Cute lunch today!

Been missing in action lately but back with a lunch post. Been meaning to try Meat and Bread for ages since my brother in law told me about the porchetta sandwich but haven't made it due to laziness (having to go out and get lunch when it's free at work) and cheapness (having to go out and get lunch when it's free at work).

So it's a nice perk today that the free lunch at work IS from Meat and Bread!

Check out the cute box:

I was two minutes late in walking to the lunch room and all that was left was lamb and pork. Good thing pig is my favorite animal! Oh and it smells good:

Is that crackling??? Sweeeet.

Balloons

Looked out the window just in time to see these balloons flying off into the sky. Bye balloons! Please don't choke any marine animals!!

Pinterest

I've decided to embrace Pinterest.

I've got lots of pins.... I just need some interests.

Ok then... I'm already overwhelmed.

How am I supposed to use this thing again?

I'm over it

Day 29 out of 102:

And I ain't gonna walk around the flat in circles to get those last 1443 steps. I'm already in bed. Screw u global corporate challenge, screw you.

Holy Perogy

I was all intent on walking up the street to get Vietnamese pho for lunch today but got lured in by the perogy food truck Holy Perogy. So pho turned into 6 potato and cheddar Perogies covered in pesto spur cream and tomatoes, add a sausage for $2 please!

Oh and don't forget Parmesan!

Ah nature

Keith: isn't this beautiful?

Me: how long is the walk back to the car again?

More from our weekend on the Sunshine Coast to come 

My husband's favorite hobby: winding me up

Me: "god, Chinese people really like to put pictures of their food on Facebook" I say as I scroll through my newsfeed to view a piece of salmon on some spaghetti and some kinda noodle in broth (riveting)

Keith: "not just Chinese people"

Me: "like who? Dave? And his fish and chips?"

Keith: "... Or Anna*. And Bill*"

Me: "I guess. Who else though?"

Keith: "you"

Me: "I AM Chinese you idiot!"

Keith:"hahaha you are so easy to wind up"

But it's true. Tonight I had a paneer malkani from Curry Zone and I wish I had a picture of it to share with you all.

*names changed to protect identities of rare non-Chinese food picture addicts

Global Corporate Challenge

I'm doing the global coroporate challenge with work. It's basically a program pushed out via busniesses who get their employees to form teams and encourage them to get more active during a 16 week period. The goal is 10,000 steps a day. At first, I was reluctant to sign on, as any kind of committment to exercise is automatically rejected in my innately lazy self. But since I walk 1.2 kms each way to and from work every day, I actually automatically walk about 3500 steps just from that. So I decided to bite the bullet and sign up!

Since it hasn't been too busy at work lately, we have been able to go for walks at lunch time to bump our steps up, which i guess means the program is working because we are doing about 40 minutes of continuous walking that normally we wouldn't do. It has been really sunny this week in Vancouver so it has been very nice walking down by the waterfront towards Stanley Park. Today we were walking along the waterfront when we noticed a lot of people standing still and staring, some with cameras out. We peeked over the edge and saw a big heron with an eel about 10 inches long in its beak. Wish I had my phone to take a picture. The poor eel was writhing around a little bit trying to free itself but it was beat. My vegetarian coworker that I was walking with felt so bad for the poor eel, and i was like, yummmmm, unagi.

Countering the effects of the walk, both days I have had a coffee frappucino from Starbucks at the end before heading back to sit my f@t @ss at my desk. Perhaps publishing some stats will motivate me!

Steps today so far (June 5): 8,616
Total steps yesterday (June 4): 12,791
Personal best to date: 17,268 (Vegas forcing me to schlep around over the weekend)
Step average: 11,765

Really cool how world-wide this thing is. My friend in DC that we met up with in NYC a couple of weeks ago mentioned counting her steps and we realized we were both in this challenge thing this year. Her team is ranked 3,709. My team is ranked 24,157. I'm contributing 30% of the distance walked so far to my team of 7 though so I blame them.

Las Vegas Recovery Ratio

I survived my first Las Vegas bachelorette party!! No puking, no sunburn, no molestation, but am I ever tired. Given that I was only there for 2 days, came back on Sunday and it's now Tuesday afternoon, it seems an unustifiable amount of exhaustion. I've had to resort to a coffee frappucino (it being a balmy 20 degrees in Vancouver today, a blended ice drink was needed) at 1:45 after my lunch time power walk to get me through the afternoon.

