I went to see an RMT (registered massage therapist) today about the neck pain I’ve had for the last month. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.

Sooo much owwie!! If you remember from my San Francisco post, the thumb print bruises left by Thori, this was twice as bad and ALL OVER! Every joint was screeeeeching pain.. I can take a lot of pain, I just go to my happy place, but he made me say owwwww more than a few times and clutch and claw at the bed. The pressure in my neck is gone, but I don’t know if the pain is just hiding under the bruises or not.

So first he shook me around by my hips then he tortured my back and the little knobbies at the bottom of my spine.. God those killed. Every joint he poked killed.. but those felt like he was stabbing me with a hot poker. That’s when I knew it was going to be a very very long hour.

Next, my legs.. Back of knee on left leg and Achilles tendon on right leg were the worst offenders but then he tickled my toes.

Turned over, he worked on my neck some more.. shoulder owwies.. then did some kind of voodoo head scratching that felt really nice. Then he went back to my legs and did some more work on my thighs, then some range of motion testing. Turns out my left leg is severely worse than my right in how far it can bend and stretch. :/ While he was working on my left leg, it was causing a severe cramp in my right hip.. very strange!

I’m really sore now, but as long as I don’t touch my shoulders, back or arms, I’m ok.

Overall he said that my neck is ok, just that my joints aren’t getting enough circulation and that’s why they ALL KILLED. More exercise, more stretches, more massages..

I think I should go to a reflexologist next for my poor heel issues. He was concentrating on my neck, as I asked him to do, so didn’t get much time for heel.

So here’s what Thori said about the whole thing, made a lot of sense so I reposted it here with her permission.

*cuddles* Are you feeling better? Can you move yet?

Is very good he did range of motion with the massage (Deep tissue = Owie but goooood, if a day or a week later when the body stops screaming at you). Run if anybody mentions rolfing massage at this point *hehe* I have a gift certificate to a Thai massage that does all that and I’m ..saving it for a day where I don’t have the work the following week cuz my body’s messed up too.

*nodnod* @ joints, that’s where I left your bruises Btw, I showed Wrennie the piccys and she laughed her ass off ..because y’know, she does jewelry and knitty so she has the same areas as you do

..when are you going back to him? He sounds funny AND good

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awwwwwh! *snuggles some more*

Spa massages should not leave bruises (hot stone, aromatherapy, etc) and relaxes the muscles with more light to medium strokes than deep/digging into muscles. Deep tissue massages are shorter term, like 5 to 10 min straight for one area of pain and it’s ment to break down scar tissue so your body can grow new, more flexible, tissue.

The fact that he was testing your physical limits (range of motion) and adding stretching with the massage means (to me, at least) he’s on the more serious side @ medical/sports injury/gym type of guy and *hehe* I do think you need a bit of that because you spend time hunched over the ‘puter or making SHINEYS! for years and you get weird muscle twitchies and numbness.

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Some people bruise more easier than others so that’s a good indication of too much pressure but not absolute. IMO, if you can handle the pain during and soreness after (not more than 2 days, borderline 4 days) and y’know .. you like it then it’s ok. You MUST feel less stiffness/pain symptoms (after the soreness) afterwards tho and feel good for 2 weeks to a month. Then *nodnod* you go in again when things are stiff/pain.

Would say three-ish weeks for a couple of months for deep tissue, less after things clear up. You need a week to recover from pressure and another week or two for your muscles to heal back up.

You should tell him whenever it hurts past two days and you need to tell him when there’s too much pressure during. Unfortunately, for people with high pain tolerance (*clings* come get a tattoo with me ) it sort of takes a while to know which part of the “sharp burning hot pain” is too much.

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*hehe* You’re welcome to @ post but y’know .. usual disclaimer(s) that it’s only my personal opinion since I’m neither a massage therapist or licensed in Canada and I wasn’t there and don’t know what’s going on in your body or his mind

My favorite example (if not exactly accurate of what goes on) is having a cut on your skin and the blood clots combine with the now dead tissue (at the edges of the cut) merge to form a scab (body fluid band aid @ body uses what it’s got) to seal off the area from more damage (infection and more blood loss). Underneath the scab, new tissue takes a week or so to to reform and eventually the old tissue/blood ban aid falls off.

Sometimes there’s a scar because the new tissue isn’t the same (for whatever reasons) as the old/surrounding type, it’s a little harder. Think stretch marks during pregnancy? Then you go to the spa (or my closet) to get scrubs, derma abrasions, lots of lotion/liquids to make that area more flexible. That’s essentially sandpapering the skin cells to slough off the old to make room for the new.

When you injure the muscle (big tramuatic accident or chronic carpal tunnel), the same process happens. Muscle and tendons needs to be more stable because they do all the work instead of lying around, looking pretty and getting a sun tan) so the body lays down stiffer tissue to make sure the injured area doesn’t get pulled too much. It’s that stiffer “safety net” tissue that is scar tissue and makes the muscle all stiff and shrinks it. Overtime (months/years depending) the whole area gets all kinked up because the injured tissue intertwines with other muscles/tendons/bone and pulls the others.

Soooo.. if you have numbness, muscle spasms, tight and tenderness (with pressure) AND pain then you most likely have enough scar tissue in there that needs to be tenderized @ deep tissue massages because that stuff isn’t just going to fall off on it’s own. Once the tissue gets broken down, you get that injured feeling. The therapist is supposed to know what they’re doing, instead of causing unnecessary pain/damage. Then you get that one week recovery period, one to two weeks growing tissue (and the new tissue will be baby tissue/weak) that should be more flexible than the previous bits but is probably still harder than what it should be = rinse and repeat.

But you really, really have to feel better afterwards (even if it only lasts a couple days but you should feel loose after the sore goes away), the second time (provided it isn’t a year later) massage = less pain/sore AND he has to listen when you say “no” and “ow” *nodnod*

*hangs head @ ANOTHER info dump*
I is talkies.
Candy now?

March 15 (Saturday)
Ken took me to the airport at 7am for my 9am flight to my parents place. All I’ll say it that it was a really long day, followed by some drama and errands. Ended up ok though with some nice real info for once.

March 16 (Sunday) to March 21 (Friday)
We took Mom and Gary to the airport pretty early for their trip to Reno and spent the rest of the week running errands and letting Dad rest from his eye surgery. He really played out the eye-patch pirate thing though :p I had to play him some Pirate themed Metal that my friend, Nick, sent me. He loved it.

I love my puppies but being woken up at 8am every morning after only going to sleep around 2 or 3am is really tiring. Dad and I worked out a schedule for his eye-drops, 2am, 8am, 2pm, 8pm. The puppies get fed at 8am as well and Vashti got her morning medicines, then we tried to get Vashti to finish her food at 8pm and gave her the night medicines. She seems to be doing ok with her cancer. She got really loopy some nights though, I think it was her medicine. We also tried several things to get her to eat her pills easier. She’s very picky. She used to gobble them down with just bread, but the first night I tried it with bread and she didn’t want it. So I put some butter on it, it took forever to get her to eat it. Then we tried mixing alpo canned dog food into her food to get her to eat that, so I dipped the bread in the gravy and she loved it. But it was messy and the bread fell apart sometimes. Then we tried some beef ravioli thinking that at least the pills would stay tucked in. But she really didn’t want it. She chewed it and spit it out when I dipped it in the alpo gravy, and broke open one of the pills which spilled all over the floor. Mookie and Wolfie are vultures and tried to eat whatever she dropped so I had to kick them away and yell for my dad to let them out while I cleaned it up. I did not need those two getting loopy, they’re a handful enough! Finally we got Vashti to reliably eat her pills by stuffing them into bits of hot dogs.

March 22 (Saturday)
Dad spent all day trying to rearrange flights for Mom and Gary because she’d gotten food poisoning and Gary had to take her to the hospital. I just played with the puppies and cleaned the kitchen, wiping down the cabinets, walls and appliances. They get really muddy at doggie height.

March 23 (Sunday)
Happy Easter! Mom and Gary were supposed to be home just after midnight that morning but Mom got food poisoning and was throwing up too much to travel. Dad had rebooked their flight for midnight that night but she still wasn’t feeling well enough so they had to change it again. Dad and I however went to King Street Blues restaurant and both had their new brisket sandwich. I don’t usually go for that kind of thing but it was pretty good, but I had to pick through the brisket pieces and take out the fatty sections. I hate that.

March 24 (Monday)
Mom and Gary finally made it back to D.C. Their flight came in just after midnight but it took FOREVER for them to get to the baggage area and another FOREVER for their bags to come through.

March 25 (Tuesday)
I had to be at the airport by 11:30am.. had no trouble through security. Grabbed a BLT bagel because my tummy was growling and read my book. The silly flight attendant made me put my purse up in the bin, which I’ve never ever had to do before and really pissed me off. It was an hour flight and I didn’t want to bother the woman sitting in the aisle seat to get up and get my book and headphones for the 30 minutes that the seat-belt sign is turned off. So I just slept. Had a long walk through the terminal to customs and baggage but no problems there either. Got a cart for my bags, **note** I really hate this brown suitcase I always end up using because it’s got a hard shell and is wide enough for all my jewelry making tools that I like to bring on longer trips to my parents place. It has no wheels and it cumbersome to carry through customs. I don’t have to carry it on the way home though, as the baggage drop off at Dulles is right next to the ticketing counter, but I do have to shuffle it through the sometimes long line in Toronto when I’m leaving. I really need a new hard shell suitcase.

I called Ken once I got outside and told him which pillar I was standing by. It was snowing pretty hard and I had only brought my light windbreaker. I was freezing cold and Ken accidentally missed me and had to drive all the way around again. We stopped at Lonestar on Dixon to warm up and have lunch but the snow didn’t stop. Ken told me that it had pretty much started as my plane left D.C. and it hadn’t snowed at all while I’d been gone. Lovely! It was kinda pretty though, the gigantic snowflakes looked like the cheap soapy bubbles they sometimes use in stage plays.

March 26 (Wednesday) to March 27 (Thursday)
Spent these two days catching up on my shows on the pvr.. it was at 88% and afterwards was at like 25% :p

March 28 (Friday) to March 30 (Sunday)
Mailed off Melar’s daughter, Alana’s birthday bracelets. I made her 2 so she could share one with her best friend if she wanted, as girls often do. Then I went to pick up Ken’s cousin, Michelle, from Kitchener which is about an hours drive away with no traffic. We hit a little traffic on the way home and arrived around 5pm. Ken was still working so she and I took a walk down Yonge Street to the Sassy Bead store I go to sometimes. I’ve mentioned before but it bears repeating, I hate shelves and shelves of beads in tiny tiny jars.. We spent a good long while there and we both picked up a few things. I got some curved silver tubes, a silver leaf pendant and a circle pendant. She got some matte grey beads. I also picked up a neat little tool that’s supposed to help you put on bracelets by yourself. It has a clip one one end that holds the clasp open and a ring at the top to grip with your fingers, then you use your other hand to hook the other side of the clasp on. I think it would be great for Ken’s grandma.

When Ken finally finished his work we went down to Papa’s Grill and both Michelle and I had to bring home doggie bags. I had a village salad and humous .. My favorite. She had a beef souvlaki dinner and Ken had lamb souvlaki dinner.

Saturday Ken took Michelle to the Farmer’s Market at St. Lawrence Market. They were there till around 2:30, and Karen stopped by at 7pm to chat. I hadn’t seen her since Ken was away in Sausalito. At 8pm Ken flipped off our breakers to turn off everything for Earth Hour. We lit a few beeswax and non-toxic candles. Michelle knitted while I read them questions from Trivial Pursuit: Canada Edition. It was 9:30pm by the time we realized Earth Hour was over. No harm in that, we had fun, but we use Bullfrog Power anyway.

We decided to stay in for dinner so we ordered Chinese from C’est Bon. They have a really good barbeque pork and crispy sesame beef dishes. While we ate we watched the Stargate movie The Ark of Truth (second time for Ken and I). Then played some Rock Band till sleep-time.

Sunday we all got up kinda late. Played some more Rock Band and I was pretty hungry by 4 and wanted Hero’s hot dogs. They don’t deliver till 6 and Michelle needed to get home to pick up Daisy so we ended up driving to Hero’s on the way to bring her home. I had hoped to stay home and get some chores done because I’ve decided it’s time to Spring Clean. Still, I don’t have a time limit or anything so it’s ok I guess. I just need to get motivated again. Ken and I hit the grocery store on the way home for fresh stuff for salads and bread, got home around 10pm.

Spent the rest of the night playing Guild Wars with Melar, cheering up Reina on the phone and Ken finished Assassin’s Creed.

March 31 (Monday)
Having stayed up playing Guild Wars with Melar till 2am and then continuing on by myself till around 4:30am, I’m surprised I woke up at 11′ish. Chris was over working with Ken and I did some straightening up. The boys went out to lunch at 2 and Andrea arrived at 2:30pm. I hadn’t seen her in 3 weeks, once because I was passed out sleeping, and the other 2 from my trip to Virginia. So she was very happy to update me on everything she’s been up to and I showed her all the bracelets I made for birthday presents. I waited until Ken got home and let him present hers. Hopefully, we want to treat her and her husband (whom we still haven’t met yet!) to dinner this weekend or next at Pier 4.

Chris stayed pretty late working with Ken. I was dying to play some more Guild Wars because I hadn’t been able to play while I was away. Stupid laptop wouldn’t partition for Boot Camp. So after he left, I jumped on with Melar and we blew through the Gates of Kryta mission and attempted the D’Alessio Seaboard mission but failed twice. Sadly our henchmen available there are only level 10 so we’ll either have to wait until my friend, Luvene, can join us, or we’ll have to grab some random players /shudder

Melar went off to watch a tv show at 10pm and I kicked around some more, picking up quests and exploring the North Kryta Province and Nebo Terrace. Then I got through episodes 7-10 of Law & Order: SVU season 1. I’d seen some of them but I like rewatching Law & Orders.

April 01 (Tuesday)
April Fools! I got a cute little card from my friend, Miuu. He knows my fear of spiders is immense but I have lots of <3 for Hoops and Yoyo the Hallmark card characters. The card started with Hoops telling me that I had to save Yoyo from the spiders that they were going to release from a big glass jar. My cursor controlled a big mallet with which to whack them. So I click the button to release the spiders and they start chasing Yoyo.. I dutifully try to whack them but the mallet is frozen in place. At first I thought I had a plug-in error or something... Hoops was chastising me and calling me heartless and such.. They they laughed and said they were just kidding and it was an April Fool's joke then they displayed the message from my friend. It was a good card!

I spent most of the day spa'ing myself. Well as much as I can in our tiny bathroom.. Bubble bath while reading a magazine, deep conditioning my hair... etc.. I really need a pedicure though. I've been trying to wait till I'm ready for a manicure at the same time though. My nails all broke off in the last few weeks and are just starting to come back. Didn't know I was so girly sometimes did you? :p

Ken's cousin, Joel, came over for a dinner date around 8:15pm. We haven't seen him in quite awhile. Ken and I debated all day on where to suggest for dinner. Duffs would have been a great choice but Tuesdays are 1/2 price wings night so the line-up is insane. We also thought Mongolian Grill, Hernando’s Hideaway or La Mexicana would be good choices and Joel chose Mongolian. The first bowl I made contained, beef, bean sprouts, scallop onions, white onions, pineapple, red pepper and their Korean sauce with extra garlic, sesame seeds and a dash of liquid sugar. Sooo good. I really liked how it turned out.

The second bowl contained, beef, bean sprouts, scallop onions, white onions, pineapple, and their mongolian sauce with extra garlic, sesame seeds and a dash of liquid sugar. The beef wasn’t as good, it was the last call so they hadn’t replaced it with fresh stuff. I’m not sure if that’s why the second bowl didn’t turn out as well or if my mixture was off, I’ve done that combination before, but it really was no where near as good as bowl 1.

