07 Dec 2006
So we put up the Christmas tree at Holly’s last weekend. We bought some of those new LED lights, a few ornaments and some silver bids. We’re pretty happy with the tree :)
It was nice to have a start to the Christmas Season like this. Holly baked cookies and made home made cocoa and we trimmed the tree. It was an all around good time.
Her cat Max didn’t quite know what to make of the tree. When we hauled it out of the box he got so stressed out that he threw up (he’s a nervous creature). Now it seems like he feels right at home with it though. There is some evidence of him trying to climbe it and he enjoys sleeping under it.
Picutres:
Tree in the dark:
Tree with the lights on:
Tree after you’ve had too much to drink:
28 Nov 2006
It snowed. I’m not talking a little bit either. At Holly’s we got 30cm of snow. Some places further south it was up to 50cm. The temperature also dipped down to -15°C.
Now, for me, that isn’t really amazing in it’s own right. To a lot of you, it would just be an average snowfall. However, this, was in British Columbia. Yeah, that place that never snows. I hear Washington state was hit quite hard as well.
30cm of snow means that the whole place shut down. Almost no one has snow tires. Almost no one who does knows how to drive in the snow. They don’t have enough plows to get to the small side streets. Absolutely no one plows out a parking lot. Over 90,000 people were without power this weekend. It was a mad house.
Holly got told not to come in to work, and I called in to say that I wouldn’t be making it in. We weren’t going to be going driving anywhere in that mess.
On Sunday night we had power at her place, and her parents didn’t. So she made dinner and we took it over to them. On the way down to the parking garage we lost power in her building. For some reason the garage door isn’t hooked up to the emergency backup power. So we had to manually open the garage door and head out. By the time we got to her parents’ place they had power back which was nice.
Anyway, we all survived the cold and the snow. I guess I’ll enjoy it while it lasts :)
15 Nov 2006
Holly and I went to Seattle this weekend. It was an amazing trip. We didn’t do a whole lot, but we really enjoyed it and plan to go back.
We took are time on the way down. We stopped at a little dairy on the way that is famous for its chocolate milk, ice cream and oddly enough, iced tea. Now, apparently the people who consider this place to be famous for its chocolate milk have not been exposed to nearly enough chocolate milk. It was okay, but nothing amazing. The iced tea was flat out disappointing. The ice cream though, mmmm the ice cream, was delicious! Served in almost every flavour you could imagine!
We also stopped in Bellingham for a while on the way down and did some shopping. We had a good time in the Kitchen-Aid store, since they have every possible contraption you haven’t even imagined yet. I am currently running some tests on their devices that supposedly keep your pop fizzy until the whole bottle is gone. So far one device has failed horribly, unless you want to make a Coke foam dispensing gun. The second device is showing promise.
Once we finally got to Seattle we drove around for a while looking for the hotel we were planning to stay out. Unfortunately when we got there it was completely booked (yep, silly us, no reservations). Then we walked around the area for a little while looking for a hotel. While doing so we were telling stories about the various hotels we had each stayed in during the past. I mentioned that I had never stayed in fancy hotel with a bell hop.
We came upon The MarQueen hotel. Lo and behold, it had a bell hop! Not to mention the swanky 50s show tunes music playing in the lobby. They had two rooms available and I decided we should stay. Holly thought it was a little expensive, but I am all for indulging in the good life once in a while.
We went up to our room and it was quite nice. It had a great room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and little den area. It was right on the corner above a coffee shop and always smelled like fresh brewing coffee. It had two TVs and a DVD player too. The entire suite had that 50s movie feel to it. It was a nice change of pace for both of us.
After short rest we ventured out for dinner. We went to a place called Racha - Noodles and Thai Cuisine.
We order the Banana Blossoms as an appetizer, and it failed horribly. Neither Holly nor I were able to handle it. It just tasted wrong and bad. And there wasn’t any banana in it at all, it was just the blossoms.
We then moved on to a soup, Tom Ka with chicken breast. Tom Ka is a hot and sour soup with coconut milk, fresh oyster mushrooms, shallots & cilantro. It was simply fantastic. I would give it a 9.5/10. The only thing it had against it was the cilantro. Cilantro is one of the flavour banes of the universe. It is EVIL! Through and through. The hot and sour worked their best to hide it, but there was still a faint hint of it in there.
Holly ordered the catfish, which was very tasty indeed. Even I liked it, and I don’t really like fish. I ordered the lemon grass chicken. After my chicken arrived I had a moment of clarity that made me fully understand why it is I don’t enjoy Asian food as much as North American food in general ( not in all cases ). It comes down to the quality of the meat cuts. If I had ordered lemon grass chicken in a North American restaurant, I would have gotten a boneless chicken breast cut up into pieces smothered in the tasty sauce. In an Asian themed restaurant, it means you get the left over chicken bits that we haven’t been able to use for anything else yet. The quality of the chicken in my soup, was far superior to the quality of the chicken in my chicken based dish.
If my lemon grass chicken had been made with a chicken breast I would have given it an easy 9/10. Unfortunately, the unrecognizable masses of meat that were sometimes very tough, sometimes very, queasily, chewy and sometimes perfect leaves me struggling to even give it so much as a 6/10, but 6/10 it is.
For a drink with the meal I tried my first hefeweizen (Holly’s beer snobbery is rubbing off on me, much as my water and pop snobbery is rubbing off on her). A hefeweizen for the uninformed is a wheat beer. The particular wheat beer I had was a Widmer Brothers Hefeweizen. Served with a wedge of lemon I would have to highly recommend it. It seems to hit me harder and faster than any other beer I’ve tried.
