people in the group look down at the brief funeral program. How come no one in the program has the same last name as our friend except for the pastor? Oh no, we are at the wrong place!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So we tried to get up inconspicuously while the organist in the back is shooting us dirty looks. We rush out of the room, and put back the envelope. Oh wait, our driver did not put back his envelope. He was in too much of a rush. We only notice when we get back to the car and we're like "You didn't put back the envelope!" It had a candy and quarter inside.

We get in the car. LAUGHING. While driving to the correct visitation place, we sort of burst into random laughter. We crashed a funeral, not a wedding. I feel bad for the family of the person who died. This has taught me that I need to pay attention to the chinese names of old people.

We told our friend the story the next day and he had a good laugh over it.

The difference between google and bing

2009-11-10T21:40:00.000-08:00

Dennis and I just saw the commercial for Ninja Assassin and he was like" Is that Rain? I heard he's the most important (or was it influential) person in the world (according to a Time Magazine online poll)" so we go to google and type "Rain" and guess what? Rain (the entertainer) wikipedia comes up on top, above of rain, the precipation wikipedia entry. At which point, Dennis declares, "looks, he's even more important than the preciptation".

However, when you go to bing to do the search, precipation beats out the entertainer.

By the way, this is the house we bought

2009-11-05T13:06:00.001-08:00

And we've done a few changes to it so it doesn't look so......country cottage

http://www.obeo.com/Public/Viewer/ViewerFrames/LargePhotoGallery.aspx?ID=550580&refURL=mls.ca

Those are the before photos. Once I charge my camera battery, i will put up the "after painting/taking off wallpaper/replacing the carpet/moved in furniture pictures"

wedding gift from a customer

2009-10-16T11:27:00.000-07:00

today i received a card and gift from a customer by expresspost....how awesome is that?!?!

almost done with the house.....give it another month and then we won't be doing anymore furniture shopping.

p90x chewed me up and spit me out. i only did 30 minutes and that was enough.

dennis lay down on the floor and says to me "my head is going to leave a sweat stain on the floor". i concur.

I started to pay double up on the mortgage..so i need to watch how i spend my money. i need to pay off as much of the principal as i can until 2014 before we renegotiate the mortgage. this is a boring paragraph.

broccoli causes bloating and gas.....according to dr. Oz. That's funny.

Who are you?

2009-10-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

I'm still putting the house in order and was going through my bag of cards and found some of my World Vision cards and letters. I found the pictures of my kids and put them on the fridge. Then I came to one card and I didn't recognize the name of the child. Apparently I received some other person's kid's card!!!

Dennis picked up a dead bird off our driveway. It was in good condition except for the curled toes. he first tapped the body with a stick to see if it was still alive. Then he tapped its head. Nothing happened. All the while I'm pretty grossed out.

The house is big enough for just the two of us. I don't want anything bigger. It already takes a while to clean.

Thanksgiving, I ate a lot of asian fusion food and pizza.

in the past two weeks..i saw....

2009-09-22T13:48:00.000-07:00

Point Break. I didn't believe Dennis when he said it was a good movie..but boy was it good. Keanu Reeves has not aged at all. Patrick Swayze aged quite a bit. I couldn't help but laugh during one of the scenes at the end of the film with Gary Busey.

Yesterday we watched Pump Up the Volume. I didn't realize how coarse the film was...probably because I saw it on TV when I was younger so it was probably edited and I was too young to understand anything. It made me think of podcasts.

pictures

2009-09-21T19:49:00.000-07:00

other pics found here

dennis' last hurrah before starting work - Maritime trip

2009-09-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

We decided to head to Newfoundland since neither of us have been there and we needed something close by and cheap because we had to be in Ottawa in 5 days for reception #2.

So the only thing we planned out was our flight to Newfoundland, hanging around Gros Morne park, taking a ferry to Nova Scotia, and flying from Halifax to Ottawa.

We landed in Newfoundland at midnight and we knew that driving on the road at night meant being careful not to hit a moose. We discovered how remote of a place we were in, when the rental car guy showed us a map and used the Esso gas station, and KFC as landmarks when directing us on how to get to our hotel/motel. Newfie accent comes up when they talk amongst themselves. We found that when they talk to us, the pitch drops and they speak normal english..some of them.

One Tim Hortons.

The next Tim Hortons was 350 km away. No rest stops. No McDonalds or any other burger place. No Rogers phone service. 2 lane highway. The cops don't care if you're speeding.

No mosquitoes....yay!

We drove through Gros Morne Park where they use the honour system. no one every asked us for our park pass. Hiked Western Brook Pond and got to the ferry and discovered it only runs once a day and we missed the ferry. That's okay....so we hiked 3 km back to our car.

On a whim, we decided to drive north and go to viking land - oh yes. We ended up at St Anthony's in time for Viking Feast which is a dinner and theatre thing where people dress up as vikings and you eat lettuce, moose stew and some other stuff. Then the vikings hold court and people at each table are supposed to bring up "charges" to present to the viking court and we decide if the accused patron is guilty or innocent. That was funny. The people at our table wanted to bring charges against us because dennis told them we were from Toronto. I already told him ahead of time to just tell people we are from Ontario.

Windy and cold, but picturesque. We didn't see any icebergs in St. Anthony's but we took some pictures which we could imagine is probably what Scotland would look like in the highlands. We did L'Anse Aux Meadows the enxt day and apparently the actors from Viking Feast also work at L'Anse Aux Meadows Viking historical park. The original viking settlement looks like little grassy concave dips in the ground. Dennis walked by something and i would say "hey, you just walked by the iron work building" but he totally couldn't tell. The recreated village was more fun.

Caught our overnight ferry where dennis reserved us bunk bed dormitory style sleepers - 70 beds to a cabin. It was cold.

Arrived in Nova Scotia and I told Dennis we should drive the cabot trail. It was a bit underwhelming in the beginning but it eventually led us to the Cape Breton Highlands where we did some hiking. You know when you hike and you pass people, you normally greet them with a hello. Dennis wanted to say "Konichiwa" and "Bonjourno Principessa" to them. Thank goodness he didn't.

While hiking, all of a sudden I stopped and I told Dennis to stop as well. I looked around and then I see a moose within 10 feet of us, eating. Weird. Once again, no mosquitoes around here. When we finished hiking the highlands, we were torn between going to New Brunswick or going to PEI. In the end, PEI won out so we decided to drive towards Antagonish/New Glasgow. On the way, Dennis decides to stop at the tackiest looking lobster restaurant. Oh it was super tacky. We're talking a john mccain poster when you walk in, a utah flag, a lot of acadien posters and knick knacks all over the place and stuff about soldiers and duty. I expected a dude to come out with a shotgun. We each had a lobster and the guy at the restaurant comes out and says he wants to light fireworks for us. And you know what? He does light fireworks for us outside. It was such a weirdly fun experience. He's like one of those Red Green guys but with a Maritime twist. I said that if there was a movie character based on him, Johnny Depp should play him Dennis disagreed and said Christopher Walken. He gave us two apples to take with us on our way out of the restaurant.

We drove through New Brunswick to get to the bridge to cross to PEI where I took Dennis to L. M. montgomery's house, and to the Anne of green gables house and he was like "let me get this straight. I am paying money to go see a house of a fictional character?!?!" and i had him walk with me down lover's lane and the haunted woods. So this is love. We found the church that lucy M. montgomery attended. that was random. We also had Cows icecream because no road trip is complete, or any trip for that matter, without ice cream stops. We also had mussels http://www.flexmussels.com/ Very good cuz it was relaxing just to sit outside, light breeze, sunny, eating. we walked around downtown charlottetown too.

