trying something new

not sure if i like the change or not, but i changed up my myspace page the other day and figured i might as well try something new on this page too.

i'll give it a few days to sink in.....

just another day...

Just taking some time to help educate the children of the future.....ahh....reading to kids.....they will never know if I actually read the words that are on the page.....heck they just like the pretty pictures (and on a personal note, i love reading kids books, cuz i can pronounce all the words....lol)

even the kittens love the 'Bucks!!

This is my friend Carrie's cute litte innocent kitten....kitten and I were hanging out last time I was in the States for school.....

kitten looks so adorable in the basket with blankets.....




Here kitten is happy just licking the outside of my drink....but as you can see above.......when you least expect it and leave your drink unattended, kitten will go for the straw......

the best part about camping....

so pammer and i went camping for the canada day long weekend...though we were camping in a trailer so i hardly consider that camping, but nonetheless, it was a lot of fun!

It's been a while since i've been camping so i was pretty excited to get to the best part of the evening.......the s'mores............!!!!

what follows is a step by step guide on how i made the perfect camping snack!!

Begin with making a fire. I think we had the prettiest firewood in the whole campsite....lol!! Pammer's dad works for a window and door company, so we had boxes and boxes of left-over end pieces of door frames, etc...none of this "go cut down a tree and take it's branches" stuff...!!

Anyway, you make a fire and then i play a bit....it's important that i have a poker stick, so that i can poke and play with burning sticks, push them around in the fire pit, flip boards over, etc. Ok, i'm wierd. but it's fun. ANYHOO, you let the fire burn down to coals and then the fun begins!!!




Look at us, hard at work.....!!!

the ingredients....

now that the coals are ready and inviting, it's time to get the key ingredients ready. now, normally i wouldn't choose these cinnamon flavoured graham crackers, but it was all Target had to offer. Not too bad, but i do prefer the original. In any case, let us get this show on the road!


Allow me to point out the GYNORMOUS chocolate bar i have purchased....

And perhaps the most critical part.....the marshmallows.........toasting them to perfection is a true art.....Pammer and I came up with a great idea......begin toasting the 'mallow and then take the first toasted layer off and squish it in your s'more..leaving the middle (and not yet toasted) of the 'mallow still on your roasting stick. Put it back in the fire for round two, and then when it's done, place it on the OTHER side of the chocolate. Therefore, your s'more looks like this....graham cracker-marshmallow-chocolate-marshmallow-graham cracker......oh baby, it's the ultimate s'more!!

final stage

mmmmmmmmmmmmm............delish!!!!!!!

inflation rate is rising

ok so that title doesn't have anything to do with this blog, i just heard it on the news as i sit here and type, and since i couldn't think of a title, i went with it.

So i realize i haven't blogged in a very long time.......but i did warn you to not sit there and hold your breath for consistent blogging. And i really don't know what to blog about....hmmmm lets think......

Well I am sad that the NHL season is finally over. Also very sad that the Oilers couldn't pull through in game 7.......i really did think they had a good chance. Frick...stupid cup staying south...sigh, one day the cup shall return home....though i did manage to educate some of my American classmates on the wonder of NHL hockey over the weekend. And now i just have about 3 months to wait until the big boys hit the ice again....sweet.....i love how hockey consumes so many months of the year.

What else? I really want to go to the zoo this summer. A zoo commercial just came on tv and reminded me how much i want to visit the giraffs. but i also discovered the other day how stupidly expensive it is to go to the zoo. I remember when the zoo was free........oh those were the days, school field trips are where it's AT!!

Well i think i'll shut 'er down here for today. Maybe i should take some pictures or something and blog about them.........yes........that'll do...........

oregon!!!

I just went on a great little trip to the Oregon coast with my friend Pam and her parents, which was really great because when you go on a trip with parents, the kids spend very little money. Well, i spent money on shopping, because there is no tax in Oregon and we hit up a sweet outlet mall, so of course i had to buy stuff! Also included in this trip was lots of chillin' out maxin' and relaxin'. the beach was beautiful, though a wee bit cold and windy, but hey, it was still the beach.

here are some pics of the trip. i know the sunset picture is supposed to be at the end of any good presentation, but lucky you get to see it first. enjoy!!

i have reappeared again

hello hello, just wanted to drop in and let y'all know i'm still alive and kickin'. Life has been busy busy busy! I have recently moved and am getting settled in to my new place, which is really great and has a super view too....please see below!!

for Jeremy

i appreciate your comments and use them to improve my blog. An extreme oversight on my part has led to one of my fans being very upset with me, so now this post is dedicated all to him.

