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Same old story, the longer I don’t blog the more of an effort it seems like it will be and the more I put it off, proliferating the cycle.

Been busy. Did more overtime last weekend, went to a Chinese New Year parade, a mega shop at Metrotown, hockey game, doctors appointments, visitors, free concerts, and soon Granville Island and playing Settlers with new friends.

Work has been profitable lately. Lots of overtime and I’m getting faster every month so my bonus goes up every time. I guess I will just stay there. I’ve been there for 5 months now and I’ve heard whispers about a 6 month raise.

The Chinese New Year parade was pretty cool. But it was raining and cold and people kept poking us in the eyeballs with umbrellas, so we didn’t stay for the whole thing. Still came home with a pocketful of red envelopes though.

Last Monday we went to a Canucks vs. Sens game with a couple of our friends. We all met up right after work and drank a bit and went to the game. It was a lot of fun, even though the Sens lost. I must have drank a bit too much actually though because I felt really horrible the next day and barely made it to work. Scott’s a real trooper though, he’s been starting work at 6:00 AM this week and still made it.

I really like my new doctor. Yet another reason why I hope I miraculously get into BCIT so I can stay in Vancouver and stay with this lovely doctor. Anyway the news from the last appointment was not so great, he’s narrowed it down to two (crappy) possibilities. I have to go off dairy for a week to see if that helps, starting the day after Valentines I guess. Anyone who knows me know this will be torture for me.

Jarrod and Taylor are staying with us right now. It’s been a mellow visit, which is good. We went to a free outdoor concert last night which was good until our feet turned into muddy icicles. We’re off to Granville Island market in a bit. Yeah I’ve been there twice already, but I like markets!!!

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Woooo only 1.5 more days of work, then a 4.5 day weekend!!

I haven’t been sleeping well lately. The kid upstairs screams for her mom for 20 minutes once per night, and I get hyper-focused on Scott’s breathing sounds, and my brain keeps going a million miles per hour… and I’m up for hours. :(

Looks like we’re going to Whistler mid-January. Two of Scott’s friends from Kansas are going and we are meeting up with them there. He says the last time he saw one of them was 2008 and the other 2004! I just hope it’s not toooo crowded (since we’ll be going on a weekend) and we get enough time on the mountain, because it sure is expensive! Hopefully we can also squeeze in a night session at one of the local hills before then too because I feel rusty and Scott is still very much a beginner!! I’ve been keeping an eye out for coupons.

Last January I made a whole bunch of stupid New Years resolutions. I don’t have the exact list anymore because it was on my ‘craptop’ which is now in the garbage. :/ I really can’t remember them except for “invent teleportation” and “eat a grilled cheese hamburger”. Anyway I did the latter on the weekend and it was glorious.

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After a rather uneventful Saturday (just tv and laptop and a quick trip down Broadway to the Michael’s grand opening (Holy moly it was busy. I got 8 things of acrylic paint for $2, two canvases for $5, a cheapo paintbrush and some varnish for the table (with 50% off coupons))) I decided to check the Craigslist community postings for the first time.

The first posting was about an apple festival at UBC. I thought it was cool, and Scott loves apples. The $2 entrance and $3 to taste 60 varieties of apples convinced us to go. So we got up early Sunday morning and bused to UBC (wow it is far!). It’s a good thing we arrived early because it was very busy and extremely busy by the time we were leaving. Unfortunately we ran out of time in the tasting tent but I reckon we still tried about 40 kinds of apples. Pretty neat. I liked one called Fiesta, and another one I can’t remember the name of. Doh.

We tried the new Ambrosia apples. Scott liked it, but I don’t really care for ultra sweet apples so it wasn’t my thing.

After the tasting we looked around at all the other food booths, and also did a taste survey of three new varieties of apples. We also saw them making cider and a huge room full of every variety of apple that exists (nearly!).

We thought we’d pick up some of the ones Scott liked at the end, but by the time we got to the sales area EVERYTHING WAS SOLD OUT. It was totally barren. Note for next year: Go EARLY on Saturday, and buy your apples immediately!

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Wow what an amazing week. Everything went so smoothly and I’m so relieved and happy.

Now for everyone not there…

The Big Day. Wednesday the 14th.

Scott had to go in to work a little bit that morning so I spent the morning relaxing and getting ready on my own. I went out to get my make up done and pick up the cake and Scott came home and cleaned everything up and got it all ready for everyone coming over later. I got home, we got dressed and then headed into the city (by tram of course!) for the ceremony.

