Update

Been awol again lately, I'm not trying to make excuses but I'm NEVER home, NEVER...that's why I don't call people either :P Sorry... I didn't come to Asia to socialize with you guys!

Weekend was good, went out both Friday and Saturday night, mind you we only stayed at the party we went to on Friday night for about ten minutes and then we went back to Heather's to watch Juno, which we all fell asleep about half an hour into.

Saturday night was Brickhouse's second anniversary party, and as you may know I love Brickhouse. They were giving VIP stickers to regulars so I got one of those and got to drink for free for an hour. Then they did awards and guess which award I got??? Come on, guess! It's got nothing to do with poker.... Okay you're never gonna guess, you might not even believe me when I tell you, but I got the "Kindest Person" award. That's right, I'm kind! It made my night to say the least....

Spent Sunday hungover and in bed for far longer than I would like to admit.

Heidi and I have also decided to start training for a half marathon...it started off as a 5km, and then we both do 5km at the gym in the morning anyhow and Heidi suggested on Saturday that we aim a little higher...okay, a lot higher... I'm a little skeptical at this point, but our goal isn't about speed or running the whole thing, so we figure as long as we complete it we will be proud of ourselves...and if it seems to be near impossible in the upcoming weeks we will drop down to a 10km....probably a wise decision if you ask me....

Tonight is poker, I am currently tied for second place in the tournament after winning last week so hopefully all goes well. Right now, I'm off to meet some coworkers for a birthday dinner. Hope all is well on the western front!!

No Contest

Just in case you were ever wondering who would win in a contest between Beth, Em and I for the best granddaughter award.

I'm Old. :(

Just sitting around having a lazy Sunday morning. Had a good birthday night on Friday. After work we all went home and had a rest and spent some time primping ourselves before heading out. Started the night off at Heidi's for some yummy chocolate cake and then headed off to Brickhouse. Being that it was my birthday people felt compelled to buy me drinks that were doubles and triples and we did shots of sambucca and jagermeister. Brickhouse was pretty empty so around one we headed over to JRock, which is another foreigner bar here, that I really didn't like last year but it's just reopened under a new owner and each time I've been there it's been pretty fun. The rest of the night is kind of a blur, due to the aforementioned beverages, but there was dancing and good friends and I managed to make it home just before four in the morning.

For some reason I woke up at eight in the morning yesterday and laid around in a vegetative state for the better part of the morning, then in the afternoon I went over to Richard's and him, Ashley and I watched the movie, Juno, and ate pizza. And not to be overly dramatic but I think Juno is the BEST movie EVER, and I've watched it three times this week. So everybody should go out and see it. Now.

Not much else is going on around here right now, Heidi and I are going for lunch soon and then off to do bit of shopping. We still haven't made any progress on making plans for Lunar New Years, everything is either booked solid or ridiculously expensive, so right now we think we might just head up to Seoul, rent a hotel for a few nights and pretend we live in the big city.

Oh, and the poker league also started back up last week so we're back in action every Tuesday night, the venue has switched from Brickhouse to JRock but for the most part it's the same old crowd. I didn't start out with a great finish last week but hopefully I'll get some better cards in the next few weeks.

Oh well, enough being lazy this morning, time to get moving. Have a nice weekend!

Courtesy of the Star:

If today is your birthday: You have a chance to stride out confidently this year. Mercury will bring clarity by lifting the mist from your vision. You will see where you've gone wrong, recall an old lost dream and find a way to get to where you really want to be. Happy birthday to Kevin Costner, 53.

Mission Accomplished...

9:40 pm Sunday night and I'm "so hungover..."

Had a fun night though so it was well worth the pain today!

The Week In Recap

This just in: Being a grown up and working for a living sucks. I wanna go back to Bali and lay on the beach.

Week at work started off fine, other than the usual grumblings one has after a week's vacation.

One of my co-workers decided she wanted to go on the master cleanse, which was the lemonade fast Heidi and I did a few months ago. In a show of support I decided to join her and begin it again; however, she didn't make it through the first night. I got half way through the second day and rationalized that I was only doing it to be supportive and since I had nobody to support I might as well enjoy a cup of coffee and some food. Have a massive supply of lemons in my fridge now...

