Grated Expectations

June 2022

August 20, 2022 by Katrina·0 Comments

Ridiculously late. I have so much to catch up on.

We started the month by Scott falling off the front step and spraining his ankle. We were on our way to Betty’s Burgers with his parents for his dad’s birthday, which we still went to (I drove), but when Scott couldn’t walk back to the car afterwards we knew something was really wrong. I dropped him off at Monash ED and he found out he had an avulsion fracture, which is treated like a very bad sprain. It took him quite a while to recover from that. He was most sad about not being able to do all his weekly sports.

We went to the Melbourne v Collingwood game on Queen’s Birthday. Nice crowds and sunset, but Melbourne lost and that part wasn’t that fun.

We also went to the Melbourne v Brisbane game at the MCG with cousin Shaun and his family. Maybe you can tell from our faces who enjoyed it more.

Our June SMAJ activity was portrait painting and charcuterie. It was silly and fun. I accidentally painted a very smug version of Scott and I couldn’t fix it. It really makes me laugh every time I see it.

We drove really far North one night to try Dingo Ate My Taco birria tacos. I loved them. Would eat again but hopefully closer.

We went out for pizza at Deep End with Sophie and Joel. It was all of our first time trying deep dish pizza, which we found ok but maybe a bit… wet. If I was going to have it again I would order one that didn’t have vegetables in it and maybe that would be better. We also had a Detroit-style pizza which I enjoyed more. It was like pizza made on delicious oily focaccia.

On the way home from the restaurant Scott got pulled over. We were very surprised because he hadn’t done anything sketchy. But turned out his license had been suspended for like 3 months because of a pending medical check that he never received notice for. Thankfully Scott doesn’t drink so he blew a 0 breath test and they let me drive home instead of impounding the car.

It took a week or so to get that sorted out before he could drive again! It’s all because VicRoads know he has sleep apnea and now apparently he has to get a doctors note every couple years. Such a pain.

Scott’s ankle was finally good enough to play hockey again but the poor guy wasn’t allowed to drive. So I drove him all the way to Reservoir and attempted to take a few pictures while I was there. It was not the most interesting hockey I have ever seen…

My next knitting project after the scarf was this basketweave headband. It was originally going to be a bag type thing but I got pretty bored of it.

I was making overnight pizza dough but our house is freaking freezing in the winter and our oven light was burnt out. I couldn’t think of anywhere warm to let the dough rise so I took it to bed with me and my electric blanket. Worked perfectly.

A super rich slow cooked beef stroganoff. Love how tender cheap beef becomes if you cook it for long enough. This was extremely delicious and made about 10 servings so I was able to freeze some for later, which Future Katrina was very pleased about.

A deconstructed chicken shawarma and garlic potatoes. Needs pickled turnip.

Unpictured things:

I pulled off a minor unintentional vacuum repair scam and managed to get our vacuum repaired for $30 instead of the $400 the dude was quoting.
Trivia in Knox with Ash and Charlie with very strange service from the bar staff.
A free screening of Jurassic Park Dominion care of our mortgage brokers. Terrible movie but excellent (free) snacks.
An amazing pizza brunch party at Naomi’s with the old EH gang. Her new house is amazing.
Saw Top Gun: Maverick and really enjoyed it!!! It was like a movie version of a roller coaster. Very exhilarating. If you want to know what sliding skeleton in Whistler feels like, watch the valley sequence of the movie.. I’ve never heard anyone else describe the feeling before, outside of skeleton. So fun.
Bach and I helped Doreen compete at Victorian Masters Championships. I loaded her warm ups for her and tried to make her sit still and rest (very difficult).
Scott started his new job. He has more support in this job and doesn’t have to do as much of the annoying things like spending hours on the phone with Telstra. He is also doing less work in the evening. He seems overall happier!

May 2022

June 12, 2022 by Katrina·0 Comments

This will be a short one.

We got back from Canada, had a few days extra holiday at home, and then I ended up going back to work on Monday instead of Thursday because everyone at work had covid and they were desperate for help.

We went to Dean and Vanessa’s wedding celebration in Mornington. I rented a dress that was like a blanket and it was actually great. Lunch was very very nice, and we got to catch up with some friends that we haven’t seen in a while. It was a very nice afternoon.

