Very long weekend

Dinners

Took half day Fri off and Wed and Thurs =).

On Sun nite, had family dinner with John's family. Very very good food and drink.

Drink: cranberry and pomegranate juice, white wine.
Entrees: turkey with cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes with gravy, mashed yam, chickpeas salad, broccoli and carrots, and brussel sprouts.
Dessert: minced pie with rum butter on top, chocolate coconut cluster, gingerbread cookies, and pumpkin pie. I only had the minced pie.... too full.

:D Gifts I got:
Pinky flannel top with a hood, a pocket of chocolate coins, flowery candle holder, bath liquids, 2 cans of green tea.
Hand made comfy scarf.
Cute photo clip.
Big Al's gift cert.

On Sat nite, had dinner with mom's friend. We went to fisherman terrace. It was good food as well: cold plate appetizers (bbq duck, roasted pig, jelly fish), chicken with taro stew (the taro wasn't soft enuf...), roasted tofu, deep fried fresh oyster...

Went to church on both Sun and Mon morning. Said happy xmas to father David.

Shopping

Also did a lot of shopping. Went to boxing day shopping with sister. We got there before 10 and it wasn't too bad. Not a trouble finding parking and not a lot of shops needed lineup.

I bought 2 sweater tops from Smart Set and one sweater top from Morgan.

Before boxing day, I bought about 5 pieces of clothing, 2 jackets and 3 tops.

After boxing day, I bought another top.

All are casual and necessary cuz many of my clothes don't fit me anymore....

Went to golf town with John. We also went to IKEA window shopping and had lunch there.
We had the meatballs, jelly, a Liginberry drink, and a yucky chicken noodle soup. The meatballs were tasty but the soup was just terrible.

On Thurs, finally got time to go to Big Al's and used up my gift cert.

I bought 3 bags of soil, 3 baby food, and one test kit. Everything 20% discount in store.

Dad finally started putting the stand together, it's almost done now. Only the doors left to be hooked up.

On Sat morning, I found more babies.

I have in total of 3 batches of babies now. Probably over 50 of them in total.... donno what to do.

I'm planning to move the goldfish into the big tank and move the babies into the goldfish tank. Dad kept saying just feed the babies to the goldfish, they'll love it. It's unthinkable to me, the babies are too cute to be disposed of like that.

But 50 of them in a 29 gallon tank.... won't last too long.

I'm planning to buy a 79 bow front tank later after I've moved into my new place, probably during next boxing day sale.

Movies

Borrowed 2 DVDs from library, "Howl's moving castle" and "Firewall".
Saw my old company's building in "Firewall". Reconized those cranes on the ceiling in the shot in the server room. The movie wasn't too bad.
"Howl's moving castle" is great!!!! The dog climbing back up after it reached the stairs is so cute and funny. But, I find that the voice of Howl doesn't really suit the character, a bit too mature or manly for it.

Party

Went to an ex-coworker party.
We had so much food and a lot of fun.
One person brought in sushi party tray, and another brought food from Yaohan food court (curry beef, chicken with ginger sauce on the side, fried noodles, deep fried sweet pork, veggie soup).
Dessert: chocolates, red bean ice cream dumpling.

We did gift exchange. The rule is that each gift cannot be "exchanged" more than 3 times. I brought in a starbucks coffee mug and in the end I got 3 stainless still cans. I'm going to use that for sugar, salt, and pepper for my new place. Or, I can just give them to john now so that his sugar and salt won't smell like plastic anymore.

We played Wii, the Rayman Raving Rabbids game, and the tennis game. Some ppl also played the boxing game, and bowling game.

Here are some screenshots of the rabbids game. It's a package of a lot of silly and fun games.
http://media.wii.ign.com/media/821/821585/imgs_1.html

One of my favourites:
1. Zoom in with your remote to find the rabbit that is singing out of tune and slap it.

a group of singing rabbits Nope not me, it's the one next to me. Slap!!!

Nothing but bad luck

A series of injury lately. First, dropped the glass top on my foot, then banged my head on the ice, then twisted my ankle.... then last Friday...power outage.... lost my overnite test result... plus crashed my PC.... had to spend the whole morning fixing it... and it seems like the power outage had corrupted my database for my simulators :'( .
But, we managed to win $10 on the lottery with the free play tix that we got from another free play tix.

