sometimes it's all about WHO you know

yesterday started off terrible, but ended great. the side effects from my muscle relaxant really messed me up - i woke up with a massive headache topped off with some lightheadedness and nausea, so i went home to sleep it off. 4 hours later i was as good as new!

i was so worried in the morning, because i had tickets to the canucks game, and i really didn't want to miss it, because the tickets were a recognition gift from my manager. the sleep did me a world of good because i had my appetite back (great news for the buffet dinner we went to!), my headache was gone (bring on the screaming fans!), and my neck was almost back to full range motion (great for keeping an eye on the puck!).

so off we went to the canucks vs. minnesota game. chris and i were both convinced that the canucks would win the game......and not just because we were in attendance :-) we had dinner at the captains club......a bit pricey for the quality of the buffet, but we ate at home all last week, so we deserved a night out! we completely stuffed ourselves with pork tenderloin, leg of lamb, baron of beef, shrimp cocktail, cheesecake, fruit tarts, etc. etc. once we got to our seats, we saw johnny.....an old friend from our dragonboating days. it's all about WHO you know, cuz he hooked us up with some bevies and popcorn. yum! even though i was completely full, there's always room for popcorn, especially when it's free :-) the game wasn't exactly thrilling, and i was resigned to the fact that we'd be sitting through o/t, and then at the 6 second mark, anson carter scored the winning goal! G-O-A-L! gm place was in chaos! o-lay, o-lay, o-lay, o-lay! whoomp, there it is! yeah, baby! and of course the assists went to danny and hank! what a great line :-)

i do have a confession to make......i don't know who 1/2 the players are on our team. it's been so long since i've been to a game, and i don't follow trades or statistics, unless it has to do w/trevor linden's coming and going, so i was completely lost. i kept looking at the jersey numbers and thinking back to previous players....i.e., #3 was brent sopel, #23 was martin somebody or other, #8 was donald brashear, but all 3 players were long, long gone. oh well, whatever.

it was a great night! and to top it all off, i got home just in time to watch animal precinct new york. definitely a great night!

it's not a tumour!

so what i thought was a tumour in my head, was just that......all in my head! i visited my doctor today and he informed me that i have indeed injured a muscle in my neck.....whether it was from sleeping funny, sitting at the computer too long, or sneezing a lot on sunday morning when i woke up......whatever it was, i pulled a muscle. and everything along the side of my head is joined together by this muscle, hence the throb in my temple. so now i'm on the happy drugs, and i can now almost fully turn to the left again :-)

one of the side effects of lots of drugs is drowsiness....the pharmacist did warn me about that, but i've been go, go, go ever since this afternoon, and it hasn't hit me until now. i would just like to fall asleep more than anything else. but it's too early for bedtime :( anyhoo, my drowsiness could have to do w/the fact that i just ate a huge meal at cactus club :-)

tonight was my somewhat regular get-together with my former work friends bal and sati. i love getting together and catching up w/these girls. there was something about our years together at work that just bonded us forever. we would talk about everything under the sun (or rain), and nothing was ever off-limits, and believe me, there are some things you just don't want to know about your friends, but we never taboo'd that (still don't as a matter of fact). the three of us were inseparable back then. for the longest time, being at work wasn't the same after they left, and i have to admit that a part of me will never be the same again. who else am i going to eat a large cinn-zeo bun w/extra icing with?! but life goes on, you adjust and make new friends, but never forget the old friends. how could you forget friends as great as them? you can't! and now bal's going to have a baby in july, and i can't wait to meet him!

to ANONYMOUS, whoever you are

i don't know who you are and i don't really care either. i don't know if it's just spam, or you have nothing better to do than post the same comments day after day under "anonymous", but stop posting on my blog about making quick money!! none of my readers are interested in that, and i don't need money and i don't want to earn my money that way!! just stop already, PLEASE!!

you're obviously keeping an eye on my blog, because you stopped posting comments when i turned on the comment blocker, but didn't hesitate once my guard was down and removed the blocker. BUT IT'S BACK, baby! my post "who needs cash?" wasn't a plea for money, and get-rich quick schemes.....it was merely about the convenience of debit and credit cards. so you can back off now.

sorry my friends for this inconvenience, but there's always someone out there who ruins the fun for everyone else. i'm putting my foot down against spammers and all electronic evil.

it might be a tumour.....