The Tuesday after the wedding I started to get a sore throat at work. I get sore throats from hayfever all the time, and we still wear n95 masks at work, so I still finished my shift. When I got home I did a rapid test and it was negative.

Wednesday is my day off. I still only had a sore throat so I still went to the gym (it’s not busy in the mornings), but I cancelled my dentist appointment.

Thursday I was coughing a bit in the morning while getting ready for work so I did another rapid test and it went positive immediately!! Isolation begins.

Friday – Sunday I didn’t do much. Although I didn’t feel tooooo bad, just sore throat and cough. Energy was fine. The sore throat was relieved by eating things so I just snacked all day.

Monday – Wednesday I actually felt fine, and if it was just regular sickness I probably would have gone back to work. Instead I just hung out at home and did some chores and finished up some projects.

Scott managed to stay healthy! He was allowed to keep doing whatever he wanted as long as he did a rapid test every day and wore a mask while out of the house. The first few days he worked from home as we just assumed he was going to test positive soon, but by the end of it we figured he might as well go back to work. He’s feeling pretty invincible now.

At the moment I feel fine. Not coughing much. I think I had very mild covid. We’ve been very cautious with my return to weightlifting and it seems to be going well, slowly coming back to normal levels.

I finished my scarf! My first knitting project. Many people had to help me with it. I’m working on a basket-weave circle thingy at the moment, and have ordered yarn to make a sweater next. How hard can it be?? :)

Unpictured stuff:

I voted for the first time in Australia! Voting here is very different than Canada. It’s mandatory, and also preferential voting, so you have to rank every single candidate. Which meant I had to do quite a lot of research to figure out which parties are actually secret racists/crazy people. We had 8 candidates on our ballot, and then the senate one was the length of about 4 pieces of paper and probably had 100 people on it? That one you just had to pick your top 12. Anyway it was a pretty successful election, in my opinion. The good guys won.
Scott’s aunt Kathy had a bbq, which was supposed to be at a park, but then the bbq wasn’t working so we impromptu moved it to Scott’s parents house. So many children running around. Maybe one of them gave me covid.

Canada Week 4

June 4, 2022 by Katrina·0 Comments

Week 4 was very very fun. We crammed in as many BC experiences that we possibly could. This is gonna be a massive, non-chronological, post!

We went to Vancouver one day for a massive day of seeing people and eating things. Let’s see if I can even remember everything…

started by going to Bulk Barn to buy more zingy zaps
met up with Kevin at Meat & Bread for porchetta sandwiches
bought a few treats from Purebread for later
met up with Phil for ice cream at Earnest Ice Cream
stopped at a random sushi restaurant for one yam roll
went to Terminal City Training while Rosemarie and Scott went to Parallel 49
met up with Liz, Tom and Kevin for Japanese BBQ
followed it up with some late night bingsu

A big thank you to Rosemarie for facilitating this ridiculous day.

We had a bit of time to kill in between eating things so Rosemarie suggested we check out the Bloedel Conservatory. It was neat! There were a lot of random types of cool birds in there. The highlights were:

Kramer, an insane parrot that danced and screamed
the four suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuper high boys that were fascinated by everything in there including leaves

OK back to Squamish. AKA where Rosemarie and Lauren live now.

Squamish is scenic AF.

We put together the Hogwarts model that dad gave to us. And by “we” I mean 95% me. :D I enjoyed it.

Trivia night. Lauren was probably trying to cheer me up because I had THE WORST MARGARITA OF MY LIFE.

Calculating how many lactaids we need to take.

Lunch with Lauren at an amazing Japanese place near his work. SOO YUM!!

Lauren made us epic okonomiyaki. So many shrimp. I was in heaven.

Even just regular neighbourhood walking in Squamish is scenic AF.

Of course we played more Pickleball. The Squamish courts were luxury, with those fences to divide the courts up so our rogue balls don’t go rolling into other people’s games.

No one wants to see a pickleballer from above!

Not the best pic but I had Nadal shoulder from falling off my bike the day before. I looked jacked… on one side.

I was trying out Leslie’s weighted blanket.

Leslie and Kyla came up to stay with us for the whole last weekend and it was awesome. We had so much fun.

