It's a Wonderful{ly Weird} Life

It's Nerdy...

2012-01-16T19:32:00.001-05:00

...but I really like it when these two (unintentionally) match.

Food Failure

2012-01-11T19:17:00.002-05:00

One of my New Year's Resolutions this year was to cook more and eat out less. (Why do I even bother?) So, here we are, well into winter in Toronto-land and we're getting a little bored of being cooped-up inside all the time due to the cold. In order to remedy our bored-ness and winter-blues, we're doing what we did last year: We're eating. A lot. And--wouldn't you know--the food we're eating is usually of the nearby-restaurant variety.

And just like that: my resolution of cooking all of our meals at home has flown right out the window.

Usually the weekend is the most tempting time for us to go out for a bite, as laziness is just what we do on weekends. This past weekend was, of course, no exception. On Saturday, we went to Kensington Market to grab some of the best Korean food the city has to offer (in our opinion) at Ka Chi.

Ken had his usual bibimbap and I had the doenjang jjigae. It was worth every bite and penny. (I've been away from Korea long enough to start enjoying the food again and not feeling the urge to gag whenever I lay eyes on a bowl of kimchi.)

After we had Korean, we decided that now we would take our resolution seriously. Since we were already in Kensington, we thought it would be a good idea to do some grocery shopping so we wouldn't be tempted to go out to eat again the next day.

We were successful in our grocery shopping, but we failed miserably in our resolution yet again on Sunday...

...when we decided to try the new gourmet grilled cheese place that just opened up the street from us a couple of weeks ago. Yes. Gourmet grilled cheese. And, in case you were wondering, I had the "Toronto" grilled cheese (which included two "sliders" from neighborhoods of my choice) and Ken had the "Beijing" grilled cheese. Both were amazing and I really hate (love) that this place is so close to our building.

Number of restaurant outings this weekend? Two. Number of grocery shopping sprees? One. Number of meals cooked at home? Zero. (Unless you count breakfasts, but throwing bread in the toaster doesn't really count, does it?)

We're weak, weak people.

A Little Birthday Post

2012-01-06T19:00:00.003-05:00

My birthday was this past Monday, January 2nd. It was a "chill" kind of day. (...if old ladies like me can still use those "cool" words.)

We went for coffee at Jimmy's...

We had lunch at The One That Got Away...

We had dinner at Epicure...

(Deer in headlights. Who knew the flash on the iPhone camera was so darn bright?)

We ate cupcakes from Loblaws...

(Bubba really wanted one...)

And I got the best birthday present I could have hoped for...

...a reading pillow/chair! (I've been dying for one of these for ages.)

It was a pretty great birthday. And wouldn't you know we used my birthday as an excuse for some cheesecake a few days later?

We are now celebrating birthday weeks. (I like it.)

Happy 2012!

2012-01-01T15:42:00.002-05:00

Our good friends, Kyle and Natasha, were in town this past week from Charlottesville, Virginia, and we were so excited when they asked if we would like to spend New Year's Eve with them this year (we, of course, said yes).

The whole of New Year's Evening was spent chatting and catching up, playing Nintendo Wii (the guys), playing with our cameras (the girls), chowing down on hors d'oeuvres from Loblaws (have I mentioned I'm slightly obsessed with the new Loblaws that opened up the street from us?), and playing "What?" (funnest game ever). Of course, we turned on the TV and watched the ball drop in Times Square and there was definitely some party-favor action mixed in there, too. (It was a whole lot of fun.)

Even Bubba The Grouch was feeling festive last night....

Bubs was also doing his best to work on his New Year's Resolution of being more sociable and less I'm-going-to-bite-your-fingers-off-if-you-even-look-in-my-direction. (He has a very long way to go this year, but he did fairly well last night, all things considered.) His good-ish behavior may have had something to do with the adorable gift-set Kyle and Natasha brought for him:

(The cheesy ball is Bubba's new favorite toy in the whole world.)Last night was a pretty fantastic way to ring in the New Year and I'm feeling quite optimistic about 2012 (sans the whole end-of-the-world thing, but whatevs).And now I'm off to come up with a couple of New Year's Resolutions (that I will no doubt break within moments of making them). Happy New Year!

2011-12-25T08:37:00.002-05:00

Christmas Miscellany

2011-12-24T23:29:00.001-05:00

Here are just a few bits and pieces of our little Christmas thus far.

Our (very obnoxious) Christmas puppy:

Bubs was feeling particularly mopey over the fact that Santa forgot to get him a gift this year...

(He was naughty.)

In his excitement for the upcoming holidays, Ken took it upon himself to buy all of his own Christmas presents this year. He still pretended to be ecstatic and surprised with each one when he opened them.

Until he opened a gift he had not gotten for himself....

(He wasn't impressed with my ingenuity.)

I have to admit, Santa (or, as he refers to himself, Kenta Claus) was especially good to me this year.

Among my gifts was an iPhone 4s. I was so surprised I couldn't speak for a full ten minutes after I opened it. Fortunately, with this new iPhone, I no longer have to speak. It can probably do that for me.

(That's how I've spent most of my day.)

All of the Christmas presents and hullabaloo aside, I'm most thankful to be spending the holiday with these two guys:

And I'm looking forward to seeing family over the next few days!