.....stop laughing, renee!

i think i've sneezed so much over the past 24 hours, that i've created a tumour on the left side of my head. it started out as a small little twinge. then it started hurting when i looked left. then i ate spicy food and angered it. and now it's a full-blown throb. i took renee's tumour-reducing drugs she got from some guy somewhere. it looked somewhat legit :-) if you don't see anymore posts from me after this, then you know there was something wrong!

so i brought leftovers from saturday's dinner adventure, but i decided that i just didn't want to eat it for lunch today. so i bought my lunch from rice & spice......chicken curry on rice w/spicy potatoes and eggplant in a tomato-like sauce. so yum! and now i'm so full i can't focus on anything except my slightly-smaller-than-before head tumour.

i think the drugs are magical.....i'm starting to feel better :)

3 little ingredients......can be so terribly wrong.....

yikes! i must be the only person in the world who can mess up rice krispy squares (butter, marshmallows, rice krispies). well, they weren't totally ruined, but they ended up crunchy instead of and goo-y. i even cut back on the amount of rice krispies, but it still wasn't quite right. oh well, i've learned for next time at least.

we had dinner @ milestone's w/my family and a few other relatives tonight. chris and i both had the "special".....8 oz. sirloin (medium rare, of course!) topped w/crab and baby shrimp, with seasonal vegetables (onions, red and yellow peppers and you choy); chris opted for the baby roast potatoes, and i went for my usual.....curly fries w/watercress dip. so yum!

after dinner everyone came back to our condo for coffee and dessert. my brother quite enjoyed the butter tarts :) i nearly freaked out because i had tried one before dinner when i pulled them out of the fridge, and i could barely bite through it. then i remembered they needed to sit out for at least an hour to "soften" up. i'm learning......slowly but surely.

when i hosted the fondue night, sandra taught me how to buy fruit.....even though she was a bit of a newbie at it, too.....we learned together, and we did alright. so today i hit kins, and i bought honeydew, canteloupe, grapes and strawberries. i also bought a pineapple, but i forgot to cut it up so chris and i will eat it tomorrow night.

a mediocre meal

mediocre.....probably because i forgot one important ingredient......the chili powder. it would be important, considering it's called Spicy Coconut Noodles (c/o Real Simple magazine). when i was out shopping for ingredients, i thought i had chili powder, but it turned out to be cayenne pepper. oh well. i also forgot the scallions because i got confused with shallots. honestly! why can't they just be called green onions and mini-onions? and i left out the coconuts because i hate coconuts :)


8 ounces rice noodles or fettuccine
1 13.5 ounce can unsweetened coconut milk
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon chili paste or sauce
3 scallions, thinly sliced
8 ounces bean sprouts
16 basil lelaves, whole or torn
1/4 cut shredded coconut, toasted

cook the noodles according to the package directions. meanwhile, in a large saucepan, over medium heat, combine the coconut milk, tomato paste, chili powder, salt, and chili paste or sauce. bring to a boil. reduce heat and simmer for 2 to 3 minutes. stir in the drained noodles and toss. divide the noodles among individual boals. top with the scallions, sprouts, basil, and coconut.


i also made soup w/pork bones. and then i added choy. so yum! it's a long process to make soup, since it's made from scratch with the pork neck bones.

there's a magnetic force, i tell ya!

the force just pulls me into starbucks everyday! day 1: grand opening, i had to go! day 2: just went to buy earl grey tea and passion tea and some coffee benas. day 3: chris and i had hot chocolate and just sat and chatted, something we hardly ever do. it was nice :-) day 4: my mom came by to help w/my curtain issues, and then we sat and had a latte.

today i'm trying out two new recipes. first up, tara's butter tarts. i'm having some relatives over for coffee and dessert tomorrow night, so i thought i'd try to do something in advance. if it failed, i would still have time to buy something tomorrow :-) i love butter tarts so much, and now that i have the recipe, it could be tempting to make them every day! i noticed right away that i'm not much of a baker.....i don't think i pressed the base enough, and when i brought it out of the oven, it was cracking. yikes! so i poured the topping, hoping it would seal in the cracks! it's like magic, i tell ya! the tarts tured out great! mind you they're actually more like butter tart squares. thanks for sharing the recipe, tara! i think i might have added too much brown sugar to the topping.....when it called for "packed sugar" i really squashed it into my measuring cup. so i made a second batch and just lightly filled the cup. i'm so excited about my new experience right now. the last time i made any attempt at baking was probably w/my grandma when i was about 10 years old. check it out...