We are so spoiled. It was the very beginning of spot prawn season so Kevin brought up fresh prawns from Vancouver. They were still squirming in the sink. He poached them, made a delicious sauce, and taught us all how to shell them. They were so sweet and delicious. I had about 12. :D

Liz and Tom came up and we had a backyard sausage sizzle with everyone. The weather behaved for us. Kevin ate 9 sausages.

One last meal together before Leslie and Kyla had to leave.

Scott pushing my bike up the hill for me because I am a whiny baby. <3

We went mountain biking twice. The first time we borrowed a bike from Rosemarie’s friend. Despite Rosemarie picking a route that involved the absolute least uphill biking, we still had to bike uphill for 90 minutes for 5 minutes of downhill riding. I complained the whole time. I hate uphill anything. I was unconvinced that this is a fun sport.

So the second time all four of us rented e-bikes. Now that helped! We were flying up the hill compared to everyone else, and it really didn’t require much effort. We did three big laps in our half day rental. However, it was terrifying!!! Lauren is a good teacher but I found it really really scary and hard. Yes I know I used to do skeleton racing, but skeleton doesn’t have sticks and rocks and pointy things all around you! Scott was much less scared and did much better than me, he was pretty fast.

My main problem was being a big chicken and not keeping enough speed to get over the bumps. I’d slow down too much and then have to pedal and then the bike would shoot me off too fast I felt like I was not under control. Also I really did not like the bridges. Lauren kept telling me to look more ahead and not down at the ground in front of me, and to relax more, but I probably did the exact opposite.

I fell off my bike twice. The first time I kinda just fell over, that wasn’t so bad, but the second time I had a bit of speed and it actually hurt a lot. Rosemarie was supposed to be helping me but she was long gone!!

Also Scott didn’t fall off his bike but managed to do a mini-crash where the spikes on the pedal tore the shit out of his shin.

I am still unconvinced that it is a fun sport.

Our final BC activity was doing a yam roll crawl in Vancouver on the way to the airport. I found an area that had 4 different sushi restaurants within about 10 streets (near Commercial Station). We parked in the middle and then split up and hit each place for a yam roll, and then met back up in a park to eat.

I think the cheapest one ended up being the crowd favourite? It actually was probably one of my favourite things we’ve ever done.

And the final few pics you already saw on Facebook:

Canada Week 3

June 3, 2022 by Katrina·0 Comments

The third week involved a bit of traveling.

We somehow crammed 5 adults and luggage into a rental sedan. Poor Diane had to reduce her bag down to like 20% of what she started with. It was TIGHT. Dad couldn’t even fit his box of Shreddies.

It felt like it took 90 hours to get to Listowel. This pic was from one of our bathroom stops. Rosemarie was so desperate to make the time pass quickly in the car that she even agreed to play Agricola on the ipad.

Anyway we made it. This time we all stayed at my aunt and uncles new house which was a lot of fun. Terry is always on top of constant beverages. One night we had dinner at my grandparents house (first time them having guests inside in two years!), and the other night Terry, Rosemarie and I destroyed Joanne’s kitchen making pizzas for everyone including our cousin and their kids. The kids loved it when they arrived and the smoke alarm was going off.

Dad, Scott and I played Wide World with Violet, which she won, and proclaimed “I CAN’T BELIEVE I WON AGAINST TWO OLD PEOPLE AND ONE TEENAGER!”. Hehehe.

Many robins around trying to tell us it was spring, but the temperatures said otherwise.

The biggest ball of yarn I’ve ever seen.

Of course they played some Pickleball in Listowel too. Also Listowel had probably the second best gym of the entire trip? It was huge! The owner was super nice and even let me train the second day (for free!) even though the gym reception wasn’t going to be open.

We left early on the last day because we were planning a special detour to surprise Scott. We only told him that dad wanted to go somewhere specific for lunch.

I thought dad blew the surprise when he pointed out that we could see Toronto on the other side of the lake but actually we got nearly all the way there before Scott was like “Wait… are we going to Niagara Falls?”. He has been wanting to go there the entire time we lived in Canada but we never managed it.

I also hadn’t been there since 1999! PS did you know that the falls recede by a METER every year?!

It was a nice day! We parked way down by the casino and walked all the way up along the falls to the crazy tourist area. We had lunch at Wendy’s and looked around at all the attractions while dad walked back to pick up the car. We were going to ride the rollercoaster but it was too expensive and also possibly broken. There was a 6D cinema?! I don’t even know what that means.