Jeremy came out for a wedding early in Feb and since he hardly knew anyone else that would be there, he took me along as his date. Hey, for a free meal, i will sit through a wedding. Turns out i knew a whole bunch of people at the wedding. Also turns out he still didn't....lol

Anyway, it was a fun few days while jer was here and i'm sending him a big shout out in wpg!

i'm so embarrassed

wow, has it really been that long since i posted? man i suck. there can be 2 possible explanations:
one- life has been SUPER busy
two- nothing blog-worthy has actually happened in the last many many weeks

well i little bit of both is true. but i just finished another class yesterday, and have a few days before my next one starts, so although i don't have anything interesting to say, i'm blogging dammit!!!

let us see....what can i talk about? ohhhhhh how about the Olympics? i must say that although i have been swamped by homework this last while, i have been watching the Olympics in all my study breaks. and i was quite happy to see Canada actually do pretty well! Seriously, we won way more medals than i was expecting, sorry Canada, but we have a record of choking under pressure. then again, i will not waste space ranting about how our men's hockey team sucks. instead i will talk about the wonders of curling. my friend Jackie has decided that i should marry Brad Gushue, the Canadian skip.....ok so i just looked up his profile on the olympic website, and just discovered that i'm OLDER than he is!!!!!!! what the heck! ok sorry Brad, no dice.

I would also like to give a shout out to our women's hockey team, who brought forth total domination....bravo. it was also a time to recollect, as I went to elementary school and a year or two of Jr. High with Jennifer Botterill, who plays for Canada. All those great memories of her beating us all at sports way back then came flooding back, that favortism the coaches showed, ahhh good times....Lan, if you're reading this, you can relate, eh!

anyway..........i think i'll wrap this one up.........take it easy....peace out

happy new year!

it's been a while since my last post, sorry, i know this blog is sooooo interesting that you people just count the days until i post again...

at any rate......happy new year! i am now a year older and wiser as well - true story, it really was my birthday a few days ago!

i've had a great few days, complete with a surprise party, a great dinner out (with some fab wine) and a Canucks game yet to come!!!!!

my last post didn't let me add pics for some reason, so i will try again to show you all of the wonderous things we do to keep ourselves busy in Winnipeg during the winter

you get the idea...
anyway.........that's about all the pathetic creativity i can muster up right now, but i will try to post again soon...

winter wonderland

hellooooo from winnipeg!! Glad to have you along today! i've been "home" (for the record, i have multiple homes...when i'm in BC, i say "i'm going home to wpg" and when in wpg i say "i'm going home to BC") for 5 days now, and i think it has been snowing slowly but surely the whole time. Lets just say that the City of Winnipeg seems to have decided that since there is still snow in the forecast, that negates the necessity to plow the streets at this point. Much snow= bad driving conditions. booo on the City for their stupidity!!

I don't get to shovel snow in BC, so i gladly do it here. i think i'm doing the driveway about 2x/day on average thus far..heck, it gets me fresh air and a little bit of exercise in my otherwise LAZY lifestyle, so it's all good! Ok well i am trying to upload an "action shot" of me shoveling, but for some reason it's not working; i don't know why and it's really pissing me off.

so i'm going to end this post here because without pics, it's just really not too fun. alrighty, take it easy...

wow slacker

to my many fans who have been waiting with baited breath for my next posting...i am truly sorry for such a delay. This clearly means one of two things: either i am too busy to be posting, or I lead such a boring life that there is nothing to blog about...well if we're being honest (which we usually are) i would say i actually fall inbetween those two statements. It's not like i'm running around with my head cut off, but I am also not partaking in many a memorable experience as of late. I am also quite lazy, which leads to my lack of productivity in just about every area....

but let me tell you about a little place called Beachwood. Nestled deep in the woods just over the Can/US border on the coastal shores of Washington there is a campground catering to the RV crowd as well as a few small cabins for nightly rental. My friend Pam's family has been camping there for years and happened to have a few "rent this cabin for free " nights to use up by the end of '05 (which we all know is quickly approaching...). Conveniently, Pam has Wednesdays off, and I do absolutely nothing with each and every day, so both this week and the week before we headed down to Beachwood for a "vacation". Now, let me explain something to you. When you are as poor as I am, free nights in a little cabin not even an hour away is actually quite nice. And i guess when you work hard at your job every day like Pam does, and just need to escape for a night, Beachwood does the trick for those kids too. (/by the way, if you have not done so already, please refer to the photo above. As you can see, the cabin is really really tiny - by the way, that's not our truck, i stole this pic off the website).

So what do you do at Beachwood? Well, i'm sure if you wanted to take advantage of all the great amenities on the property, you could (i'm actually being serious). But really, I'll tell you what we did, and then you be the judge on what sounds more fun. We ate, played Monopoly, watched Friends on DVD on my computer, and drank. That's about it. I really enjoy validated lazyness!

