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In case you missed it, our old car got smashed while I was at work a bit before Christmas. It was a snowy day and someone hit it while it was parked. Luckily they left a note. The annoying part was that we couldn’t take it in to get fixed until early January (because there were so many other accidents that day). Once we dropped it at the repair shop we got a courtesy car, but we only got to keep it for a few days because our car was written off as soon as they started to look at it (and I didn’t get loss of use coverage). The damages apparently would have cost $9300 to fix!! HOLY MOLY.

Anyway ICBC gave us a decent payout so all in all it wasn’t that bad, just annoying. We just wanted the same car again, lol. We started searching immediately, but there weren’t too many available, probably cuz no one would probably want to sell a 4WD in January.

But last night one popped up from a couple that is moving back to Australia. I emailed immediately and we got to see it this morning. We told them we wanted it but they still had someone else to show it to right after us. We went out for ramen at Kintaro but I was so anxious I didn’t really enjoy myself. They did end up calling us back and we got to have the car because we were able to give them the moolah immediately. The ol’ “I WILL PAY YOU RIGHT NOW” worked. We were able to sign the papers and drove home in our new car!

It’s a Saab 9-2X, which is basically Subaru Impreza guts with Saab styling. A Saabaru, if you will. Pretty nearly the same as our old car, but with less km! I am so happy we were able to snatch it up because the whole point of us having a car was for driving in the winter! Looking forward to some ski trips soon, since the mountains finally started getting some snow.

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I made these about a billion years ago but I forgot to post them until now. They were a present for Scott’s brother. Scott picked out the pictures and I drew them. I think they turned out pretty good!

At the same time I also touched up Scott’s faded Mario shoes. Now they look fresh again (at least on the outside).


By the way, if you want a pair of custom shoes I am more than happy to do that for you. Just provide the shoes! I still haven’t managed to find a good source here in Canada.

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LAST DAILY DINNERS POST EVER!! WOOHOO!!

For any newer readers: I took a picture of my dinner every day (errr minus about 12) for a whole year, and posted them every fortnight! It was annoying sometimes, but kinda cool in the end. You can see the entire collection of posts here.

December 15th, 2013 – scarfed some thai curry when I got home after skeleton. So hungry I forgot to take a picture.

december 16th, 2013 – chili garlic pasta

december 17th, 2013 – spicy thai beef with green beans and red peppers

december 18th, 2013 – kokoda

december 19th, 2013 – curry chick peas and spinach

december 20th, 2013 – ham and cheese croissant sandwich

december 21st, 2013 – beef stir fry with noodles

December 22nd, 2013 – bagel sandwich scarfed down after getting home late after skeleton.

december 23rd, 2013 – quesadilla with black beans, avocado, and peppers

december 24th, 2013 – dragon noodles with shrimp

december 25th, 2013 – butter chicken, green beans, and homemade naan

december 26th, 2013 – turkey, leek, mushroom risotto

december 27th, 2013 – yam tempura, salmon belly nigiri, spicy tuna, spicy salmon, dynamite roll, cream cheese yam etc. etc. at Sake Cafe

Rosemarie, Scott and I all ordered from the sushi combo menu so we had 9 different things to share. Sake Cafe has added more things to their combo choices now!! They have 96 different things to choose from and I find that amazing. Why order anything else from the menu when you can create your own perfect combination of foods yourself?! I love this restaurant!!

december 28th, 2013 – diy stuffed crust pizza

Mine had some parts with cheese strings, some parts with hot dogs, and some parts with both. LOL. The hot dog part was way too salty tbh, but the cheese parts were awesome.

december 29th, 2013 – cheesy chicken leek pasta bake

december 30th, 2013 – fridge leftovers omelette and a roll

december 31st, 2013 – quick grilled cheese

Quick grilled cheese before heading out to Scott’s friends place for early NYE celebrations, then bowling for late night celebrations!

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I LOVE DAYS OFF!

Not that I’ve done much with my time. Mostly all I’ve been doing is watching tons of Bob’s Burgers and Suits and making and eating food, haha.

