Tag: board games

July 2022

August 21, 2022 by Katrina·0 Comments

I had a great birthday. It started with breakfast sashimi and a vegan cupcake. Then we went to Boronia for lunch to celebrate all the June and July birthdays: mine, Pat, Jemma, Michelle, Vicky, Luca and Brett. I was very spoiled with gifts, lots of amazing bird things.

Then Scott and I went out for a nice dinner at Entrecote. Didn’t see any fights. We had a seafood platter, beef tartare, steak and chips, lemon tart, and a couple macarons. Too much. Despite taking several Lacteezes I felt very ill afterwards. Learned my lesson.

We had our board game friends over for a falafel feast. I made falafel, harissa eggplant, salads, turmeric rice, and garlic sauce and didn’t take any pictures of the spread. Trust it was perfect. We played 7 Wonders and Camel Up. Chaos ensued. Fun was had.

Possums keep eating all the peel off the lemons on our tree so we decided to harvest ALL of the lemons. Even after giving a bunch of them away I still squeezed 1L of lemon juice. My hands felt like they had been ceviche’d. I poured half of it into ice cube trays to freeze in cubes, and froze two smaller jars of juice for future baking or lemonade.

Our tree isn’t even that big! But perhaps we need to prune it back a bit.

Beautiful Bendigo Woollen Mills yarn for future sweaters and ponchos.

A month of progress. I went to a crafternoon where my friend helped me get started on my next knitting project: a sweater. I’m using a pattern that she recommended that is good for beginners, lots of support online like videos and stuff. Plus she is making one too so she helped me through some of the tricky parts. I’m now up to the body part where I just have to knit stitch for eternity (especially since I have such a long torso haha).

We went to Shira Nui for our (12th!) anniversary. We’ve been there a few times and just love it. We got the omakase again, where you get two pieces of nine types of sushi. I liked all of them except the grilled oyster one is probably my least favourite. Unfortunately it’s like their signature sushi so they always have it, lol.

My friend really wanted to go out for lasagna. I ordered a vegan truffle lasagna. It was extremely creamy, possibly too truffle-y, but nice. The others had ragu lasagna and duck lasagna, which I tried bites of. A good evening out.

Michael and Gina had us over for Christmas In July. Scott and I made stuffing, and green bean halloumi salad, the others made charcoal chicken, roasted vegetables, a mushroom Wellington, Yorkshire puddings, and sticky date pudding for dessert. We also had mulled wine and eggnog. It was an amazing meal.

Scott left to play hockey so we took advantage of having five players and played a new game: Concordia. I didn’t quite understand what was happening at first but once I finally kinda got the gist I liked it a lot. It takes too long with five people though, Scott came back to pick me up and we still weren’t finished playing. We decided to artificially shorten the game so that we could all go home, and then I won, which Michael wasn’t happy about, haha. I put an asterisk next to my win in my app. :P

Unpictured stuff:

I helped out at a Phoenix weightlifting competition by taking pictures and videos. It felt very weird not participating, because usually I do, but it was too soon after having covid.
We had a good bye dinner for one of my co-workers who left for an office job. It was the first time our team had gotten together outside of work since before covid. We actually never had a welcoming dinner for her, haha.
I got a massage at a new place and the guy’s hands were like popsicles. Wasn’t very nice.
We went away to Flowerdale, VIC for a weekend. I actually have lots of pictures from this, it will get its own post.

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 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:

Canada Week 1

May 31, 2022 by Katrina·0 Comments

Kind of old news at this point but for posterity…

I think I was still a bit dopey from the flight…

Had to wake up though because Rosemarie and Lauren picked us up from the airport in Vancouver and we went directly to Liz’s house in North Van to host a party. Rosemarie prepared lots of Canadian treats for us like perogies, Smartfood popcorn, Canada Dry, party mix and lots of our Vancouver friends showed up! Thanks Liz for letting us stay there!

The next morning we headed back to the airport (via Duffins Donuts ofc) to fly to Ottawa. This is the last picture with Lauren for a while because we had all sorts of problems.

First our flight out of Vancouver was delayed. The lovely Westjet agent tried to help fix up our flights for us but since we had booked on three different tickets he was only able to get Scott on I on a new route via Calgary before that flight filled up, and had to keep Rosemarie and Lauren on the original flight to Toronto that might not make the connection to Ottawa. He offered to switch us back so that we could at least stay together but Rosemarie told us to go ahead and we’d just cross our fingers. Amazing Race style.

