it's all about hot pockets

tis the season to get your gear all ready and to prepare yourself for a fun filled winter on the slopes. whistler has reported some record breaking snowfall and i'm planning to rip it up next week. more pix to follow...

fender bender

lesson learned:

keep your foot on your brake at all times when you're at a stop, don't get distracted by reading a flyer.

missing home

i went to the canucks hockey game on saturday and realized how much i miss home. they were playing a video montage for remembrance day and after they sang the national anthem it struck an emotional chord within me. canada is such a lovely country and hockey has to be one of the greatest sports on earth. i think i'm going to do some investigating this week and i'll see if kerry will join in on a women's hockey league. i know it's a bit ambitious to think i can play when i've only laced up figure skates and i've never chased after a puck on ice but i'm determined to find some kind of fun, organized team sport and to be all that i can be ...

on a different note, here's a cute little video that i took of mr. mooks this weekend.

flying into cowtown

i had a lovely weekend going to calgary for the first time and hanging out with a bunch of folks in the industry. epcor hosted the texas hold'em event at the stampede casino where four full tables were filled with highly competitive poker players and my lonely female self, just attempting to outlast a few good men.

the top five winners walked away with some great prizes. kevin ended up taking home the xbox 360 as the grand prize. a few ipod nanos were given out, as well as a portable dvd player and a sony radio/cd player. the game got intense when it came down to the final four with the blinds going into 4K/8K ... insane!

after the tournament was over the epcor guys were so hospitable. they took us to a great little club/lounge called mynt and then shortly after we checked out another place called whiskey.

saturday we decided to make a trek out to banff. we had brunch @ the banff springs hotel and it was just mediocre. i think if we came in on a sunday or arrived earlier the selection of grits could of been better. we walked through the streets of banff in search for my baby blue snowboarding jacket - but to no avail...couldn't find it!

feds invited dean, his wife and some temu colleagues for dinner to a great little restaurant called the river cafe. the food was great and it was located in a cute little area in prince's island park. i'm hoping to come back to calgary one day and spend more time there. i didn't really get a chance to check out 17th ave or the kensington area.

i had a great flight back to seattle and was pleased to add calgary to my list of travels. i'm so embarrassed that i haven't travelled to more canadian destinations. my goal in '07 is to spread my wings to parts of the east!

i only have a few calgary pix to share as feds thought it was inappropriate for me to bring out my deadly ammo - the lovely canon 630. i'm all about documenting memories because we only live one life...i guess feds doesn't value it as much as i do!

going commando

grrrrrr!!!

the light shines on all of us ...

but on this particular day it was shining on ms. kelbel. although we had to celebrate it twelve days later from her actual birthday, it was well worth the wait. not only did we get a chance to meet up the night before for the halloween party, but we added nic, pat and JT to the festivities and had a wonderful meal at a trendy little moroccan restaurant on granville street called sanafir. afterwards we made our way to the republic for a few drinks and i would think a few too many for our little kerbear (sorry, girl!). the music wasn't too great so after a few hours of some drinkin', dancin' and some lickin' we decided to head over to forbes' to unwind and chat.

kells was thrilled having all the girls together for her birthday and it was a great way to celebrate her 'coming of age' as well as her little adventure that lies ahead of her next week. she's part of a key group of ten people who will be living and working together in new orleans and assisting families and the habitat for humanity group with the construction of new homes. way to go, sista!

here are some 'classy' pictures of us celebrating the night away...

spice up your life

When your feelin', sad and lone
We will take you,
Where you gotta go
Smilin' and dancin',
Everything is free
All you need is positivity
Colours of the world
Spice up your life
Every boy and girl
Spice up your life
People of the world
Spice up your life
Aaahh!!!

i attended the pwx halloween party this past friday at the mouse and the bean in vancouver. we had a blast and it was great seeing some interesting costumes and reconnecting with people that i hadn't seen in years. here are some pix to the fun filled event.

happy birthday mr. mooks!

today mr. mooks turns one

and will be pleasantly surprised tomorrow when he gets to

frolic around with other doogles at the dog lounge in seattle.

disclaimer

hey nic...

i have removed gunt out of my 'cobblestones and the gunt' posting. you know i'm not mean spirited and would never ever want to insult a single soul. thanks to you,

say bye bye to the gunt!

you have a piece of my heart...

so i had an interesting day today. i drove into seattle this rainy afternoon to go get an echo exam done on my heart. it was part of my routine physical exam from last week where i got some blood work done and the doctor went over a few things to inform me on my health and diet. i told him i worked out about 3-4 times a week and he actually insisted that i go five times a week. umm ... what else am i suppose to add into my work out routine?

he then asked me personal questions such as am i sexually active? i giggled. and then he was applying pressure on my stomach to ensure that there were no abnormalities - i laughed hysterically. see why i never go to the doctor's? but the good news is, it's confirmed ... i'm 5'5.5"! just 3.5 more inches away from my ideal height. yah!