Up Went The Tree

2011-12-17T15:45:00.003-05:00

We put up the Christmas tree really early this year. As in, beginning-of-November kind of early. This is Bubba's first Christmas with us, so we were curious how he would respond to having a big tree in the middle of the living room (and we couldn't wait to find out).

Since Bubba loathes change of any kind (e.g. he refused to go anywhere near the bathroom for days after we put up a new shower curtain, unless it was to bark incessantly at it), we were worried it would be a little traumatic for him. We were especially worried, however, that he might try to christen the tree with a lift of the ol' leg (he tried to pee on a plant in Ken's mom's house a few months ago, so we figured a full-on tree indoors might be tempting fate).

The outcome? Bubba didn't give two hoots about the tree. And I would be lying if I said I wasn't a teensy bit disappointed in the lack of Bubba-dramatics.

He did, however, prove to be a bit of a thief during the whole decorating-of-the-tree.

And, as it turns out, garland can keep a dog entertained for hours. (I'm thinking of keeping it as a year-round fixture.)

Who knew, right?

Every once in a while Bubba will march past the tree and take a swipe at it with his paw, or just try to steel a hunk of garland from it with his teeth, nearly tipping the whole tree over (this has happened twice). Otherwise, he's proving to be a very well-behaved Christmas puppy. (With the tree. Wrapping paper, on the other hand, is another story for another time.)
Oh! And one more thing:

Merry Christmas from (a very disgruntled) Bubba!

England, Part Three: London

2011-12-06T20:22:00.000-05:00

It has been over a month since our trip to England, and I've been pretty slow about getting the third bit of our trip up and running here, partly due to laziness and partly due to the overwhelming number of pictures we took while in London (there were a couple hundred, at least). Of that number, there were few pictures that actually looked good, partly because of our poor taste in subjects and partly because of our (mostly my) lack in the patience required to actually take decent photos. (I'm working on it.)

Anyway, here we have it: Pictures of our trip to what is still one of my favorite cities in the world.

London is a great city for exploring, so that's what we did in the three days we were there. We walked, we shopped, we ate, we visited museums, we drank tea (don't forget we're those tourist types) and we walked a whole lot more. (I still have the remnants of the biggest blister my foot has ever hosted to show for it.)

One of the highlights of our trip occurred right outside of Buckingham Palace: While we were strolling past the palace grounds on our second day in London, we actually saw the Queen leaving Buckingham Palace in a tank of a Range Rover, led and followed by a large motorcade. Did we get a picture of this huge moment? Of course not. (I only saw the back of her royal white head, but we were only standing about ten feet away from her vehicle, so it was an awe-inspiring moment nevertheless.)

(Queen not pictured, sadly.)

I didn't do the London Eye the last time I was in London, so this time it was on my priority list.

The views were amazing, but the price was a little absurd. T'was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime thing. (Unless I win the lottery and move to London and go around on the Eye every night, just for the fun of it.)

The autumn colors were just starting to reach their peak while we were in town, which made up for the cold-ish temperatures.

I think London's parks are one of my favorite things about the city. They're so clean and nature-ish. And there are loads of random birds hanging around, waiting to squawk at you and make you feel like you're out in the middle of nowhere.

On our last night in London, we decided to see Les Miserables in the West End. I had seen Les Miserables before, but it was definitely on one of my (many) bucket lists to see it in London.

It. Was. Amazing. (And Ken was clearly touched.)

And that's all, folks. I will conclude my England series with this lovely bit of shrub art we came across while trekking through the city:

Bubba's 1st Birthday

2011-11-22T11:43:00.004-05:00

Bubba's first birthday was this last Sunday (November 20th), and since we take birthdays pretty seriously around here (human birthdays or otherwise), we made sure to celebrate his little day properly.

(He was none the wiser.)

I leashed-up Bubba and walked him to the pet store that morning to pick up some doggy-safe birthday treats and maybe a little birthday present. (The birthday present part didn't happen, however, as Bubs got a little nervous while in the store and piddled on the floor, forcing us to make a hasty and embarrassed exit.)

And, of course, a birthday cake for the humans was involved in the birthday celebrations, too (not from the pet store).

As you can see, getting Bubba to hold still for a birthday picture was darn near impossible. When he wasn't wiggling around and trying to escape, he was shutting his eyes just in time for the flash. I finally gave up and handed him over to Ken...

...when Bubba decided he wasn't having any of this picture business and had a full-blown squirming fit, nearly singeing his paws in the process.

The almost-catching-himself-on-fire part is what finally caught his attention...

...and he was transfixed long enough for a proper picture to be taken.

Happy Birthday, Bubba! (Here's to better picture opportunities next year.)

England, Part Two: Bath

2011-11-20T16:06:00.000-05:00

After our visit with Ken's extended family, we moved on to Bath via train from Essex to Liverpool Street Station in London, then via tube from Liverpool Street to Paddington Station, then from Paddington Station to Bath via train again. With a large suitcase in tow, it was a bit of a trek... for Ken. I didn't carry the suitcase once and yet I still had the audacity to complain the entire way about how difficult it is traveling with a suitcase. (Ken is patient.)

I don't know what to say about Bath other than it is beautiful and it is my dream to live there. Correction: It was my dream to live there. All dreams were crushed upon seeing the real estate listings for the below units. It would take $1,000,000 + to be a proud owner of such a quaint place. (Yeah... Sigh.)

