Browser display issues...

OK I really don't have time for this right now. It's nearly 2am and I still have to shower and wrap up my Chinese translation for the August newsletter, and get up tomorrow morning at 6:30am.

But for some reason or other, I decided to open our blog in IE8 (I've never done this til now and I blame my HL days for checking how things display in different browsers to different viewers) and of course the spacing was all messed up. 45 minutes later of fiddling with this and that, it still is all messed up.

Sometimes I really wish I wasn't so anal about such tiny little things. But I am.

Seriously though, I have to go to bed by 3am or I'm going to feel sick. So you know what, I'm just gonna wrap up my rant here and let that be my resolve. I will just pretend that there is no weird spacing and that all the photos and text are aligned properly on whichever browser you use, and make my peace with that. I can do that.

P.S. If you are a true friend and cared for my mental well-being, you would use Firefox 3.6.8.

Two Weeks Until Cottage Vacation!!

Mike spent just about all of his childhood summers with his cousins, aunts, and uncles at his family cottage on the Big Rideau lake near Portland, about an hour's drive from Kingston. I can see why they'd want to spend so much time there -- complete with log cabins, handmade furniture, screened-in porch, BBQ patio, hammock, kayak, canoe, boat, horseshoe pit, swing chair, badminton on the lawn, and even an authentic bear skin rug -- it is quintessential Canadian living at its best.

It's been forever since we've spent a good chunk of time at the cottage and it's gonna be great. I want to go treasure hunting in the crazy mess that is Rideau Antiques, go to Westport for a portside lunch, maybe do a day trip to Ottawa to stroll through Byward Market and see the National Gallery, but mostly I just want to hang out at the cottage, go swimming, and do a whole lot of lounging around in and out of the sun with a cold drink in my hand and plenty of snacks near by. I can't wait, it's going to be awesome! :o)


We're gonna be spending a whole week there starting on the August long weekend. Kyle & Masa are going to come along too for the first half which is awesome because Kyle hasn't been there in years and this is going to be Masa's first visit.

Unfortunately, I am going to have to work really hard on the job hunt these next two weeks to earn my cottage vacation, so this is going to be the last post for a while. Bye for now and enjoy the last couple of weeks of July! :o)

Toronto Public Library

I love libraries, it's the inner geek in me--ok, some people might argue the term "inner"--but libraries are cool, seriously! Shelves and shelves of beautiful books, all properly categorized and alphabetized? Come on, as if you wouldn't want to spend a whole day there and just wonder (ok, some people might not want to).

The Toronto Public Library is the best library we've ever used. With 99 branches in the GTA, it is the largest library system in North America. We're about a 10 minute walk away from the North York Central Library, which has six floors and is the second largest library in the city next to the Toronto Reference Library.

My two favourite things about the Toronto library system:

1. They have a vast collection of DVDs including films, TV series, and documentaries. I've borrowed loads of movies--many of which were brand new releases--and have even see a few Blu-Rays lying around. Why go to Blockbuster and pay $6.95 per rental when you can get it for free from the library down the street?!

2. You can go online and request for any item from the entire library collection to be delivered to your local branch from wherever it currently is. They will even e-mail you to let you know when it's ready for pick up.

I'm currently flipping through the beautiful Decorating with Flowers by Paula Pryke, fresh off the press and a new addition to the 2010 collection. Next up on my reading list: The Bro Code by Barney Stinson with Matt Kuhn (from the hilarious TV series, How I Met Your Mother), 500 Ideas for Small Spaces by Kimberley Seldon, and a bit later, New Resume New Career (*wink*). We've also got both Part 1 and Part 2 of Che with Benicio del Toro sitting by the DVD player.

To clarify, I'm not affiliated with the TPL in any way apart from being a happy user so this isn't a secret government campaign for literacy or anything--I don't even really read that much--I just think libraries are great. So, why not make a trip to your local library sometime, walk around, and maybe even check out a book or two? You never know what you (and your inner geek) might find! ;o)

Diagonal Road

Last night we went out for our longest run yet -- 12km. My knees were completely messed up towards the end and the thought of running 14, 16, 18, and eventually 21km in the coming weeks made me feel ill. Thank god for our destination bubble tea which was the only thing that kept me going during the last couple of kilometres.

There is one street that always amuses me and takes my mind off the run for a couple of minutes: "Diagonal Road". It is a slanty street in the residential areas we run through and I asked Mike whether he thinks it's actually a diagonal (def. a straight line connecting any two vertices of a polygon that are not adjacent); lo and behold, it is.

How funny is that? Hehehe. (ok, maybe I'm simple)

Playing with Flowers

I am not into artificial flowers. What can I say, I got spoiled from all those years working at the flower shop and unpacking boxes of beautiful fresh flowers everyday. 

