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.

April 2 (Wednesday)
So I didn’t end up getting to sleep till around 8:30am. I skipped my dentist appointment because I ended up having to take my inhaler and was feeling so crappy and tired. Highlight of the day was Ken dropping a large bottle of Worcestershire sauce and it ran under the fridge so we had to move it and sweep and mop up everything, including several old cat toys that had been MIA. Also dusted and wiped down the back of the fridge and discovered why it was making so much noise! There was a christmas tree shaped cake pan stuck between the coils. *smile* I’ve never owned a tree shaped cake pan!

Later on, Melar and I played some Guild Wars. We completed the D’Alessio Seaboard Mission, explored The Black Curtain and Kessex Peak. After she went to bed, I did some more quests in the Eye of the North campaign and picked up a new hero, Gwen! The little girl who followed me around in Pre-Searing (noob land).

April 3 (Thursday)
Happy Birthday Andrea! Again I get to sleep at 8am.. woke up at 2pm.. Washed the dishes and later played Guild Wars with Miuu, who just started playing a ranger. We did his quests, answered his questions about the game.. then watched some shows with Ken.

April 4 (Friday)
Woke up, did some chores.. Did spring cleaning in the bathroom, not much in there so it was easy. Sorted out the medicine cabinet and wiped it clean, sorted out the sink cabinet and wiped it down.. Organized all the bottles of stuff and tossed expired stuff.. Wiped the walls and shower ceiling.. Then I had Ken seal some cracks in the wall corners.

While waiting for Melar or Miuu to log in I explored the Talmark Wilderness trying to level my warrior hero, Koss. Once Miuu logged in I joined him for more questing with his ranger.

April 5 (Saturday)
This was a big day, Ken and I spring cleaned the bedroom. I was dying with allergies pretty immediately and used almost a full box of tissues with my runny nose and sneezing. But it’s done! And it really needed it.. Before, there was maybe a foot of room between Ken’s side of the bed and the “computer graveyard”.. but after sorting and rearranging and 3 trips to the dumpster with 2 carts, there’s now tons of room!

Afterwards we treated ourselves to a Teppanyaki dinner, then went grocery shopping and washed all our blankets

April 6 (Sunday)
Happy Birthday Keri-Lynn! As expected I had trouble sleeping and breathing from all the dust kicked up on Saturday. It was pretty severe though. I didn’t get to sleep till around 12:30pm and woke up at 5:30pm. I spent the morning sorting out my old bookmarks that were lumped together.

More Guild Wars! Melar and I explored the Tears of the Fallen and half of Twin Serpent Lakes. She wasn’t feeling well so I made her go rest for a bit. While she was away I finished exploring and found the Mission Outposts: Riverside Province & Sanctum Cay. When I explored Stingray Strand, I found an armorer npc that had better stuff available for Melar, so I called her up and made her come back in and get it! *laugh* It looks nice though, she chose a mix of the druid armor and the studded. After she was all suited up and happy, we completed the Divinity Coast mission and attempted the Riverside Province Mission twice (cleared 4/9 towers the first time and 8/9 the second) so we called it a night.

April 7 (Monday)
Happy Birthday Sosena! I slept from about 1:30am to 5:30am.. Played Guild Wars for awhile, explored Majesty’s Rest, my last unexplored area in the Kryta region but I couldn’t kill Rotscale, one of the most powerful mobs in the game. He’s got an entourage of about 12 including 2 clerics. Since the max level for players is 20, I will have to figure out a strategy to kill it. Seems to have a nice bow that my friends could use.

I was able to get back to sleep around 6:30am and woke back up at 11am. Washed the dishes, and cut up my Red, Yellow and Orange peppers for my salads and snacks. Chris was over but Andrea couldn’t make it because her husband was getting some tests done.

I spent most of the day discussing my up-coming trip to Sausalito with my friend who lives there, made plans with Sos for dinner on Tuesday for her birthday and discussed some sleep-over plans for when Ken is away.