We did a lot of walking in Bath, logging a minimum of 8 hours a day huffing and puffing up and down the city's pretty little streets, hardly stopping unless it was for a "spot of tea" or something to eat. (I don't know how my buns aren't made of steel yet.)

See the above mint green car? I kind of want it.

{Note: My dad is probably moaning and groaning at this moment about our awful nighttime photos, but honestly: Who's going to lug a tripod all over Timbuktu? Noooot me.}

On one of our many walking-sprees, we came upon the Jane Austen Centre. I'm a big fan of Pride & Prejudice, so I couldn't resist paying a visit. (Of course, that didn't include paying for the visit, so I opted to limit my tour to only the entrance area and gift shop.) It seemed fitting to buy a new copy of Pride & Prej while there, so that's what I did. And then I took said copy to a nearby coffee shop and decided to pretentiously read it over tea. (We were such obvious tourists... and jerks.)

Of course, a trip to Bath wouldn't be complete without visiting the ancient Roman baths....

Call me ignorant (insert a "I was home-schooled" joke), but I didn't know England was once occupied by Rome, so this little touristy trip was particularly enlightening. (You can read about the baths here if you, too, were home-schooled.)

And what's a vacation picture without Ken doing something inappropriate? (He was pretending to go to the bathroom here which, fortunately, he didn't enact too literally.)

And this was our trip to Bath in a nutshell! The third installment of this little "England series" will follow shortly.

England, Part One: Family

2011-11-13T13:20:00.000-05:00

The whole reason we decided to spend our vacation in England this time around was to pay Ken's grandparents, whom I'd never met, a little visit. (Ken's dad actually accompanied us on the first leg of our journey for the same reason.)

The first part of our trip to Britain was spent in the lovely town of Essex, where Ken's family resides. The city's reputation, by the by, is far worse than we found it. I work with a couple of transplanted Brits here in Toronto and the way they described Essex, I was imagining the whole city to be like one giant trailer park with pregnant 12-year-olds running around carrying pints of ale in one hand and burning cigarettes in the other. Thankfully, it turned out to be nothing of the sort... proving my imagination is a little vivid at times. (Although we didn't really explore Essex at all, so those chain-smoking toddlers may still be out there.)

We spent the majority of our time there sitting in Ken's sweet grandparents' living room, chatting and catching up (or, in my case, getting to know one another).

I also had the opportunity to meet Ken's aunt and cousins!

(His aunt was extremely kind and acted as chauffeur for us on many occasions, saving us loads in taxi fare.)

It was a lot of fun getting to know this side of Ken's family over (many) cups of tea.

It also happened to be Ken's grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary that weekend.

(They're really very sweet.)

We spent our last night in Essex celebrating their anniversary with them over dinner.

T'was a good time had by all, and both Ken and I were sad to leave everyone behind for the second leg of our journey.

(Part two will follow shortly....)

From Across The Pond

2011-11-06T14:08:00.000-05:00

We just got back yesterday from our week-and-a-half trip to England, which just so happens to be one of my favorite countries in the world. It was a really good time and we're a teensy bit sad to be back in Canada (although we're thankful for a fun, safe trip).

I don't have a lot of time to post pictures right now (due to the copious amount of laundry currently stacked on top of the washing machine), but I'll post a few of the highlights later. (And, in case you couldn't tell, we still have no idea how to use our camera.)

Apple Pie (and other things)

2011-10-16T18:22:00.002-04:00

I have an insane sweet tooth and I love to bake. (Juuust in case you were wondering.)

I especially love pie and I'm always looking for an excuse to bake one, but rarely have such an occasion. As it turns out, I chose a wonderful husband who doesn't have a sweet tooth whatsoever (the horror), so if I bake a pie I'm solely responsible for its consumption. (That's not to say I haven't baked loads of goodies without rhyme or reason since we've been married; I just try not to make a habit out of it... unless of course you count oatmeal chocolate chip cookies which are a regular part of my unbalanced diet.)

Anyway, Canadian Thanksgiving was last Monday and what better excuse could I have to make a pie? None, I tell you. Since we stocked up on apples at a farmer's market the previous week, apple was the pie of choice. I enthusiastically went about throwing the whole thing together the morning of Thanksgiving and pulled it out of the oven just before leaving to have Thanksgiving dinner with Ken's family.

One word described that pie:

Ugly.

Lumpy, oozy and slightly burnt around the edges. And see my lovely attempt at pie design?

(It was supposed to be a palm tree.)

On the bright side, it tasted pretty good so I think I have future potential in the pie-baking department. I just need a little more practice and maybe a new husband who likes sugar.

On an entirely different note, the above picture is in black and white because I was trying to disguise half of my face. Yes, half of it. I had a couple of moles (literally) burned off of my right cheek only days before by a dermatologist, and the procedure left my face in a sore mess. I don't have much in the line of photoshop skills, so when I tried to erase my big ol' wounds in color, this is what I ended up with:

(Don't mind the crazy eyes.)

It was a slight improvement from what my cheek actually looked like last week, but not by much. (I'll spare you the unedited photos, as the majority of the right side of my face was pretty icky looking.)

We try to ignore him....

2011-10-05T23:34:00.000-04:00

...but he just...

stares.