Went back over the bridge to nova scotia and went to towards Halifax. I saw a black bear on the side of the highway. dennis hit a bird while driving. went to halifax the next day and we quickly did a tour of the old citadel which was surprisingly fun - we caught the noon time cannon thing.

We learned:
1. We don't like the hyundai elantra - the power steering briefly went out and we had to stop in Bible Hill to figure out where to return the car. Then when we started the car again, it was okay again.
2. Don't tell people you are from Toronto.
3. Bring change for the toll booths. We ended up using american money because we ran out of canadian coins and bills.
4. Be prepared to pee on the side or the road if you are driving from gros morne to st. anthony's. There aren't any rest stops. I didn't pee on the side of the road but I can see how someone would stop to pee.
5. Bring long sleeve stuff, windbreakers, jeans.

Thanks to summer and eric for the gas card. We used it all up on the trip. We averaged about 500 km/day.

more improv fun

2009-09-17T20:07:00.000-07:00

dennis and i will probably be checking out an improv show that makes fun of Twilight.

http://www.baddogtheatre.com/modules/agendax/?op=view&id=492&on=20090919

late nights putting together furniture

2009-09-16T10:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we returned 18 bottles of wine and bought ourselves beer, coolers, and one bottle of wine.

What that means is drinking Zinfandel at midnight while putting together the wardrobe from JYSK. We worked on it for 3 hours and gave up at 12:45 am.

Part 2 tonight.

what is this?

2009-09-06T14:56:00.000-07:00

i was putting away stuff at home and i came across something that i didn't recognize and i went to mom and said,:
Me: "mommy what is this?"
Mom replies, "i don't know, maybe it's for your fun party stuff" (fun party stuff being a euphemism for the wedding night)
and i'm like "i don't even know how to use this. it looks like a table runner."
Mom says "use your imagination"

Hot Oil Barons in Love - improv at Bad Dog Theatre in the fall

2009-09-01T09:07:00.001-07:00

Anyone want to go?

Only $10.

HOT OIL BARONS IN LOVE
The Improvised Soap Opera

This improvised soap opera returns to Toronto, and it’s sexier, funnier, and oilier than ever. The same cast that brought you “Hot Doctors In Love” presents a fully improvised show in the vein of “Dallas” and the much less-watched “Wild Roses”. Just like any good soap opera, the stakes are high, the affairs are torrid, and the hair is big.

The talented cast is led by five-time Canadian Comedy Award winner Kerry Griffin in his first show since finishing a successful run on the Second City mainstage.

The show also stars Lisa Merchant (Train 48), Aurora Browne (Comedy Inc.), Alastair Forbes (Battleawesome Awesomestar), Tom MacKay (Troubadour), Sean Tabares (Project:project), Lindsay Grant (Troubadour) and Rica Eckersley (Show Stopping Number). Directed by Ralph MacLeod (Twisted Christmas Carol), it will feature appearances by Jan Caruana (Monkey Toast) and other special guests. Each week, this attractive cast of improvisers will bring you the continuing story of the Templeton family, who has a passion for oil and for anyone who looks like they might sleep with them.

There will be face-slapping! There will be open-mouth kissing! There will be blood! Okay, maybe not that last part! Hot Oil Barons In Love Fridays in September and October at 8 p.m.September 11, 18, 25, October 2, 9, 16, 23 and 30 Tickets $10

the pictures

2009-08-31T22:54:00.001-07:00

Did Uncle Clement slip in a devotional book for couples into Ada's gift bag?

yum...i like to drink true blood.

TRON vehicle

Stewie signs my wedding guest book while Bonnie holds Lois' head and I get the knife.

Spiderman!

I had to get pictures with trekkies.

The Joker was nice.

The Green Lantern was a sweetie.... He put a ring on my finger. I suspect he normally just gives them out to kids and we saw him give it to a down syndrome girl.

I went to fan expo as part of my pre-bachelorette party

2009-08-31T13:16:00.000-07:00

and it was pretty fun because i think i kind of blended in with my bachelorette "costume". I got some impressed looks from people.

Spiderman didn't know how to spell neighborhood when he was signing my wedding guest book. Green Lantern was such a sweetie considering he is a grown man wearing green spandex bodysuit. He got down on one knee and handed me a ring for my left hand fourth finger. Awww...shucks!

I got Stewie to sign, and snow white, and Master Chief.

talked to some star wars people, posed with a guy who was supposed to be Eric from True Blood but he didn't know the name of his character.

One booth, they had a green screen. You line up to have your picture taken in front of the green screen. Then they superimpose you on a movie poster and email you the pic, for free. Bonnie K. and I reenacted Bella and Edward from Twilight. I'm glad she's a good sport. I want to see the pictures. We also lined up for the movie poster for Sorority Row.

Took pictures in front of the Tron vehicle. It looks awesome.

Best line from Fan Expo...
Elaine: "There's Waldo!"
Bonnie: "Where?"

Bachelorette took place at a Spanish Flamenco restaurant at Broadview and Danforth. We had tapas, we had leftovers. The gifts were hilarious. I was surprised that Malina would write "this is your gift for Wednesdays!" hahaha.

Summer does a little interview with me in front of everyone before giving me the gift.
Summer: "So now that you have all this lingerie, what else do you need on your wedding night?"
I'm thinking of stuff like condoms.....etc cuz i wasn't really sure about where she was going with the question but I thought it would be really odd if she gave me contraceptives at my bachelorette party.
Elaine: "Uh...."
Summer: "You need alcohol!"

I got cash, cards, gift cards, lingerie, a men's thong for Dennis (Can you picture Ginger asking sales people if they have men's thong and then bringing the men's thong to the cash). Ada got me something in which her mother found and her mother was like "who are you using this with?!?!" haha poor Ada. I opened up another part of her gift and there was also this intimacy devotions book. I was like "is this from your father?"

lot's of laughter. My cheeks were hurting from laughing so much.

Thank you girls. pictures will follow (but not the inappropriate ones).

I'm glad no one got me flannel pjs.

Elaine

i had a dream last night that a lot of stuff went wrong on my wedding day

2009-08-27T14:20:00.000-07:00

things that went wrong:
1. i didn't have the write undergarments for my dress
2. too much makeup on my face
3. makeup lady all of a sudden not doing tania and amanda's makeup and hair
4. makeup lady charging $40 (in reality, she's doing it free for all of us)
5. we started getting ready really late
6. I drove my own car to Sears to buy the undergarments for the dress, but someone steals the car when i leave it in the parking lot
7. I see this indian guy in one of those tikki indian vehicles and he says he knows who stole my car but won't tell me. This occurs 30 minutes before the ceremony.
8. So i did the most logical thing and jumped on him and started scratching his face and trying to gouge his eyes a la 28 Weeks Later while screaming "TELL ME WHERE MY CAR IS!!!!!!!!! I'M GETTING MARRIED IN 30 MINUTES!!!!!!!!!"
9. I show up at the ceremony 30 minutes late.

On the bright side, when the real day comes, I doubt it will be as bad as the nightmare.

Burrito Boyz

2009-08-26T19:12:00.000-07:00

Last night, I took Dennis to the Burrito Boyz at Long Branch and I think he fell in love with it because he wanted to go again tonight eventhough we didn't have any cash on us. So we went again tonight and the guy who cooks the Burritos recognized us and said to us "hey buddy" and after he gave us the burritos, he was like "see you tomorrow night". I suspect we're the only asian people who go to burrito boyz in long branch, always at the same time.

Add this to the list of things I want to do before I die

2009-08-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

Road trip around Iceland following the Ring Road.

We were looking at things we can do for the week after the wedding. It had to be affordable, and something we can do in 5 days.