We had only booked the small room at the registry office for the wedding, but since there was no one else there they moved us into the big room! This was good since we had a few last minute extra guests (the nephews). The ceremony went smoothly (except for the lady saying ‘Perkins’ instead of ‘Perkin’ even though we’d just gone over it in the other room!!!) It was really great that my family got to listen in on speakerphone! It was a last minute suggestion by Kate but I’m so glad it worked out! They stayed up until 1:00 AM and had a little celebration at home in Ottawa!

This is what Rosemarie had to say about it:
“listening to the ceremony was nice. it was kind of peanuts teacher style but we could understand what was going on and tell who was talking. and we could hear the vows and things. it was really nice being able to listen to it though. after we ate fondue and had champagne. kate got really into everything. she even wore a dress!”

I was only kind of nervous the whole time and I didn’t get teary until right after the vows when dad told me (over the phone) that they could hear everything and there were some tears there and they would have a toast for us. So great.

After the ceremony Rhiannon took a bunch more pictures for us around the city, and then we took the tram back to the house for some drinks and cake. There was 14 of us that day (Scott’s parents, both Scott’s sisters and a boyfriend, Scott’s brother and his wife and two children, Rhiannon, and my friends Chris and Trang). We drank lots of beer and champagne, and WAMPAGNE (when Jessie accidentally topped up my wine with champagne) and devoured our delicious delicious hazelnut cake from Ganache (my favourite chocolate place everrrrr), looked at the pictures, and then headed down the street to Fiesta for a Mexican feast.

The meal was nice and so were the enormous margaritas. I had prawn fajitas and Scott had the veggie combo plate, like usual.


(NEW SISTERS!)

We all ate too much and headed home after the meal. And to bed early since a lot of people had to work the next morning!!

On to part 2….

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So busy all the time now. It’s crazy how complicated planning even a tiny wedding is. I don’t even want to think about what it would be like for a big one.

Most things are under control now though. We’ve got rings (although mine is still off being re-sized), I’ve got dresses, we booked a place for the party on Saturday, our friend agreed to photograph, and the invitations are being finished up tomorrow. I guess still we have to figure out cakes (yum!) and a flower for me and a few other small things but those should be fairly easy.

I’ve heard suggestions of web broadcasting the wedding. Would anyone watch it even if it was at 1:00 AM EST? I’ll look into it, but I’m not sure how easy this would be to do. First thing I guess is to check whether they even have internet in the building. If we can’t do this, we’ll make sure to video it I guess.

This weekend coming up is a full one. I work Saturday morning and Scott is going golfing with his mates for him and Jarrod’s upcoming departures, then we have been invited to a formal dinner at the yacht club by John and Muriel. I am really looking forward to it, it’s been a while since I’ve been to anything kind of fancy. Scott has to wear a jacket and tie! Sunday is my bosses birthday party at their new house too which should be good fun. Lots of food and drinks I expect.

The other night we had to throw out a whole dinner. We made Kylie Kwong’s eggplant thing and it turned out GRITTY. It must have been the packet of Szechuan pepper I bought from the Chinese grocery. Maybe we had to do something to it before we used it, but how am I supposed to know… the package was totally in Chinese. I think it also had a heap of MSG because my tongue went numb like it used to in China. Nasty stuff. It was such a shame to throw out so much nicely cooked eggplant, coriander, spring onion and chilli. :( After that disaster I cooked up a stir fry in three minutes with all the bits of stuff we have in the fridge with a bit of hoisin sauce and that was much better.

It has been so so nice having free fruit and vegetables all the time. Isn’t it the perfect relationship, the vegetarian with the fruit vendor? Most days at work I go through the ‘rehab’ box, which is where we put anything that has a crack or sunburn (the best kind of damage, it just means a small brown spot on the surface of the vegetables, only affects appearance), and then pick a few other things we might need for a recipe and my boss lets me take it all home for free. This means we have an endless supply of capsicum, mushrooms and eggplant and other things. Amazing. I am REALLY going to miss this in Canada.

I guess after the wedding the next step is to get everything ready for Canada. I’ve almost finished the visa paperwork, but we haven’t even started figuring out where we’re going to live or what work I can get. It will be extra hard getting started in a new city with way less connections.

All for now.