vacation part 2: toronto (part 1 of 2)

we flew into toronto on wednesday night, and enjoyed some yummy asian take-out :-) after settling into geoff & sunny's condo, we got ourselves oriented with our neighbourhood. they're right in downtown toronto....nice!

on thursday, chris got to relive his "stick-driving" days, as we busted our way down to niagara falls. after a few wrong turns, we managed to find our way onto the highway. because we got a later start than anticipated, we only managed to walk around the falls and view it from the street. we had filled our entire thursday with plans.....we had to leave the falls to go visit derrick, chris' uncle, in st. catherine's, and he took us out for lunch. after that, we went back to the falls to go on the maid of the mist boat ride. chris and i both had a near catastrophe when we approached the falls......both of us almost lost a contact lens. blimey! i can't believe that in 1991 my brother and i were too scared to bo on the upper deck during the boat ride. instead, we both huddled under cover and looked from afar :P the only disappointment was that even after my 2nd trip to niagara falls, i still haven't done the "journey under the falls" walk. oh well, maybe if/when there's a 3rd trip, i'll make it happen.












anyways, all was fine after the boat ride, and we booted back to toronto in rush hour traffic. we had dinner plans w/my family to get to! once we got to dinner we were finally able to sit back, relax, and have a great meal and catch-up.

on friday, chris and i slept in and wandered around downtown.....cn tower (that glass bottom platform scared the beejeezus out of me!), air canada centre, rogers centre, and the hockey hall of fame. for dinner, the 4 of us went to pure spirits oyster bar & grill for dinner to celebrate chris' 30th birthday. dinner was sooooo good :-) after my duo of beef entree, i polished off sunny's french fries for my dessert!














a trip to toronto wouldn't be complete without a trip to the niagara-on-the-lake wineries. so we headed off to jackson triggs, where i proceeded to get slightly (or more, depending on who you ask) drunk :P at least it was after 12 p.m.! i even bought 2 of the dessert wines.....i can't remember what they were, but i'll post about them after i enjoy them at home :) i was cut off after my ice wine tasting, so geoff and chris clutched up and carried on at a few more vineyards.














as i mentioned in my previous post, this could be called our gambling vacation.....well, true to form, after the wineries we made our way to the fallsview casino. after i won big on the slot machine, it was all downhill from there. we all walked out losers :-( oh well.

and now, chris and i are off to vernon, connecticut to visit another cousin who he hasn't seen since they all left south africa in 1989! should be fun.....she's planning a cook-out for us.....i'm not sure what that is, but it sounds like a lot of food is involved!

later gators!

vacation part 1: the maritimes

well, we made it. in a whirlwind 6 days, we've been there, done that. we started in halifax and then drove our way up cape breton island to the cabot trail, then headed back down and over to charlottetown, drove over the confederation bridge to new brunswick, and then straight on back to halifax to catch our flight to toronto.

i think the major highlight of part 1 was meeting and then eating "larry". who's larry? well, larry is (er, was) a 9.5 lb lobster. once we set our eyes on him, we knew he would be tasty. geoff's eyes were just sparkling thinking about him. so, not only were we strange to start with (not too many asians make their way across the maritimes apparently), but we now wanted to eat larry. we were the talk of the restaurant :-) even after when we were walking around charlottetown, ppl stopped us to ask how our lobster was! it was quite an adventure eating larry.....his claws were bigger than sunny's hands :-) she could actually stick her hand inside it and use the pinchers! too funny! but by the end of the meal, we were all completely stuffed - also because the meal comes with a plateful of mussels to start. crazy!

at the start of our trip the weather wasn`t very cooperative. it rained pretty much for 3 days straight. but when we were halfway throught the cabot trail, the sun decided to come out, so we did get to see some of the beautiful scenary.