When Melar finally got home, she and I helped Miuu through the first two missions post-searing: The Great Northern Wall and Fort Ranik. Then Miuu went to lay down and Melar went to watch a movie with her daughter. I made some cream of tomato soup for dinner and played on my new ranger for awhile. When Melar came back we retried and completed the Riverside Province mission and we only have 1 more mission left in the Kryta region, Sanctum Cay.

While I was playing, I was on the phone with Reina for about half an hour.. that girl can talk! Then later that night I learned about Adventures by Disney trips and that my friend in Cali is going to Peru in October! I want to go!!!

April 8 (Tuesday)
Another really bad sleepless night, sneezing and runny nose & eyes. I played my new Guild Wars ranger some more. A stargate shaped mirror that Ken ordered arrived.. it’s way smaller than I thought it would be. Andrea came and we talked about her birthday with her family and she was very happy with the spring cleaning we did.

Ken and I left around 6:30pm to get a car wash and gas, then picked up Sosena in Brampton for her birthday dinner at Iron Chef with Clint, Erika.. Lots of laughing, making fun of Clint’s chinese cough syrup, Ken and Clint catching up on the goings on at Datawire. I had beef terriyaki, Ken had steak.. Clint had bolgogi and Erika had a veggie tempura dinner w/ veggie roll on side, Sos had several rolls of sushi, Geisha Roll, something else and a Spicy tuna sushi pizza or something.. She loved the bracelet set I made her and finally managed to remember to bring to her and she loved the birthday bracelet I made her too. After dinner Sos and Ken went to Tim Hortons and got coffee, donuts and ice capp.. Then we took Sos to work for 10:30.

On the way home, Ken and I stopped at the grocery store, finally got home around 11:30pm. I tried to sleep at 4am but got back up, finally got to sleep at 6:43am.

April 9 (Wednesday)
I woke up at 3:50pm, Chris had arrived around 11:30am for their work upgrade. I talked Melar into being added as an author to this blog. She asked me what she’d write about so I suggested she write about things like: being a mom, living in georgia, working at a daycare, playing guild wars, tv & movies you watch, stuff on the news, food & restaurants you like or make, or she could write short stories like she used to.

Chris didn’t end up leaving till around 9pm and he missed his kung fu class and Ken missed his Japanese immersion language school meeting. After Chris left, we watched some shows, then Ken went to sleep and I browsed the Fire Mountain Gems website and filled the online shopping cart. I asked my friend in Cali if I could send it to her because I’ll be visiting her in 2 weeks. She said that would be fine but I know I’ll have a fight to wrestle the shiney’s away from her Again I had a hard time sleeping.

April 10 (Thursday)
I had a really bad night, I couldn’t sleep, I felt like I was breathing through water. So I installed a free trial of Bento and started filling it out, to see if it will help me with my jewelry project lists or not. I finally got to sleep at 12:30pm but had to cancel dinner plans with Andrea. I slept forever.. Ken thinks it was all the medicine I took, plus the lack of sleep all week since the Saturday spring cleaning and a lack of drinking much on Wednesday.

April 11 (Friday)
We had some rain yesterday and today, so that may be why I was able to sleep again, but I slept till 5pm. I did the horrible amounts of laundry that I’d been putting off all week due to feeling like shit. But it was good to get done. When I came up from switching the wash to the dryer I was sniffly, Ken was on a call and I heard him say “no she’s not always sick, she has allergies”.. Yeah.. everytime he’s on a call is when I sneeze and cough and get sniffly.. they must think of me as Tissue Girl..

I didn’t play much Guild Wars, helped Melar with some quests with her new Necro and then took a nap from midnight to 2am. Ken and I watched some tv shows till around 5am then he went to bed. I chatted with his cousin in IM a bit and we made plans for our sleep-over. She reminded me that I wanted to go to the farmer’s market which is only open on Saturdays so I quickly told Ken that I’d be waking him up around 10:30am to go. He said ok, he loves it there.

Considering how much I slept between Thursday and yesterday, I shouldn’t have much trouble staying up, but I’m still really tired for some reason. No choice though, we also have to go shopping for some clothes for Ken before he leaves for Chicago on Sunday. Maybe staying up will reset my “clock” too. We’ll see.. Gonna play some Guild Wars then take a shower and have breakfast.

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

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.