Was supposed to go skiing today with a few friends but a 24-hour down pour yesterday ruined those plans and instead I've done next to nothing today, other than scrubbed my apartment and went to Costco, where all I managed to purchase was dish cloths and salmon.

Tonight the plan is to go out and get a little wreckless but so far we are coming up empty handed with people who are game for it. Regardless, Heather, Chandrie and I are heading out on the town shortly and I'm not coming home until I'm seeing double, or drinking doubles. It's been far too long since I've had a good "I'm so hungover," post.

Tomorrow I think I'm headed over to Richard's to watch some movies because he is done in two weeks and then everybody from last year that I hung out with will be gone. :(

Bali Revisited

I never should have left things unsaid about Bali cause even just a few days after the fact it's hard to separate different things that we did. After being back at work for three days it feels like I never even left.

But to just say a little bit more about it, it was absolutely beautiful and reminded me of why living somewhere tropical would be way better than living in Canada. For the most part the weather was good, which was great because all the forecast had shown in the weeks leading up to our visit was constant rain, but instead the rain would come in spells and then the sun would come out immediately after, so if anything it served as a nice cooling off some days.

The shopping was really good, everything was pretty much the same in each store, but it was cheap and there was always room to barter. I think my bartering skills have vastly improved since Thailand last year and most of the time I walked away feeling like I got a pretty good deal. On the other hand though, it feels so wrong to be bartering some poor lady down from five dollars to three dollars for a purse that would cost way more at home.

The food was always amazing, wherever we went. I don't really feel like Balinese food has its own distinct flavoring, but moreso that it borrows from Thai, Indian and Vietnamese. Either way almost every night we went out we had appetizers, meals, and drinks and our bills were almost always around the ten dollar mark. One night we polished off our meals with big cups of gelato that was fantastic!

Overall we were pretty low key and in our hotel by ten most nights and up at the crack of dawn each mornng, so that Beth and I could enjoy sipping our coffee on the porch of our hotel room before starting our days.

I actually have another vacaction next month so before even settling down from Bali it's time to start planning again. Haven't decided where yet, maybe Taiwan or the Philapines. It's Lunar New Years which is a popular travel time for Koreans, so I guess it will end up depending what is available and what is moderately cheap.

Part 1 (of 1 million)

This picture makes our trip look much more exciting than it probably was, but you weren't there so you can't prove anything...

I'm still tired and I don't want to write a novel right now because I find when I do that I leave a lot of things out and I'm not nearly as witty as I normally am (at least I'd like to think I'm normally witty).

So some of the exciting, unexpected things of Bali first:

** La Senza!!! In Bali! That was like the icing on the cake when we were at the shopping mall in Kuta and we were coming off the escalator and I could see the silver sign in the near distance. Despite my excitement I rationalized that I had not travelled all the way to Bali to buy bras, so I left empty handed :( (then on Saturday afternoon I made a mad dash back into Kuta to give into my La Senza obsession).

** My now overflowing spice cabinet, due to a trip to a local plantation where we found coffee bean trees, cocoa trees, vanilla bean trees and saffron plants. I think this may have been the highlight of our sightseeing for me and I came home loaded with Balinese spices that are oh-so expensive at home.

** The animals there were bizarre; the locals let their dogs and cats run all over the streets seemingly starving to death, but when we went to a family compound on one of our trips they had caged porcupines as pets! Among other things, we saw: pigs, chickens, ducks, pythons, turtles, bats, toucans, monkeys, spiders, geckos, and a flying-lizard, creature thing that landed in Chandrie's hair at lunch one day.

I have lots of pictures, some of which I've put on Facebook, the others will be going up on Flickr soon but this afternoon my computer or the web site was acting up and my attempts proved futile so for now you can either log on to Facebook or you can wait patiently for me to get the others up in my own time!

Happy New Year!

I'm back from Bali! I'm cold. I'm tired. I'm tanned!

I've got lots to say about it and lots of pictures to post but right now I'm in the middle of unpacking, laundry, grocery shopping, and battling the thoughts of going to work tomorrow, so for now stories will have to wait!

Happy 2008!