we`ve been calling this the east coast trip, but it could actually be called the casino trip as well. in halifax we hit the casino for several hours.....the boys had fun playing poker and taking money from the locals, while sunny and i got a kick out of the $2 blackjack. since charlottetown`s a quiet city, we were surprised there was a casino, so of course we had to check it out. we sat down at a $1 - $2 no limit table, where sunny and i quickly lost our $40. the boys faired a bit better. oh well, good times, good times :-)

with all the history of the maritimes, we`ve learned a lot....whether it was from the fine folks at the alexander keith brewery tour (proper thing!), the lieutenant at the halifax citadel, to the founders hall museum in charlottetown.....there`s a lot of history here. don`t ask me to remember everything i`ve learned though. after all, i am on vacation :-)

also, we`ve all eaten our fair share of seafood.....shrimps, scallops, lobsters, fish, mussels, oysters, etc. etc. it`s been a great trip so far, and we still have 2.5 weeks to go! i have to say that i`m really looking forward to having some chinese food tonight when we get to toronto.

ta ta for now!

3 weeks of fun....here i come!

this is it!

we're finally off on our 3 week vacation to the east coast. i meant to blog throughout the week since i had so much exciting stuff to blog about, but i just got too busy. oh well, i'll catch up later :-)

later!

a "me" weekend

what a weekend! i am so proud of myself for getting so much stuff done over 2 days. with having a puppy, chris' birthday celebration and mother's day activities next weekend, i kicked my butt in gear to actually get stuff done. i timed everything really well this weekend, and managed to make 2 batches of lychee sorbet. tomorrow night i'll be getting the rum raisin ice cream ready (chris' favourite!).

it might not look like it, but i even did some tidying up in the condo. i still have some serious work to do this week before we have friends over on friday night :P i've also got a few of my co-workers coming over for dinner the day before our trip. i know, i know, crazy! i also did a lot of shopping - i needed to buy clothes and toiletries before our vacation.

while i didn't actually cook on friday (dinner at miletone's w/mike & stan) or saturday (dinner at house of tofu soup), i did manage to make spaghetti today. it's always good to have leftovers for lunch :-) plus, our re-scheduled agm is on monday night so we'll be eating out afterwards. i also bought a bunch of ingredients for my fruit smoothies. this is my effort at cutting down on latte's and other breakfast goodies.

i also managed to visit both of my grandma's today. since chris and i can't celebrate mother's day w/grandma m., we went to drop off her present today.....1 jug of lychee jellies, 1 jug of mango jellies, and a whole bunch of scratch & (hopefully) wins. i told grandma not to eat all the jellies at once.....i'm not sure if she understood me though :P lost in translation! at least my aunt was there and she heard me :)

and now i think the countdown to our vacation has begun....we've realized we just don't have enuf time. chris wanted to see spiderman 3 this week, but i think we've run out of free evenings. he also has to pick up his new runners and get a haircut before we leave. it sucks cuz he's had to work 7 days a week lately :P

oh well. i thrive under pressure, so it'll be fun. maybe. or not.

i'm bringing SEXY BACK!

them other boys don't know how to act! yeah!

yah baby, my justin timberlake tickets arrived today :-) i'm so super excited about his concert on september 5. i think sel's even more excited than me, which is hard to believe! i can only imagine the trouble we're going to cause at gm place that night....hehehehe!

i'm totally concert crazy right now. josh groban is coming to vancouver in august, and i would really like to see him, but JT cost me a lot. also, chris and i just bought tickets to see boyz II men on june 17. i also tried to get gwen stefani tickets, but by the time i got around to it, the only seats were sort of behind the stage, and i wasn't down w/that.

good times ahead!

i got the bejeezus scared right outta me!

as part of my responsibility as a fire warden for my office, attendance at the annual training session is required. so, renee, louanne and i represented our office and sat through 3 hours of intense, horrific and scary disaster scenarios.

the gentleman who did the training was very passionate about safety, and covered everything from fire drills, bomb threats, biotoxins in the mail, earthquakes, etc. etc. it was very participation-focused so what i thought would be my snooze-time quickly turned into active listening and participation. the trainer had been to almost every major disaster over the past few decades and he shared his personal pictures with us. it's one thing to see the pictures in the news, but to see and hear this man tell his experiences first-hand as a search & rescue worker and former firefighter, it brought everything closer to home.

we learned many important lessons (some were general reminders), some of which i'm going to list now:

• during an earthquake, the safest spot is under a table or desk; the former belief that doorframes were safe is no longer true. if there is no table or desk nearby, then find a corner wall and squat in front of it with your back firmly against the wall (to protect your spine), hands covering your head.
• after an earthquake, always count to at least 10 before leaving your secure spot. there's always a chance of an aftershock.
• anyone in the downtown core after a major earthquake is pretty much screwed. all the bridges would probably be damaged, but even if they weren't, they would be restricted to emergency vehicles only. also, richmond is going to sink to a certain degree, so they're in trouble as well :P regardless of where you live or work, you never know when an earthquake could hit.....we could be anywhere!
• emergency stairs are the safest place to be during a fire, as long as the exit doors are not propped open. remember to use the crossover floors if a stairwell becomes inaccessible as you're exiting, or if there is major conjestion.
• a fire can consume an entire room in less than 30 seconds. we watched a video depicting how that happens. crazy!

while my bullet points above are fairly common sense and what most ppl already know, it was these other points that brought more awareness to the intensity and danger we could face:

• the downtown core will be buried under 6-10 feet of glass from all the buildings. if you are near a building, try to get inside....you wouldn't want to get hit w/huge shards of glass.
• during an earthquake, don't call your family, friends, radio/tv stations (i'm guilty of this from 2001). the lines need to stay clear for emergency situations. wait 90 minutes after the earthquake has ended, then get in contact w/your out-of-town contacts and report that you are safe and where you are. then wait a further 24 hours before calling again to find out about your loved ones.
• sewer systems will probably not be functioning, and hepatitis becomes a risk. what goes in, must come out - the key is to go into a plastic bag in these emergency situations. sounds nasty, but 3 days of contaminated water is even nastier.

i am pleased to say that i am somewhat prepared for 3 days following an emergency. however, i'm only ready at home. if i'm at my parents house, in the car, or anywhere in between, i'm pretty much s-o-l. i do however need to stock up on more water....you can never have enuf! besides, once the packages near their expiry dates, my girls and i are going to eat our meal bars and water. mmm, yum :P

thank god, the week's up!

so i thought having ginger for a week would be lots of fun. boy, was i wrong :P asides from being the devil wrapped up in cuteness, she somehow managed to get a urinary track infection. so on thursday night, i was up every 1.5 hours to let her outside to pee (or attempt to pee). we learned from our earlier mistake of leaving her in the kennel for an hour, and she managed to pee all over herself. so at 11 p.m. we plopped her into the bathtub for a quick clean-up. needless to say she messed up my friday morning, since we had to go see the vet in burquitlam.

and now, after endless chewing on hands, pants, shoes, chairs, tables, backpacks, the sofa, and scratching our hardwood floor, i am pleased to say that in 14 hours from now, she'll be en route back to PADS and out of my hair for good :-) ginger....good riddance!

no more puppies for at least 6 weeks! whoo-hoo! by then they'll be older and a little better trained :-)

so much puppy!

work is fun....all i do is play!

all that playtime made me sleepy...

strata meetings are boring!

bye cary, hi ginger!

ok, so i thought i could be puppy-less, but after spending time w/cary, i've grown attached to the puppies. so, now i've got ginger w/me....

just catching up on my zzz's

wow, after a ridiculously busy monday (9.5 hour day), tuesday (12 hour day) and wednesday (8.5 hour day) at work, cary and i were able to leave work on time today. i was amazed when i woke up at 6:15 a.m. and realized that i got to sleep throught the night. i guess cary was tired from the long workdays as well :-) i have to say that she's stolen everyone's hearts, and everyone at work is going to be so sad when we have to say farewell on monday afternoon. in just over 48 hours, chris and i have noticed how much she's grown - i could tell when she went bounding up the stairs this afternoon....2 days ago she could barely get her pudgy legs up :-)