anyways, though i fray away from going to the doctors i would have to say that today's visit was very educational for me. i asked the technicians a tonne of oddball questions and found out that officially they are called ultrasonagraphers. at one point when i looked at the monitor and watched the valves in my heart pump away, it literally looked like some kind of alien saying, 'hello' to me. the sonographer, melissa, applied that funky gel on the ultrasound tranducer and kept pressing away on the left side of my chest and over my chest bone. did i tell you that she was an intern? and she was putting so much pressure on my chest that i thought it was going to crack.

so just thought that i would share something with you. i was thinking that when you actually look at a human heart it doesn't really look like the shape of a heart as one would normally sketch it out. but after closely examining the screen today, it just came to me like a lightning bolt. if you tilt your head sideways to the left and look at the picture below ... from the view of my aortic valve, you can see the shape of my heart - enjoy!

my new rollerblading partner

Peppa - my new rollerblading partner

sleeping beauties

here's a fabulous picture of my dear friend pat. the only one friend who has an issue with her picture on my blog and who thinks it's unsafe to have your face plastered anywhere on the world wide web. sorry, just had to do it!

forbes and pat drove down this weekend to pay me a little visit and to do some shopping. funny how it works. forbes is always claiming that she's here to visit and refuses to waste time shopping. i think this is the second time around she's walked out of nordies after dropping five bills. and then to 'boot, pat insisted on going to trader joe's to stock up on some goods and reluctantly convinced forbes to drive her. then once again...forbes walks out with $70 of groceries! nice.

here's to another wonderful bitch fest and to my sleeping beauty!

feeling the love

so it was pretty much a lovefest this weekend. i drove up to vancouver (with minimal sleep coming off my fri night shift) and spent the saturday evening celebrating my cousin's birthday. it was great to see soohee, suzi, stephen and paulina again. think we should do it more often and get everyone out next time. perhaps a good game of cranium.

prior to dinner, i paid a visit to the senior care home and chatted with my gma. she's such a funny lady to be around. it's the never ending question of whether or not you've eaten. how come i'm not married? where are my kids? to once again, have you eaten? too funny... but what can you say, she's still in great spirits for a ninety-two year old and i am sincerely grateful that she has played an important role in my life. think i have to thank my lucky stars for having allowed her to teach me to be resilient and strong, yet at the same giving of myself to those that i care about. got to love her!

met up with forbes and J briefly on saturday to grab the keys to my place. i took a bunch of pictures and was sure not to interfere with the xrated love sessions that took place in my unit. easy there forbes! but here's a view of what you can see from my living room window. had brunch with the two lovebirds on sunday @ NU and then met up with my hungover bro at barber's apartment. it's been eons since i last saw mike and i was surprised that i remembered his cell number after trying several times to track my brother down. it was a pleasant reunion.

so i left van in the early afternoon and was worried that i wouldn't be able to pay my final visit to see brynja before she headed back to iceland. she had din plans already so i managed to swing by to rob and lana's new place in sammamish for a quick visit. OMG...talk about architectural digest/frontgate - their home is insane! i'm hoping that luck in some form will come my way via the villagio connection. i was thoroughly impressed by carrie's place in mercer island but she kept going on about rob and lana's killer pad. their backyard is landscaped so beautifully and in the springtime they'll be putting in a heated swimming pool (with a hard covershell that will protect the pool and easily allow luba, their bullie, to run around freely without any danger). they've inquired about wanting to babysit mookie so luba could have a playmate and now there is no question that my mooks would be in good hands with the pledger's.

after a quick visit, i drove out to snoqualmie ridge to bring some dessert and icecream over to the myren's. had a great chat with bryn about her life in iceland and how exciting it is to work for the us embassy. she's met a lot of interesting people along the way and is looking into putting in her time and then returning back to washington state and working for a local government agency. yippee... i miss her so!

an interesting joe

check out this short film by joe.
now i know why your knees are all banged up...

reunited

reunited and it feels so good...

mr. mooks was here for a little visit

arrived alive

so i arrived safely back into the us of A. i noticed when i was leaving heathrow that they had us departing from an older area of the airport where we had to walk through this dodgy maze inorder to board our plane. i think they had all the US direct outbound flights situated in one area where you had to pass by a few police officers with these massive automatic uzzis. you then had to walk through a long ramp towards a bunch of other security guards that were staring you down. then we had to board a shuttle bus that was strategically situated beside some kind of bomb squad truck...totally unreal. nonetheless, the flight back was great and i had no issues going through us customs. the agent was kind enough to even extend my h1-b visa with ease and at no charge. pretty sweet!