Here is my review of some of the delights Las Vegas has to offer:

Mirage: an older hotel but the rooms were fairly updated.
Pros: staff were fairly patient with drunken girls spilling bottled water on their lobby floor at 6am in the morning
Cons: black streaks which Kim guessed might be mould found on one towel

Pool Parties: where no one swims, the men gawk at the women, and official hottie contests are held
Pros: Mash lent me a hat and I didn't get sunburnt. Too early in the day for the men to be drunk enough to get grabby. Tossing beach bawls around keepy-uppy style actually kinda fun.
Cons: missing the guest list by 2 minutes = $20 entry fee.

Restaurants: amazing steak at Joe's Seafood and Steakhouse, frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity 3, champagne buffet at Mirage
Pros: YUM YUM YUM and not that pricey! I think I devoured 25 prawns with cocktail sauce at the buffet. I even wasted space with a barbecue pork bun from the dim sum table but I couldn't help it - those are my favourite!
Cons: none. but i was so stuffed after the buffet I needed to lie down for 2 hours

Behold the 4-cheese mac and cheese from Joe's and the frozen hot chocolate from Serendipity!

Clubs: Tao
Pros: none
Cons: snooty bartender getting snippy with us when we stood on the wrong side of the cut-off point at the bar where the waitresses pick up table orders, then proceeding to completely ignore us and not serve us, until such time that the cut-off for free drinks from our wristbands was past and Kim had to pay $26 for her double. No-where to hang out. Music not good.

Clubs: Marquee
Pros: amazing amazing venue, outside partying on roof-top with pool and views of the other hotels and their bright lights. Venue not so stuffed that you were cheek to cheek with strangers.
Cons: nowhere for the women who didn't pay $$$$$$ to reserve a table to sit, forcing all the women, who, in their real lives, I'm sure are completely decent women with scruples, to whore themselves out flirting with groups of men in order to secure a seat at their tables to rest their weary feet (which are all in 5 inch heels).

Clubbing in general
Con: dressing up like a ho makes you feel really dirty
Pro: dressing up like a ho can make you feel quite pretty. hahahaha.

And I think it's a record that I managed to snap at only one person, but he really deserved it. Douchebag towncar driver was trying to rip us off by charging us $40 to go from Caesar's Palace to Excalibur, claiming that two taxis would cost us $20 for each taxi at least. Knowing full well it doesn't (it costs $11 for each) I refused to deal with him and proceeded to wait 15 minutes for a taxi because we weren't at the busiest taxi queue for Caesar's. While we were waiting, he could tell that we were getting a bit antsy because we were trying to make it to Excalibur in time for a show, he had the nerve to come up and taunt me by remarking "if you had taken the car you'd be there by now". To which I responded reactively "OH. THANK YOU. That's VERY HELPFUL". Then proceeded in my head to punch him in the face and revise that response to a more venomous "Wow, thanks for that, you douchebag, and we'd also be ripped off by you right now you enormous scumbag". But I can never think that fast! Why can't I ever think that fast???

Freaky fairy sized woman

There is a grown woman asleep in this bed. I kid u not.

Las Vegas - why are you full of douches?

To be fair to Las Vegas, I guess, I'm not actually there yet, so these douches I speak of are merely on a flight to Las Vegas. Why must I be in the seats next to them?

Case in point - two slimy dudes macking on a group of Indian girls on their way to Sandys hen do. Both groups in this situation are working my last nerve. 

How do I know it is Sandy who is getting married? Well, it might be their insistence on screaming, in unison, ARE WE GETTING MARRIED ? HELL NO! IS SANDY GETTING MARRIED? HELL YEA! I didn't want to know, bitches, I didn't want to know. Also, I already knew that because of the tiny matching tank tops stretched across all your impressive racks. Damn Indian women and their enviable figures.

But their most annoying trait has got to be their insistence on blaring and singing banghra music, complete with whoops and shit.

The two men, of course are loving this display an buying them drinks (like they are going to sleep with you on the plane). Also, spending their time asking the flight attendants if the US sim cards they are selling will fit into their IPhone 5. When informed that no it won't but that they can buy a cheaper phone for $50 to use with any US mobile carrier, they douchesomely inform her that switching from an iPhone 5 to that phone is "like switching from a plane to a... horse." Ok, Douchebag McDoofus and your douchebag iPhone 5. No one is cooler than you now. Wooooo.

Argh - just over an hour to go in theist horrific flight ever.

Sunny good Friday

Starting off with some good old fish and chips down by the historical but now touristy fishing village of Steveston (where I grew up!). This place opens seasonally do has just been back in business the last week or so with the brilliantly sunny weather that we have been having. In a fit of blasphemy, I decided to have a fish burger and I am not sure it was a wise decision. Basically I just don't think I really like fish and chips!