The Bracebridge Fair

2011-09-27T21:35:00.013-04:00

As you probably noticed from my previous post, Ken and I were up in Muskoka last weekend to have our pictures taken. (It was a lot of fun.)

We finished our "photo-shoot" in the early afternoon on Sunday and then started out on our slow journey back to Toronto. Much to my small-town-girl excitement, we happened upon a little fair about an hour into our trip. With some time to kill and seven bucks to spare, we decided to stop by and see what Bracebridge had to offer in its fair-department.

T'was the best seven dollars we've ever spent.

The 800-ish lb. pumpkin. (That's what the sign said.)

The End.

{You can see where I got tired of making collages.... Laziness is my middle name.}

Couple Photos!

2011-09-26T21:34:00.002-04:00

Ken and I travelled up to Huntsville last weekend to have our pictures professionally taken for the first time in our little marriage. We had the privilege of working with this lovely and talented photographer.

Today she posted the preview of our pictures here.

{It may go without saying that we are very excited about these.}

Bubba At Bath Time

2011-09-15T19:04:00.004-04:00

This is what Bubba looks like if you say "Bubba, do you want a bath?":

And this is where Bubba hides if you say "Come on, Bubs, into the tub!":

{Pictures of bath-time do not exist. The chaos that ensues upon throwing Bubba into the tub makes the bathroom a hostile environment for a camera.}

And this is what Bubba looks like after his bath (also after tearing out of the bathroom like a bat out of hell):

Nothing but murder in his eyes.

{This is a biweekly ritual.}

Here's to Two More Years!

2011-09-03T10:25:00.010-04:00

It's our second wedding anniversary today. Yay!

Ken surprised me with a flower delivery at work yesterday. Excuse me, they were roses. A whole dozen of them. And, as you may or may not be able to tell by the crappy picture from my crappy phone, I was one happy lady.

And here they are up close:

Now we're off to a spa for the day for massages and such. (Because, you know, marriage can be stressful.... ;)

Happy Anniversary, Bean!

Note: The title of this post is actually the message Ken wrote on the card that came with the flowers, which left all of my coworkers scratching their heads. I had to explain multiple times that it was just Ken's idea of being funny, but I was the only one who laughed. (And that's how we know we were meant to be.)

Sometimes Life Calls For Really Good Food...

2011-08-21T10:42:00.003-04:00

...even if it's a bit on the pricey side.

Both Ken and I had a pretty long and stressful week last week, so when we woke up on Saturday morning to overcast skies and a pressure in the air that proceeds a storm--making it almost unbearable to be outside, we were thrown into the mental pit of despair.

To make matters worse, our air-conditioning stopped working in the middle of the night on Friday and it wasn't up and running again until much later in the day yesterday. Air-conditioning (or the lack thereof) ain't-no-thang if you have at least one fan in your possession.... But we don't. So we were both hot and miserable, and given yesterday's hot, headache-inducing weather, going outside provided little to no relief.

We were sad and uncomfortable, and we needed some comfort food and an escape from our warm, sticky apartment (and from our puppy who was completely unaffected by the weather and positively bouncing off the walls).

So we went for Italian food at CaFfinO in Liberty Village. It was the best mistake we've ever made.

The first reason I say it was a "mistake" is because we were both feeling melancholy and felt like we deserved an appetizer and a bottle of pinot noir to go with our comfort dinner. Hey, when in Rome, right? (The prices at CaFfinO are fairly reasonable, but we went a little overboard.... And it was so worth it.)

The bruschetta was the best we've had. Ever.

I don't know what Ken ordered (I was too focused on my own menu-decision to notice) and Ken doesn't remember what it was called. He declared on a number of occasions, however, that it was the best pasta dish he ever had. Side note: His pose in the above picture was intentional, although I don't know exactly what he was going for. (He doesn't know, either.)

I've been on a gnocchi kick lately (even though my pronunciation of the word is always horribly incorrect), so I ordered the homemade gnocchi. And guess what? It was the best I ever had! (Noticing a trend here?)

The second reason I said going to this place was a "mistake" is, not only is the food amazing, but the atmosphere is very Italian, very quaint and, yes, a bit on the romantic side. Ooh-la-la.

We learned after chatting with our friendly server that CaFfinO has been around for over 15 years, but it's a new and extremely dangerous discovery for us. Why? Because we're kind of in love with this place and it's only a twenty-minute stroll from where we live.

Dear Bank Account: Get ready to take a couple of hits before the summer is over.

Summer Randomness

2011-08-15T21:45:00.006-04:00

I noticed the other day as I was uploading our Muskoka pictures into iPhoto that I have loads of unpublished, uneventful pictures I've taken over the summer. Since I don't have a Facebook account on which to dump all of them, I figured, hey, why not throw them up on the ol' blog? The internet is all about shameless self-indulgence anyway, right? Of course.

So, here it is: A load of picture-vomit from my summer, along with commentary. (Let the randomness from my camera begin....)

One.

One of the greatest things about owning a dog in this city is the excuse it gives you to hang out in the dog park. I realize that statement makes me sound like a creepy dog-stalker, but I'm not talking about just any old dog park here. I'm talking about the Lakeshore dog park. We've racked up countless hours there this summer. This lovely little park is a perfect place in the city to find some peace and quiet (if you don't count the dogs howling), to bring a book along, to get some sun, and to let Bubba go wild. (He does.) We even had a front row seat to see the Canada Day fireworks over Lake Ontario, thanks to this park. (A lot of people didn't think to bring their dogs along for the show, so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves and Bubba was our ticket. Happy Canada Day, indeed.)