After dinner Joel played a bit of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. He’s quite good at the shooting parts and I teased him about always trying to solve the games puzzles with his gun first. He left around 11pm to go get ready for work.

I jumped online to play some Guild Wars with Melar before she went to sleep around 12:30am. We did some quests in Nebo Terrace and explored the Cursed Lands. A little ways into The Black Curtain we came upon a rather nasty boss mob who was level 28 and had friends. We’re only both level 17 and our poor henchmen are level 12 if we get them from the Bergen Hot Springs and run from there. I managed to survive and get away but only barely. That’s when she decided to call it a night.

April 02 (Wednesday)
I can’t sleep, so I’m up at 3:30am writing this and playing Guild Wars. I have a bit of a sinus headache, my neck is sore and my ear is bleeding. I have a dentist appointment at 12:45 so I’ll probably just stay up.

We’ve received a lot of snow this month, and I really don’t mind it. I actually love the way snow looks on trees and such. Luckily we are able to choose not to go out in it most of the time. Even on the worst snow day (Saturday the 8th) there were still so many cars on the road. I don’t envy them.

March 2 (Sunday)
I met up with Sosena and we went to Kelsey’s and chatted over some Nachos. She gave me 3 bracelets she’d purchased that she didn’t really like as bracelets and asked if I would make them into something else. I’m pretty happy with what I came up with! Later we went to see The Eye. I’ve been a huge fan of Jessica Alba since the Dark Angel series. I’d give it 4 out of 5 stars. This is what I said on my facebook movies app:

This was pretty good. It had some very spooky moments but nothing too scary.

Afterwards, we hung out at Starbucks and devised a movie plot that will make us millionaires! Email me if you’re interested in funding us :p Sorry the video game adaptation rights were already sold to Nick. LOL Note to other people who hang out at Starbucks: You know when they close, especially when the staff have gone around giving 15 & 10 minute warnings, don’t bitch when they finally start moving people to the door.

March 3 (Monday)
Our car spent the day in the shop getting it’s check-up and getting detailed, the latter I only let Ken get done twice a year. I didn’t feel like going out to lunch so Ken and Chris went to the Indian buffet again. I don’t dislike Indian food, but I don’t really crave it either. They were supposed to pick me up something on the way back but they ran late and had to rush back for a work call. Ken later went out to get me some tacos from Moe’s. Andrea was over and poor girl had slipped on some ice that morning outside of her building. She was obviously a little sore :/

March 5 (Wednesday)
A very very Happy Birthday to my sister-in-law Missy! I got to talk to her, but she was trying to plan Daemon’s birthday party so we didn’t get to talk very long. I hope she got to relax some. It’s pretty stressful just trying to talk to anyone in that mad house sometimes

March 6 (Thursday)
I’d been missing Peter so I arranged a “Girl’s day” over at Chris & Lesley’s house in Milton. Unfortunately Sosena had to work, and Michelle had something come up at the last minute so it was just Erika and I. Still had a great time! We played more Rock Band, Erika brought her drum kit & guitar, I brought my new guitar and mic. Lesley made an awesome chickpea stew that I absolutely must get the recipe for! Peter was adorable as always, he kept running around singing songs from Mary Poppins. LOL We also teased Chris to no end when he wasn’t working, which is always fun. I wish they lived closer, I would definitely babysit Peter every day! I’m going to steal him. I’ll just have to settle being the crazy lady who teaches him strange words and what mazda’s say :p

March 7 (Friday)
We knew there was going to be a lot of snow, but I was supposed to puppy-sit Logan while Ken’s sister and her husband were in Buffalo. I left at 6 and it took me an hour to get there. The roads were very slippery. We’re on the lower level of the underground parking so we have a pretty steep driveway to get out. They had the “out” door open and the “in” door blocked off. I had to gun it up the ramp but ended up sliding into the massive snow drift lining the road to the front door. I didn’t hit it very hard, just tapped into it. It popped the corner of the bumper in slightly but Ken was able to pop it back out later. I stayed with Logan till around 9:30 when there was a break in the snow. The roads were much much better so I picked up Ken and we went to the grocery store.

March 8 (Saturday)
Just insane amounts of snow fell. Every time I looked out of the window I couldn’t help but say “good lord”. We just stayed home, played games and watched tv.

March 9 (Sunday)
I met Sosena at Yuk Yuk’s after her work get-gether, Nick also met up with us. First we went to Boston Pizza, chatted had some nachos. From there we spent the next few hours at the Tim Horton’s. Lots of fun!

March 10 (Monday)
I didn’t get home till around 5am. I don’t usually have much sugar but I had 2 medium hot chocolates so I was unable to go to sleep till around noon. Ken and Chris were too busy to go to lunch but Chris went down to Licks and got some food for them both. Sadly I slept through Andrea being over.

March 11 (Tuesday)
Clint, Erika & Brea came over to watch Ark of Truth the new Stargate movie. It was pretty good, it wrapped up a lot of the storylines.

March 12 (Wednesday)
Nick came over for lunch, we took him to Moe’s then Ken showed him Assassin’s Creed which he’s been playing a lot for the last few days. Very Happy Birthday wishes for my favorite nephew who turned 9! We got him the Danger Mouse Season 1-6 DVD (which my brothers and I used to love) and Princess Bride DVD (second best movie ever made).

March 13 (Thursday)
Melar and I got to finish the Borlis Pass mission in Guild Wars, only one more to go till we’re out of the Northern Shiverpeak Mountains and hopefully not long till we can make some prettier armor! I got my giant book on web design today. I’ve read the first 3 chapters but it’s pretty boring. I just want to learn how to make my own site and friends sites better. I’ve got a lot of ideas for my site, I’ve been sketching them out along with the site I made for the Malamute Rescue group and the one I worked on for Ken’s sister. Perhaps I will look for a course or something. Though last time I took a course I got stuck sitting next to a girl who didn’t know how to use a computer, in a graphic design course. I spent more time answering her questions about where to click than hearing the teacher. :/ Sucked big time.

March 14 (Friday)
Today I’ll be packing for my week in Virginia. I leave tomorrow morning at 9am which means I’ll be at the airport at 6am. It’s also Brea’s birthday today, so Happy Sweet 16! Happy Birthday to Ken’s cousin Greg! I’m debating on bringing some of my jewelry tools. I’ve got 10 bracelets to make for upcoming birthdays and I ordered the parts and had them sent to my mom’s. The stuff takes up a lot of room and we only have 1 good big suitcase left but I will probably have a lot of quiet time to work on it while I’m there.

Our last episode left us at Valentine’s Day, which was 2 weeks ago .. I am so fired. :p

February 15-21 (Friday-Thursday)
Not much to note, we gamed a lot. Me mostly on Guild Wars with Melar and Luvene and Ken on EQ2. Monday was the newly added Family Day holiday, no Andrea or Chris. So Chris came on Tuesday instead, we had lunch at Duff’s. More gaming and relaxing, catching up on shows like American Idol, Numb3rs and ANTM.

February 22-24 (Friday-Sunday)
Friday was our big “slumber” party at 151, I tagged along with Ken and Chris for their upgrade / moving servers work with Nick and Myles. I had hoped to be able to play Guild Wars on my laptop while I was there but a: Ken didn’t have time to install Boot Camp and b: Chris forgot his laptop anyway so he had to borrow mine. We played a bit of Rock Band before heading downtown and Chris had me giggling over some ad-libbed words to Metallica! We were at the colo from about 10pm to 9am and it was pretty fun. I got to sneak in some Civ IV playing whenever Chris didn’t need my laptop and the pizza we ordered ended up being an EPIC EVENT*

I mostly just tried to stay out of the way and not bug the guys too much. Finally was able to give Myles the souvenirs I picked up for him in Kiev in November and give Nick the hilarious phrase books that Ken picked up for him in Sausalito in January. We also gave Nick the bag of chocolate covered coffee beans we got from Soma and I can’t wait to hear a review on them

When the boys were finally finished, Ken, Chris and I went to the Golden Griddle for Saturday Brunch. We were all pretty tired though so we didn’t eat much and got the check quickly. The rest of Saturday and Sunday were spent napping and trying to recover sleep habits.

