My brother, his wife and their 2 kids were just here visiting with me. We had such a great time! It was their first real time in Toronto (or Canada for that matter) though they were all here for my wedding reception in 2006. That was just a weekend though and they didn’t get to see much of the city.

June 24th - Tuesday
They spent all day in Niagara Falls and didn’t arrive till after 7pm. We went to Memories of Japan for a tappanyaki dinner. The kids seemed to really like the food and the chef did some egg juggling and an onion volcano! My brother and his wife went out to check out a bar nearby, Scruffy Murphy’s. The kids stayed the night with us and we played Rock Band all night.

June 25th - Wednesday
Took the kids to our indoor pool to swim for a little bit but we were all hungry and the building was having water issues AGAIN. We went to Licks for lunch then took the subway to Union Station and walked down Front Street to the CN Tower. We purchased tickets through Airmiles so we had the full package and express elevator. They seemed to think it was cool. Especially the glass floor!

We found the skyway back to Union Station and met up with Ken to go to dinner at Pappas Grill on the Danforth. Isabel had a minor melt-down before dinner but DJ took her outside for awhile and she was fine after. We had a noisy bunch of teachers having their end of the year party at a table next to us. They were quite rowdy but it was funny to watch. After dinner we drove around the city a bit and Ken gave a mini-tour. Then back at our apartment we played some more Rock Band and Daemon played some Assassin’s Creed. Isabel didn’t have an extra pull-up with her so she went back to the hotel with DJ & Missy.

June 26th - Thursday
We woke up late, my brother had been trying to call but he had been using my cell phone number and I didn’t hear it. I drove Daemon over to pick them up so he could get changed. Then because of the time we just went to the Science Center, had lunch in their cafeteria and spent a good 3 hours looking at all the stuff and chasing after the kids. They especially loved the Science Arcade, the Giant Mouse Trap (like the game) and Isabel had to be dragged away from the Kid Spark area which had a stage set up with working lights and songs. Then at 5pm we saw Roving Mars in the Omnimax Theater. So cool! Everyone had a great time, though I think my sister-in-law had the best time there :p

Then we picked up Ken again for dinner and went to Pier 4. The kids didn’t really seem that interested in all the naval decorations but it was such a pretty view on the water and they loved the food. My brother & his wife shared a huge seafood platter for 2 that had everything you could want, if you like seafood that is!

June 27th - Friday
Picked everyone up at the hotel and we met Ken’s sister at the Pickle Barrel for lunch. Afterwards we took the kids to the Toys R Us store to browse. Managed to make it out without buying a THING! Then we hopped on the subway again, this time to Museum station and went to… wait for it.. the MUSEUM (Royal Ontario Museum)! They had a great Dinosaur exhibition going on. Pretty cool actually. Then they had a bunch of art and artifacts from different regions, China, Korea with some gorgeous mother of pearl inlaid furniture which is my favorite, Europe: Themes and collections with suits of armor and such, Europe: History of Style with displays of Victorian & other outfits and home decor, Africa, the Americas & Asias Pacific, Middle East & South Asia, Africa: Egypt which was the coolest of course!, Cyprus, The Bronze Age Aegean, & Greece which had the best jewlery display next to Egypt. We spent a long long 6 hours there, but only had one Isabel melt-down.

Ken picked us up after, and we drove to the Mandarin chinese buffet near our apartment. They are huge fans of chinese buffets so everyone loved it. Lots of variety there. We were all extremely stuffed! My friend came over after dinner and my brother entertained us all with stories and videos from Iraq. Then he and his wife went back out to the bar for their last night together. Daemon played more Assassin’s Creed. Isabel had a short melt-down when she couldn’t watch Meet the Spartans because we have it on Blu-Ray and that can only be played on the PS3 which Daemon was using. After some threats and some alone time in a bubble bath she calmed down and we watched her movie later.

I miss them already and I hope they can come back again this summer but I doubt my brother will be able to join them for awhile. My sister-in-law and the kids are staying witih my mom and younger brother in Virginia for awhile and my older brother will be in Florida doing some training.

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.

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

We saw the musical, Wicked, for the second time last night at the Canon Theatre. But let’s back up..