For desert Holly ordered a nice flavour combo of mango slices with rice smothered in a sweet coconut milk reduction. I ordered deep fried bananas with ice cream. The banana was rolled in coconut and then deep fried. It was served with coconut ice cream. I have to say, and this is from someone who doesn’t even really like coconut, that coconut ice cream is the most delectably divine ice cream in the world!
The next morning we checked out of the hotel and headed out for breakfast. Holly had come across a place called Top Pot Doughnuts in one of the travel brochures in the hotel room and wondered if I would like to go. Who am I to turn down fresh made and famous doughnuts?!? The doughnuts were in no way disappointing. In fact, I don’t know that I can ever eat another Tim Horton’s doughnut again… To start with the doughnuts were massive. Absolutely massive. Holly and each at one and a half and then wished we hadn’t eaten that last half. For anyone who knows me, that should really put the size of them in perspective. On top of that, the fillings actually tasted like they should. We had a lemon filled doughnut, and the filling actually tasted like the lemon from a lemon meringue pie, and not that soapy wish-wash in a Tim Horton’s lemon filled doughnut. And then there was the raspberry jam filled doughnut… mmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmmmm!
After the doughnuts we headed out to the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (yes, I do have the coolest girlfriend). It was pretty cool to see some of the various sci-fi movie props up close, as well as Captain James T. Kirk’s command chair!
Our last stop in Seattle was for some lunch. I can’t even remember the name of the place we went to. It was one of those very fancy sounding names, so fancy you could never spell it. It was a French place that specialized in crepes and paninis. It was okay, as Coke in a glass and ham with cheese on bread tend to be.
As odd as it sounds, some of the most fun we had was stopping in at various grocery stores and wandering the aisles. Everything is subtly different in so many ways. It was really quite amazing. I found a bottle of water down there, that on that back said “If you are reading this, then you are a hydrophile.†I can only agree with it, I truly am. I picked up several different brands of water that I haven’t tried. I find my hydrophilia somewhat amusing. Growing up, I hated water. Loathed it even. I would never drink it. Now, one of my favourite pastimes is taste testing different varieties.
For the rest of the weekend we didn’t do anything too amazing. We went out for dinner on the Monday, and stayed in and ordered pizza on the Tuesday. We just watched movies and spent time together mostly. Punctuated by a detour to the vet on Monday for her cat Max. He wasn’t feeling well, but he seems to be doing better on his new food.
I hope the rest of you had a good Remembrance/Veteran’s Day weekend.
06 Nov 2006
The opening act for the Goo Goo Dolls was a guy by the name of Tommy(ie?) Zwick(e?).
The light show was okay. Actually it was really good for an opening act. It worked well with the floor of the show.
I’m pretty sure that hidden somewhere behind the music and the mumbling that the lyrics might have been good. As I watched him perform I thought of an active Bob Dylan. Mumble, mumble guitar twirl mumble, mumble Oohhhhhh Yeeeeeaah eeaah eaaah! mumble finishing strum.
Tom seemed a little musically lost to me. One song he was a jazz man. The next song he was folk. He tossed in a little acoustic alternative. And at the end he played some hard rock. I give him kudos for his last song. It was really wonderful. Captivating and leaving the listener wondering if there might be more to the singer and the music. Both Holly and I agreed that we should give his album a listen. Though she definitely liked his music more than I did.
For me, the most interesting thing that came out of seeing Zwick play was the conversation afterward. A couple of days ago Holly and I were talking about how we interpret food. She is very much an artist when it comes to food. When she eats something she picks it apart. She appreciates the subtle undertones of flavour and can discern an amazing list of ingredients from something just by tasting it. More than once we’ve gone to a restaurant, had a dish, and then a while later she has recreated it at home from “flavour memory”. I on the other hand categorize food as “Mmmm Mmm Good”, “Enh”, and “Bleh, Gross”.
When it comes to music though, our roles are reversed. I appreciate each portion of the show. How was the entrance? Was the band visibly into the music? Is the sound mix off? Is there good showmanship? How is the inter-song banter, if there is any? Did they get the crowd into it? etc.
This all came about because I was picking on the fact that the drums were overpowering the bass line and the vocals were mixed too low. That is one of the reasons I am willing to give his CD a listen though; to see if it is mixed better.
I give Mr. Zwick a 6/10
06 Nov 2006
The Goo Goo Dolls definitely delivered last night. It was an early Sunday night show and they still delivered a great show. One of the great quotes from the night, while Johnny was interacting with a heckler in the crowd was “If you want me to take off my pants, come back on a Friday or Saturday show!”
The first thing about the show that came across as extremely amazing was the diversity of the crowd. There were people there from the age of 10 all the way up to probably early 50s. The GGDs just have a sound that appeals to everyone. They have a gift for lyrics and catchy hooks.
The show started with a tremendous bang. There was complete darkness one moment and the next the guitar and bass players were jumping in the air and hammering down on their instruments as the lights flashed on. Every concert should start like that. The band just completely throwing themselves into the show.
Admittedly other than the entrance, the fist song was a little week. The band had to warm up to it a bit. From that point on though it was fantastic. Everyone was out of their seats for the whole night (the current throbbing pain in my feet can attest to that).
During “Black Balloon”, black balloons started filtering forward through the audience. The crowd kept them bouncing through the air, slowly up onto the stage.
I think the only real downer of the night, is that it wasn’t a sell out; or rather it was a sell out, but the scalpers didn’t sell all of their tickets. Row 4 was essentially empty.
It was a fantastic show and I’m glad I got to go. The GGDs haven’t toured Canada in four years, and it’s hard to say when they might pass through again.
I give the Goo Goo Dolls a solid 8/10.
