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Yesterday was really really fun and delicious.

It started off with dim sum with the family. I got to have all of my favourite things, including (don’t laugh at my spelling!!!) ta siu bao, shrimp ha gou, that noodley thing, tons of turnip, eggplant with shrimp, shiu mai, and more!

After dim sum we came home and bummed around for a little bit. Then Rosemarie and I picked up David and Stephanie and we went rock climbing at Coyote Rock Gym.

i'm pretty sure i fell off right after this picture

rose and david bouldering

I was really terrible. I could only do the really easy walls. Any of the rated walls I would get about half way up and then fall off 5 times. My arms are soooooo weak! Rosemarie was excellent. She looks really good up on the walls, very strong and flexible.

I don’t think rock climbing will really be my thing, unless I somehow get bulging biceps.

After rock climbing we stopped by Taco Bell. I love Taco Bell for some reason. I think it’s mostly because I only get to have it every six months. I had a crunch wrap and that satisfied my craving for another long while.

Then we started talking about bubble tea and decided we might as well stop by My Sweet Tea again because it was “on the way”. Rose and I both got the same yogurt-y bubble tea, mmmm. Rose was not really a bubble tea fan before, but she loved this one!! Hooked!! Now we just have to find it in Vancouver.

Shortly after I got home I got picked up by Helenka and her bf Chris and they brought me out to their place for New Years Eve. We ate a nice dinner, drank wine, talked, watched Youtube videos, watched Midnight in Paris, and then counted down to 2012. They drove me home and I felt really wide awake so I stayed up and chatted with Scott for a while. :)

Quite a decent New Years Eve, actually!

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I’m having a nice lazy morning after two action packed days in a row.

On Friday I was really really tired. I had a third bad insomnia night in a row. Anyway we were having people over so I spent the day tidying up a bit, and preparing food for 11 people. I made butter chicken, and saag aloo (potatoes with spinach), and Rosemarie made cheesecake, and Kate made an enormous salad. I think everyone enjoyed the meal.

After dinner we started our gingerbread houses. My family and the Monnon’s family have a big tradition of decorating gingerbread houses together. We must have been doing it for maybe 8 years? This year we had Rose and I, Natasha and her bf Richard, Sam (Eric’s gf), and Callum (Kate’s son).

We also set up the computer so we could Skype with Bill and Suzanne who are down in Florida. They saved their gingerbread house to decorate at the same time with us and we left the cameras on for an hour! It was really neat that they could almost be there with us.

This years gingerbread houses were pretty epic. Jane brought over all of her extra candy and we just had so much it was ridiculous. I covered every surface of my gingerbread house and so did everyone else, and we still had bags and bags of candy left on the table. We ate so much candy we all felt sick, and people even got hiccups. It was like we were drunk on candy. It’s three days later and I still haven’t touched my gingerbread house because I STILL feel like I never want to eat candy again! AND I REALLY LIKE CANDY!

The finished products were so good. We were all very creative this year!!

I made a board games house. Can you recognize it?? I hope so!

I tried to make the other side like Carcassonne, but it’s a little more abstract.

Rose also made an epic nerdy gingerbread house. She made a rock climbing wall!!! She says those are the real knots and everything. She also marked out a couple different routes. I love it!!

Nerdy sisters.

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January:

February:

March:

April:

  • I interviewed for BCIT (in Vancouver), SAIT (in Calgary), Michener (in Toronto) and NAIT (in Edmonton).
  • There was a fire in the kitchen.
  • Scott’s aunt came to visit.

May:

June:

July:

August:

September:

October:

November:

December:

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I am pooped. I haven’t been sleeping well. Why am I so bad at sleeping???

It’s been fun here so far. It’s also been really cold, like -15ºC, and then another 10ºC of windchill. I haven’t experienced this weather in a long long time. Maybe rainy Vancouver isn’t so so bad.


We played Wasabe. Rosemarie and I tied.

I think it would be fun to actually gather all the ingredients in the game, and every time you complete a roll you actually get to make it and we all get to eat it. That would be awesome, except some of the ingredients are strange like urchin and blowfish.


On Wednesday Rose and I went for a quick snowshoe in the forest behind our house. We didn’t go very fast. Very leisurely.


It’s hard to make a snow angel in snowshoes.

The Haberl kids dropped by for a quick visit, and then we had dinner with Kate’s kids.

Yesterday was good. I met up with Lauren and Sarah Swan for shawarmas downtown. I consider shawarma an Ottawa thing. We were going to go trampolining after that but then decided not to, and to get bubble tea instead. Sarah knew a good place that lets you substitute the tea with water, so no caffeine. The place also can serve the bubble tea hot, instead of icy, which is much more appropriate on a day like yesterday.

I actually ended up ordering a strawberry yoduly bubble tea with pearls, which had no tea at all. It was made with drinkable yogurt and real strawberries and was extremely extremely delicious. I want to go back to that place!!! This is the place, if you are in Ottawa and want to check it out: http://www.letseat.at/MySweeTea

After bubble tea I met up with the Ace Gang for our first reunion since Christmas 2008, I think. (The Christmas we were all in Sydney together.)

It was fun catching up, and we went out for dinner at the Clocktower near Leslie’s place and my bacon, apple, and dill sandwich on a potato bun was really yummy. We took a picture, but I don’t have a copy. I would make a terrible photo journalist.


Oh and here is Rosemarie with her secret santa gift in Vancouver. Scott made her a sushi kit with every single possible thing she would need to make sushi: rice, nori, sushi mat, rice vinegar, wasabe, ginger, chopsticks etc etc. I think she liked it.

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Last night we decided to go out and see the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie. We hadn’t done much through the day so it was good to get out of the house.

Both of us had read listened to the books last year so we were quite excited to see the movie.

I’ll keep my review spoiler-free.

I thought it wasn’t bad! I mean, it was like the books in fast-forward. They did change some things, but I am not the type that gets mad when the movie is not exactly the same as the book. In fact I was quite impressed by how they condensed some plot lines and still had a good story.

When I listened to the books last year I really thought they could have been improved by better editing. The books were SO boring in some parts. I felt like they should have cut a lot, but maybe the death of the author (Stieg Larsson) stopped this from happening.

The movie did this editing, and I liked it.

By the way, how weird was it to see Joost from The Way in a totally opposite kind of role.

Can’t wait until the next movie!