For some reason, Iceland came up as an idea since neither one of us have ever visited Iceland. They have this one road, Route 1 called the Ring Road and it is a two lane highway. They say Iceland is where fire meets ice. Upon doing more research, we saw that its the perfect place for a road trip, and it is the size of Virginia. 830 miles to go around the island.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_1_%28Iceland%29
Towards the end of September, you can see the Northern Lights. in June/July, the sun starts setting at 1 am and only sets for 3-4 hours so you always have light.
Pictures here: http://www.icetourist.is/photogallery.asp?cat_id=548&page_id=1&photo_id=1238

Unfortunately most sites say you should take about 7 to ten days to do the ring road, also renting the car would be too expensive on our small budget.

Looks like road trip on the cabot trail for us after the wedding. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabot_Trail

super awkward email of the day - this one get's a trophy

2009-08-25T08:49:00.000-07:00

My mom is booking a hotel room for me and dennis for after the reception so that my parents and sister can stay at the new house. My mom is a sweetie and she's looking up hotels in sauga and this is what she sends to me:

"I just called Homewood by Hilton which is rated #1 in all luxury hotels in Miss. area. My question to you is: Do you want a jacuzzi bath (the bathroom also has shower) in your room? Will you be using it? If you prefer that, let me know so I can book a room which has that feature for you."

Awkward - especially the part where it says "Will you be using it?" HAHAHA I love my mom.

cheesy engagement photos are up

2009-08-25T08:02:00.001-07:00

http://elainendennis.com/photo.aspx

was looking up wedding reception music

2009-08-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

and came across a spoof on B4-4:

GOLD!

no furniture means living like a student again

2009-08-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

and it's awesome! Nikki and Jonny dropped by and we ended up sipping our thick mocha type drinks on the carpet, in the middle of our living room. WE don't have curtains, we have one lamp without the lamp shade so i'm sure that our neighbours who were driving by may have found this a bit weird looking. Four adults, drinking on the carpet, with a shadeless lamp in the middle of the bare room.

Repeated this again last night but this time with Emily, Dave, and Pat. This time we had pizza in the basement while sitting/lying on the carpet, with two placemats for the pizza boxes. CLASSY!

I like it. It's very freeing. No parents around to say you can't do this or that.

My neck and shoulders are sore

2009-08-23T23:19:00.001-07:00

From hunching over a bike.

On Saturday, Dennis and I set off at 9:45 from our place and we biked on the waterfront trail/lakeshore blvd (oh yes, we shared the street with cars) until we hit the boardwalk area near High Park right after the white bridge that you can see from the highway. My thighs were in pain...as was my bum (i didn't have a gel seat). It felt good to get some exercise.

We broke the law and rode the bicycle a bit on the sidewalk. I also didn't think it was too bad riding on the road with cars (I'm sure the drivers didn't like sharing the road with me). There were a lot of super elite bicyclists that flew past us in the biking gear. We looked like amateurs with our canadian tire bike and really old school more than a decade old bike.

i think we went for about 3.5 hours. We had lunch...and then passed out. Like, I fell asleep on the bunk bed. Dennis passed out on the carpet. We repainted the living room as we weren't really into the "Atmosphere" colour - it is not a good substitute for white paint.

Today we bought a massive red bean bag chair and we got a fantastic deal on it. It was $160 (the original price on the bag was higher than that but I guess they reduced the price cuz it's a new store) And then the lady said she would sell it to us, 2 for $300. Then we bargained it down to 2 for $275 (she's indian so we knew she would negotiate with us eventhough the store is in square one). Well, we told her we would walk around the mall and think about it so she wrote the price down for us on a card. When we returned to the store, it was an indian guy at the desk. We showed him the card, and said we only want one bean bag chair and that we wanted to know what the price was for one bean bag chair (we were planning on bargaining it down to $130 /bean bag). Instead, he just said "$120". Dennis and I looked at each other we were like "let's buy it".

So we got the price down from $160 down to $120. Yay!

Weeds galore at my house. We love our Canadian tire tool. Even one of our neighbours was asking us about the tool and asked us if we got it on the As Seen On Tv Store. I like using it because i like the idea or ripping out plants from their roots. It's very satisfying. Like, you're doing something that is normally bad (that is, killing a plant) but it is acceptable since it is a weed.

We have moat. We discovered this during the Thursday rain storm as we watched the water running in our ditch. Cool! Not so cool is that a tree branch did fall on our house. We don't have a ladder to get onto our roof.

Dennis and i practiced dancing to our wedding song. At the end, he tried to dip me, but it looked like a repeat of Pat dancing with Sel. i fear he might fling me to the ground.

french translation for "nerd" or "geek"

2009-08-18T09:43:00.000-07:00

In July, I had a discussion with some french people on slang and I was asking them for the french word for geek or nerd and at the time they didn't have any answers for me until now....

Just a quick message to tell you that i found a translation for geek/nerd!!!
The best is:
un petit intello coincé ou une tête
or
un sans-ami (if you want to say that it is a person that has no friend).

Man..the last one seems so mean but I guess for us it is the equivalent to a loner.

Other frenchioms: C'est moche - that's ugly (tsing said this when we arrived at Kipling station and she saw all the power lines.
Blédar = FOB

Which reminds me...I used to live with....

2009-08-17T14:08:00.000-07:00

Georgy Egorychev, the author of the influential, milestone book titled "Integral Representation and the Computation of Combinatorial Sums". In 1980, Egorychev solved the van der Waerden conjecture on the determination of the minimum of the permanent of a doubly stochastic matrix and was awarded the Delbert Ray Fulkerson Prize. Over the years, Egorychev has published more than a 100 papers in Combinatorics, Algebra and Group Theory. He is currently a Professor of Mathematics in Krasnoyarsk, Russia.

As to why a professor would have to live in student housing..I do not know. What I do know is that when he sat me down trying to teach me math, I had no idea what he was saying. Part of it had to do with the subject, part of it had to do with his accent. He tried to teach me math. I taught his wife how to use the laundry machine and I taught him that unlike russia, we can flush toilet paper and we flush after every use of the toilet.

I think Dennis remembers very clearly this time in my life.

Met my neighbour while deweeding the yard

2009-08-17T13:17:00.000-07:00

Found out that he is retired and he used to be a part of a Canadian band called The Bells in 1970's and they had two hit songs. Apparently his daughter is in some rock band in Montreal but I don't know the band name.

You can read up on them on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bells_(band)
And on http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Pop_Encyclopedia/B/Bells.html

"At the turn of the millennium, the entourage frequently re-united for one-off shows including three reunion concerts in 2003 (Port Hope, Brockville and Kingston). Interest has been so strong in the act that Universal Music finally fashioned a 'best of' package in 2005 under the supervision of the band. "

We started removing the ghastly wallpaper. there is something very therapeutic about ripping off wallpaper. It's like unwrapping a christmas gift (not the meticulously careful unwrapping method but the ripping apart the paper method).

We bought two bicycles because there are a lot of bicyclists around where we live.

I've been bitten by many mosquitoes so far. Also need to find where the flies are coming from in the house. We are considering putting hard wood floors in the room but we don't know if it falls within our budget.

My GICs came to maturity! I'm so relieved that I have access to my money again.

i hate missing patio parties

2009-08-14T06:17:00.000-07:00

especially the ones at Malina's house. Missing out on Annie's party. Missing fellowship. Missing meeting up with people at random place on friday nights.

Soon this will all be over and then I will have a social life again.

We got a pretty ridiculously awesome entertainment system...Dennis and I were playing Pixel junk monster for 2 hours, in the dark, just starring at the big screen... I still need to move over the PS2 and the gamecube.