but i must say, i feel sorry for a lot of minorities who can't really speak english. i noticed through the random custom searches they were all of asian and middle eastern decent. and then the guy in front of me must of flown in from africa via europe and he was being bombarded with a bunch of questions that he didn't seem to understand. i hate it when customs agents go on their power trips.

ker was kind enough to pick me up from the airport and we chatted and caught up on what's going on with work, the girls and our crazy lives. i decided to fight the jet lag and lace up my blades for a nice cruise along the lake washington waterfront. i'm seriously on this high right now. i know you can get it from traveling and such and i've been fortunate to have this chunk of time off but it's the coolest feeling. i'm learning to love myself again and just enjoying every little moment i have with my nearest and dearest friends and even with absolute strangers. i guess this is suppose to be some kind of springboard to the big unknown. as vic once told me, 'no guts, no glory, cath'.

so on that note...here are some pix from my bday trip to london and another video clip just outside of dolly and 'drew's flat. enjoy!

along the thames...

so it's a sunday night and we're all just hanging out at dolly & drew's flat until we head out for dinner. i knew this would be a short trip and can't believe that i have to leave in a few days. it's kind of strange. though i know i'm in london, there are times when i don't feel any different being here. not sure if it's some kind of sign or it's because i'm hanging out with good ol' friends. it was great to see dolly on weds night when she got back from work. we went for a jog along our usual route (from tower hill to the millenium bridge, over to the tate modern and then along the south side of the thames river and over tower bridge). it's always nice to hang with dolls and continue from exactly where we left off...

the first night we walked over to the wapping area and had dinner at il bordella. a fabulous little italian restaurant where the portions are huge. dolly and i shared an alfredo dish and the rocket parmesan salad. i realized after eating this fine meal that when i go home, i will get back into the swing of things and try some new dishes out.

the following morning, i made joe go for a morning jog with me. joe (andrew's younger bro) was in town since mid august and had come here via vancouver but had spent an entire year over in japan. the boy is fluent in so many different languages...it's pretty impressive. we took a leisurely jog and i thought it would be funny to document the start of it. by the time we hit the south side of the thames, joe thought it would be funny to run through a water fountain and then i thought it would be even funnier to follow suit.

later that night i took the tube over to the marleybone area to meet up with rick for dinner (and gave the alchie his bottle of crown royale). we ended up going to a great thai restaurant in st. christopher's place and had dessert in leicester square. the funny thing was along the way we were roaming the busy streets of london and this range rover turned the corner ... all in slow-mo. rick was like, 'hey, that's ross!' as i raised my head up and took a quick glance at the passenger seat (with the window rolled down). low and behold he nodded his head and gave us this quick hand signal to say 'hi'. david schwimmer must get that all the time. here's to another celebrity citing.

so on friday, we decided to pick up the rental car for the weekend and head over to the putney area to check out a place that dolly and 'drew were interested in getting. it was an old woman's college (with a chapel) that was designed by sir giles gilbert scott and was recently converted into new apartment units. drew was interested in this great 3bedroom set up that had this huge living area with a terrace that was equal if not greater then the living space. i would say that this unit was a gem but the location was a bit questionable and dolly wasn't happy with the small bedrooms. later that night we had dinner at the rocket bar and shared a chorizo calzone that just melted in your mouth. yum scrum!

by the time we got home, we were so exhausted! andrew works long i-banking hours and the commute time for dolly to and from (four hours total each day) work made it a very long week. so we debated whether or not we'd call it a night. but i bit the bullet and popped into the shower. i figure, let the married couple rest...i'm in london, it's a friday night and i better not fall asleep at 11pm. hit the shower and headed out to the soho area and had a tasty little grape martini at a cool place called cocoon. ended up having late night chinese at HK diner at about 3:45 in the morning. yikes!

so saturday was one of my favourite days so far. for several reasons. one, i was proud of myself for actually getting into a UK rental car and driving on the other side of the road while handling a stick shift in my left and driving on the right. we drove into putney in the afternoon to check out a place that dolly and 'drew were interested in buying. and now onto the second highlight...they signed and reserved a place in this quaint little area in putney (carlton square). i'm sooo excited for them. it's a beautiful unit and i know that it'll be a great investment for them. later that night we sped back to the flat and got ready to celebrate my belated bday. now, this is the part that got me totally floored. they made reservations to this great restaurant called the wolseley and i didn't know that it's a place where british celebs dine and it's ubber hard to get reservations. i just read in the paper today that catherine zeta jones and her hubbie m. douglas were there last night celebrating both of their bdays. anyhoot... after being seated at our table, dolly gave me my bday card and i was on the verge of tearing just reading it. she has been such a solid gem to me and i'm so grateful to have her and 'drew in my life. so then shortly after, she hands over this blue box and said, 'happy bday'. OMG. i'm thinking why do i have a this tiffany box in front of me. even before i opened it, i hugged her incestuously and thanked her and drew over and over again. and then at some point drew looked at me and said, 'don't thank me, it's not from me' and then seconds later, out from under the table he hands me another tiffany blue box and says, 'now this is from me'. what the fu? i was in so much disbelief and at that point so stunned and shocked by their generosity. i will forever remember that special night and will cherish my 'return to tiffany' heart necklace and bracelet. thanks for making me feel like a million bucks!

so later that evening we ended up going to 'the long bar' for drinks. according to 'drew it was another pretentious place in london but dolly really wanted me to check it out. after having a few rounds of drinks (obviously not me) dolly and rick got into a lengthy discussion about their family history and some of the interesting life lessons that were passed down to them from their respective gmas. at one point, drew and i figured out that there could be a possibility that dolly and rick are long lost relatives. their gmas come from the same village in china, they speak the same dialect (which is very rare among most chinese immigrants) and have so much in common in terms of family background. too uncanny.

so sunday was yesterday. we ended up sleeping in and decided to hop into the rental car and head to spitafields mall ... a cool little district in london where on the weekends it's sort of like a flea market but better quality. had a bunch of cool knick knacks from local designers (jewlery, clothing, design, furniture, etc). i guess you would say a huge open forum like pike place/granville island but with less food and more design. got a few things to bring back and hopefully my friends will like 'em. i ended up ditching dolly, drew and joe and took off with rick to hit 'wagamamas', a great little japanese noodle shop. i think they have a whole bunch of them franchised throughout europe. not sure if it's in nyc yet but i know it would do really well in the pacific northwest. anyhoot...had my chicken ramen and then went over to rick's to go over some alberta pool stuff. i'm really thinking that work life would be more exciting if we got involved with the alberta or cali pool market. headed back to the flat for dins and then had an interesting convo with joe, on the eve of his departure. for the first time since i got there he actually opened up to me and we yammered away on the meaning of life and what makes us tick. how happy we are in our lives. what do we need to make us happy. what really is happiness? joe is an interesting fella. i told him that i still want him to email me his best man speech. once i get it, i will be sure to post it on my blog. to this day...it had to be the best friggen best man speech i've ever heard anyone present to the groom. deep in thought and purely genius. here's to joe and pulling himself out of his happy numbness.

so now it's actually tuesday (2:49am).

monday, we had another great day! dolly and drew were at work all day but we agreed to meet up to catch the 'mary poppins' show in the theatre district. dolly scored perfect seats and it was such a sweet little show that brought back that childhood spirit in all of us. here's to 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'! ended up having a late night dinner at this cute little japanese restaurant that served delicious pancakes that were fried right infront of you on a teppanyaki grill. ended up taking the cab back by midnight and as soon as i heard that ed was coming down for a quick visit, i knew i had to break open my surprise for 'drew. on my shopping stint today, i walked into hmv and bought the latest nhl '07 for 'drew's xbox 360. i was going to save it for him as a surprise when i left but i couldn't resist as his partner in crime was paying us a visit. i was so thrilled to see 'drew turn into a little kid again as he skipped to the tv and popped in his game.

i only have one more day to go...hopefully it'll be just as good as the rest, if not better.... will follow up with a post and with some pix.

i'm headin' to bed!

euro blog pictures

so i finally had the chance to upload all the pictures from my european getaway back in june. for some reason the kodak gallery kept crashing so you'll only get a chance to view some of the pictures. as i was uploading them last night i was in perma-smile mode again and thinking about how fabulous these moments were in such a strange time in my life. i think travelling does wonders for your soul...

enjoy the pix!

before and after

so i'm in the process of uploading a bunch of pictures from dolly's computer from our trip to the italian lakes and barcelona.

once i have them all loaded up, i'll be sure to post them. just came across some funny shots that i thought i'd share.

it's called the before....

and after....

cobblestones

so i'm back in the great city of london for a short little visit to see dolly and celebrate our birthdays together. i told her that since it all started when we were in sardinia, italy last year that we should make best efforts to make this an annual thing. however, we were chatting tonight and she suggested that next year we should do st. tropez again and stay there for an entire week. then i realized, now that we have a hook up through our french captain alec...perhaps we could aim for st. tropez in june for the rolex sailing regatta. would anyone else be interested in joining us?

this is day one of my week long trip and nothing really is planned other then a few cuppa joes and roaming the streets of london. i think dolly and 'drew will be renting a car this weekend so we'll most likely escape outside of the city. take note....upon my arrival, i was instantly reminded that i was in london after i got off the tube at tower hill. welcome to coblestones. you'll find it a bit of a task to roll your luggage and heavy carry on bags while walking in heels through the cobblestone streets of london. my carryon kept getting knocked off as the uneven pavement bounced things around and in turn kept tugging my headset out of my ipod socket. aarrrgghh!