Although every once in a while, I don't mind a stem of really nicely made artificial orchids. I happened upon these gorgeous pistachio green cymbidium orchids on sale for $19 at a local florist the other day so I grabbed them and made this pretty arrangement with variegated pitt and salal, a couple of branches and some lovely river pebbles (the remains of the centrepiece from Bev's wedding a couple of weeks ago). 

Now I won't have to worry about replacing the flowers on the dining room table for a while! (Besides, I probably shouldn't really be splurging on flowers until I find a job anyway...)

Good Morning!

I'm not a morning person. In fact, Mike sent me an article from the BBC a couple of days ago about how different meerkat groups consistently get up either really early or really late, and we knew right away that I'd be in the "lazy" meerkat group.

It's just that I love to sleep and I need about 9-10 hours of it to feel happy and well-rested. I know some people think sleep is over-rated and totally wastes away your day, and it's true, it does take up a good chunk of it especially when you've only got 24 hours, but I really enjoy my sleep!

I can get up if I go to bed early, but it's lame going to bed at 9:30pm, isn't it? We go to bed around 11pm nowadays and I hardly ever manage to get up with Mike at 6:20am if I don't have to. Besides, when I do get up early, I am one of those people who are annoyingly full of energy, dancing and chirping around like an idiot, and Mike doesn't appreciate the wonderfulness of the world as much as I do this time of day.

So, I've come to exert some of my energy here in order to stay out of his way for a while. (Which reminds me of this T-shirt we saw once that said, "Sometimes I wake up grumpy, other times I let him sleep," hahaha, took me a minute to get it, but I'm slow like that.) 

Ahhh -- it's going to be a great day, isn't it? :o)

Training for the Half Marathon

Sometime in the first week of May, I decided to look back on my January resolutions and see whether I've managed to accomplish anything a quarter into the new year. That was a bad idea because as it turned out, I hadn't accomplished anything. (To be fair, I had foolishly written down 10 resolutions for 2010, which Mike had rightly judged as "unrealistic".)

Anyway, to make myself feel better, I decided that I had to cross off at least one thing, and I had to do it right away. I have no idea why I thought "Run a half marathon" was the thing that I should get on with--seeing as I wasn't even entirely sure about it when I wrote it down in the first place--but Mike went to work devising a training program in Excel and we bought new running shoes that weekend and started running the next day.

I am not a runner; there was a time when I despised running and could barely keep moving for 15 minutes without struggling. 

But sometime last spring when I figured out that I didn't want to eat less and had to lose weight some other way, I signed up for the Oxford Town & Gown 10K run with a group of other people at work. Poor Amanda had agreed to be my running buddy without fully realizing what she'd gotten herself into. Three months of whining and complaining later, we took on the cobbled streets of Oxford city centre and finished our 10K run in just under an hour (in the rain, of course, typical English style) and rewarded ourselves with G&D's ice cream afterwards. 

Since then, other than the occasional today-is-Monday-so-I-should-seriously-start-exercising-and-dieting-again moments, I basically stopped running.

Now, 10 weeks into the training, we finally got back up to the 10K mark on Tuesday. It wasn't too terrible, actually, but this time I knew it wasn't the end. According to "The Schedule", we've got to keep running 5 days a week, and hit a big one (10-19km) every weekend. For the next 10 weeks. 

Then, at 7:30am on Sunday, September 26th, we head down to City Hall and run the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Half Marathon. I feel a bit ill just thinking about it. 

Why couldn't I have just picked "Paint a painting" instead?

Summer in the City

Summertime is pretty awesome, isn't it? Sunshine, blue skies, drinking beer on a patio, lazying around at the cottage, swimming, walking around at an outdoor market, ice cream sandwiches... Yeah, pretty awesome, I'd say. (Except funny enough, for someone who grew up in Taiwan and Arizona, I really can't handle the heat; I can, however, just about manage to sit in a perfectly air-conditioned condo and drink iced tea.)

I went to meet up with Mike after work on Friday to grab a pint at the Irish Embassy (wouldn't it be cool if it actually was the Irish Embassy?!) where I managed to down a few gulps of Guinness before I gave up and asked for a Magners cider instead to go with the tasty bacon-wrapped scallops we were snacking on. Then we skipped over to Commerce Court for our dinner at Jump. 

Nothing quite like Summerlicious to make you love Toronto. I can't think of many things better than a beautiful 3-course prix fixe lunch or dinner at a fantastic restaurant so we always try to take advantage when it rolls around. We start to feel rather guilty if we make any more than three reservations in a season but over the years we've ticked off some great restaurants off our list including Canoe, Auberge du Pommier, La Maquette, The 360 at CN Tower, Bymark, Oliver & Bonacini, Provence Delices, and Zucca Trattoria. This Saturday we've got lunch with Derek & Karina at The Bier Markt then next Friday we're gonna try out Eight Wine Bar. When Winterlicious comes around again in February, Centro and North 44 are the first ones I'm going to call. (I think I should probably get a job first though...)