February 25th (Monday)
10 Months of Not-Smoking! I couldn’t get to sleep that night, and Chris was over for working. Right after our lunch at Tandoori Buffet I passed out and completely missed Andrea. She brought us some amazing chocolate croissant type things though. We also ordered my tickets to Virginia for March.

February 26th (Tuesday)
The day started off innocently enough. I was originally going to go pick up Sos and hang out with Erika for the day, but after finding out that Sos hadn’t been able to get to sleep and worrying that the snow would get worse by the end of the night we decided to “Snow Check”. Ken downloaded a game demo for the PSP called PataPon, which is a really cute rhythm game. Then all hell breaks loose.

I started to smell something like chlorine and after writing it off to the amazing pools website I was reading at the time, it kept getting stronger. Ken smelled it too eventually and we heard dozens of sirens heading our way. Ken looked out from the balcony and said that Eglinton was blocked off to traffic along our block and that there was thick smoke from somewhere near the corner. He turned on the news and could find nothing about it, searching online didn’t get us any info either until almost an hour later after the power had shut off and we were running on battery backups. Good ol 680 news.

Ken and I decided we’d be better off finding a place to eat or something because they were saying the power might be off for up to 12 hours. So we loaded up the cats with food, just in case, and trudged down 24 flights of stairs to the 2nd sub basement and since Eglinton was blocked off between Yonge and Mt. Pleasant our back streets were heavily clogged. It was only around 3pm though so once we got away from it a bit the roads were fine. We drove around trying to decide where to go and ended up at the Eaton Center Mall. We hung out there, I got new shoes! I’ve always been partial to Skechers. (Sneakers & Shoes) until around 7pm. Ken had brought his laptop so we opened it up and found some wifi to look up hotels. We’d kept calling our house phone to see if it would ring indicating that our power was back on. Just after we’d picked a nearby hotel, we tried to call the house phone again and it rang. Yay!

Decided to have dinner at Pickle Barrel at Yonge & Eglinton where we could watch the literal army of Toronto Hydro trucks lining the street. That light was still out but there were 2 cops there directing traffic. I think they had all but one elevator shut off so it was a rather long wait and it was packed but we walked into the apartment around 9pm. Checked that the computers and air conditioners hadn’t blown if they tried to restart themselves. All were off, so that was good, then there was an announcement over the intercom system that Toronto Hydro was in the building and demanded that everyone turn off as much power as they could, and not use their stoves, or they would have to shut off all the power to the building. So we left our computers off, turned off and unplugged everything we could think of and took naps.

February 27-28 (Wednesday & Thursday)
Tried not to do too much, our knees were finally feeling all those stairs. After moving around a bit it was ok, but the initial acts of standing or walking were pretty freaking painful.

February 29th (Friday)
Happy Leap Day! Didn’t do much except watch the snow fall. Caught up with Melar in Guild Wars and finished off some tough quests we both had. We basically had to zerg ourselves and 2 henchmen against a couple dozen Charr who were guarding the ashes of Prince Rurik’s fiancee Althea. Luckily there was a rez shrine right next to the temple. Althea was one of my favorite pre-searing npc’s so I was not very happy about her being burned at the stake.

Previously on As The Palace Turns.. A new chocolate heaven was discovered, did the love last or was devastation around the corner??

*Update* A week of trying the samples of everything we purchased at Soma’s last week has resulted in the following findings:
**Malted Milk Hot Chocolate Mix: Ken tried this and said it was ok but he’s not big on hot chocolate
**Mayan Hot Chocolate Mix: The instructions said to use 1/2 cup of water with 1 packet (almost a cup) of mix. This seemed way too thick to me so I added another 1/2 cup of water and it was good. I made the second packet for Andrea on Monday and used 1 1/2 cup water and it seemed the same consistency as the cup we purchased at the store. Though theirs was steamed milk not water. Still.. OH my lord is it good..
**Gianduja Hot Chocolate Mix: I tried this on Sunday, it smelled delicious but it was too nutty tasting for me. I think Ken would <3 it though.
**Almond Clusters with Milk Chocolate and Handmade Toffee & Baci D’Allassio (Chocolate Hazelnut Kisses) sandwiched with Dark Venezuelan Chocolate & Roasted Cashews tumbled in Chai spiced Milk Chocolate: Ken, Michelle and Andrea all raved about these. I don’t like nuts though.
**“Arbequina” estate olive oil dark Venezuelan truffle cones: Not bad, a strange shape though. Yummy.
**Beurre noisette & Valentine Holiday candies & salted chocolate caramel: All very good, I’ve never tasted salt with chocolate before. Surprising.
**chocolate caramel crisp: Hands down winner of the taste test. It makes you want to take the smallest bites possible so you can savor it longer.

So on to our main events.. what have I been doing this week?

February 7th - 9th (Thursday to Saturday)
Went and picked up Michelle for a visit. Good amount of snow on the ground so driving was interesting. We played a lot of Rock Band, had yummy food and of course discovered the distillery district on Saturday. Driving her home Saturday night was pretty bad, the roads were snowy still and it started to snow again when we reached Kitchener. We actually got stuck in the unplowed side street where her friend lived when we picked up her dog Daisy. FUN!

On the way home, I called Erika to see what she and the gang were up to and asked them over for some visiting. They agreed and we played more Rock Band had some of the yummy bread from the Bakery and had a cop come to the door at 9:30 (on a Saturday?!?) about the noise. We promised to turn it down but the sad part was that we already had it turned down from it’s normal volume of 55 to 40. So we turned it down to 35 and put a blanket underneath Ken’s drums. I really hate living in these apartments. This is not the first time we’ve had notices left on our door or hallway about the volume. The walls are thick but the front door is not so all the sound goes through there. Even at lower volumes you can still hear it in the hallway. It also really pisses me off that the notices always say something about “respecting those of us who work all day and need our sleep” .. Ken often has late night upgrades, when they have to pull the servers off-line, doing so when there’s the least amount of traffic is best. Yet the building has been doing construction on the new old folks home beginning as early as 7am. Where’s his respect? I’m positive he’s not the only one in the building who works nights. I often wait till after midnight to do laundry so that I don’t have to worry if there will be available washers, and occasionally even at 3am it’s been busy.

February 10th - 13th (Sunday to Wednesday)
We didn’t really do much of anything. Andrea came on Monday as usual but Chris was scheduled to come on Tuesday this week instead. He didn’t end up coming because we got an insane amount of snow again and didn’t want to risk anything. Wednesday, Michelle came by for 2 hours after her doctor’s appointments but she was feeling tired so we just chatted for a bit.

Both Ken and I played a lot of EQ2. They put in the Erollisi Day holiday events and while 2 of them were the same as last year, there was a new one and a bunch of new items to craft such as silver or gold plated roses, incense burners, perfume bottles, chaise lounge chairs and marrsipan candies and frosted cookies and much more. They’ve been selling well in the market too, so I might be able to afford a horsie someday! Of course I had to put one of everything in my own house. :p

February 14th (Thursday)
Valentine’s Day! Not really a big holiday for me, but it’s a nice idea. I really wanted some Mayan Hot Chocolate so we went down to Distillery District and picked up some sandwiches, then went to Soma’s. It was not-surprisingly packed! Of the stuff we got last time we picked up, A big bag of the Mayan Hot Chocolate Mix, another small bag of the Almond Clusters with Milk Chocolate and Handmade Toffee, a packet of the Gianduja Hot Chocolate Mix for Ken to try, 6 of the legendary chocolate caramel crisps, 4 Beurre noisettes, 4 salted chocolate caramel and 2 of the candied Seville orange peel, hand-dipped in dark Venezuelan chocolate but somehow they didn’t make it to the bag. :/ Sorry Ken! I also had another small cup of the Mayan Hot Chocolate made with steamed milk.