Two.

Playing Scrabble is fun, but not as fun as it is when you're sitting on the cute little patio of your favorite little cafe (Tequila Bookworm, which I once mentioned in a previous post). It's a great way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon... which is pretty much every Sunday afternoon around here.

Three.

Avocados are not cheap, right? So you can imagine my disgust when I cut into one about a month ago only to discover an avocado pit the size of a baseball lodged inside of it. (In case you aren't all too familiar with avocado pits, the second picture shows you what an avocado pit should look like. Uhhh, yeah.) I actually contemplated taking it back to the market simply to say, "Are you kidding me?" but decided against it, as such an action would make me one of "those customers" who everyone loves to hate. So I sadly made do with the tablespoon of avocado I managed to scrape out of the pathetic thing and had a very small batch of guacamole to show for it.

Four.

We've spent a few too many lunches this summer eating at The One That Got Away, a super yummy fish and chips place that opened up way too close to our condo building a few months ago. (I'm partially blaming this place for the 8 pounds I've gained in the past year.... I hate you, you stupid, delicious place.)

Five.

Random pictures we apparently took right after our outing to the fish and chips place. Yeah, no reason.

Six.

I discovered heirloom tomatoes this summer and I've decided they are simply the best. I mean, really, can you tell me this isn't the most beautiful tomato you've ever seen? Plus, these babies taste far better than the hybrid tomatoes we usually find in stores. Maybe it's all in my head, but whatever makes the old taste buds (and extra pounds) happy.

Seven.

These are just a couple of random Muskoka leftovers. (No, I didn't eat the berries, but I wish I had.)

Eight.

Bubba has been intent upon ruining any picture we try to take with him lately. These are some lovely examples.

Yes, I'm really starting to believe it's intentional.

And since we're on the topic of Bubba, do you remember this sad, sad day? I just found it in my photo album and it made me laugh a little bit (which no doubt makes me an evil person).

The Cutest Cottage I Ever Did See

2011-08-07T13:32:00.021-04:00

I will start this post with the first two things that come to my mind as I type: (1) I'm the worst blogger ever (how the poopity poop did I think my last post would suffice as an actual update?) and (2) I can't wait to bombard you with pictures from my latest vacation.

{There. It's the most uncensored thing you'll ever read on this ol' blog of mine.}

Ken and I just returned yesterday from a week-long getaway up in Muskoka. I've been living in Ontario for over a year now, so I finally decided it was time to check out this "cottage country" that all Ontarians (did I make that up?) rave about. My verdict? Their ravings are warranted.

We rented a cottage on Browning Island located in the middle of Lake Muskoka -- an island that is only accessible by boat. A little water taxi took us to our vacation spot last Saturday and we didn't leave the island for an entire week. Everyone kept asking before we left if we were worried about getting bored while being stranded on an island for a full seven days. I always chuckled at the question. Us? Get bored doing nothing? No way. Laziness is what we do best. And we did it well all week long.

The cottage itself was adorable. It was love at first sight for me and I actually shed a little tear when the water taxi came to take us away yesterday morning.

We spent our entire week there swimming, canoeing, reading and napping.

We also really loved having a barbecue to play with all week. (Although it proved a little dangerous at times.)

Since we left Bubba with Ken's mom for the week, I had to adopt pets of some kind while we were on the island. (I always find critters to take care of on every trip we take.... I should have been a veterinarian.)

{Side Note: These ducks were the boldest things I've ever seen in my life: They would come right up and snatch the bread out of your hands if they didn't think you were breaking it up fast enough. By the end of the week, they were climbing up on our dock and waddling across our toes, begging for food.}

I always need to throw in some smarmy, couple-on-vacation shots for posterity....

(Upon inspection of the left photo, Ken announced I have a unibrow. I, in fact, do not. At least not since attacking it with a pair of tweezers.)

And what is a vacation-post if it doesn't include a sunset shot?

Or just a random shot....

And that's all, folks! We had the perfect little week away, but now it's time to finish unpacking and start on the mountains of laundry currently piled on top of our suitcase. (Best. Sunday. Ever.)

A suicidal pigeon...

2011-06-24T21:24:00.002-04:00

...might look like this:

Bubba and I have been walking underneath this poor, disgusting thing on our way to the dog park nearly every night for the past two months and I can't help but wonder how on God's great earth such a dumb ol' pigeon managed to hang itself from an overpass. I mean, really?

(I also have a terrible feeling that I will be the unfortunate soul upon whose head it will eventually "decide" to drop.)

Anyway, this is just a little bit of Friday randomness for you. What I really wanted to say here is: Happy Weekend!

Ken's Birthday(s)

2011-06-16T19:38:00.001-04:00

Ken was a lucky man this year: His birthday was this past Tuesday (the 14th) but we got the party started this past Friday and it just kept going until, well, his actual birthday.

Friday night we had a group of friends over to play some board games (we ended up watching the hockey game instead... oh Canadians) and then, of course, we went to the noraebang. There we sang our little hearts out for four whole hours before we finally decided to call it a night (because it was morning by that point). Did I think to take any pictures of the evening? Nope. Which means you'll just have to believe me when I say it really happened and it was a really good time.