There you have it. My latest adventure.

I will write again soon, this time from the snowy midwestern prairies....until then....

(for those interested in their own Beachwood experience, please visit http://www.mybeachwoodresort.com/overview.htm)

deck the halls.....

ahhhhh Christmas......what a great time of year! Let the decorating begin..........!! Allow me to provide you all with a great tip to make trimming the tree a WHOLE LOTTA FUN this year: someone needs to be drunk. It's as simple as that. Trust me, it adds a lot of humor. My friend and i put up her tree the other night. Correction; I decorated her tree, she lay on the couch drunk and provided a running commentary! We both decided it made the whole experience a lot better and thus have decided to make drunken-tree-decorating an annual event.
Good times; i highly recommend it!

my new best friend

clearly i am a psychology GEEK. i would like to introduce you to a new friend of mine. his name is DSM-IV TR but you can just call him DSM.

For those who are not familiar, in the long drawn out version, that stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fourth edition text revision. Inside is all sorts of fantastic information regarding over 400 mental disorders...ahhh...the Bible of psychology!!

Sooooooo.........if anyone is feeling like they may have some symptoms of something, please pass them along to me, and i will try and diagnose you with something. Trust me, it can really be a fun game! You may not believe me, but it really is.....of course, i will not be passing you on to a psychiatrist or anything, so you won't be getting any meds out of the deal, but at least if i can impose a label of somesort on you, that will be fun for me!

ha ha........welcome to my crazy psychological world!!!!

ode to kelly

Since U Been Gone i want to Breakaway; Because of You i'm a Beautiful Disaster and I Hate Myself for Losing You. But you won't see the tears i cry, Behind These Hazel Eyes.

Ah Kelly Clarkson! I must say, i was a little ashamed to admit my love for Clay, but with Kelly, it's a completely different story........I LOVE HER AND AM PROUD OF IT!!!!!

She's fabulous, and DAMN can she sing!!! While her voice is quite high and soprano like, totally in a range i can hardly hit, that definitely does not stop me from belting it out in my car. Good times. If you do not partake in such a thing, i totally recommend it. Sing it out people, sing it out!!!!!!!!

just take a minute and ignore that whole "From Justin to Kelly" mishap......beauty, well done everyone....and now let's carry on........Kelly will always be my #1 Idol!!!!

the secret is out

perhaps it's because i've suppressed and repressed this "secret love" so deeply, that i forgot to add him to my "secret" list before......so now i am going to dedicate an entire blog (albeit brief) to him. now, i know i am setting myself up for mockery by doing this, but i don't care....mock all you want, i still think he's great.

i know he's geeky and even looks pretty gay, but then again, he wears that WWJD bracelet and so that just throws everything off kilter.....but the main point is that he has a GREAT voice.

And that is why i love Clay Aiken.

Now i will definitely admit that his song "invisible" definitely is a little shady and stalker-like, but really it's not the lyrics that matter......listen to the voice people...... listen to the voice...........

the list continues....

ok so for the sake of my fans, i will avoid blogging about hockey today....i have noticed a steep decline in my number of comments.....so am trying to write something that will allow people to add their thoughts.

I am going to continue with the idea i started last time, "things that make me happy" because i have more to add!! Let us begin the list!

1. prairie thunderstorms
2. dave matthews band
3. foreign films
4. Red Kitchen Aid products
5. Anderson Cooper
6. HOT Hawaiian men
7. gerbra daisies
8. psychology
9. monopoly
10. Jack Daniels

(and the secret list..........)
Michael W. Smith....aka Smitty
Baywatch movies and David Hassellhoff (shout out to Mac for the reminder...)

Ok........there we go......now the floor is open......please add your thoughts......and especially to the "secret list"..........

things that make me happy today...

well besides the obvious rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens.........

i must say (and i somewhat hesitate, based on the similar theme of my past few postings, and my faithful blog readers who could care less about hockey....) that as i sit here watching Sportsnet News, what is making me REALLY REALLY happy right now is that NHL highlights are once again gracing top spot when the 10pm show rolls around. To add to that......the Canucks are doing well thus far.....and of course that brings a big smile to my face!!

Long weekends also makes me happy......though i must confess, i haven't really been working lately, so it's like i've been on a really really really long weekend, with some school work interspursed here and there....but i digress........long holiday weekends are great when filled with good food and good friends!

A few other things make me happy too, but they will get their own special blog posting, coming soon to a computer near you (a little preview....the OC, Anderson Cooper and Jack Daniels)

And finally, my favorite pass time also makes me happy.......sleep......good, long, uninterrupted, comfy, cozy in my down duvet sleep..........and that's where i'm going now.......peace out