Random

I have some random shots and updates that I thought I would share.

Here are Unos and I taking a nap in the sun on our balcony. Unos is a huge sook and he thinks he is much smaller than he is.

Tala is doing very well. Her aggressive behavior towards other dogs is much better and I am getting more and more comfortable letting her off leash in the dog parks. We have Cesar Millan "The Dog Whisperer" to thank for that. I love that show and tape every episode. His moto is "I train humans and rehabilitate dogs". Love him!

Here is Mike goofing around at Costco. He has discovered this ramp as an alternative to the massive elevators and insists on taking it.

Gotta love him, he is very young at heart. He has started becoming much more active. He frequents the pool (walks outside to get to it in his black terrycloth bathrobe lol, a young Hugh Heffner), he runs on the treadmills and has recently begun climbing the Grouse Grind after work with a coworker. He stopped drinking coffee and is eating really well.

This city seems to do that to you for some reason, there are just so many ways to stay healthy. After having our bike stolen ($140 Costco special), I gave up on bikes and bought us both roller blades. I now roller blade to work, which I love and Mike and I go on the weekends on the seawall as well. As usual he picked it up no problem. He'd never even tried them before and the first time was being way more ballsy than me. It is just so much easier here to do it. There are bike lanes that you can use to roller blade in and most sidewalks are kept new and there are paved trails everywhere so it is much safer.

Her is a picture of a triathelon that we just happen to come upon when we were out rollerblading.

We had no idea it was going on, and it was this huge international one held in Vancouver. Apparently a guy from Victoria wont the whole thing which was pretty amazing.

What else? Oh, we started playing squash. There are courts at our gym and you can rent the rackets for $2 a pop. Squash is a great workout. Even if I just practice by myself, after an hour my face is beat red and my heart is pounding. I also am taking some golf lessons with a friend. Just 4 basic lessons, because the opportunity comes up fairly often to go and I kind of want to know how to do it right, instead just goofing around and feeling stupid because I don't know what I'm doing. I also discovered Sushi recently, which I now love and crave, it is so yummy! So we are doing great, my work is super busy right now, but I don't mind because I love what I do. I also don't care because these are my weekends ;)

Boobilicious

So I'm finding the toughest thing about experiencing all there is to do in Vancouver is finding the time to blog about it.

A couple of weekends ago Mike and I attended a charity event for breast cancer that a guy I work with was organizing with his new company. The cause is of course very close to my heart and after talking to people there, everyone seemed to have someone close to them who had breast cancer at some point in their life. The event was called Boobilicious and held at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in the middle of China Town.
Everyone was asked to wear pink and come ready for a great time.

This picture was taken earlier in the evening. The gardens are beautiful during the day, but lit by pink flood lights and candles, it was a sight to behold. Doesn't Mike look handsome in his pink shirt? Hopefully I'll be able to convince him to wear it again, the man didn't have even a stripe of pink in his whole wardrobe.

There was a silent auction, DJs, massage stations, henna tattoo stations and burlesque dancers.

The party was an absolute blast and to top it all off all the women were given pink goody bags on the way out.

Goodies included hair brushes, sexy pink panties, hair care products, free photo finishing, etc.

You could really tell that the whole thing was organized by a bunch of young guys ;)
Here are the massage chairs I mentioned earlier.

I'd never seen these before until I came here, but they've been hired for several events I've been to lately. I have yet to take the plunge and try one out yet, next time!
Here I am in front of the pink-lit statue of Dr Sun Yat-Sen out front and what a gorgeous evening it was too.

They were very lucky that way, it wouldn't have been the same if it had of rained.

Here is a photo of the entrance where we gave our ticket, checked our coats and donned our pink ribbons.

We need someone there to keep out the riff raff, right?
Here is a picture of the gardens. It may bee a bit too dark for the blog, but it shows the lanterns and the little ponds.

The ponds are full of gold fish and ducks.

And now for the burlesque dancers. I was not expecting this and I don't thinks Mike was either although he was pleasantly surprised.

There were several shows with several different girls in varying getups. Here is the beginning of one of the shows....
and here is the end. Boobilicious, get it?

They were incredible shows, one girl actually lit the tasseled suckers on her breasts on fire and danced around.

Brave girl! Nope you couldn't tell that the whole shebang was organized by a bunch of young men...Our friend Chris was kicking himself the next day because he declined my invitation to attend what he pictured to be a dry fund raiser for breast cancer.
It was awesome anyways I have to make sure I keep in touch with that guy, he knows how to throw a party!

Happy Father's Day

This year for Father's Day, I decided to say Happy Father's Day to you Dad, by dedicating a blog post to you and all you do for me and my sistas .

I post a lot of pictures on-line and I have to remember that many of my good times I owe to one man!

My Dad...
So from chronological order of pictures I have that represent things that my Dad has done for me.....Exhibit A.

Sugar, the family dog who has brightened all our lives for many years.