Last friday because of power outage, none of us were able to get into the building. We had a xmas lunch reservation so most of us "stayed" till then. Several of us went to Metrotown but nothing was opened so we basically just sat in the food court and some of us got coffee. It was such a boring day. The lunch was great. Lots and lots of food and dessert.
- cold dishes: many different kinds of salads (tuna salad, potato salad, garden salad...), mussels (flavour too strong for me), cheese (skip), cold cuts (skip), tiny tomatoes, boiled egg (shared half with coworker)
- turkey with raspberry sauce and a lot of stuffing
- pan fried beef with onion (the beef was too chewy)
- fish with a very tasty white creamy sauce (I like this one the best)
- steamed broccoli and cauliflower
- roasted potatoes
- penne with tomato pesto sauce
- desserts: coffee cake, yule log (bitter because of the wine i think), mango cake, lemon tart, some kind of pie with walnut inside (too full, didn't get to try), cookies (skipped).
I felt sick from all the food afterwards.
My sis's company went there for their xmas dinner as well, a formal one with a hollywood academy award theme. Their VP dressed up as a woman. Their company is so much more fun.
They had the same desserts I think but much better entree. They had roast beef and smoked salmon.

Even with my foot injury, I was able to finish most of my xmas shopping. There were so so many ppl at the mall this yr compared to last, almost impossible to find parking.

Sat had dinner with uncle and family. We went to Kirin again. I wasn't feeling too well from the buffet the day before and from dim sum during lunch and from the cheesecake that I had a few hrs ago....

Afterwards we went xmas light hunting... actually the battery in my camera ran out and I had to go back home after we visited 2 houses, stupid me.
These are the relatively better pics taken:

The house at hunt street


My coworker's neighbour house





Frosty the snowman house

Seasons Greetings














Sun, didn't do much. Just church and cleaned the small tank.
Oh... and also visited the display center for my future home... but too late, they already took everything down.
But, I like this office table and this TV stand.

My newly acquired fishes, balloon molly

Rough weekend

Sat
After going to the ER, I went home and rested a bit.
Then, went to coworker's wedding ceremony. Friend drove of course.
The church was very beautiful and the bride too... and the maid of honour.



There was no refreshment after the wedding, just some very very pretty and tasty candies.
After that we went to a gelato place.
I had the vanilla cookies flavour, and tried strawberry cheesecake, hazlenut, mango sorbet, and rum from my friend's. I first liked the rum flavour the best, then I moved on to like strawberry cheesecake the most.
We then drove to downtown and my friends bought wedding cards from a very neat card store.
We actually got lost twice or thrice before arriving to the banquet.
I was supposed to help out setting up the table but because of my foot they let me go.
This is the centerpiece that they let me have.

I got to participate at the game this time. Me and John showed the couple how to kiss. Haha.
Sun
Mom drove me to church, then went to a walk-in clinic @ parker place. ... they let me cut the line.... very nice of them. The doctor told me to ice it and said that I should have done it as soon as possible.... hehee... but instead I was limping around and not icing it....so then I went home and iced it for 15mins before going to another wedding ceremony in Vancouver Museum. It's so pretty. Very nice view.




Banquet was in the restaurant in Metrotown..... very similar to the Sat banquet and the many banquets before

The desserts were excellent.
The wedding cake was either apricot or peach cheesecake and had some pastries layers (like the napolean cake) in between. SO SO nice..... mmm so nice that I forgot to take a picture of it.
There was also something like mooncake slices (sweet lotus paste pastries), the pastry layer was good but the paste was too sweet.
Also had thick pancake slices, very very good.
And the typical sweet red bean soup.
Another thing that's very different was that they gave out oranges to each table in the end. They were quite good.

The ER

Coach told me to go to the ER and said that one of their skaters also had the same thing (fell on axel on dry land... but hers is probably double axel) and she had broken the bones inside her ankle.
So, I went to the ER.... drove there myself (using my knee and pretended my ankle was a stump).. luckily not too far away.
Also, it's because I heard a crack when I landed on the ground and it hurt so damn much my tears kept flowing out involuntarily... (pardon my language). I had seriously thought for a few mins there that I had broken something.
When I got to the hospital it was so confusing, took me a while to know where to park. And then I had to limp/hop my way into it.... took me a few mins to get to the door.
I felt like a suspect and was being interrogated.
First I had to wait for a few mins for a doctor. She asked me what happened and also my medical history, she wrote down something and then she got me a wheelchair and wheeled me to the administration. Then, I was asked for the same thing again.
Then, I was wheeled in front of a nurse, and she asked me the same thing.
Then, I was wheeled into the Cast Unit. Waited a few mins there, and then I was asked the same thing again by a medical student.
Then, another few mins afterwards another doctor came by and did the same thing again. It was like Grey's Anatomy, he was explaining how to examine a sprained/broken ankle to the medical student while I was in pain.... always examine the knee in this situation as well.... and something about the 4 C's which he could only recite 3 of them, couldn't remember the last one.... and I couldn't remember any of them afterwards.
After many many mins, a nurse took me to the X-ray machine and took several X-ray.
Then after like half an hour or more (during that time I went to the washroom and played several games of solitaire on the PC that was in the Cast Unit), the doctor finally came by and told me that nothing was broken and he'll get confirm from the radiology later.
Then I hopped to my car, took me many many mins.... and had to take a break in between. Paid $5 parking. In just before 7am, out of there around 9:30am. There was no line up at all and still it took so long.....

Badly sprained ankle

Diligently went to Minoru for Sat morning practice.
I was doing warm up on the ground before skating..... was doing single axel on the ground and somehow landed on my ankle... this is the result... (taken the next day).

Desserts at bridal shower

Babies

Another busy week

Trip to coquitlam
Took skate to Coquitlam (Skater's Edge) to fix. OMG it's so busy. I got there just before 11am. They were extremely backlogged with skate sharpening. I waited about half an hour before he had time for me. He fixed the blade angle as well as the alignment, basically had to take it off and remounted it. It felt a lot better on the ground, I had yet to try it out on the ice. I almost got lost on the way there, google map says turn right on Lougheed. Before I reached Lougheed, I saw a East, West exit for #1 highway. Somehow I remembered Lougheed is #1.... so I almost turned right towards the East exit but after a few secs it didn't look quite right so I went back in, fortunately traffic wasn't too busy. After that confusing exits, I saw Lougheed....if I had turned into the East exit... donno where i would end up.
On the way back, there was no problem except for the blinding sunlight.... reflected off the the road because of the water and because of the snow on the side.
Afterwards, I visited John for a bit and ate lunch there. He's busy with school and FF.

Fishy fishy
I couldn't get to the shop earlier cuz my platy gave birth to babies again and I was busy trying to catch all of them. It's now extremely crowded in my tank.
The next day, I went out and bought another nurseries for the bigger babies and left the smaller babies in the net tank.
Here are the bigger babies with the mom (the one with the bigger belly) outside

The one in the middle is my fav, so pinkish and pretty

the one with the black dot on the tail is the youngest here, found him a week after all the others were caught

They like to hang out on the side

You can see its tail and fins clearly


Extremely crowded
Besides my tank, the mall is also extremely crowded. On Sat, I was lucky to had someone leaving when I just got into the parking lot. On Sun, no such luck, I was forced to line up for half an hr to go back out.

Bridal shower
Went to friend's bridal shower on Sat. Burnaby was so convoluted and confusing, took us several round to find the house. We talked about games to play before the ceremony and during the banquet, had dessert, and presents opening, and lots of pictures taking. Didn't leave till 12:05am... I was starting to feel comatose around 10pm.
We had:
- strawberry covered cheesecake
- very creamy tiramisu
- chocolates from HK
- fruits (pineapple, huge grapes, watermelon, cantaloupe)
- fruit tarts
I liked the cheesecake the best.
And, no, there were no stripper.

Friend's bday
We went to Tomokazu Japanese Restaurant, all you can eat.
- pan fried pork dumplings
- cooked spinach with peanut butter and sesame sauce
- deep fried pork dumplings
- BBQ chicken
- sushi: salmon sashimi, tuna sashimi, spicy tuna sashimi, carlifornia roll, cripsy skin with avacado, sushi with eel on top, sushi cones,
- sunomono
- agatashi tofu

And then had strawberry mousse cake with floating chocolate in the middle. The cake was very good, but the chocolate is a bit bitter for me... eventho it's not exactly dark chocolate.