But! I pretty much documented Ken's other birthday outings and happenings in pictures, so you lucky people get to see the highlights in all of their I-don't-know-how-to-use-my-camera-properly glory. Here they are:

Birthday Presents!

I took a stab at creative-gift-giving this year and made a little scavenger hunt for Ken's very cheap birthday presents. I had him start the scavenger hunt on the morning of his birthday, but poor ol' Ken was still so sleepy that my clues seemed a lot harder than they should have been and the scavenger hunt--which consisted of only five clues--ended up taking quite a long time. But it's the thought that counts, right? (I think he appreciated it anyway.)

Birthday Breakfast!

We went to what is now our second favorite breakfast place in Toronto, Easy Restaurant, for Ken's birthday breakfast (I'll tell you all about the number one fave another time). The food was so good, we didn't hesitate to devour it all before snapping a picture. (There isn't a "before" picture, but I think the "after" picture is a testament to how good the food is.)

Birthday Snack!

We went to our favorite cafe, Tequila Bookworm, with the intention of getting another coffee as a little afternoon pick-me-up. Upon plopping ourselves down next to their big ol' bookshelves, however, a different beverage magically appeared in front of us. On a Tuesday afternoon? It's positively scandalous! But it was Ken's birthday so we went with it.

Birthday Dinner!

We went to Ken's favorite restaurant in the whole wide world (Golden Thai) for his birthday dinner and, as you can see, he was pretty darn excited about being there. We love us some green and red curries! (Unfortunately, curries don't love us back and both of us spent the rest of the night moaning and groaning about stomach aches.)

Of course, I can't finish this birthday post without a shout-out to the other people who share Ken's birthday, can I? Ken has a twin brother, plus his mom's birthday is only a day before his (theirs).

It's been happy birthdays all around this month! (I think I'm going to have to start celebrating my half-birthday in July because summer birthdays are a lot more fun than January-day-after-New-Year's birthdays.)

When Life Gives You Lemons...

2011-06-07T23:54:00.001-04:00

... bark at them. Incessantly.

(The viciousness really starts at about the 1:01 mark.)

Aaaaaand I'm pretty sure our neighbors hate us now. A lot.

[Forgive the terrible quality of the video.]

Symptoms of Bieber Fever

2011-05-31T20:04:00.005-04:00

You MIGHT have Bieber Fever if....

1. You hear "Baby" on the radio and think to yourself: "Hmmm, this song is kind of catchy." (...and you keep that crazy little thought to yourself.)

2. You start to get a teensy bit excited whenever "Baby" is within earshot. (Once again, you put on your best "What is this garbage?!" face and keep the excitement you feel deep down inside a deep, dark secret.)

3. You start humming "Baby" to yourself on your walk home from work (albeit--accidentally--out loud).

4. You start playing the YouTube video of "Baby" at home just to annoy your husband. (Then start to annoy him three or four times... a day.)

5. You actually add "Baby" to your iTunes playlist, but only because it might be a "hip" song to sing in the noraebhang so, really, you should learn it, you know?

6. You blog about "Baby" and post the video cheese.

(Only listen if you know you're immune.)

But you MIGHT be okay if....

1. "Baby" is the only Justin Bieber song you like.

2. "Baby" is the only Justin Bieber song you know (out of principle).

3. You've managed to keep "Baby" off of your iTunes "most played" list.

4. You can still laugh at Justin Bieber jokes without feeling too hypocritical.

So... I'm going to be okay, right?

(I probably should have entitled this post "The Progression of Bieber Fever." Boooo, I'm screwed.)

Bubba is no longer a man...

2011-05-27T18:50:00.004-04:00

...but an "it" who still pees with his leg up.

We went to pick up Bubba from the animal hospital yesterday only a few hours after his "procedure" was complete and, let me tell you, it was traumatic. The poor little guy not only had his "manly parts" removed, but he also had to have two baby canines taken out (which were stubbornly refusing to come out and starting to cause problems) and a micro-chip inserted into his back. To top off the whole package, he now has to wear a cone on his head. This, my friends, is the worst part by far.

When we left the animal hospital and started our five-minute walk home, we realized the anesthesia hadn't fully worn off yet; Poor Bubs was staggering around like a drunk puppy, scraping his little cone head on the sidewalk as he stumbled along. He eventually stopped walking, looked up at the two of us with the most miserable face I've ever seen in my life and started to cry with the most pathetic sounding whimpers. I assumed he must have been crying in pain, so I ended up carrying the poor little guy the rest of the way home. (He cried the entire way.)

Now I'm pretty sure he was crying because he hates the cone.

And, oh, how he hates it.

We're only on day two of seven with the evil Mr. Cone and Bubba hasn't stopped trying to devise ways to get it off (nor has he stopped crying about it). Of course, I would probably hate the cone, too, if I had to wear it. It's made him crash into pretty much anything and everything (walls, floors, doors, legs, whatever), he's unable to eat properly out of his food dish, his toys keep evading him, and worst of all? All of the park dogs are either scared of him or they tease him whenever he (and his monstrosity of a head) goes outside to do his business. So, Bubba is now officially friendless.

It's going to be a long week before those pesky stitches come out.