We got up at 9am on Saturday feeling well rested and ready for our 8K run which wasn't too much of a struggle actually particularly when followed by a cool dip in the pool. I made a massive salad for lunch on the balcony (I normally hate salads, but this one had tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado, feta, and my own Dijon dressing and turned out to be really yummy) and then fell asleep during the second half of the Germany vs Uruguay game. After my lovely nap, we got ready and headed down to Polson Pier with free tickets to The Drinks Show (admission is usually $30 but someone was giving away free tickets downtown), had a number of lovely cocktails and saw the Toronto waterfront for the first time as the boats drifted in and out of the harbour.

Sunday was BBQ and the World Cup finals (is it just me or was the World Cup here then gone really quickly?) followed by a not-so-great-but-brainless movie to wrap up the evening. 

And here we are again, a brand new week in July. I hope summer never ends.

Charlie Ba is 10 Years Old

I keep telling people (and myself) that Charlie is 4 or 5 years old, but I've been saying that for about 4 or 5 years now. Charlie was a year old when we picked him up from the shelter in 2001, so I guess he is about 10 years old now actually. Apparently that's roughly 56 human years, so Charlie is a middle-aged man, hahaha.

Charlie has got to be the cutest, sweetest cat ever. He is a *little bit* overweight (Mike calls him "fatty" and he is on weight management food...), has white paws, green eyes, and a nose that gets really pink when he is hyper. He may shed everywhere and drive us crazy sometimes with his whining, but he's still the best cat ever and we love him to death.

Here are 10 photos to celebrate Charlie's 10 years:

Bev & Ty's Wedding

We had such a lovely time at Bev & Ty's wedding at the Ancaster Old Mill on Saturday. The weather could not have been better and the wedding was beautiful (*tear*). Here's a picture of the happy couple just after the ceremony in the garden chapel.

Bev was in Mike's Civil Engineering class at Queen's. Technically they're SCI '06s but both did an internship--Bev with Bantrel in Calgary where she met Ty and Mike with Halsall in Toronto--so we all ended up graduating in '07. 

When we moved to Oxford, Bev and I sort of became modern-day pen pals--yeah it sounds lame, but it's actually really cool (yeah ok it still sounds lame)--and exchanged e-mails of all the little things that were going on in our lives on either side of the Atlantic. 

We hitched a ride to Hamilton with Amy & Andrea (also engineers, they're quite a clique, these iron ring types) who were both Bev's housemates back in Kingston and are those smart-beautiful-successful-and-yet-still-super-fun-and-cool types that you would just love to hate but can't. 

We had a great time hanging out with them and they did a wonderful job as co-emcees at the wedding. Andrea was heading back to Calgary today and we owe Amy a visit and a beer sometime down in the Distillery District where she lives.

Now, I know it's a cliché to say "what a small world" but sometimes it really is. In the elevator at the Sheraton we bumped into our high school teachers who were also guests at Bev & Ty's wedding! Mr. Crozier was my Grade 10 math teacher and Mme. Crozier taught French at Bayridge as well. It just so happens that Mr. Crozier was Bev's dad's roommate at Queen's when they took Phys Ed. together and have been close friends ever since and Mme. Crozier came along to play her beautiful harp at the ceremony. They make such a cute couple and it was so random and lovely to see them. Just before they left, I told Mme. Crozier that I used to have a little crush on Mr. Crozier way back when, to which she replied, "I still do!" (*aww*)

 
Since Bev & Ty both live and work in Calgary, we never got to meet Ty until now. They are so perfect for each other it's ridiculous and we are so happy for them. Maybe someday we'll end up in the same area code again and can see each other all the time!

These two spoiled brats are off in Las Vegas for their "mini-moon" now (a proper honeymoon in Hawaii is slotted for September) and we are left with one of the gorgeous centrepieces to remember them by (beautiful white hydrageas, football mums, roses, salal and variegated pitt). 

I love flowers and am really missing the good old days working with Nancy, Paula, & Marisa at the Flower Market in Kingston. I can't resist the urge to buy some for myself every once in a while (Mike says I'm too picky when it comes to flowers so that's why he won't buy me any) but I wish we could have flowers in the house all the time. Maybe one day when we are rich I can just stay at home all day and play with flowers...

I love weddings too, they are so wonderful. I so wish that we could get married again but Mike says no (I know, right, he's so negative). We'll see if I can't convince him otherwise. In the meantime, I can't wait for Sarah & Richard to get married next year (Cape Town in March!!!) and for Kyle & Masa's wedding in Ljubljana at the end of August!! Both are going to be absolutely amazing!! :o)