Some new things we picked up are:
**1 small package of Lightly Salted Roasted Sunflower Seeds tumbled in Milk Chocolate
**2 packets of A La Taza Hot Chocolate Mix (The classic thick hot chocolate of Barcelona, gently spiced with Vanilla, Cinnamon and Allspice). I want to try it and then maybe I’ll send some packets to my Grandma and Great-Aunt who are from Spain.
**1 small square of Sugar-Free 53.8% chocolate. (Low carb and suitable for diabetics, sugar is replaced with Maltitol)

With chocolate glowing hearts we set off to run a few errands, we’d been slacking hard and needed a trip to Costco. Apparently everyone else in the city needed to go somewhere at the exact same time and we had a really bad time with traffic, but I got to see a really nice area on the Lakeshore that I hadn’t seen before and a SNOWY beach! We picked up way too much stuff at Costco.. but somehow it really didn’t look like that much. Our most extravagent purchase was a new 11 piece knife set. We never did find the paring knife from our old set.. how the heck can you lose a knife in a tiny apartment without “finding” it accidentally in your foot or something?

I have to mention that while we were at Costco, every other guy I saw had either a giant box of chocolates or a huge orchid plant.. or both.. way to go slackers!

Next Week / Future
Ken, Chris, Nick and Myles have lots of work to do this weekend and the following week finishing up moving all the servers to the new suite. I think we’re all going down to 151 this Saturday night. Monday is a new holiday, Family Day, just about the worst name I’ve ever heard for a holiday and for no reason other than to have a holiday in February. Ken says that he will be “unavailable” for work except for world ending situations, I wonder what he’ll do instead :p

Next week is also my Grandfather’s birthday (Thursday), Ken’s Uncle Lynn’s birthday (Saturday) and an old friend Pheuri’s birthday (also on Saturday). So HAPPY! BIRTHDAY!! <3

Soma Chocolatemaker
In association with Oliver Bonacini Restaurants the distillery historic district.
55 Mill Street
Building 48, Suite 102
Toronto, Ontario M5A 3C4

Chocolate Bar, Factory, Boutique

That’s really what their stuff says But oh my are they right. We went to the distillery historic district for lunch at the Brick Street Bakery and since we’d never been there before we looked around and found Soma Chocolates. Here’s a picture of their menu but we picked up:
**a package of Malted Milk Hot Chocolate Mix (lightly roasted Costa Rican cacao blended with malted milk. A rich and creamy elixir with warm notes of caramel.)
**2 packages of Mayan Hot Chocolate Mix (An intoxicating chocolate elixir handmade with chilli peppers, ginger, orange peel, Madagascar Vanilla and a unique blend of spices.)
**A package of Gianduja Hot Chocolate Mix (Created wtih an aromatic blend of roasted hazelnuts and cacao. A rich and nutty elixir.)
**A small bag of Balzac’s Organic Farmer’s Blend Coffee Beans tumbled in Venezuelan Dark Chocolate.
**A small bag of Almond Clusters with Milk Chocolate and Handmade Toffee.
**A small bag of Baci D’Allassio (Chocolate Hazelnut Kisses) sandwiched with Dark Venezuelan Chocolate.
**A small bag of Roasted Cashews tumbled in Chai spiced Milk Chocolate.
**1 candied Seville orange peel, hand-dipped in dark Venezuelan chocolate.
**2 “Arbequina” estate olive oil dark Venezuelan truffle cones.
**1 Beurre noisette ( brown butter truffle).
**2 Valentine Holiday candies (don’t remember what it was called).
**2 salted chocolate caramel (dark chocolate caramel sprinkled with fleur de sel).
**3 chocolate caramel crisp (dark chocolate caramel covered in crispy flakes).

We tried a cup of their Bicerin drink (one of the oldest, most famous, delectable drinks in Piedmont, Italy. Bicerin is in essence, a “bicchierino” or “small glass” of melted dark chocolate espresso, steamed milk and whipped cream.) And a cup of their Mayan Hot Chocolate (an interesting elixir made with dark Venezuelan Chocolate, spiced with cinnamon, ginger, orange peel, Madagascar Vanilla and Chilli Peppers.)

The store had “laboratory rooms” with glass walls labeled Gelato Lab, Chocolate Lab and I didn’t see the third rooms name. I can’t wait to try some of the things we bought (some of which are gifts too) and I can’t wait to go back .

Welcome back. In our last episode our heroine was reveling in the multitude of social engagements cast at her feet. Things got rather quiet in the weeks following.

*Update* I mentioned that we were supposed to go see the movie Fanboys with Clint, Erika and Brea on Jan. 18th (Saturday) but we ended up seeing I Am Legend in Imax instead. Here’s what I thought of it as posted on my Facebook Movies app:

I hear it’s well below the book quality, but I enjoyed Will Smith in this. The poor doggie was awesome too. I am still confused about how the woman and her son managed to survive alone traveling and how they were left alone at the docks right until they saved Will from dying. I will have to read the book I guess.

January 21st (Monday)
Regular Chris visiting for work day (Andrea was sick)

January 25th (Friday)
Happy Birthday Luvene! Wish we could have hung out
Nick came over for gaming and dinner

January 27th (Sunday)
Ken and Chris left for Sausalito, Cali to meet with the folks at FM. Except Ken lost his wallet at the airport just before boarding his plane. He IM’d me from the plane and I called the airport information line, explained the situation to them and asked if they could call the gate agent to take a look for it. She did and they didn’t find it. Ken told me he last had it at the Tim Hortons by the gate, so he may have lost it there so I told him I’d continue the search since he was about to take off. Mom suggested I should call the credit card companies right away to have them put a freeze on the accounts and possibly overnight Ken new cards. I called up Amex first and was told there was nothing they could do until the next morning and Ken would need to go to a branch office, and THEN he asked me for my account number. ?? I politely thanked him for his help, and said that I really didn’t think he needed the number to not help me.

So Plan B: Look up Tim Horton numbers and call around to find the one at the gate. The first one I called barely spoke english and I asked if they were the Tim Horton’s inside the Airport. The lady said “no this is tim hortons”, I explained again and asked if they were located inside the airport, “this is tim hortons” .. great .. then she hung up. ?? So I called at least 6 more Tim Horton’s that I thought were in the area, and all were “not it” but I asked if they happened to have the number for it, none did. An hour had passed since Ken’s flight had left. I called the Lost and Found office and explained what happened, the girl assured me that she would call me right away if it turned up there. I then tried calling the Tim Horton’s customer service line, which was closed for the night but I left a message. I never heard back from them by the way. Thinking it was my last shot, I called the airport information line again, explained what I was trying to do and begged for a phone number. The guy only had one number for Tim Horton’s in the airport but he couldn’t tell which gate it was located near. It was a good lead anyway, so I thanked him profusely and called it. It was not the one I sought but they did have another number I could try. BINGO! They were indeed the right Tim Hortons.. and they HAD THE WALLET! I damn near cried, my phone had been fully charged and was on the verge of dying by this point. The lady promised me that she would bring it down to the Lost and Found office as soon as she could. It was 7:30pm at this point.

The Lost and Found office would close at Midnight but as soon as they called me to tell me the wallet was there, I was ready to go get it. By 9pm I hadn’t heard anything, and not wanting to risk angering the 1 person in whose hands rested our entire financial well-being, but still needing to know what was going on, I decided to call the Tim Horton’s back. The lady sounded frustrated but promised she would bring the wallet down by 10pm. I thanked her and hung up, just hoping that if it made it to the Lost and Found by midnight, I could pick it up at 6am and hit a FedEx, Nick helped me locate one near the airport. I spent from 9:30 - 11pm waiting for the phone to ring, willing it to ring.. no luck.. Not wanting to anger the Tim Horton’s lady further, I decided to call the Lost and Found girl. She had just been about to call me, she had the wallet. Unfortunately she could not release it to me without Ken’s signature, which he could fax but his plane wasn’t landing until after the office closed. So I told the girl that I would get Ken to fax his signature as soon as he could and I’d be by to pick it up in the morning. Then I waited for Ken’s plane to land to explain everything to him, since he still didn’t know that it was found. Ken landed an hour late, and I was already convinced that I wouldn’t be getting any sleep if I was to go get his wallet, fedex it off, then meet his sister for lunch and then pick up Erika for our slumber party at Lesley’s. However, he could not find a fax machine so I gave him the number to the lost and found and went to bed.