We're Famous! (Kind Of)

2011-05-24T23:04:00.001-04:00

Sweet ol' Ken had a little too much time on his hands at work a few weeks ago when he suddenly had an idea to write a little story about how the two of us met. He then submitted it to the Metro paper in hopes of it being selected to run in their "relationships" section. (He did this entirely on his own and I was none the wiser.)

Well, lucky, lucky us! Metro selected Ken's story (our story, really) to run in today's paper.

You can read the story in its entirety here.

And, yes, Ken has officially bought himself a "get out of jail free" card for nearly every conflict we may have over the course of the next year, at least.

He done good.

P.S. The horrifically cheesy title was Metro's doing.

This Post Is Brought To You By...

2011-05-22T14:56:00.001-04:00

... the color red.

It's been so long since we've seen the likes of summer that the thought of wearing sunscreen... well, it wasn't really a thought at all, actually.

The downside: We are very uncomfortable and irritable today.

The upside: We're set in the vitamin D department for a good long while.

Summer Faves

2011-05-21T18:17:00.002-04:00

Spring/Summer is just now starting to make its long overdue appearance in Toronto, and I'm loving every (dry) minute of it. It's been raining almost nonstop during the month of May (grumble, grumble), but we've had a few days of nice weather here and there and I've been soaking up the sun every blessed chance I get. Just in case you were wondering (and why wouldn't you be?), here are my "favoritest" things about such days:

Trips to historical Fort York... which, incidentally, happens to be a five-minute walk from our condo building. (We just discovered it last week.)

Bubba loving the sun.

Walks along the Lakeshore.

Feeding ill-tempered swans (because if you don't feed them they get really upset and scary).

Long walks to High Park, followed by a much-deserved picnic. (It's nearly two hours there and two hours back, so now we're pooped.)

Fresh, smelly tulips around the house.

And homemade healthy(ish) pizzas!

...which have nothing to do with summer, but I took a couple of pictures so, hey, why not?

The end.

Lent

2011-04-18T22:58:00.001-04:00

It's been awhile since I've updated this new-ish and improved-ish blog of mine, but I have my reasons and they actually go beyond laziness this time. As you may or may not have heard, I gave up "most of" the internet for Lent this year.

I'm breaking that promise early.

When I originally told people back at the beginning of March I was giving up "most of" the internet for Lent, a lot of those people--mainly those who don't know me very well or perhaps think a little too highly of me--seemed to think I was doing it as a spiritually guided practice in discipline. Although I will readily admit I should have practiced a Lenten sacrifice for such a reason, I didn't; I merely made a promise to give up "most of" the internet for tradition's sake. It is also for tradition's sake that I'm breaking it.

You see, a couple of my friends in Korea had a traditional habit of giving something up for Lent every year and they were always so good at keeping their promises and becoming better people because of it. I found their discipline and dedication inspiring (if not also a teensy bit annoying) and decided to join these obnoxiously self-denying friends of mine in making my own sacrifice for my first Lent in Korea. It was something I had never practiced before and, at the time, I wanted to do it for all of the right reasons (spiritually guided discipline, reflecting upon sacrifices made for me, etc.).

For my first Lenten promise, I decided to give up taking taxis everywhere around my then-city of Busan. And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. I was notoriously lazy about walking anywhere back then and I was frequently caught in the act of hailing a cab when I was sometimes only a block or two away from my destination. It was bad. I therefore decided it was time to make a sacrifice for change. (It was a true sacrifice.)

I failed. Terribly.

Exactly two hours after declaring my first Lenten promise, I marched outside and hopped in a cab and rode four city blocks back to my apartment, proudly thinking about all of the ways my new discipline would change me for the better.

The next year when I decided to give up my bad habit of complaining about "stupid stuff" for Lent, I was just as successful (or unsuccessful, depending on how you want to spin it) as I was the previous year. Perhaps somewhat ironically, I broke my promise that time around by complaining about my lack of discipline. (This happened only an hour into Lent.)

And thus began my tradition of taking on new Lenten challenges (sacrifices?) and breaking them within hours of making them.

This year was a little different, although entirely by accident. I gave up "most of" the internet at the beginning of March and then I simply didn't go back to it. Was it really so easy? I can hardy believe I'm saying this, but yes! After making the decision, I lasted for two or three hours without even thinking about it in the slightest. Before I knew it, two or three days had passed, and then two or three weeks. Today I realized, with a jolt of surprise, pride and a tinge of horror, that I've nearly made it to the six-week mark without peeking at Twitter, People.com, or the blogs I regularly stalk.

Who. Am. I.

I'm considering this a major accomplishment but, let's face it: I'm a little bit of a traditionalist at heart....

So here's to tradition.

Oohhh February...

2011-02-13T18:45:00.002-05:00

2011 thus far has been filled with lots of snowy, freezing-your-face-off kinds of days and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a hardcore case of February Blues at the moment. (February is my most dreaded month of the year because I'm so, so over winter by this point.... If I see one more snowflake I might throw up in disgust.)

In order to keep our spirits up during this time of brutal weather, Ken and I resolved to bundle up and venture out to visit a new restaurant and/or coffee shop at least once a week, just to give us something to look forward to every now and then and to help us enjoy life in Toronto (in spite of it being an icier version of hell on earth). We've found a number of gems during our new weekly assignment, and most of them are a stone's throw away from our living room window (which is dangerous for our wallets during those lazy, I-don't-feel-like-cooking days... which are frequent). Here are a few of our recent discoveries:

Korean Food. Wha--?