We haven’t done Christmas yet. We’ve made up our own arbitrary holiday and it happens on January 1st. This means we could wait for boxing day sales and get MOAR PRESENTS for less $$. The day is also going to involve the polar bear swim, an egg hunt, a big meal (not sure what yet), stockings…. basically just all the fun parts of other holidays.

Did I ever write about how our TV broke and was deemed unfixable by the repair shop? Well that happened. We went to Costco on Boxing Day morning to replace it. I was expecting it to be a madhouse, but actually it was totally quiet. I have never seen Costco so empty, it was lovely. We ended up getting a cheap 32″ TV. It’s nice being able to watch TV during daylight hours again.

I don’t work again until 2014. I have two and a half weeks solid of training in January but then I’m not on the schedule after that. I’m sure I’ll pick up some shifts here and there but I think I’m not going to be very busy for a while. Perhaps I’ll go back to nights at the data centre? We’ll see we’ll see.

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A lot happened last weekend.

It all started on Friday. Of course it had to snow 10 cm on the one day that I actually had to drive to work (I was supposed to pick up my skeleton friend Matt and drive straight to Whistler after work). The roads were horrendous. I got to work no problem (yay Subaru) but I had to park on the street and was worried all day that someone was going to slide and smash into it.


…And someone did. The back left corner was pretty smashed. The front is damaged as well from hitting into the car parked in front of me. At least the person left me a note. This was my first time dealing with an accident so I wasted a lot of time figuring out what to do. Unfortunately because of that I couldn’t meet up with Matt in time and I had to miss skeleton practice. Usually that would be fine, but it was a race weekend (BC Cup) and Friday was “official race training”. I got some texts from Matt and our coach saying that I might not be eligible to race on Saturday or Sunday because I missed the training. I was double sad.


The next day I was told that I could still come and be a forerunner (test person) and they would try to make my runs count as official race runs. I was told they would have to talk to the jury and see if they would let me participate. Of course I really wanted to!! My first ever skeleton race??!! So exciting!

I didn’t find out I was actually racing until the very last second. I was frozen because one of the bobsledders sliding from the top crashed and we had to wait for a long time while they inspected and fixed up the track. I was first to slide after the crash. My first run was ok until the last straightaway. I ping ponged a bit before the finish line and lost a lot of time. I had the worst time (out of the three of us). Then we went back up, the bobsled crashed again and we got re-frozen and I had another bad run.

There were three skeletoners and one bobsled going from the top, and three skeletoners and two bobsleds going from Lower Ladies start. It was a weird mix of official and not official… the people going from the top were competing for medals and points, but we weren’t really… yet we had a race official with us and had to ask a jury for me to be allowed to participate. Iunno.


Race 1 was disappointing but I just kept thinking Race 2 is its own separate thing and I’m going to do awesome. Our coach found speedsuits for us (that we can keep!) and everyone was pumped. I was optimistic and less distracted (I thought).

Everything was feeling good and then the bobsled crashed again. This time was pretty bad, he crashed in corner 4 and slid the whole rest of the track upside down. We saw him come by our start area upside down making a horrible scraping noise. Not cool. (He is fine though). The track was pretty gouged and we had to wait a long time before it was cleared for sliding again.

Again I had to go right after the bobsled crash. Frozen and distracted. I steered myself right into the wall at the start. SO DUMB. Even though the rest of my run was fine, I lost a lot of time with my start so I was in last place again.

Then one of the skeletoners from the top hit a wall and flew off his sled. So crazy. (He is also fine though). That scraped the track quite a bit too so more waiting, more freezing. Last run of the weekend what do I do?? STEER MYSELF DIRECTLY INTO THE WALL AT THE START AGAIN. I was like “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” down the rest of the track.

Matt and Grant had some great runs. The track was fast and they got some PB times. I beat them a lot in practice but I came decisively in last place in both races. Sigh. The pressure got to me I guess! I think the cold and stress of the car might have had something to do with it as well. Anyway it was still fun and I’m glad I got to participate, and I can’t wait to beat those guys in the next race. :D I’m going to go do some track visualizations now…