Then it was off downtown in the afternoon for a bike ride around Stanley Park, which involved a good hour long intermission at the Tea House where I had a nice cocktail and Keith had some pale ale.

And then off to Marble Slab Creamery where you pick 1) a flavour of ice cream. 2) a "mixin" like smarties or cookie dough or Oreo cookies or kit kats and then they put it all onto a slab and chop it all up and mix it in together. As recommended by Lisa, I had the birthday cake flavour ice cream with Oreos and cookie dough mixed in. Delicious ! Top it off with a white chocolate dipped waffle cone and it was a perfect way to top off a sunny day !

Oh and then I had two bellinis at milestones complete with little plastic moose!

Chipmunk face

Sorry for the lack of posts. Let me try to make up for it with a real oogly but amusing pic of myself.

Chipmunk face

Oooh yea. That's me after 4 wisdom teeth pulled. An hour in the dentist chair with just local anaesthetic, enough time to watch one episode of The Mentalist (unfortunately the space channel was not showing stargate or star trek) and then off I went drooling to the chemist for some painkillers and antibiotics.

A week later I am in pretty much tip top shape!

Snow shoeing on Cypress

You know what's silly? Auto correct insisting that show shoeing is not a word and persistently changing it to snow showing. What on earth would snow showing be anyway? Snow pretty much shows itself!

Anyhoo, we took Babs up to one of the local mountains this Sunday for a bit of a snow shoe adventure. The weather looked abysmal as we set off - when we went over the bridge to Norrh Vancouver we could not even see the water, much less their rains right in front of us. But before we were even halfway up the mountain road we got past the fog/cloud cover and broke through to brilliant sunshine and blue sky!

Snow shoeing, it must be said, is a lot easier than skiing. We learned about the different evergreen trees from our guide and got rewarded with a hot chocolate and cookie at the end. All in all a fun day!

Major Work Burnout & Hostess Excitement

I sit here, my 12th consecutive full day of work, already feeling ripped off because not being a contractor anymore (I went permanent at my job in January!) means I don't get paid for every single hour that I work, and I contemplate how to politely wrangle my way out of working another weekend. Lord have mercy on me. Last night I completely cracked in the diet and ordered deep fried chicken nuggets with rice and a mango slush bubble tea for dinner. At least I've been saving on dinner costs!!

So since my life has been so boring (consisting of going to work, deciding what to order for dinner - in addition to the deep fried chicken nuggets, this week I also had the jambalaya rice bowl from Cactus Club, and chopped scallop rolls and california rolls from some sushi joint - going home and sitting on the couch like a zombie for an hour or two, going to bed, then groundhog day all over again) I am sorry there have been no blog posts. I guess I should have taken a photo of the chicken nuggets because when I type it out they sound disgusting but in reality they were oh so delicious. Next time.

But never mind!! Tomorrow our FIRST VISITOR FROM THE UK arrives.... drum roll for.... Babs!!!

Babs is going to visit for a week and I've decided she is our lucky charm, with her arrival comes also the end of the NHL lockout, which means we are taking Babs on Weds to a live ice hockey game! Hereby to be referred to simply as hockey, because it is the real kind and should not need the prefix "ice". Canucks vs Flames on Sunday!!

We also have a few other bits and pieces planned, and the weather forecast is looking pretty good so far. We are pretty darn tootin' excited to have her stay. Now if only the London weather would cooperate and not snow so much that it affects flights! Damn you London! Why you gotta snow?

Did I mention that Babs is restocking our stash of malted milks? There is one left, and Keith and I are each too polite to eat the last one. Strange, we're not polite to each other about anything else.

I've turned Keith into a Chinese tourist

Keith always makes fun of me when I take pictures of my food and meals. But I always think a lovely meal is worth remembering and I always scarf it down too fast to appreciate it, so a picture is definitely warranted!

Well I must have convinced Keith of this because tonight when he pulled his culinary masterpiece (baked aubergine with asiago cheese) out of the oven he asked me if I wanted a picture. Sure! I said. And here it is yummy:

Skiing

This is me skiing, except nowhere near as cute

I hurt all over today. My coworker remarked on my stiff walk and one "really toned" calf. which is being inadvertently flexed as I limp my way around the office, running into walls.

Today's view

If you're gonna be at work before the sun fully rises might as well enjoy the view right? The cloud cover today was really cool.

Mount Baker

On a clear day you can see Mount Baker from Vancouver and since my company is on the 34th floor the view of it from its windows is particularly spectacular. As the sun sets on a sunny day in Vancouver this is the scene from it.

Doesn't it look fake?