Dad finally gave into my pleas for a dog around grade 8. Sugar was a cute little white puppy and a great distraction for some problems I was having with kids at school. Dad has also devoted a lot of his time and money taking care of this very expensive gift. Thanks Dad!


Another one of Dad's gifts is being the family photographer. It is definitely a thankless job, given the groans and rolling eyes, but without Dad we wouldn't have all of the candid shots of every family gathering.

He is relentless, undeterred and non discriminating with his digital eye. We may complain, but later we will browse through these memories and be thankful that he was there to record them all. Thanks Dad!


Now Dad may not understand this shot at first, it is a picture of Michael's family camp in Baie Comeau, Quebec on Lac Rond. The reason for this post is we got there by borrowing their car.

That has always been one thing that he has been very generous with. Making sure all 3 of us had safe transportation to get us to all of our endeavors. From the mall, to rowing to university, to getting Tala to the vet, to Northern Quebec, I never had to worry how I was getting there. Thanks Dad!

At Christmas time Dad always makes sure all of our favorite provisions are there.

Chocolate, cheese, pistachios
, cashews, wine and Baileys, mmm mmmmm



Thanks Dad!




Another great thing that Dad does is fly Emily home for the Christmas, the summer, etc. so that we could see her when she was in Edmonton. Here she is visiting during the summer at our house on Bailey Drive.

Also Dad helped me a lot with fixing things around my house and buying and letting me borrow tools to do repairs with...

Thanks Dad!



Dad also sent Heather and I to Montreal to see a Bon Jovi concert last year.

We both love Bon Jovi and it was a great treat! I will remember that concert for a long time, it was something I always wanted to do.

Dad is great for organizing fun things like that to do for us.

Thanks Dad!



Another thing that Dad and Mom do for us is send care packages to us when we are away. For Christmas, Birthdays, Easter, etc. we can always expect something in the mail. This is something Mom does as well, but I'm sure the ridiculously over the top ones, Dad is responsible for. We may tease him about sending say a pound of nuts that cost more to mail than they do to purchase, but it is nice to have an unexpected treat arrive. Thanks Dad!

So in closing I'd like to say that I am having a great time living my life right now, but I think a lot of how I got here, I owe to my Dad.

He always taught me to work hard, to do my very best, to be be independent, self-reliant, to have and meet goals, to be dependable, generous, how to be financially smart, to help out others less fortunate than me and to always help your family out.

Thanks Dad for everything! Happy Father's Day!

ER?

One thing about Vancouver is it has a very large entertainment industry. All the time there are commercials, tv shows, movies, etc. being shot here.

Usually once a month I see something being shot either in the park outside our place or near my work, which has quite a few historical buildings.

One morning at work, I noticed them installing an EMERGENCY sign on our building. I knew that the next day there would probably be something being shot.

Sure enough the next day the place was covered in actors, extras, camera men, crowd control, etc. At first this is a bit interesting, but after a while it gets to be annoying. The elevator takes forever because of the traffic, they make you wait to enter and exit the building because they are shooting a scene, etc.
For this movie, there were a bunch of ambulances and taxi cabs being used. On our way to lunch when a group of us were waiting to go out the gate, I asked "So what is this anyway, anything good?" to the guy making us wait. He said it was a movie called Elegy with Sir Ben Kingsley, Peter Sarsgard and Penelope Cruz.
I had read up on it recently. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0974554/
So when he let us go, we walked right by Sir Ben Kingsley. I was about 4 feet away from him. Really weird. This is the guy who won an academy award for playing Gandhi. He was also in Schindler's list, AI, House of Sand and Fog, Oliver Twist, etc. Anyway so on Monday I'll bring my camera maybe I'll get a shot of the actors themselves, or maybe I'll get in tons of trouble for trying to take pictures of them, who knows.....
It's kind of neat though, I'll probably see the movie, just to see the shots of my work place.

Party, Beach and Roller Blading

Last weekend was very full. Friday night, we went to a going away party at a restaurant for a couple of guys I work with who are leaving who had been there for a while.

Everyone got to leave work at around 2:30 to go to a nearby restaurant for drinks and appetizers.

I went home, got changed and then Mike and I met them at another restaurant for dinner.

One is moving to Ireland and the other is going into the family business.

We had a nice dinner and headed home early.
Saturday, I went to Kits beach with the girls. We had a great time chatting, snacking and people watching.

When I got home, Mike and I decided to try out our new roller blades. I got them for $47 a pair at Costco and they are AirWalk which is a pretty good brand. We skated around Stanley Park and the seawall.



When we had had enough we stopped at a stand along the beach and got hamburgers and cokes.

Mmm, mmm. That night I had been debating going out with the same girls I went to the beach with, but I had had enough for the weekend.

Mike and I got a quick bite to eat and watched a movie.

Sunday was another gorgeous day.

We got up and went for a long walk along the seawall with the dogs.

Then we stopped at Quiznos and brought our sandwiches to the green by the water and had a little picnic on a big beach towel I brought.

Everyone was out and sunbathing.

What a beautiful weekend!