That morning I was working on my wedding scrapbook and researching various programs and options for a digital scrapbook and finally came up with a good option. I plan on making scissor and paste books ™ for special events like weddings, and a digital “yearbook” for everything else. I didn’t get to sleep until about 6am. Then I woke up around 10am coughing up a lung, and needed to take my inhaler, which hurts. My whole body feels like it’s shaking, I feel dizzy and I usually already have a headache from coughing. After about an hour, my body starts to hurt like I’ve run a marathon. It usually takes about an hour for my coughing and watery eyes to calm down after I take the inhaler, so once I was able to get back to sleep, I was out for maybe an hour before Ken woke me up because someone was at the door. It was a package delivery but I didn’t get to the door in time so there was just a notice. After complaining about feeling crappy and being super tired, I managed to fall right back asleep for another hour.

Then it was time to get up and get ready for our day out. We took off to get Ken’s cousin and her friend from Kitchener at about 2:30pm. We’d given Ken’s cousin 2 tickets as a birthday present and included transportation and dinner. We arrived at her place at about 4pm and then picked up her friend. We hit some major traffic back in Toronto, but we managed to make it to Tappanyaki (Ken’s cousin’s dinner choice) by 6:20pm. Our chef was on a roll, he made joke after joke and had the whole table cracking up. Last time Ken and I had him he cracked us up with alot of Japanese/Chinese joke, but this time he had man/woman, and husband/wife jokes as well. We had to skip dessert because it was 7:30pm by the time the cook was done, so we hurried down to the Canon Theatre.

Ken dropped us off at the door and we ran to the ticket booth. They said we had 3 minutes left before they started. I told Ken’s cousin and her friend to go on inside so they wouldn’t miss the beginning. Since I’d already seen it before, I would wait for Ken. Once Ken arrived, we waited for the ushers to be able to seat us, which was during the set change to Shiz. There were alot of changes in the show, Galinda was much more self-absorbed, Ken’s cousin said later that she was reminded of the character Karen from Will & Grace. She had a fantastic voice though. Ken and I agreed that Elphaba was a better singer when we saw it last year, but we didn’t dislike this one. Her voice just seemed strained. Everyone loved the show, there were enough minor changes to keep Ken and I attentive and his cousin and her friend were enthralled. There were lots of people dressed in costume for Halloween. Lots of Dorothy’s, Elphaba’s and Glinda’s.
After the show we came back to our apartment for a little while. I wanted to show Ken’s cousin my wedding scrapbook that I’ve been working on, he wanted to show her where we live since she’s never been here. And we had a gift to give her, a small ornament. It has Glinda’s crown and wand and a pair of ruby slippers.

On the way back to Kitchener, we listened to the Wicked soundtrack cd. We dropped the girls off at around 2am, and on the way home we got hungry so we stopped at Perkins. We walked in the door at 4am checked our emails and went to sleep

We had a great time! We made plans to meet Ken’s cousin and her friend again for the One of a Kind show. I can’t wait

Today was the last day of the EX We took a cab to the Princes’ Gates and walked all the way to Ontario Place to catch the end of the Snowbirds air show. Then we went around looking for an ATM. We passed at least 4 that were turned off or out-of-service. The one we did find working had a line at least 25 people long.

After we had some cash, we went over to the Food Pavillion because we didn’t eat at all before we got there. I really don’t like that place, too busy, hard to find a place to sit while you’re holding super hot food. It’s expensive and the stores are often out of their “main” item. We always walk all the way around first to see what’s available and then split up to get our food. I wanted cheesy fries and a pogo (corn dog). I went to one place for the fries, which turned out to be under cooked, and another place for the pogo. The cashier at the pogo place kept insisting that I give her my $5 bill and 2 toonies.. When I was trying to give her a $20. I had to stop her from asking and tell her to take the $20. Just needless hassle..

After we ate, we went hunting for somewhere to get a pack of smokes. I knew I needed some before we got there but I didn’t know we’d be taking a taxi so I didn’t have anywhere else to get some. End up costing me $10 for a small pack and I got carded..

Then we got to the international pavillion, usually our favorite part. The prices are dropped on the last day and it was around 8pm so there was at least half as many people. Found a good deal on 12-packs of socks. Then we watched a bit of a dance show which was cool. Then Ken’s feet starting hurting because his shoes are on their last stitches. So we went to sit outside and caught the final performance of the Human Cannonball. Then we grabbed a taxi home. I usually don’t get to see much of the area as I’m driving through, I’m always watching the streets and taxis and waiting for directions. But I got to see alot of pretty stuff on the way home tonight. Maybe someday I’ll walk around there and actually check stuff out.

All in all, a tiring day but school starts on Thursday!