Drop it like its hot

2009-08-12T10:40:00.001-07:00

will be on the playlist for my wedding....crossing my fingers..........below you can learn the dance moves that a friend provided to me so that i can practice. the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GYSei66Rh4 I'm going to ask for the clean version.

house reno

2009-08-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

Dennis has painted the basement walls lime green. Yay!

We removed the wallpaper in one of the smaller rooms. Applied primer to half of the room. Will do the rest of the room tonight. Tomorrow, we will paint the room.

Killed three bugs. Where are they coming from? Need lawnmower - it's been raining a lot. Awesome lightening show last night. i attached a toilet seat cover.

Did karaoke with the sunday school class - that was FUN - Aaron and I introduced the kids to Mmmbop and I heard one of them say "I like this song!"

Jonny and Nikki's wedding - done! I have a wedding to go to this weekend as well.

Meeting DJ this friday.

Need to go to restaurant to figure out decorations.

crunch time. 26 more days.

Castle of the lords

2009-08-07T07:42:00.000-07:00

Dennis and I were walking through the mall yesterday and we saw some floorplans for housing developments so we decided to take a look. Most of the houses were like 4000-6000 sq footage but Dennis looks to the other end and there is one place that is 32 000 sq feet. We were like "WOAH!". Dennis was like "I want that...it has a bowling alley, a gym, a ball room...etc" but he realized he is about $7 million short of completing that dream. Another couple walks in and they basically have the same reaction so they were joking with us about maybe we can share the place and the woman volunteered to stay in the Butler's cottage. White people are fun!

I told Dennis that a house that big is kind of freaky cuz you could be living in the house and not know that someone's been squatting in the rooms.

The next larger one was 11 000 sq feet but dennis said it was too small.

mike holmes - we need you

2009-08-05T12:03:00.001-07:00

badly.

i've become boring

2009-08-02T21:23:00.001-07:00

i talk about backsplashes and tiles.

house shopping: done.

2009-07-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

I bought a detached house in Lakeview, right by lakeshore.

I welcome debt into my life for a signifiant period of time - with open arms.

1.4 million dollar house

2009-07-26T22:23:00.000-07:00

= wasted space - only 3 bedrooms?

looking for housing

2009-07-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

house hunting is a lot of fun but very tiring. Dennis used someone's toilet and it didn't flush. Then he lifted the cover off the toilet and discovered that the tank didn't have water so we had to take a jug and fill it with water and full the toilet tank so that we could flush the toilet.

We also went to a really creepy house. The type where when you go to the master bedroom, you can step into the walk in closet, and from the walk in closet, there is a secret door to a crawl space, and from the crawl space, you step into an attic. Also, when you go down the stairs to the basement, it splits off into two different levels. the left level takes you to a really dark laundry room and a freezer where it would be a really good place to hide dead things. On the other size of he basement, you descend more stairs to the "wreck room" which has a wet bar, a massive fireplace that reminds me of harry potter and is generally very dark. I exclaimed "this is creepy". Dennis concurred. We can picture a squatter living

We made an offer (but didn't submit it in the end) on a very cool house in Weston Village. It was a victorian house, 100 year old trees neighbourhood....etc. They converted the garage into a multipurpose room/gym, there was a solarium.....etc Charming old house in a charming neighbourhood. Unfortunately the neighbourhood is surrounded by low income housing.

Checking out more places tomorrow.

Who is Elaine Dennis?

2009-07-19T18:04:00.000-07:00

Apparently some poor soul called Elaine Dennis has been receiving some of the RSVP's to our wedding because people have forgotten to write the "n" in the email.

"i mistook you as an indian boy" - Dennis

2009-07-10T18:05:00.000-07:00

Those were the words spoken by Dennis as he scanned my childhood pics.

I also heard him say "you look like Jacob Black from Twilight"

Church going fob with my name is lurking in the city

2009-07-09T13:23:00.000-07:00

I received an email today and I think it was supposed to go to someone else with my name who lives in Toronto:

Dear all,
First, a reminder of our Bible study this Friday evening. Sam and Grace will lead us to study Luke 7. Please read it beforehand. Schedule is the same as before:
Dinner: 6-7 pm.
Praising songs: 7-7:15 pm.
Bible study: 7:15-8:45 pm.
Sharing and Praying in small groups: 8:45-9:20 pm.

Also, two other things,
1) Gospel Camp (Aug. 14-16). If you are not a Christian yet, you are strongly encouraged to attend it! This annual event is very precious opportunity to know the gospel - many received Jesus as their savior at the camp in past years. I hereby attach the registration form with detailed info. Please spread the news to your family and friends, and note registration should be done ASAP, as it usually fills very fast. The fee is $40, which could be also covered by our church.

I was super confused because I was trying to remember if I signed up for anything at church. I was looking at the email list, and most of the names were very mainlander china-ish with a plethora of Zh, X, Y, W, J's (the ten point scrabble letters).

There was a registration form for the Gospel Camp. I opened it up and it was all in chinese characters. Definitely not for me.

Missing out on the free concerts at Harboufront

2009-07-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

I like free music but this year I will be missing out because I'm going to the fellowship camping trip.

Aimee Millan.
The Dears.
Hey Rosetta.

Free movies at harbourfront sirius stage including bowie in tights flick Labyrinth on August 12th. They also have Say Anything. I just missed Pretty in Pink last night.

hopping from one thing to another

2009-07-08T09:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to work and I couldn't wait for it to end so I snuck out early. Bad!

I went to Starbucks and met up with Yukki, Flo, and Rob and we chilled and talked. It was interesting to talk to Rob about his experiences working with the youth, especially on what worked and what didn't. He was telling me that he mentored some guys and his group grew from 3 to 7 but then he got burned out.

I met up with my mentor group for the first time and took them to Apricot Tree. I got the girls to have adult desserts such as crepes and flambe. They were chatting away to the point where I returned them to church a bit later than I expected. So, that wasn't good. But I also found out that they wanted to meet every week in the summer instead of every two weeks (I initially told them we were only going to meet every two weeks) so that's a positive.

Drove to Dennis' and got there by 10:30 pm. Worked on invitations until 1:00 am and prayed to God that I wouldn't get into an accident on the way home because I was super tired. I was complaining about the stickers that I was using to stick on the envelopes to which Dennis replied "I had to glue on 5x8 petals for every invite using a glue stick". I went quiet after that.

So we encountered a dilemma - to accept money from our parents to help us buy a house, or not to accept?

Easier decision - to use wedding programs that have two white people kissing on a beach and a 1 Corinthians 13 reference? I said no thank you to this one.

Elite athletes

2009-07-07T09:05:00.001-07:00

Cliff was sharing with me about how his friend sent him an article about elite athletes and it made him think about Cliff. The article, Elite Cyclists Risk Infertility http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8124458.stm should, for the most part, create a not so happy response. Instead, it elicited the following from Cliff:"at least I'm not elite!". Haha, I find that so funny.

Yesterday I took Tsing and Sophie to the Greyhound terminal where they were going to catch the NYC bus. We took them to the pickel barrel. Tsing showed us all the canadian souvenirs that she got from dollarama. One particular souvenir was a change purse in the same of white baby socks with canadian leaves all over. I told her it was pretty ugly and i asked her who she was going to give it to. She responded with, "regift party!" - I told her about our annual regift party.

Tonight, I will hopefully meet up with Yukki and Flo (they are leaving tomorrow morning) and then do my first session of mentoring, and then drive to Dennis' to finish the invitations. It will be a long night.

Pat's email

2009-07-06T09:10:00.000-07:00

"Also, at the top of the mountain peak was a little weather outpost from 1916. (think a one room cabin smaller than a bathroom, that has a bed, desk and washroom....with the washroom being a bucket with toilet paper) Urban Legend has it that one guy used to trek 9 hours a day to get weather readings when he wasn't working as museum curator. I'm sure it is admirable, but somehow I get the feeling he'd have a tough time finding a girl. Like, what would his pick up line be?? "Do you like weather??" " - from Pat by email.

