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We have been mega busy in the last four days. I’m pooped.

While Scott looks happy in this picture, Canada Day in downtown Vancouver was a disappointment. It was crowded and there was nothing good going on. There were some food carts but they were too expensive and there were trucks giving out samples of chocolate milk and stuff but the lines were too long. And the lumberjack show was too slow paced and boring. So we went home.

On the Monday of the long weekend Scott and I went mattress shopping. Our old mattress has just gotten too soft unfortunately, even though it’s only two years old. I have been waking up with a sore back for a while, from sleeping in a canyon, and Scott snores more now!!! >:( So we got a way more firm mattress on mega sale and it gets delivered on Sunday. I CAN’T WAIT. We checked out all the stores nearby to get the best deal.

We also played many many games of Agricola over the weekend. THE BEST GAME!! Check out this game where Scott sucked so bad he lost 38 to 10. Even if you don’t know the game you can see how badly Scott did. He doesn’t even know what went so so wrong, hahaha.

My board.

Scott’s board. HAHAHA.

Tuesday was MY BIRTHDAY! We had a really good dinner at Phnom Penh. We had tons of food including their famous chicken wings and butter beef. My favourite dish of the night was the deep fried squid though… man oh man it was SO TENDER. That was the softest, non-chewy squid I have ever had. I don’t know how they do it! Unfortunately a lot of the dishes (including the squid) were extremely salty though so while I’m glad we finally tried it, I don’t know if I will go back again.

Rosemarie got me a nanaimo square cake and Scott made cookies. I got awesome presents this year including Ticket To Ride from my Aussie family, and a Kindle from Scott!!! I am spoiled!!!

Us playing Ticket To Ride on my birthday. Rosemarie won.

Then yesterday was Rosemarie’s goodbye party. I had parmesan and herb wings and a cocktail called a Rocket Pop. It was good but I think I ate too fast and felt really nauseous so that’s all I had. Rosemarie had a lot of friends show up. I think it was a good goodbye party for her.

I’ve still been having to wake up at 5:45 AM for work this week too, but tomorrow is the last day of that for a while. I don’t think anyone should ever have to wake up at anything before 6:00 AM. Cardiac stress lab has been my hardest rotation so far. There is lots of stuff happening and the same time and you don’t really get to stop moving until the afternoon. I’ve done 5 injections so far but that’s it. Not the right rotations to do a lot of injections unfortunately. And next week won’t have many either. Boo.

ANYWAY that’s me all caught up I think! I’m looking forward to this evening bumming around with Scott and playing some more Ticket To Ride once Rosemarie gets back from her errands.

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Last night Rosemarie and I went to the other night market in Richmond with a few of my classmates. It is called the Summer Night Market, not to be confused with the Richmond Night Market that is in the summer. To make it even worse one moved in to the location where the other one used to be up until this year, and also one used to be the only one but then shut down and only re-opened this year. It’s all very confusing and I wouldn’t be surprised if people end up going to the wrong one by accident.

Anyway they are both really similar but the Summer Night Market doesn’t have an admission fee, plus the food is a little cheaper. BUT there are less food booths. BUT there are more shops. So… I don’t know which is better.

Hurricane potatoes were only $2! We had parmesan and garlic flavour. Rosemarie REALLY liked it!! (So did I.)

Papaya salad. I looooove papaya salad from Thai restaurants so I was pretty pumped to se this being sold. It was pretty tasty but not as good as I hoped. $4 (was supposed to be $5 but I bargained.)

Waffle fish thingy filled with custard. $1. This thing was really good!! But it was sooooo hot we didn’t really enjoy it to its maximum potential.

She looks happy there but that was before she got to the burning hot lava centre.

Pork siu mai on a stick! A lot of the market food was on a stick. Good for eating while walking around! These were decent. $3.50

Can you tell what this is?? When Rose saw this her eyes lit up and she said she HAD TO HAVE IT.

A hot dog covered in sweet potato fries. Bahahahaha. It was pretty weird. I didn’t mind the one bite I snagged, but I would never buy one just for myself.

We also shopped around in the non-food area. I got a new little dangly thingy for my phone. We tried to convince each other into buying lip tattoos…

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Rosemarie and I went to the Trout Lake farmers market this Saturday and picked up some bread, raspberries, local strawberries, peppers, new potatoes, and a zucchini. The stuff wasn’t exactly cheap or anything but I make myself feel better by reminding myself that the produce is FRESH FRESH FRESH and we’re supporting local businesses instead of THE MAN.

Anyone who knows about me working for Shouldice for three years knows how I feel about local strawbs. I can’t get enough!!!

The bread was hazelnut and fig bread. OOO how fancy. I wasn’t that impressed with it plain at first though because the hazelnuts are WHOLE and crunchy and weird. But later I topped slices of bread with some deli turkey and some mozzarella and broiled them, and that was REALLY yum. The figs are delicious. Figs are becoming one of my new favourite food things.

Dinner plate of market foods and leftovers. A mini-quesadilla with peppers, salsa and cheese, hazelnut and fig bread with turkey and mozzarella, plus fruit and veg. I was pretending I was on Masterchef and tried to make each plate look the same, haha.

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For the next four weeks I start work at 7:00 AM, so I spent today prepping a bunch of breakfast foods so that I hopefully don’t have to wake up much before 6 AM. I made 12 oatmeal chocolate chip muffins this morning, and just finished making 10 breakfast burritos this afternoon. All that combined with bagels being on sale for $1 a bag at No Frills means that our freezer is totally ridiculous right now!!

Is it weird that I took a picture of my freezer? Probably.

Last week at work was enjoyable. Things are becoming more familiar and I’m getting better at dealing with patients. There really are a lot of details I need to eventually know!!! I’ll be on a new camera for the next two weeks, similar to what I was on before but with only one camera head instead of two. This camera also gets a whole lot of different scans scheduled on it so it will be another two weeks of randomness.

In other news, Scott is home! He worked something like 140 hours over the last two weeks in Edmonton so we’ve been taking it very easy this weekend. We’ve been watching a lot of Australian Masterchef.

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Rosemarie and I had a nice weekend together. Soaking up all the sister time that we can get before she leaves for Fiji. We played Carcassonne (with two expansions), cooked Shepherd’s Pie, painted our nails, did crafts, watched Parks and Recreation, and went to the food convention together! I only heard about the convention on Saturday so I was pretty happy that Rosemarie agreed to go.

Eat! Vancouver was AWESOME! It was $14 to get in (you save $2 if you buy your tickets online) and we stuffed ourselves with zillions of free samples from all sorts of food companies big and small. It was amazing. There were samples that cost money too (from $0.50 to $4) but we didn’t actually buy any because we were stuffed from all the free stuff.

I definitely did not take a picture of every single thing that we tried. We tried 50+ things!!!!!

Some highlights:

  • calamari salad
  • seaweed salad
  • butternut pumpkin and fennel soup (I didn’t taste fennel, it was more curry)
  • pomegranate and blueberry smoothie (McDonalds!)
  • tofu with a gross hot sauce
  • butter pecan fudge
  • a million different dips
  • a million different salsas
  • a million different hummuses
  • a million different salad dressings
  • olive tapenade
  • pistachios
  • ice cream and gelato (both salted caramel flavour)
  • hot sauce on styrofoam crackers
  • corned beef
  • salmon jerky (yuck)
  • weird noodles made out of tofu (yuck)
  • fancy butter
  • mushroom cream cheese (one of the most tasty things we tried)
  • lots of different types of fancy pop
  • lots of different types of juice (Purity Organics strawberry paradise was my favourite)

And MORE!! I can’t believe how many free samples there were!!

I bought some praline fudge. It is really good. People really liked my sushi shirt, if I had some business cards I totally would have made a sale. Rosemarie took this picture of me and my food related items.

They also had some kind of FOOD ART competition going on. I think the first two pictures there were made out of chocolate, and this last one was made of carrot, daikon, ginger etc. SO COOL!!

It was my first time being in BC Place ever. That’s the new roof that they spent 50 billion dollars on that isn’t even that great. The stadium seemed pretty good though, like everyone would have an equal view of the field.

They had Food Network celebrities doing shows around the outsides and we sat to watch one of them but the video screen that showed the counter was too hard to see so it wasn’t very interesting. We left early. There was a cheese seminar too but we missed getting in, bummer!!!

We got tons of swag. Magazines full of recipes, tons of coupons, samples, MORE COFFEE etc etc. We also got free shampoo samples at the Skytrain station! MEGA SAMPLE DAY!

All in all it was an excellent way to spend the morning. I recommend going right for the time it opens because it was pleasant then, but then started to get VERY busy around 12 or 1 PM. The only criticism I have is NEEDS MORE CHEESE SAMPLES!! There were almost none!! Booooo. But anyway we left with very full stomachs and had lots of fun. Definitely worth $14 and I will definitely be going back next year.