I’m really going to buy a staple gun for that man…

January 28th (Monday)
So I finally got to sleep but set my alarm for 10am. Checked my email and Ken’s sister wasn’t feeling well so wouldn’t make it to our lunch date. I was a little relieved that I could grab 2 more hours of sleep before I went to pick up Erika at 1pm. I had packed up a small overnight bag with PJ’s and a change of clothes, and bathroom stuff already, and also our Rock Band guitar, Game & Mic. Erika was bringing her guitar as well. Lesley had never played Rock Band. Erika and I hit the grocery store near her apartment to bring drinks and snacks, and also stopped off at the Tim Horton’s for some coffee type stuff.. I tried not to grumble about the night before. Our sleep-over was oodles of fun, we played with Peter, who is way smarter than I am by the way. We ordered Chinese food for dinner, we watched a giant bear sing about the potty then after Peter went to sleep we played Rock Band till Midnight. I should have thought to bring my saved game with me, we played as a band for awhile, Lesley on the mic, Erika on Bass and me on Guitar. But realized quickly that all the songs weren’t unlocked so we round-robin’d the solo gig on guitar. Our band was named Limp Dalek’s :p Ask if you wanna know why!

I had left a note for Andrea saying that I was sorry to miss her again, she’d been sick the week before, and left her check.

January 29th (Tuesday)
I actually woke up pretty early for me. 8am I think it was. Lesley and Peter were already up and had breakfast. I made some toast and played with Peter so Lesley could have a shower. Do all mom’s get super speed boost for the 30 seconds they get to themselves? Erika woke while Lesley was in the shower and we were having lots of fun with Peter asking him what the animals say. I taught him what a Mazda says!! We hung out with them till around 2pm and then left to get Erika home so she could spend some time with her kitten before taking her to the vet. I accidentally left my purse at Lesley’s though and she called my cell phone as I was getting off the Gardiner at Jarvis. I know, what is in the water at our apartment huh? Though I left with 2 bags and a guitar so missing one bag on my arm would have been a miracle. She had an appointment to go to but thankfully I had my house keys on me so I told her I would come back for it once she got home.

My head was kinda foggy so I took a rather long shower and waited for the time to head back to Lesley’s. There was a little bit of traffic but I still made good time. When I got there, I knocked on the door a few times and heard no answer. So I opened the door and I could hear Lesley speaking, I only have one ear so I couldn’t tell where it was coming from so I guessed that she was reading Peter a bedtime story. I called her name a few times and started walking up the stairs. The sound got quieter so I realized she was in the basement. I called her name some more and started walking down the stairs. I already had my bag, but I thought it would be rude to take it without saying hi. I didn’t want to scare her so I kept calling her name, I even knocked on the basement door before walking in. She was sitting on the floor talking to Chris on her laptop. I called her name again, and took a few steps forward. She must have seen me out of the corner of her eye because she nearly jumped out of her skin. Such a horrible feeling scaring your friend that way. I would have had a heart attack. Peter was playing in the corner and thought it was pretty funny. I gave Lesley a big hug, apologized for scaring her, waved to Chris and Ken who were sitting at FM together and then headed home. Lot of driving! I don’t mind driving though.

January 30th (Wednesday)
Karen emailed me and asked if we could have our lunch date still, I had planned to pick up Michelle from Kitchener either Wednesday or Thursday depending on when Nick’s computer arrived in Niagara Falls. I was going with him to keep him company and to mail a bunch of burned dvd’s with TV shows and mp3’s for my brother DJ in Iraq. It looked like the trip would be postponed to the next week so I asked Michelle which day she wanted to come down. She thought Thursday would be better so I met up with Karen for lunch at noon, except I was feeling nauseous and she was still a bit sick so we just hung out at my place and chatted for awhile. Then she had to get home to study for her classes.

That night I heard from Sosena, she’d called my cell phone and asked if I could pick her up from the airport on Tuesday when she got back from Jamaica. I said I would but Tuesday morning I got a text message from her saying that her family would pick her up instead. So I couldn’t wait to hear about her trip, she had been pretty worried about the whole situation, going with co-workers, not staying at a hotel, etc. Turns out the trip was awful, but I did see some pictures and it looked pretty at least.

I also had the bright idea to take down our Christmas decorations. I should have known better, I always have an allergy death day after we put them up and after taking them down, but what I experienced doing it myself was like both combined. My face was red and itchy, my eyes were watery, I was sneezing faster than I type!, my head hurt from sneezing, even my teeth were itchy. I had to take my inhaler twice, after taking my regular doses of allegra, and I still wasn’t much better. I got all of the ornaments put away and tied up the first two sections of our fake tree and put them in the box before I almost collapsed and had to take a rather long break till I could function again. To top it off, Rogue got the idea to be a menace and launched himself off our corner shelf stand, knocking over my beautiful Fairy on a Unicorn statue I got from Clint, Brea & Erika this last Christmas. He’s lucky I didn’t see him for a few hours after (he scared himself) and that I was dying. Unfortunately he wasn’t done tormenting me though, and he later knocked over my external hard drive which I would have skinned him for if it had broken, especially in my not-so-cat-happy-miserable-walking-bags-of-death allergy mood. I finally did get the rest of the ornaments put away, but I’d forgotten the giant blow up penguin my mom got for Ken and our stockings, but decided they could wait for Ken. *grumble*

January 31st (Thursday)
I was supposed to go get Michelle but I had such a horrible night. I couldn’t sleep, my heart was racing from the adrenaline in my inhaler, I couldn’t breathe but I couldn’t take any more. I tossed and turned and sneezed and was a general face waterfall of tears and snot.. Lovely huh? So I wrote her and cancelled, thank goodness too because she thought she’d come down with strep throat and that’s something I can’t afford to get without insurance .. still.. My best-friend, Melar, picked up Guild Wars and asked me about it. I’ve had the game for a few years (since launch actually, I pre-ordered) but I’d never made it past level 10 because I didn’t have anyone to play with. She’s never played a game like it before, so it took a little while to get her accustomed to playing with another “person”. If you’re interested in playing, there’s no monthly fee or anything, you just buy the game which comes in a pack now with the 2 expansions (not including the new one). Message me if you want to play!

February 2nd (Saturday)
Nothing really happened on Friday, I was still recovering from the allergy attack. Saturday I had to be at the airport cell phone lot at 7am to meet Lesley & Peter and to pick up Chris and Ken. Their flight was an hour and a half late, but we’d known that it was going to be at least half an hour late so we’d planned for that. I sat in Lesley’s car with her and Peter and we talked, and Peter kept saying “no see Niki” for some reason. Weird but damn cute. Once the boys arrived we went to Perkins for breakfast and we were all about ready to drop face into platter I think. Peter informed Lesley that “mommy needs her coffee” !! We did pretty much nothing else that weekend, just recovered from our respective weeks.

My dad made it home to Virginia from Iraq, he’ll be back for 3 weeks. But we learned that he has a detached retina and needed surgery which could have him home for an added 3 weeks. The surgery went well though and he’s recovering. I ended up having to call him really late because DJ is bunking in his trailer for the week and had some questions about where he and his friends could secure their weapons and such. Having to apologize to your dad at 3am on behalf of your brother for eating all his oreo cookies in a war zone is kinda surreal.

February 3rd (Sunday)
So pleased to hear that Posey Doctorow was born! She’s healthy and adorable. Congratulations again Cory & Alice! Also, we had scheduled to have dinner with Ken’s cousin, Joel, but the weather was being iffy so we rain-checked.

February 4th (Monday)
Regular Chris & Andrea visiting for work day, nothing much else happens on Mondays. I finished my book The Oathbound, Vows and Honor, Book 1 by Mercedes Lackey. Here’s the review I wrote on my Facebook Books app: 3 /5 stars

The book mentions that there are previous stories of the characters, but this is the first one I read. Overall it was enjoyable, I liked the “world”, but every chapter there was a description of the characters and their motivations when I could have remembered on my own. Also, the 2 random foes combining at the end to form a super villain team? I would definitely like to see another book in this world.

Then I began reading Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

February 5th (Tuesday)
Nick’s computer had finally arrived in Niagara Falls so I drove over to his place by 11am and we made record time to the UPS store. I mailed off the DVD’s for DJ, the guy at the store was pretty funny. We were set to head back by 12:30pm and got back to Nick’s house by 1:30pm. Another record! I chatted with his mom while he tested his shiny new toy Then I drove him down to 151 Front St. on my way home. I was home by 3pm, our estimation had been 4 or 5pm. Thankfully I had no trouble at the border, I always worry. The weather was also in our favor, it was a cloudy but breaks of sun, 47 degrees.

February 6th (Wednesday)
Chris came over again at 3pm for a work upgrade. It was crazy snowing all day though, and I had a massive headache all day (and last night as well) so I read for most of the day, finally succumbing to a nap right as Ken and Chris were ready to go have dinner. Figures! I napped off and on from then till around midnight, when I got up and watched some of my recorded American Idol shows (still in auditions) and then went to go nap some more. I also finished my book Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris which was pretty damn good. I read it really fast. Here’s the review I wrote on my Facebook Books app: 4 1/2 / 5 stars

I really liked this one. I practically couldn’t put it down. Great story, great characters, great language. I’ll take 2 Erics, a Bill, a Jason and even a Sam. :p

Now I’m reading Children of the Night: A Diana Tregarde Investigation by Mercedes Lackey

February 7th (Thursday)
I was up at stupid o’clock, aka 6am which is usually my bedtime. My head still hurts, there’s tons of snow on the ground and Ken’s still sleeping (it’s 10:30am now) I’ve been playing the Sims 2 a lot since my sleep-over with Lesley. She brought up a bunch of stuff that I’d never done in some of the expansions. It’s been fun, and I played this morning. I’m waiting to hear from Ken’s cousin, Michelle about when she’s ready for me to come get her but I’ll write more about that in my next update.

I’ve just finished cataloging all of our DVD’s & Blu-Ray’s. The program we use (collectorz.com) can export the list into html or other formats so I’ve got our entire list up on my website. I’ll eventually get around to linking it to my other pages and adding buttons and stuff, also making it match my theme, but for now here’s the link Sapphire’s Movies

I’m debating whether or not to catalog our games and books this way as well.

Most of the time I scramble to find ways to amuse myself while Ken is working. Sometimes I make dates with friends. This week however was *packed* !! So awesome.

Monday was Chris & Andrea over as usual. Tuesday I hung out with Sos all day and then we met up with Nick for dinner at Mexicali Rosa’s, then on to Starbucks and then his place for some Family Guy episodes. Wednesday, was pretty relaxing during the day, then Ken’s cousin, Michelle, came over and we played Rock Band and she gave me some jewelry to fix/change for her. I already finished a bracelet she wanted shortened (before / after), and made a new chain piece for the headband I made her awhile ago. Still have another bracelet to make longer though (close up left / close up right). Thursday, I spent the day with Erika at her place, she finished a very pretty sweater she’s been working on for my birthday present. Then when Clint came home from work we went to dinner at Apple Jacks and then played Rock Band for awhile. Tonight we went to Iron Chef at Eglinton & Tomken Rd for Chris’ birthday dinner. Best part was when Chris was opening the Christmas present from Ken and I, Peter insisted on helping. Then said loudly “Oh My Goodness!” when he saw what it was. Other people in the restaurant thought it was just as cute The food wasn’t as good as usual but we had a good time! Tomorrow, we’re finally going to see a movie, though it’s one I don’t really know much aboutFanboys?? with Clint, Erika and Brea. Then they’re coming over to our place to watch Family Guy: Blue Harvest and play Assassin’s Creed (I think). Chris will also be over late tomorrow night because he and Ken have a 3am upgrade to do.

So lots of friend dates, lots of jokes, lots of laughing, and good food! So far I have nothing on my calendar for next week but I’m trying to set up a girls sleep-over for the week after, when Ken and Chris are away in California.

How’s that for a post title huh? /proud This will likely be a long post, so if you’re bored already, skip ahead to the next site in your rss feed :p I haven’t written anything in over a month! *reviews calendar* OH! Let’s begin with Thanksgiving.. the real one :p

~Thanksgiving~
The day of my last post, I was traveling to Virginia to spend 2 weeks with my mom and brother, G. I brought along all of my jewelry stuff to work on Christmas earrings while I was there. My suitcases were stuffed! I never realized how much “stuff” I actually have now. I’ve only been making jewelry for just over a year now. The weather was so fantastic in Virginia, end of fall-ish, not beginning of winter. G and I ran a bunch of errands, I got a new driving report for my citizenship paperwork (they’re only good for 6 months). Hopefully I won’t need to go get another one! I tried to go get a new FBI record report, but the Quantico MP station wouldn’t do it on my downloaded form, and they don’t have the stock cards. So I called the Stafford Sheriff’s office but they couldn’t do it before I left and don’t give out or sell their stock cards. You’d think they were on ration!

Bonus: I got to spend a lot of time with my adorable puppies, Mookie, Vashti and Wolfie. I missed them so much! My Mookie has become so brave, he’s the big brother now. He used to be terrified of the living room because of the ceiling fan and adjustable coffee table. Now he lives on the couch. Poor Vashti was just diagnosed with cancer and had just had surgery to remove a tumor before I arrived. She was really tired most of the time and had a really hard time walking. Once her stitches were removed she quickly returned to her normal bouncy princessy self. The best we can hope for though is that she won’t be in much pain before we realize it. :/ Wolfie on the other hand is such a giant now! I was there when my parents adopted him, and for a long time we were really worried, he had really bad diarrhea for over a month. He was sooo thin too, now he’s grown out and UP! Sitting on the couch with me, he’s actually taller. He’s probably the tallest puppy we’ve ever had. He and Mookie were quite a pair, getting jealous whenever the other was being petted. Wolfie would actually rumble though. I’m not quite sure it was growling, he didn’t seem angry, just vocal. It was close though and I found myself pulling my hand back once or twice. I <3 my puppies.

Thanksgiving dinner was smaller than usual. Even though we were only missing 1 person, that person was my dad, who can polish off most of a 10 pound turkey by himself. We were also leaving right after Thanksgiving so we wouldn't be keeping many leftovers. Mom cooked a turkey breast instead, I can't say it was even close to as good, but everything else made up for it. I of course made my world famous potatoes, we also had stuffing (ick), brussel sprouts with bacon, creamy spinach, REAL biscuits (c'mon canada!) and other stuff I can't remember at the moment. I think we were all finished and full within 10 minutes!

~Kiev, Ukraine~
The Saturday after Thanksgiving, Mom, G and I left for a short trip to Kiev. G had a meet & greet planned at the language school that wants to hire him. I admit, the Ukraine wasn’t even on my radar for places to visit. Making the plans for the trip was quite a chore. G did most of the research but the amount of emails, websites and issues was astounding. We ended up renting a 2-bedroom apartment for our stay. I really liked the furniture and bedding in what ended up being my room. Dark wood and orange sheets. My overall impression was that Kiev is a dark and gloomy place. I’m gonna ask G for pictures in the summertime but I bet it will look almost the same. Still the people were super nice, G even commented that he’d never had such a nice experience with people in his many trips to Russia. I think the trip would have been very different if G didn’t speak Russian for us though. The driver we hired, Igor, was supposed to speak English but he really didn’t. Still he was awesome, we all felt bad leaving him outside in his car while we went sightseeing or to eat. We asked him to join us, but he always refused. I have a full picture set up on my Flickr account, you need to be on my friends list to view it though. None of us could believe all of the Mexican food that were on the menus though, really? Ukrainian Mexican? We didn’t try any though. Back in Toronto at the St. Lawrence Market, our favorite Ukrainian store was pushing their Salsa.. Coincidence?

You can find more information about the specific places we visited in my brother’s blog posts.
#1 My Trip
#2 Kiev (Day 1)
#3 Kiev (Day 2)
#4 Kiev (Day 3)
#5 Kiev (Part 2)

I flew home on Dec. 1st. Ken and I had 4 days to catch up on some of the 3 weeks of TV shows that had piled up between his L.I.S.A. Conference week and my 2 week trip before Reina would arrive.

~Reina in Toronto~
My best-friend Reina came to visit for a week. I honestly wasn’t as happy about her coming as I should have been, Ken and I hadn’t even started our Christmas shopping yet and we’d be yet another week behind. Once she arrived though all of that didn’t matter. We had a great time! Everywhere we went, Reina was super excited, she’d get pictures with everyone we came in contact with. Even when she forgot her camera one day, the next day we went back to every place we’d gone to and snapped a picture. She’s just a tiny ball of optimism, cheer, energy, enthusiasm and super charming. Everything I’m not! I doubt I’d get away with half the stuff she did. Though we did NOT get away with trying to get a picture of 151 Front St. The security guard made us go away, but we did get a parking ticket that said 151 on it so Reina took that home as a souvenir. She helped us decorate our Christmas tree, and we had a great time out with some of our friends too! Some memorable pics we took: ~THE MOOF!!~ & ~Rest Assured!~ Reinforced my belief that I need a “day-friend” to do stuff with while all my friends are busy being productive members of society. We wished Melar would have come too, but I doubt that will ever happen.

~2 Weeks of Christmas!~
So here’s where Christmas Cheer Collides.. the 2 weeks of Christmas is a blur of get-togethers, present buying, SNOW!, and 4 foot penguins?! The Sunday after Reina left, we had our Christmas Dinner with Ken’s Mom & Jeff, Ken’s sister Karen & Kevin. Always fun to do a full course dinner in our tiny galley kitchen. By fun I mean, exhausting and messy.. *grin* Still it’s amazing every time we succeed. This year, I put to use my experience from our many Thanksgiving dinners and cleared out all non-essential items from the counters and tables. We even got to use one of our end tables as a secondary “serving” counter. I’m also getting closer and closer to the perfect ratio of potato <> people. My goal will be to have no less, no more than we need. I also prepared a fantastically received salad of baby spinach leaves, dried cranberries, died red onions, shredded carrots, and sliced apple with balsamic vinaigrette dressing. It was pretty awesome, and made me <3 cranberries for once. My mom usually makes cranberry bread every year, and I've never liked it much, now I understand why my older brother, DJ, insists upon it every year.

Speaking of which, I learned that my dad had arranged for a helicopter to pick my brother up from his outpost and fly him into the base so they could spend Christmas together. I it's awesome, I can only imagine how lonely it is for everyone out there. I got to talk to them both off an on all Christmas Eve / Day in IM. We joked that they'd be forced into doing a "troops in Iraq reunion" special.

The next Saturday after our Christmas dinner, our friend Nick finally came over for a visit. A long visit it turned out! He and Ken did lots of geeking out, we went to dinner at Seoul House for Bolgogi. Then we watched some Ergo Proxy. It’s been many months since we saw the first episodes with Sosena and I’d forgotten how awesome the theme song was, and PINO! It made a lot more sense the second time around. I must have been in Sosena’s “gourmet” Grilled Cheese stupor the first time. The only bad part of the visit was trying a piece of Nick’s caffeine gum.. UGH.. it took me a few minutes to figure out what the taste reminded me of.. Flintstone Vitamins mixed with Robitussin. I think the world needs me to stay away from caffeine, I already have the oddest sleeping habits of anyone I know. :p Nick however has caffeine sludge for blood, so he <3'd it.

The next day, Sosena came over and we watched a few more episodes of Ergo Proxy. Explained a bit more of the story. We ordered dinner from C'est Bon.. A Chinese place of all things. Their spicy crispy beef was fantastic, took care of my Hakka craving NP. Too bad Sos had to work that night, or we'd have watched much more Ergo Proxy. After picking Sosena up from her house in Brampton, I had to park on the other side of this giant Lake that had formed from the doorway to our car. She thought it was hilarious that I had to cross the river for her But really, driving over 5km was enough to make waves reach the windows!

~Christmas Eve~
On Christmas Eve morning, I went out and mailed off some late packages, stopped at the grocery store to pick up pepperoni bread fixings and surprised the Canadian Cancer Society with a $1k donation on behalf of the Snider Family. Ken’s step-mother has had some tumors removed this year and all looks good, so we’re very thankful for all the research and work they’ve done. The poor lady was all alone in the office, though she said it was ok since they were only open 9-noon. As I was leaving I suggested she should take off a few minutes early and promised not to tattle. Then after a well deserved nap, Ken and I watched some TV, played some games and I made traditional pepperoni bread. The frozen dough I got from the grocery store didn’t have any special spices listed in the ingredients but you could clearly see and taste them. Still it was awful good. Mmmmm

~Christmas Day~
We were supposed to drive up to Brantford and have dinner with Ken’s maternal Grandfather and family. But a few days prior, Ken’s mom told us that there would be too many people there and that she was sorry. So we made reservations at the Town & Country buffet. We go there maybe once every other month and it’s always “ok” but not fantastic. It was downright packed on Christmas Day though. Afterwards, we drove up to Brantford and stayed at the Best Western Brant Park hotel. In the new Gretzky wing.. The room was bigger than our whole apartment, had a fake fire place, and the MOST AWESOME whirlpool tub I’ve ever ever ever seen… I MUST own it if we ever get our own place. Ken says we could probably find better, but I <3'd this one soooooo. Though maybe there’s something to his theory..

~Boxing Day~
We spent the day with Ken’s paternal family as we do every year. They’re such a fun bunch, lots of sarcasm and irreverence. Us “grandkids” have taken over the main course responsibility (we were expected to bring an appetizer before) for the last year so Ken and I brought some Broccoli with cheese sauce. The food was fantastic, the presents took forever to open, always fun! Everyone seemed to <3 the earrings I made for them. Sadly Ken & his cousin, Michelle, did not win the Euchre tournament this year so we had to relinquish the trophy to his Uncle Lynn & cousin, Teresa. There was much taunting Every year Ken says he should teach me to play, but then he forgets until a few days before Christmas. So I don't play in the tournament, I won't make someone lose because I don't really know how to play. They take this tournament seriously! The trophy is engraved with winners names from like 10 years ago or something. After the tournament we packed up some left-overs and drove home.

~The Gifts~
Some memorable gifts this year: Ken got 3 certificates to attend cooking classes at Cephalon center (2 from Mom & Dad, 1 from Me), He drooled over the blu ray discs “Planet Earth” & “Roving Mars”. Books: The Tipping Point, GreenTopia & 2 of the Stargate SG-1: Fandom books. He also got a decorative plate set, a spread knife, gravy bowl, some sauces and spices, colored cable ties, a mini flash drive, .hack and other stuff I got Season 1 & 2 of Dark Angel. I <3'd that show. I also got Season 5 of the Gilmore Girls! A jewelry making book, Disgaea 2!! (I think that's a hint I should hurry up and finish 1 already *hee hee) Chocolates, 2 packs of card stationary, a pretty tiny tiny hummingbird necklace, this years Swarovski Ornament, this and last year’s White House Ornament, a beautiful handmade fairy on sparkly stone.. and lots more! I think we can walk in and buy our local Future Shop with all the gift certificates we got this year!!

~What it all Means~
Even though I didn’t spend Christmas with my family this year, they are off on a grand adventure to England & Scotland or stuck in Iraq, we were still as close as IM and picture uploads could keep us. The collision of love, good wishes, hopes and dreams from all facets of my family and friends and that which I feel for them reminds me what it all means. I’m not a good enough of a writer to explain it, but I’m sure everyone knows what I mean. It’s the one time of year where everyone can feel like the star atop the tree, and at the same time be the light on everyone elses star. Merry Christmas Everyone, I hope you figured out what it all means too.