cooking adventure #2 will follow later. stay tuned!

better than yesterday :)

today was a good day. no disastrous phone calls. no break-ins. and the starbucks in my complex opened today! it's gonna be really really great or really really bad. as if working d/t with a starbucks on every street corner wasn't tempting enough, now all i have to do is ride down the elevator, and wha-bam! there's my starbucks. it's a very expensive habit to have, however, i have to say that i've been very good at bringing lunch to work with me. AND i haven't done a lot of shopping lately. well, except for the top i bought last week, but i've already worn it twice! so perhaps i CAN justify my coffee habit.... :-)

robbed again......sort of. WTF?!?!

so this morning, i found out i was a victim of credit card theft. tonight when chris and i got home, we found out we were the victims of an attempted break-in. apparently someone broke through our parking lot, through the "secured" door, and then into the storage room. a total of 10 lockers were damaged and/or stolen from. we were very, very lucky tonight, and discovered that even though our locker had been broken into, nothing was stolen (at least not at first glance). another owner, who i've seen several times, had his bike stolen, so i was surprised that my somewhat valuables weren't taken. i'm going to do an inventory tomorrow of everything in our locker, and then photograph everything. i had meant to do this a couple weeks ago, but just never got around to it. it always takes an event like this to get your butt into gear :P

at least the day's over now and nothing else can possibly go wrong. right? what's tomorrow going to bring? i don't want anymore challenges this week :(

i've been robbed....

.......of my credit card number! yes, that's right ppl, i am now one of thousands of victims of credit card theft. i received a call today from visa asking me if i had tried to use my credit card lately. after thinking for 5 seconds, i remembered that my credit card didn't get accepted at chevron on saturday when i tried to gas up (but i just attributed that to the magnetic strip being partially scratched ). but it wasn't actually that incident that triggered the warning in my "file". as i'm freaking out about this phone call, they ask me a series of 20 questions just to verify who i am. once they're convinced that i am me, they asked me if i had ever heard of a certain company and someone's name (only my number was stolen, not my name). i think my extreme shock was convincing when i said NO! there was a charge of over $1,000 from this company in alberta, followed by a separate charge for just under $200 from the same company, along with several taxi rides (from different taxi companies). visa then asked me if i was trying to charge a large sum of money from ticketmaster - i was truly appalled at the nerve of this credit card thief to buy event tickets using my number! only after lunch did i realize that i had authorized ticketmaster to charge my credit card for the canucks playoffs :P so needless to say, orca bay was calling me to confirm my credit card number.

i'm very grateful to visa for catching this expensive error, and contacting me as soon as they did. i am truly appalled by this experience! i have always made an effort to properly shred all credit card statements and expired credit cards, and then i take it a step further by separating the shredded documents into different bags, so hopefully they can't be taped back together again.

one thing that dawned on me as visa recited my recent transactions, was that i occasionally shop online w/this credit card, and my last 2 transactions (right before my number was stolen) were on future shop for some photos. i have shopped online (at various stores) umpteen times, and i have never really worried about security, but i guess one thing i can do is ensure that little "lock" symbol always shows up to tell me that i'm on a secure website. however, even that can fail sometimes, as several years ago, future shop did have a breach in their security where credit card numbers were accessible to whomever. i personally have no idea how stuff like that can happen, or how ppl gain access to such confidential information, but it does, and in this technologically-driven world, everything's up for grabs.

fortunately for me, visa was able to confirm that my identity is still intact. the thief only had my one credit card number, but i had them double check that my other number was safe, and it is. so now, visa is sending me an affadavit for me to verify that all of these charges are indeed fraudulent, and my name is will still be in good standing :)

i do everything in my power to ensure my credit card safety, but news and investigative reporting show businesses or employees who steal the numbers as you're making a purchase, or businesses that don't destroy their copies of receipts properly, or when you provide your credit card number over the telephone, or you get dumpster divers who are paid for credit card numbers and names. there's a lot of ways to get your credit card stolen at any given time. it's a scary world out there, and you never know what can happen. like my blog says......sh*t happens!