Thankfully our journey back to BC was much less exciting than the one to get to Ontario. We got treated to a beautiful mountain sunset and clear skies into Vancouver where Rosemarie reminded me what everything was as we flew over.

Lauren (remember him?) picked us up from the airport and we made a quick late night yam roll stop before spending one night at their house in Squamish. The next day Scott and I borrowed their car and headed to the Sunshine Coast to visit Lesley.

In typical us fashion, we had some ferry related stress. We got to Horseshoe Bay plenty early planning to park the van and walk on to the ferry, but the parking was completely full. We drove around and around trying to find a space. I was totally stumped what to do, tbh. I called Lesley and she suggested just paying a little bit more and taking the car on the ferry, which thankfully still had space. But to get on the ferry you have to drive way up the highway to turn around and join the ferry line. We got to the ticket booth with about 15 seconds to spare and were one of the very last cars to board. It was hectic.

We had a fun chill afternoon/evening with Lesley and fam, playing games and eating snacks and hanging out. It actually ended up being pretty convenient to have the van with us because we were able to explore a bit the next morning after Lesley had to go to work. We went out for breakfast and looked at the water and checked out a cidery before heading back to the ferry. It was a short, but nice visit.

Smiling because it was still the beginning of the road trip.

Canada Week 2

June 1, 2022 by Katrina·0 Comments

We spent most of the second week doing chores at the house during the day, and then fun stuff with friends in the evening.

I spent two days scanning old photos so that we can throw out the mouldy albums. That was kind of fun. I found all sorts of funny stuff. Then I varnished a table. Scott did lots of pressure washing, which wasn’t very fun because he got wet and it was freezing out. And he helped dad carry lots of stuff. Rosemarie did a lot of kitchen stuff sorting. We took apart some cabinets and cleaned them so they can be re-used.

Writing that out it doesn’t sound like that much stuff but we filled up all the areas where we could store stuff and dad seemed pleased with his checklist, so I guess that’s good.

Unpictured:

Scott did get a day off one day when he went to Montreal to go to a metal concert (Mastodon) (by himself, because none of us wanted to go with him). He took a bus and stayed in an Airbnb and had a great time! And he came back with kouign amann and bagels!
That evening Rosemarie and I met up with Sarah and Lauren (different Lauren) for dinner and ice cream. This is the one time I forgot to take a group picture. :(

I swear the whole trip we never had more than two hours of free time, but that is partly our fault because any time we did have free time we were like “LET’S PLAY A GAME!!!”.

Bill and Suzanne invited us all over for dinner at their house and pickleball. We had tacos and then drove to the court and they taught us how to play. We were hooked! Especially Rosemarie. We played until it was too dark to see anything. Rosemarie asked when they were going to play again and they said “Tomorrow!”.

So we drove all the way back to Constance Bay and played again the next day. :D

We went to the Nordik Spa at night with Jackie which felt fantastic after all the work at the house and pickleball. It was awesome going with Jackie because 1. she’s like a spa expert and 2. we hadn’t hung out with her in ages!! The spa was great. I was surprised that there was an area that you could bring your drink right into the water. Crazy. We stayed at the spa for a loooong time, soaking and plunging, exfoliating with salt, broiling ourselves etc. (sounds like cooking a turkey, doesn’t it). We had a nice spa dinner too. The only thing we didn’t do was try the heated hammocks!

The next day I went to the gym and Rosemarie and Scott tried indoor pickleball. (I tell you, Rosemarie was obsessed.)

The next day was crazy busy. We went and saw Helenka again (post-babbies, although sans-babbies because they were in the NICU), ate another shawarma and poutine, and then drove back out to Constance Bay again to… you guessed it…. play some more pickleball. :D Then we came home, cooked hot pot for a quick family dinner, and then went bouldering with Sarah, and then met up with Sara for a drink. Whew.

PS that poutine, with the exorbitant amount of gravy and cheese curds, made me feel sooo sick, despite Lactaid. :( I feel un-Canadian.

Our final night in Ottawa we went to a Sens game with Stephko. It was one of the last games of the season and had no consequences in regards to the play-offs, but was still exciting because there were a lot of goals and even went into overtime for maximum drama.

Again, more pictures that you probably already saw on Facebook: