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You’ve probably already seen most of these pictures on Instagram/FB but I still wanted to recap the trip again for posterity. It was super fun!!

July 12th was a mammoth day. I went to the gym, then knitting club (Scott came too! The old ladies thought that was a hoot), and then we headed to the airport the cheapskate way via walking+train+train+bus. There was a horrifingly outgoing singing tween at our gate who of course ended up directly behind us on the flight. THANK JEEBUS for headphones omg. I requested vegan food on the flight to avoid dairy and it was ok! Lots of snacks! I only ate one of my emergency pepperoni sticks. (However it sounds like Qantas does it better than Air Canada, from Rosemarie’s report.) I quite enjoyed getting my food first too. I watched three movies and slept a bit.

We arrived in Vancouver still on July 12th, picked up our rental car, which was thankfully not as tiny as I paid for. Stopped at Duffins Doughnuts as per tradition but accidentally got PLAIN DRY old fashioned doughnuts, rather than PLAIN GLAZED old fashioned doughnuts which made me very sad. Thankfully the sadness was short-lived because we had THE BEST YAM ROLL OF MY LIFE in North Van at a randomly picked sushi restaurant. It had two layers of yam!! Everything else was great too. We over-ordered because we forgot how cheap Vancouver sushi is. Then we finally arrived in Squamish and hugged Rosemarie and finally got to lay down horizontally and sleeeeeeeep.

We crammed a lot into the next day as well. No meal left behind, so breakfast sausage and bagels for breakfast, Kululu for lunch. Check check check. Rosemarie and I went to the gym. We hit a wiffle ball around. And tried to stand up paddle board but it was too windy. Scott made it exciting by dropping our waterproof camera into the lake and later finding it.

The next day was big as well. Sense a theme here? We all got up early to catch the ferry to Nanaimo and then drive the rest of the way to Victoria. It looks like a highway on the map but actually it has 900 stoplights and isn’t the most fun drive. We ran a few last minute errands and then finally made it to Leslie and Kyla’s out-of-towners BBQ at their house. It was the first time the Ace Gang had been together in like a decade. It was so fun to hang out with Cassia, Helenka, and Leslie. And tons of others I hadn’t seen in ages like Catty, Monica, David, and their families. We used to spend so much time together.. it still feels so comfortable to hang out even now. We had hotdogs and sorbet and then later a few of us went out for sour beer slushies in the city.

PS Happy 13th Anniversary to Scott and I.

July 15 – Wedding day! We went out for brunch with Cassia and Helenka, then Rosemarie and I got blow outs while the others went sightseeing. We got Korean-Chinese dumplings for a pre-wedding snack and then we headed out to the venue. The ceremony was in a very pretty garden. Again it was fun to hang out with old friends and get pictures of everyone dressed up all fancy. Dinner was delicious and the wedding cake was lactose-free!! Scott and I bailed a little bit early because we are old lol. But Scott got MVP status because he still went to pick up Rose and Lauren later. Best bro-in-law.

We still hadn’t managed to play any pickleball yet so we squeezed it in before post-wedding brunch. Canadians are so lucky that there are free courts everywhere!! Minus one star for these courts being a bit slanted, but plus one star for having a splash pad right next door to cool down! Brunch was massive and it was great to spend more time with Jinnie, who I’d not actually spent much time with in person ever, but still feels like a long-time friend. Rosemarie and Lauren had to head back to Squamish after lunch, and Cassia, Helenka, Scott and I spontaneously decided to check out Butchart Gardens. I thought it was nice but expensive!! On the way back we heard that Leslie and Kyla were having one last gathering by the water near their house so we dropped by to chill and eat more wedding cake. Then finally Scott and I got takeaway Red Fish Blue Fish which we ate in our hotel bed before passing out from exhaustion.

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I started going to the local knitting club at the library on Wednesdays. Wednesdays are my day off and the house was full of builders so I was trying to find ways to kill time outside the house. Knitting club is great. I’m not even the youngest one! There is a mix of ages and everyone is extremely nice. It’s also cool to talk to people that are extremely local and know all the stuff that is going on in the neighbourhood.

One of my coworkers moved to England so we had a good bye dinner for her at Pizza Religion. It was good. Funny, no one wanted to try my vegan cheese pizza…

Picture by Tristan

Scott and I went up to Bendigo for a day to go to the Lost Trades Fair with some Discord friends. The fair was huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge!!!! I don’t think we even saw everything. There was blacksmithing, wagon wheel making, wood turning, rocking chair making, weaving, watch making, lots more… all sorts of stuff. It was pretty cool. We didn’t end up buying anything from there, although I was tempted by a forged metal bottle opener.

We did buy stuff from Bendigo Woolen Mills though!! Scott got wool to make his crochet cardigan, which he is nearly finished now, and I got wool to match the speckly orange-red wool I bought during lockdown to make a knitted cardigan some day.

Nearly done, just needed paint.

The bathroom and laundry renos wrapped up. We had to spend a few nights in Boronia while they re-did the toilet, and had some minor dramas with a faulty laundry mixer tap. The painter came. And then done! I’ll post some before and after shots in a separate post.

Scott had a blood donation appointment in the city with free parking during Moomba, and I had just seen a targeted Instagram ad that said there was dairy-free soft serve vendor so I hopped in the car and went with him. I power-walked and people-dodged and got a cup of mango soft serve. It was nice! Especially for dairy-free!

Finished the infuriating socks. 1. They are too small once I stand up. I didn’t realise how much bigger your feet get when you stand up. 2. The colour changes!! I don’t mind the line on the right foot, because that’s just how the pattern works when you knit around the heel and then rejoin to the ankle part. But the left foot line is just because the yarn decided to suddenly change colour with no gradient!! WHY!!! All the other colour changes are nice and gradual. So it really annoys me that there is another harsh line at a different spot, and why did the entire foot part end up being boring grey. Argh.

If anyone is approximately size 7-7.5 womens.. you can have these.

I helped out at a special weightlifting comp. Not sure why I am grinning so much in this picture, maybe because Michael forgot what my name is during introductions and I was extremely uncomfortable.

My job was Loaders Assistant. Or World’s Laziest Loader. Basically George was extremely stressed out about being able to load fast enough (they were trying to make it a fast-paced competition) and wanted me to use the app and tell them what plates they were going to have to put on next and double check that they were doing everything right. I think I was helpful.

It was cool to see some high quality international lifting from up close. I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone lift over 200kg in real life before. And the Samoan team did a fun screamy shouty war dance thingy that was awesome! So many abs!!

Bis had us over for wood-fire pizza and relaxed games. I made myself a mostly cheeseless pizza (I did put a bit of parmesan) and got taught how to cook it myself. Yum!! My second one was a bit more burnt. We played a bit of Project L, a simple puzzle-y type game.

Couple more tasty meals. Swedish meatballs and quick pickle cucumber. And miso glazed roasted eggplant, with soba and smashed cucumber from Recipe Tin Eats cookbook.

Unpictured stuff:

  • Pickleball pretty much every Sunday. I am improving!!
  • Holiday planning with MEP and Paul. They are coming in May. Love having visitors!!
  • We got our car back, with a fresh new radiator and bumper.
  • We picked out flooring for the house. Next we paint, then get the floors done. Then done!

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The main event in February was the start of our renovations. I thought it was very interesting to see the guts of our house. Note the complete lack of insulation!

We were pretty lucky to only have a few hiccups. The biggest one was that after they laid the new tile in the toilet I realised I hated it. To me it looked dirty and water stained… except it wasn’t. After a lot of anguish we decided to make them rip it up and switch it for a different tile. Thankfully they had only tiled that small section, the tile store took the ugly tile back (minus a %), the designer helped me pick a better one, and Serge didn’t end up charging us anything extra. They did end up accidentally breaking the new toilet while taking it back up because it had been so well silicon’d to the floor, so I had to buy another base… but ah well. I am muuuuuch happier with the new tile and am definitely glad we decided to switch it.

Multi-purpose bumper plates.

We had some success in the garden this summer. Lots of roma tomatoes, with less butt-rot than previous years. We also got a lot more Chinese eggplants than before, however they were quite small. Lebanese cucumber grew pretty well, and salad greens were all fine too. We did not have much success with zucchini this year and we don’t know why.

February #SMAJ was dinner at Parcs, a restaurant that ferments lots of stuff and makes their food out of scraps. It was pretty nice.

I went out for Filipino food with some Discord friends and was suuuper excited to order taho after having such delicious taho at Serai last year. However I should have not gone in with such high expectations because this one wasn’t nearly as good. Sigh. The fancy one made the tofu into a soft serve consistency which had great temperature contrast with the hot tapioca pearls. The cheaper (probably more typical!) one just had blobs of plain silken tofu and the whole thing was warm and kind of bland.

Recipe Tin Eats quick ramen from her cookbook, with marinated eggs. Was kinda proud of this meal!

Sock progress. These socks ended up making me quite angry. Will post the finished project later.

Unpictured stuff:

  • We finally got to have our car fixed after The Wombat Incident. The timing was terrible. We had to stay in an Airbnb for a few days because at one point we had no toilet, no car, and no train.
  • Thankfully I have a great coworker who ended up lending us his car that he wasn’t using so we could get around a bit again.
  • We’re not having great success negotiating our new EBA at work so we’ve had a few strikes. It was kind of fun getting people to honk their horns in support although I’m not really sure it accomplished anything.
  • Jess came to Melbourne for her 40th birthday. She had a ladies dinner out in the hills that was nice.. I shoulda got more dressed up.
  • Still training. Still trying to help with Phoenix… with the committee and helping out with competitions.

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And it’s almost March… oops… life has been hectic lately.

As is now becoming tradition, we went to Walkerville for a night to hang out with the Marcus families. It was really lovely this year, the weather was amazing and the beach was in much nicer condition than last year. We always like spending some time with Bird Boy.

Happy New Year! There were some fireworks at the beach. I was hoping to try photographing the Aurora Australis, since we were pointing South and it had been going bonkers the couple nights before that, but unfortunately not that night. Aurora hunting is super tricky… it’s pretty random when it can happen and you don’t get any notice. Plus you need no clouds, darkness, be awake, and in the right spot with a Southern view.

Possibly our most pleasant “Polar Bear” Dip ever. The old limestone kiln at Walkerville South Beach makes it feel like you’re in Tulum or something! It was lovely.

Our Christmas presents to most of the nieces and nephews was a Splatball outing this year. I think everyone had a good time except April.. she found in a bit scary. We all got very sweaty and messy.

Our January #SMAJ activity was going to the Rone exhibit at Flinders Street Station. So apparently all the rooms above the train station had been sitting empty for ages. Rone decided to fix them up into a big immersive art exhibit. It was interesting.. lots of little bits of old things to look at. I think it would be a fun place to bring your grandma or something.

I went to Phillip Island for a weekend with a big group of friends. One of their families has an Airbnb that we got to use, for free! It was a really fun weekend, we played games, went to farmers market, went to the beach, cooked and ate all sorts of fun food, knitted, hung out. I had a really nice time.

Again I was keeping an eye on the aurora forecast, as we were pointing South, but it wasn’t active. Also the milky way is not as good in Australia in the summer so that was about the best picture that I got, just off the deck. I’ll try to be more organised this winter with the moon cycle.

The big thing that’s happening at the moment, and a big part of the reason why this blog post is so late, is that our renovations have started! There are some Before shots which we’ll use for comparison later. We’re getting the whole bathroom, toilet, and laundry room done, and a minor adjustment in the kitchen. Very exciting!

My delivery man, Pat. (Scott’s dad.) He helped me pick up a big load of stuff from the bathroom supply store to save us some money on delivery fees. Thanks Pat!!

We stored all the stuff in the corners of our living room. Box life.

Carpooling to Florim and Lora’s wedding. It was a very unique wedding experience for us. There were over 500 people there, the majority being Albanian. There was a live band of electric clarinet and singing that was VERY VERY VERY loud. There was A LOT of slow snail line dancing in the middle of the room. Very fancy and tight dresses. Lots of great food. Lots of money being given to the couple. Twas a bit intense. Eventually we just had to leave and the whole way back we just sat in the car in silence, with ringing ears. Fun but I wish I had earplugs and I wish I had worn something FANCY.

Good January food.

Scott and I made 5 different curries and froze them into small portions so we can have easy future meals. They’ve already come in handy so many times. We made a peanutty one, a lamb one, brown lentils with spinach, chickpeas with tomato, and red lentil mush one.

I found pickled turnip at Coles in Dandenong and we’ve been eating a ton of shawarma this summer. Another thing I miss from home that I can now recreate here. :)

Lactose-free rugelach using plant butter and lactose-free cream cheese. Turned out nice!

Many extremely sweaty training sessions. It’s been hot, and I’ve been doing a higher volume strength training block that has been making me sweat buckets. I hope it pays off.

I hurt my back at one point doing a very routine exercise and got horrible sciatica pain for a couple weeks. That was awful, I’ve never had nerve pain before. But I recovered from it more quickly than expected thankfully. I’m completely back to normal now. I hope it doesn’t happen again.

My committee member obligations have really ramped up this year. We’re trying to get more members to save the club from impending financial disaster We’ve got actual meetings and I’m in charge of fixing up the website at the moment.

Still knitting as much as possible. I love knitting. Somewhat unusual for me.. I am working on two projects at the same time. I’m still working on my second sweater, and now a pair of socks too. I’ve finished one sock and now past the heel on the second. Unfortunately they are too small for me! I have learned a lot.

Unpictured stuff:

  • As usual Scott is very busy with all of his sports. He’s been playing a lot of lawn bowls, hockey, running, garage gymming, and pickleball.
  • I asked Sophie to come out for dinner with me because Scott was being too healthy. We had laksa and a nice catch up.

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We started March off with a double wedding weekend. One on Saturday in Ballarat with work friends, and one on Sunday in the Yarra Valley with board game friends. Big weekend of driving and canapes. Both fun. Took me three more days to recover.

Home invader.

We went to the opening game of the AFL season: Melbourne Demons vs Western Bulldogs. A Grand Final rematch. The first time that us Melbourne Dees fans got to see them play since they won everything last year while we were stuck at home in severe lockdown.

The first quarter was so good it brought a tear to my eye. Then the second quarter was very bad. Then in the exact same way as the grand final last year, the Dees pulled ahead in the last half of the game and got the win. It was great.

(Belated) January #SMAJ was a meal at The Boiling Crab. It was… OK. Partly because I don’t think boiling in a bag is necessarily the tastiest way to cook seafood, and partly because we really do not know how to break down crab. So much work with so little pay off. Also food gets cold quite quickly when it’s just poured onto the table.

I went out to do trivia with my pals at a new place in Ringwood. We won three out of four $20 vouchers and none of us were drinking so we decided to order the “Celebration Brownie Tower” because why not. When the staff brought it out it had sparklers on it and they all started singing Happy Birthday and everyone playing trivia joined in and the host asked us whose birthday it was and we were like “umm… no one…”. It was pretty funny. We also won second place overall which had a prize of six take home cocktails. Very good haul.

I went out for noodles and bingsu with internet friends. Yum.

OK apparently all we did lately is EAT. (Belated) February #SMAJ was a dinner out at a Japanese BBQ restaurant. We splurged and got a set meal that came with delicious fancy beef and a bunch of other stuff. It was very very delicious.

I did a weightlifting competition in Geelong. The timing of the comp worked well to squeeze in one last max out before our Canada trip. I really wanted to snatch 50kg and clean and jerk 60kg for a while now and have been sooo close to getting to do it. It was a bit of a drive to get to Geelong but my coach actually lives there so at least that part was convenient.

However I missed my second snatch attempt at 48kg so I didn’t get to try 50kg on my third attempt as planned. :( Extra annoying considering I snatched 48kg really nicely on my third attempt. Clean and jerks were better, at least I got to try 60kg on my third attempt but unfortunately I didn’t catch the bounce well and didn’t stand up the clean.

I snatched 45/48x/48, and CJ 54/57/60x for a 105kg total. No PBs. Next time.

When I signed up for the comp I assumed that I would be in the first session like usual and have to weigh in quite early in the morning, so I booked us an Airbnb in Ocean Grove to make a weekend of it. Turned out I lifted in the last session and I probably should have just cancelled the Airbnb booking so I could have slept in my normal not-extremely-squeaky bed and eaten my normal food but that didn’t occur to me until it was too late to cancel.

So we ended up with a lot of time to kill and the weather wasn’t great. We went to a CHEESE TRAIN, like a sushi train but with plates of cheese. We drove around Queenscliffe. We tried to find things to take a picture of with my new telephoto lens. We ate burgers. (Much nutrition, maybe this is why I didn’t lift the best.) We watched two games of footy at the same time. We met up with Scott’s school friend for coffee. We went to the Geelong Art Gallery and were amazed by this lino print art piece that went around a whole room. We went to the library and read our Kindles.

Unpictured stuff:

  • I did a lot of on call and extra shifts because of people having covid. This meant I reached my budget target for a telephoto lens much earlier than predicted! Pretty exciting. I haven’t really gotten to use it much yet.
  • We saw the new Batman movie with Jemma. It was very dark, literally. Apparently if you are rich you never turn the lights on. Also I giggled every time thinking about how he would have to put his eye makeup on super fast every time he had to get dressed up.
  • We had a family dinner! On a Sunday with everyone there like the olden days!
  • Scott went to Ballarat to see his school friend who is visiting from Scotland.
  • We were supposed to go to another wedding this weekend, but it has been postponed because they have covid. Oops.

I actually haven’t been doing that much lately besides work and gym because we leave for Canada this week and I am paranoid about getting covid and ruining all our plans. Only a couple more days to go!!!