Sleep deprived after JMC. Sleeping on the floor never felt so good. I took a pic with Joyce and her pregnant stomach. AHHH! I also saw Jon's wife pregnant. Someone told me I'm too happy to be working (when he asked if i was working or a student). I told G. Hogenbirk that there is a picture of him on my fridge. Nathan from KWCAC introduced himself to me and as we talked longer, I realized I met him 2 years ago at his house because my parents are friends with his parents. Discovered that mom knows the uncle of two of Flo and Yukki (paris girls). Their uncle owns the restaurant where I am having my second wedding reception.

We worked on invitationis on Sunday afternoon and got quite a few done while watching Gene Simmons Family Jewels, two episodes of globe trekker, man tracking, and departures.

Dennis showed me some MJ moves. I laughed. I cried. I laughed some more.

Street meat tonight as I send off Tsing and Sophie to the greyhound terminal.

I survived the first session of premarital counselling. Dennis was like "I thought it was going to be hard! I was going to do bible study beforehand!" and "I thought he would be bigger" with respect to P. Scott. We got asked "what is repentance" and "what is a covenant". I recommend him for premarital counselling.

"les hommes sans pantalons sont tres gros" - Richard

2009-07-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

Lost in translation. Paris people are here and I pointed out to our male Paris guests that the place they are staying is at Gerrard and Church which is basically the Gay village of Toronto. Did I mention that they arrived on the last day of Pride week? The boys ended up crashing at my house.

Sunday, they got to meet the gang and we took them to BR. It was Tsing's first time having bbt. Laurent was asking me "euh...do you have EE-pairrr-mashay" and I was like, yeah we have malls. Tsing and Laurent took an afternoon nap at my place while I took Gilies to Square One. He was trying to buy something for his girl cousins. I told him he should just treat them out to dinner but he said they will be chinese and fight over the dinner bill. That's when I said that he should do the "pretend to go to the washroom but actually pay for the bill" tactic. That night, we had appetizers at bombay bhel and then we went to The Attic.

AFterwards, Christal (from ocac), and the paris people and I took the subway downtown so that I can teach them how to use the subway for monday and tuesday. Went to sleep after 2 am but Tsing and I were lucky enough to pray together.

Monday, I went to work, they went to steamwhistle brewery and gave me ticket for a free beer. yay! I took them to Maison Du Japon and Gilies was so happy to go because apparently japanese food is expensive in paris and they don't have all you can east. So he says to me "are you perfect?" and I wasn't really sure about where he was going with that question. Apparently it was his way of expressing how happy he was that I took them to all you can eat sushi.

While trying to drive the boys home, we somehow ended up stopping at a Metro grocery store at eglinton bayview area. Laurent was soooooo fascinated by the cereal box aisle. Tsing and I helped Gilies pick out body wash. The cashier turned out to be belgium and started speaking french with the paris people. He exclaimed that he's never met chinese people who can speak perfect french. Went to bed after 2 pm.

Tuesday, we did korean bbq and Ginny suggested Seoul Garden restaurant (beside Pacific Mall). That place was pretty awesome. We got a small group of people (whoever I saw online while at work) and hilarity ensued. Dennis said his two most important french sentences: "ou est la toilette" (where is the toilet) and "ou sont mes pantalons" (where are my pants). Richard dazzled us with "les hommes sans pantalons sont tres gros" as in "men without pants are fat". Laurent didn't understand what he said because Richard was talking nonsense. Ginny's got this weird ability to know people's ages. She needs to join a carnival. Laurent asked Ginny if she was married to Richard. I couldn't stop laughing and crying. They were good sports and played along with it. Jeff demonstrated his broad library of kung fu moves and Tsing was impressed enough that she told me she wanted to take pictures of the moves and document them. Laurent was trying to tell Sam that he has no wrinkles but he dind't know how to say "wrinkles" so he put his hands to his temples and squished his face.

Went to bed at 2 am - but that's okay because I didn't have to go to work the next day since it was Canada Day!

I took Tsing to port credit and we ate at snug harbour. Then I picked up Jeannie and her husband Andrew who flew in from Vancouver for JMC and I dropped them off at Brock. Met up with Cliff and Marc and headed to the airport to greet JMC delegates. WE were waiting for the people from Jamaica. To my surprise, I bumped into Auntie Mary and Uncle Henry who are apparently living in Jamaica now but are in towm for JMC (parents of Lillian, Caroline, and Ben who moved to Vancouver). We also bumped into Anna and Wilson who just returned from LA. I also met this cool Jamaican girl and it was just so weird to hear a chinese person speaking with a jamaican accent. I ended up trading contact info with her and she told me i can stay at her place if i'm ever in Montego Bay. Score! Will see her sometime this weekend.

Tsing thinks you like like Miss Hong Kong from the early 2000's. She isn't sure which one.

backyard baptism bachelorette bachelor bstuff

2009-06-30T08:45:00.000-07:00

Saturday, I got to go to Em's baptism which took place in an above ground pool in a backyard. how cool is that? I've never come fact to face with an above ground pool. I tried to take a picture underwater of Emily getting baptized but all i got were her bending legs. That's okay too I suppose. We followed it up with a bbq lunch. yum. The sun was beating down and I guess as a future bride, I'm super worried about tan lines so I did my best to tan my neck and collar bone upper chest area.

I went to party packagers to buy bachelorette stuff. There was a lot of selection and no, I did not buy the candy shaped like body parts.

Went to Nikki's bachelorette party and I was able to pass down Kaori's value village veil. I asked Em to make nikki a fake bouquet and funny enough, Nikki thought they were real flowers. mind you, she did have martini before meeting up with us.

Then Geoff's Part 2 bachelor party/Jonny's Part 1 bachelor party united with us. I'm not going to comment on what happened next other than the fact that hilarity ensued and the pics are for jonny and nikki's eyes only - deleted off my camera forever once I put them on a USB key.

Went to sleep at 2 am. exhausted. Every night i've been sleeping at 2 am since Sat night.

Paris people are in town for JMC. Will do a follow up post on that.

transformers - leaves my eye wanting more dialogue

2009-06-24T11:26:00.000-07:00

I never thought I would say this about an action film but, I wish there was less action and more dialogue/humour. You know how the first transformers has a 30 minute action sequence? This one has a sequence that is at least twice as long and after a while it's like "okay, another robot fight....AGAIN"x10. Dennis actually fell asleep during the action.

Michael Bay must be the US military's favourite director.

They worked Shia Labeouf's hand into the script.

I won't watch this one again. I like the first one a lot more.

weekend of missions, arts, food, and 20th anniversary

2009-06-15T08:25:00.000-07:00

Saturday, we woke up earlier than usual to hit up the Heart For Asia OMF missions presentation in Cambridge. It was really neat that Jesse joined us because although he is a seeker, he was able to participate in our discussion in the car regarding the Emerging Church thanks to Emily and myself persistently asking Sam about the paper he has to write for Lee's class.

The average age of attendee was probably in the sixty something but they were all very nice people and the lunch was filling. It almost put me to sleep in the afternoon. A few of us bought some books and there was an obvious trend in our choice of purchase. The girls bought books that were about strong females. I went with an Isobel Kuhn book. Bonnie sold me on it when she said that Isobel's sort of a revolutionary female in missions. SOLD! I also got a manga novel about Hudson Taylor called White Devil. I will probably end up giving it away in sunday school.

Afterwards, a few of us decided to check out Luminato in downtown Toronto as well as the food sampling festival thing where you pay $5 and then you get to eat a dish of gourmet food. We were tired but the great weather won us over, and Jesse and I convinced Sam to delay writing his paper for "2 hours" of fun which really turned into 4-5 hours.

We went to look at the Cirque the Soleil performance where they incorporated the flinging of mops into their routine. It was mainly a gymnastics presentation and I couldn't get a good view. I suspect these are the cirque de soleil trainees who aren't ready for Las Vegas. Later we checked out the food sampling where there were major line ups. I got a fat piece of lamb at which point random asian guy in a grey tank/wife beater who looks familiar comes up to me and says "you only got one piece, I got two!" I was explaining to Ada that he looks like someone who should be in one of those historical chinese drama movies where he's wearing traditional chinese dress and he's got the chinese cap on and the long braid in the back. That kind of look.

I make my way to where Emily is waiting for ribs..oh yes..ribs. Asian guy approaches a few minutes later and remarks that I've already finished my lamb. Emily's asking me if I know the guy because she thinks he look familiar and I'm thinking he looks familiar but I really have no clue who he is. The girls tell me that the next time he comes to talk to me, I should make some obvious gesture to the ring on my fourth finger.

We get the ribs, and as we walk past people, I can see their eyes lingering on our food and they start asking me where I got the ribs. I proceed to make a sales pitch about which line to line up. What can I say? I am so used to talking to strangers that it doesn't turn off on the weekend.

We finish the food and approach the garbage can and I am informed by friends that asian guy has gotten up and starts walking towards us. I sort of turn and walk to the other garbage can really fast because frankly, I don't want weird confrontations. Ginny let's me know that I don't have to walk away because he's not looking/approaching anymore.

The group debates over an issue of major importance - to have ice cream, or not?

We head over to listen to the weird music at the Sirius stage and Ginny get's the Dibs ice cream which is highly appropriate for large groups as we can grab bite sized chocolate covered ice cream. YUM! What a perfect way to end the night. We also wanted to see Ginny "start a movement" by dancing alone on the sidewalk.

Sunday, we celebrated MCAC's 20th anniversary with a service in the gym and that totally rocked. Lee's sermon was very appropriate as the church is starting to take on new initiatives. Bonnie introduced me to some new people that I'm hoping to invite to some Emmanuel things. Apparently they've been coming to the church for 2-3 months but I've never seen them before. We went to Starwalk for lunch to celebrate the anniversary and I was placed with the youth which wasn't too bad. I felt like I was able to connect with Liz and Amanda at the table and I wouldn't mind teaching them next year if given the chance.

So the kids pranked us. That is, they put some stuff into our coke. Whether it was pepper, or wasabi, or chicken feet, or soya sauce. I was the lucky recipient of the soya sauce (thank goodness I didn't get the chicken feet) where I took a sip of coke and promptly spat it back into the cup. I see it as a badge of honour that they feel comfortable enough to spike the drink of an elder and two sunday school teachers. Chances are, you only prank people that you know can take a joke. Mind you, I remember in elementary school when we would try and prank the substitute teachers that we strongly dislike. Hopefully it was the former and not the latter.

Last night I watched The Matrix on APTN. I'm not really sure what the connection is to aboriginals. Maybe through Keanu?

Zumba/hiphop

2009-06-12T10:31:00.001-07:00

So Jonny joined the gang on some Zumba fun at goodlife and boy did the instructor work us hard. I had sweat dripping off my face. She had us shaking parts that our mama never gave us. We spent probably a quarter of the class doing hip movements. She also split the class and kind of had a dance off. Sort of like when you watch the prom scene in She's All That and you've got the girls doing something while the guys watch...and then the guys respond back with a routine. That's what we did.

Afterwards, apparently Jonny told Oscar that he will never do Zumba again (because it was awkward being one of two guys in the class, and also because the class was so hard). He changed his mind the next day and said, because the class was so hard, he has to do it again.

fat fridays and sunny saturdays

2009-06-07T22:03:00.000-07:00

I got to spend some time with the girls eating desserts. Hello fat fridays! Good conversations - I left Naomi's at 11:30 pm.

Saturday - Christian Heritage Day at Ontario Place mixed with a Hillsong Concert. The previous night, I had woken up in the middle of the night to pray to God that he would heal my sore throat because I had been sick for a week and on Fat Friday, Naomi, Malina, and Ginny were talking about how prolonged sickness can turn into Sinusitis. I didn't want to be another Sinusitis victim, especially if I'm faced with a full day at Ontario Place with a mix of junior high and senior high students. God did not heal me. However, my sore throat actually gave me a way "in" with one of the high school girls. P. John asked me to sit with her and we talked about a lot of different things like studying business, Laurier, Michael Ignatieff, fellowship and then she started blowing her nose and confessed to me that she had a sore throat. That was my moment to step in and offer her the Halls cherry candies that I purchased less than 15 hours ago. I also gave her an extra two Halls for the rest of the day. 12 hours later, she still remembered who I was at the end of the day. This is probably the only time I would champion having a sore throat - when it gives us the opportunity to connect to strangers.

The Hillsong concert was pretty awesome. An Irish band called BlueTree opened up for them. I recognized more than half the songs - that's a pretty major thing for me because I don't know that many worship songs. Halfway through the concert, I joined the crowd in jumping around, only to realize that I didn't have the stamina to jump through the whole song (I'm old). I restricted myself to jumping only during the chorus. They brought on stage a couple that got married earlier in the day who came to the concert to worship - they were still in their wedding clothes. The Hillsong people presented them with a shirt that had a spelling mistake, it said "Untied Rocks" insead of United Rocks. That's funny. The message at the concert was about bringing the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

The people in front of us were very into the worship. They were high fiving each other and then one of them turned around to high five us. I kind of left him dangling and then went in for the high five because it wouldn't be nice to deny a high five at a worship service.

I learned a new song. Below is an excerpt. That's probably the closest I'll ever be to feeling like I'm chanting at a European soccer match. The lights were awesome and no, that was not the last song of the night. There were a lot of fake endings and encores. The concert ended at around 11 pm, I think.

Thanks to Jeff and P. John for going through trash to retrieve my waterbottle. The security guard told us we couldn't bring our bottles into the molson ampitheatre but they said we could retrieve it afterwards. Security ended up throwing away the water bottles. P. John and Jeff found out and they took the time to go through the trash to retrieve many water bottles and one of our kid's lunch boxes and wallet. (yeah security threw out not just food, but a lunch box/bag, wallet, toys won in the arcade).

My kids loved the concert and they were telling me how they ran to the pit during One Way. One of my kids made a deicision last night so I'm super happy about that.

free massage denied

2009-06-04T14:57:00.001-07:00

Dennis says:
hey so
Dennis says:
i sold my boat on craigslist
Dennis says:
and this woman was like
Dennis says:
my daughter really likes to fish but i dont have much money
Dennis says:
but i'm a massuses so i can give u a free massage
Dennis says:
i dont respond
Dennis says:
and then a few hours later she's like oh btw they are erotic massages. and i will give 120% effort and she sent her brochure
Dennis says:
and its like really really fat lady
Dennis says:
like 300 lbs
Dennis says:
but by then i had already sold my boat to a gentleman
Dennis says:
and no massage

i'm a celebrity.....

2009-06-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

So they just had an eating challenge and one of the menu items was tripe. Tori wrestler girl and Baldwin brother had a tough time eating it.

We've got some competition

2009-05-31T20:30:00.001-07:00

Today Dennis was looking for domain names and apparently http://elaineanddennis.com was already taken. We were snooping through their site and saw that they had two weddings and they travelled all over the place in what I can only assume to be a 48 day honeymoon. Dennis' response was "you're marrying the wrong Dennis."

I watched UP in 3D. I laughed. I cried. I was proud to see two underrepresented groups as main characters: old people and asians. Yay!

Canyon pics - from dennis' camera

2009-05-27T22:17:00.001-07:00

At the Grand Canyon - took a brief stop while walking along the rim.Me and Dennis

It is grand.

Dennis takes a leap, then a fall at Glen Canyon

Bryce Canyon group pic - I don't know why Mew-lin is so far from the group

I take a picture of the stone statue that we built at sunset point in the grand canyon

I read about Death In Grand Canyon book.

Sitting on a ledge (this is before reading Death In Grand Canyon book)

Post Bright Angel trail hike

Pre Bright Angel Trail Hike

PS, I ended up getting a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies at the airport.

A sample of text of Darcy describing an accomplished woman:

"A woman must have thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages; she must be well trained in the fighting styles of the Kyoto masters and the modern tactics and weaponry of Europe. And besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half-deserved. All this she must possess, and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading."

I thought of you this weekend

2009-05-12T09:29:00.000-07:00

Bonnie K came up to me and told me that she thought of me this weekend. It turns out she was at Chapters and came across a book called: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!

Product Description"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read.

I think Bonnie basically thought i was a bastardization of Jane Austen's work.

I secretly hope she buys it for me for my birthday.

I am also happy that I'm not the only one in the world who likes Jane Austen and zombies. It received 4 out of 5 stars on the amazon website based on 97 reviews.

Customers who searched for "zombie pride and prejudice" also expressed interest in:
The Zombie Survival Guide: Complte Protection from the Living Dead
Jane Austen Ruined my Life

Customers who bought this item also bought:
World War Z and Oral History of the Zombie Wars (book)
Lost in Austen (DVD)

From a marketing perspective - this is absolutely fascinating because normally these items would be marketed to two different target markets.

dennis in vegas

2009-05-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

Dennis somehow got called onto the stage at Penn & Teller show (the magicians - one is fat, the other one is mute). He had to read from a joke book in front of a packed audience, but he was pretty nervous because he doesn't read. Anyway he told me he didn't get the joke.

Happy Mother's Day + star trek

2009-05-10T21:53:00.000-07:00

Totally not for nerds anymore. PT was wondering why I haven't blogged about the movie yet so here I go.

I really liked it. I had a tear come out of each eye within the first ten minutes of the movie. That's right, I got past the watery eye stage and had a single tear come out from both eyes..rolling down my cheek for a scene that reminded me of another Michael Bay movie.

They did a very good job of infusing humour into the movie and not using star trek jargon. Spock's hair still looks bad. I'm glad that the one weird alien creature can't talk (we don't need any jar jar binks type characters).

SPOILER

I also liked how the suave charismatic doesn't get the hot girl. Instead it is the nerd guy who get's the girl. That must give hope to all the Trekkies out there.

SPOILER OVER

Anton Yelchin is going to be the hot new actor after this summer. He's the russian kid in star trek, and he's in terminator salvation as Kyle Reese.

Fun The ONION link about Star Trek movie

While talking about The Onion, go see the satire they did on The World of World of Warcraft:

I love you mom!

need to go shopping this weekend

2009-05-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

for now hiking boots. I'm stil wearing the same hiking boots that i got some time in high school. However, now the rubber is separating from the rest of the boot.

I can't find the camelback pack!

movie time!

2009-05-04T10:16:00.000-07:00

I saw Wolverine and I loved it. It was so good (except for the male nudity). For a moment I thought they were going to go all Clark Kent on the plot but they didn't. I found out there are three different post credit endings so you have to stay until the very end of the credits.

Last night I watched X-Men and X-Men 2 and realized how campy they are compared to Wolverine.

These quotes made my weekend:
"I don't want to be touched emotionally" - friend says to me in response to a particular movie that came out this week.
"So, no teary eyes, except for that we paid for the movie. " - a different friend writes to me in response to having watched the "emotionally touching" movie.
Needless to say, this movie will be a goodlife rental.

I went to Dawn's bridal shower and I was given the task of wearing the toilet paper dress. Lovely. We had a toilet paper dress competition and I was arguing that my team should win because we had a strap on the paper dress which makes is grandparent appropriate, yet the dress is on the brink of falling apart which would make it easier for Jon (her future husband) to take off. We lost.

Sunday school story: I went around the class asking the kids what's the coolest thing that they did this past week. One of my kids who kind of reminds me of Jonny cuz he's super laid back was like "I went to a party" and I thought that was going to be the end of his answer but he continued on saying "and i was offered a smoke but I said no". I was like "yay!" and then we all clapped. It was like an Alcoholics Anonymous moment. How cool is that?

La Boheme ......DONE!

2009-04-26T16:08:00.000-07:00

I told myself that at some point in my life, I would like to watch a Puccini opera. I accomplished this task last night by going to see La Boheme at the Four Seasons Centre. $20 ($25 if you include the service charge and tax) if you are 29 and younger. That's me! Malina and I found out that the tickets go on sale at 10 am on April 2nd for Opera For a New Age (under 30 crowd). I wake up on that Saturday and we are both online as soon as the clock turns 10 am. By 10:30 am, the tickets were selling so fast for Opera For a New Age, that you had to either choose a different day of performance, or buy single person tickets. Our show was sold out.

Adventure 1: driving to downtown as the cop cars block all Gardiner Express entrances. We took the Queensway all the way downtown, and Naomi did some awesome movie style lane changes in order to get us to the green P at Nathan Phillips -$10 versus the $20 at the Four Seasons Centre.

Adventure 2: Me and the girls braved the wind and rain as we went looking for the Queen Mother thai restaurant on Queen. That may not seem much but considering we were wearing skirts and dresses, wind and rain is a lethal combination as you walk downtown, trying not to provide any kind of unwanted exposure. By they way, yes you can wear jeans to the opera but I think I saw less than 5 people wearing jeans. Some people at floorlength dresses (I assume those would be the ladies sitting in the $200 tickets section).

We eat, we meet up with Annie at the Four Seasons and we discover that we are at the absolute highest possible seaing. That is, there is no other row behind us. The difference between this theatre and the musical theatres is that the level of seats are sufficiently placed so that no one's head obstructs your view unless they decide to lean forward in their seats.

I only recognized the songs Che gelida manina, Musetta's Waltz, and Quando m'en vo'. I love the set design. The set's were pretty awesome and the atmosphere was good in that people weren't afraid to clap at the end of songs. If you were wondering if we understood the story, they give you a program which provides a synopsis of the 4 Acts (oh yes, we had three intermissions and haagen daaz is $6) and there are subtitles so you would know when to laugh in the opera.

Adventure 3: On the way back to the car as we were walking in the rain, a man approaches us and says something about "Chinese girls". Naomi, Malina and I go silent and I hear our heels tapping on the ground a bit fasater. Downtown = scary.

Anyway, I really liked the opera and I wouldn't mind going to another one as long as I recognize the songs.

2 hours later and I'm done....

2009-04-22T21:12:00.000-07:00

my taxes. I had to search for an hour for my Notice of Assessment and I couldn't access my line 150 on my previous year's stuff.

I'm still sore from my Sunday work out. Ada pointed out the creepy man who asked her to massage his thigh. Dennis' response when I told him was, "that's all right. She's a nurse"

I am really looking forward to the weekend. Worship night with Naomi, Saturday is dim sum with my mom and her cousin and cousin's gf, Emily's wedding shower, La Boheme with the girls. Sunday is church.

When wind is not your friend

2009-04-19T17:04:00.000-07:00

I finished watching A&E's Pride and Prejudice and was inspired by the romance so on Sunday, I decided to experiment with the hair straightener and attempted to curl my hair. The experiment kind of went awry and left me with really big hair. So big that I had to use a scrunchie to do a side ponytail. I'm going to bring the side ponytail back into fashion. With romantic hair, I needed to wear romantic clothing so I went with a lightweight short skirt. I looked up the windspeed the previous night and thought that 20 km/hour wouldn't be too bad. This morning, as I walked to my car from my door, I didn't feel much wind. Well, when I stepped out of my car in the church parking lot, oh yes, I felt the effects of the wind. I had to walk awkwardly to avoid any marilyn monroe moments. We're talking about bible bag held behind me, big white purse in front of me. Pat tried to walk in front of me as a wall shielding me from the wind.

Then I met up with the uw girls for lunch and I ended up tying my jacket behind me to add weight to the back of the skirt. I used my hands to keep the front of the skirt from flapping around.

I will have to categorize which clothes are wind appropriate.

dress shopping = success!

2009-04-18T17:33:00.000-07:00

I met up with Amanda in downtown TO and in yonge and dundas square, there was this super random walkoff. No music was playing. It was just two rows of girls walking down an imaginary catwalk and they would stop in front of these three young guys. Then they would turn around and walk back to their place in line. Then another two girls would walk off. Amanda was guessing that maybe they were walking off to win a prom date with the guys?

We went to Senators for breakfast/lunch and it was yum. I couldn't finish my milk shake because it was so filling. At the Eaton Centre, it was alot of fun shopping with Amanda because her style is basically everything that I find tacky and ugly. I'm serious. She was telling me how disappointed she was in Japan when she found a really ugly pair of acid wash jeans with strips of leather that didn't fit her. Yup, she described the pants as ugly, and yet she still wanted them badly. Weird stuff looks "right" on her. Like, you know those feather/giant flower headbands that all the stores are selling? That stuff looks good on her. Also, whenever I go out with her, a stranger will always ask her where she got her clothes. Today at BCBG, the sales lady was asking Amanda about her pants. They looked like BCBG $200 crop pants but Amanda got hers at H&M for $30.

Anyway, it turns out we went to BCBG on a good day because they had a sale going on. $100 off any item that is $300 or more. Success! We found an awesome bridesmaid dress that both Amanda and Tania would wear again, and it doesn't look bridesmaid-ish.

caught up in Austen

2009-04-18T07:39:00.000-07:00

I'm going through my Jane Austen period again.

Last week on TVO they showed Lost in Austen followed by Mansfield Park. I think I'm going to buy Lost in Austen.
From imdb: Amanda, an ardent Jane Austen fan, lives in present day London with her boyfriend Michael, until she finds she's swapped places with Austen's fictional creation Elizabeth Bennett.

Apparently Sam Mendes of American Beauty fame is thinking of turning it into a movie. I can't wait.

So last night, I decided that I wanted to spend my Friday night with Mr. Darcy. I popped in my BBC version of Pride and Prejudice and started watching it again. I think over the next weekends, if I have time, I'll go through BBC Pride and Prejudice, followed by Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice, and then I will transition to Anne of Green Gables dvds. Within a month's time, I will be all "romanced out".

i wish i was in LA

2009-04-17T20:55:00.000-07:00

A friend from Urbana contacted me today and told me that if I was in LA next week, he would get me front stage center for a Depeche Mode concert because he's working on production for the TV concert. The funny thing was that I actually talked to a customer about Depeche Mode earlier today. I need contacts like that in Toronto.

Work has been rough but I'm surviving. Pat was a sweetie and asked if he could drop over last night. I declined and told him to save the food for his lunch.

I'm meeting up with Amanda tomorrow to go bridesmaid dress shopping. Yay! I wonder if the sales ladies are going to think we are going prom dress shopping. I'm glad Tania trusts us to make the right decision. I can't say that we deserve her high opinion though! Amanda's growing out her hair for the wedding but apparently it's at the ugly halfway length so she's resorted to wear a lot of hats. I told her people might think she's going through chemo.

Prison Break is BACK!

From G's to Gents is finished!

I'm watching The Duel II!

I started reading "Christ our Mediator" a small book that I "won" when I the first person to name the 7th book of the Bible. It is a good read during my lunch time and before I go to bed.

I also grabbed a book from Marc's place. A very fat collection of the Grimm's Brothers fairytalkes. So far so good.

I don't think I will finish All The Pretty Horses. I'm finding it really slow, really dry.

I went to Failte's last week and I liked it eventhough the music was super loud. I would like to go on a night where they play irish music.

Our almost wedding MC

2009-04-06T16:11:00.000-07:00

Dennis went to one of those sci-fi conventions and one of the actors of battlestar galactica was there. The actor was tellling Dennis how he was going to be around Toronto filming The Bridge and he told Dennis to come check it out when he's back. Dennis asks him if he's going to be around for Labour Day weekend and then he asked him if he would emcee at our wedding. They guy said "yeah yeah yeah" in the sort of way that suggests that you've taken too much of his time already. Aaron Douglas who plays The Chief Galen Tyrol.
It's this guy -> http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2331416832/nm0234928

Dennis didn't ask Tahmoh Penikett to come to the wedding because he's shooting Dollhouse in LA and in Dennis' words, "he's too good looking". This guy played Helo. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0671886/

SNUGGIE

2009-04-06T16:06:00.000-07:00

I swallowed my pride and went to the Showcase store and bought a Snuggie for Ginny because I remember she told me that she really wanted the "blanket with sleeves". I was pretty embarrassed because it didn't look like a fast mover in the store - the boxes were properly stacked and it didn't look like anyone bought a snuggie. I take the box to the cashier and I avoid making eye contact. All I want to say is "it's not for me, it's for my friend's birthday". In my head, I kept on hoping that the store would put the box into an opaque shopping bag. I was wrong. So wrong. The bag was one of those white plastic bags where you can read the snuggie box - hello mall shoppers, yes, I purchased a snuggie. I swear it's not for me.

I've got a case of Benjamin Button.

2009-04-04T22:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I went to a club for a friend's birthday and so of course, I gave my ID to the doorman. The doorman looks at my ID, looks at me, looks at my ID, looks at me, and says "you look younger than in your picture." All I could respond with was "I have an eternal face" and I did that hand circle motion over my face and he laughed.

I had my driver's license picture taken in 2006. I wore makeup to the club to look older. Obviously that's not working. I should advertise my "make up artist services" to the 50 and older crowd on craigslist.

tv schedule

2009-03-30T11:01:00.000-07:00

My friend wanted to give me a call to talk about her wedding stuff since I'm helping her out. The funny thing was that she was asking me what day I would be available on the phone.

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 11:16 PM, Friend wrote:I was wondering when you are free one night either this week or next week so I can set up a phone mtg with you about helping with our wedding?Let me know what works :) (Please not on Wed. Lost is on )Thanks!

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 12:00 AM, I wrote:haha you're funny....I am free on Fridays after 6 pm.

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 12:02 AM, Friend wrote:Any other days besides Fridays?I'm usually on a train to TO at that time :P~ Friend

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 12:05 AM, I wrote:well, how about saturday or sunday before 7pm (Departures, Kings)? I have fellowship on thursday, prayer meeting on wednesdays......I can do monday before 9 pm (24), and tuesday before 10 pm (project runway canada)

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 6:55 AM, Friend wrote:
I think next Tuesday would be best :) - Monday's are Heroes (but at the rate the plot line is going, my Mondays will soon be very free). This weekend i'm in TO, and i'm already going to be going bananas from all this planning. Tuesday is good. Ok! So it's a date! See you on Tuesday before 10pm.

My mom is used to this and knows not to call me during 24. There was a time when I used to watch the Amazing Race and mom knew that Sundays at 8 pm, I probably won't pick up the phone or I wouldn't be paying too much attention to the phone conversation. bad.