The way the flights were staggered we wouldn’t find out if they made it until much later. Poor MEP and Paul had to stay up all night waiting for us and didn’t even know how many of us they would be picking up from the airport.

Scott and I got to Calgary no problemo. But then we saw messages from Rosemarie saying that they didn’t let Lauren on the plane in Vancouver because his ID was expired and that he had to go home. Team member down! And that her connection in Toronto was looking TIGHT.

Scott and I got to Ottawa late but relatively successfully. But then we found out that Rosemarie didn’t make her connection, had to stand in line for hours to get her free hotel, and had to wake up very early to get her new flight the next morning. Which also ended up being delayed because they couldn’t close the luggage compartment door. Poor Rosemarie. Her team definitely lost Amazing Race.

Anyway eventually we all (well… three of us) made it to Mary Ellen’s and dad came over and of course we played some games. Yay.

That night we went to the Haberl’s for a good old fashioned sleepover. It was great. We played lots of games and ate lots of food and laughed a lot. A very lovely time.

3/4 Ace Gang Reunion. Unfortunately Cassia didn’t make it because of Spanish bureaucracy. We got lucky even seeing Helenka… she ended up having her twins very early, a few days after this brunch!!

Scott trying to catch some maple sap to see if it tasted like maple syrup (it does!).

Things relaxed (a bit) after the first few days of the trip. We spent some time hanging out at MEP and Paul’s.

I managed to keep up my training while away. My coach made me a commercial gym friendly leg strength program that was basically max squats all the time. Sometimes Rosemarie and Scott came with me, and sometimes they did other random classes or played pickleball. I am glad they get along so well.

Jill had another memorial party for Joe that just happened to fall when we were in Ottawa. It was nice to see a lot of people I hadn’t seen in ages. And the canapes and cookie favours were delicious!

We started to go through some of the stuff at the house. I think Cassia made me that poster when I was about to leave for university. D’awww.

Same pictures that I already posted on Facebook/Instagram:

Wilsons Prom 2022

March 31, 2022 by Katrina·0 Comments

We took Rosemarie down to The Prom for a camping weekend. It’s one of my favourite places in Victoria. I was excited for her to see wombats!

We saw this blonde one on the side of the road almost right away! I wonder if he is elderly? He looks like he’s been through some stuff. Rosemarie was surprised how big it was.

We did the Wildlife Walk at dusk the first night. We saw lots of kangaroos hopping around and a few wombats munching on plants. Got lots of great pics. We couldn’t find any emus though, even though a lady told us they saw tons right before we got there.

Tidal River and Bear Gully campgrounds were fully booked so we stayed at a private campground in Yanakie. It was nice, the sites were pretty spread out.

Tongue Point hike. That water!!!

Little photoshoot at Norman Beach. The weather was beautiful but none of us felt motivated enough to swim, haha.

Picnic lunch and a wade in Tidal River.

Of course we’re going to play some games! Kub and Sagrada. Waiting for sunset.

I complained all the way up Mt Oberon. I hate walking up hill!

Made it! It is a nice view. Legs dead.

Then we spent 2 hours playing Carcassonne in the car at Squeaky Beach waiting for full dark because I had heard that the aurora australis forecast was pretty good that night and we were in such a great location to look south. Unfortunately it was super cloudy. We waited as long as we thought we could, but we were all so exhausted from such a big day we gave up around 10:30pm and decided to head back to the campground (45 minutes drive).

After 30 minutes of driving I kept looking out the window because it looked like the clouds were clearing and I could see tons of stars. Scott said he would turn around and drive back if we wanted, and Rosemarie agreed, so we did a u-turn and drove 30 minutes back to Squeaky Beach. … And straight back into full cloud coverage. So frustrating. We saw SOOOO MANY wombats on the side of the road though… like 25. That kept us alert.

We still at least got out of the car and walked down to the beach to see if we could see anything at all, but nope, way too cloudy. So we gave up again and drove 45 minutes all the way back to the campground and passed out immediately out of pure exhaustion.

We only wanted to do flat walks the next day haha. Lilly Pilly! We got lucky and saw an echidna! I haven’t seen one since I’ve been back in Australia. My friend told me I should have lay down on the ground to get a better picture. Next time. Rosemarie asked why Australian animals are so ROUND.

And then we drove home via Gurneys Cider, which was great, as usual. I probably bought a few too many to take home considering I almost never drink any more.

Awesome weekend!!

Grated Expectations

everything is better with cheese