It's been almost a year since we left Korea and I hadn't the slightest craving for anything even remotely Korean... until a few weeks ago.

Thankfully, we only had to walk a few blocks to Korea Town where we were met with Kimbop-Chungoos galore to satisfy such random cravings. (Although the mounds of snow piled on the sidewalk made the walk long and treacherous and perhaps not totally worth it.)

It was a yummy dinner that made my little heart miss Korea a teensy bit. I was also pleasantly reminded that Korean makes for really great winter food (the red pepper paste is particularly... warming, if nothing else). Would you believe we actually devoured four bowls of kimchi? I never thought I'd live to see the day.... Suffice it to say, we've now had our Korean-food-fill for the next year.

Burgers. Not just any burgers, mind you. Craft Burgers.

Organic, fancy-shmancy deliciousness. (I tried my burger with avocado, gorgonzola cheese, and rosemary-garlic mayonnaise... aaaand my mouth is watering at the very memory.)

This place is amazing and I'm pretty sure it's the best burger I've ever had. What's even more amazing? It's literally a two-minute walk from our apartment. (Dangerously convenient.)

Coffee. I'd been moaning and groaning about the lack of good coffee shops in our area for the past nine months of living here only to discover there's a great place five minutes up the street (and I won't be winning any awards for my observation skills).

Tiny, artsy and maybe the best macchiato I've ever had. They also have a stack of magazines and board games available for their patrons, which I thought was a nice little touch. (I'm going to make this place my Saturday morning ritual.)

We've been to a few more mentionable places over the past couple of weeks but we forgot to haul our camera along for those excursions, and because a picture is worth a thousand words (and because we now have a camera worth using) I'll provide more on the subject another time.

As for the rest of our free time during these awful winter months: It's been spent watching lots of movies and episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (me, not Ken), wasting time on the computer, and playing lots of card games and board games.

Some a little more thought-provoking than others....

As you can see, I'm running low on subject matter, so I shall also re-mention this little guy who is now occupying the rest of our free time:

We are in serious danger of becoming weird dog people, but it can't be helped. (To prove my point, here's a little Flickr album I created just for Bubba.)

He's had a number of naughty-as-heck moments this week, but he's really sweet most of the time.

Of course, it helps that he's really cute. (If he were ugly, he would have been thrown out the window days ago.)

That's all I've got, people. It's been a slow winter, but things are good... and boy am I ever looking forward to spring.

Introducing....

2011-02-06T21:42:00.000-05:00

Bubba!

Ten-weeks-old and three-and-a-half pounds of Yorkiepoo cuteness. (A Yorkshire Terrier/Poodle hybrid, for those not up to speed on current doggy-breeding trends).

He invaded our lives exactly one week ago yesterday and we haven't slept much since (he gets his days and nights confused and for some reason sleeps soundly during daylight hours and then gets the urge to poop/pee/play at 3 a.m.).

He's the sweetest puppy in the world... and we're pretty much in love with him.

(More blogging to follow.)

The Big Three Zero

2011-01-05T16:32:00.000-05:00

My big, scary birthday was on Sunday, and honestly? I probably wouldn't be so candid about my age right now had I not been carded last week. But, thanks to the man at the LCBO, I'm taking 30 in stride.

My birthday was a good one. I took it easy for most of the day, reading new books I got for Christmas and (of course) bumming around on the internet. Ken made breakfast for me in the morning...

...(yums) and then he invited a few friends over for a little birthday gathering in the evening. We played games (most notably a game called What? which is really, really fun) and then we headed to the noraebang, of course! (We forgot to bring the camera along for the latter.)

The only depressing part about turning 30? Blowing out the enormous number of candles on my cake and the smoke from said candles being enough to set off the fire alarm....

But it was all good and the cake didn't suffer at all....

We went to the noraebang at 10p.m. and ended up staying there until it wasn't my birthday anymore. It was the perfect little party to ring in my personal New Year.

And now here's to a monumental year! (Whatever that means.)

2011

2011-01-01T23:54:00.004-05:00

Happy New Year!

We've just wrapped up a lovely, long holiday week of visiting both sides of our fam: Ken's side on Christmas and Boxing Day and my side for the remainder of the week, with a couple of travel days squeezed in there. It was a really great time but it was also pretty busy and we were eager to get back home yesterday to chill out for a bit before heading back to work next week (if cool kids are still allowed to say "chill out"). When we got home last night we realized it was New Year's Eve and we felt like we should do something to mark the occasion, but we were feeling pretty pooped and the idea of attending a party seemed out of the question after seven hours of being cooped up in a car. We nearly jumped at the opportunity when our friends, Jared and Alisha, invited us over to their house for a quiet-ish night of board games and Wheel of Fortune on Nintendo Wii. It was purrrrrfect.

And it presented the perfect opportunity for me to bring my early birthday present out for its first event! Which leads me to my New Year's resolution(s):

1. Take more pictures

...the only resolution worth mentioning for now because (a) I'm using it as an excuse to brag shamelessly and (b) I got a Pentax K-x camera for my birthday! <--Bragging.

So we're obviously not used to using it yet (and we're clearly putting it's shake-resistance to the test), but I'm sure having fun playing around with this new Stormtrooper camera of mine.

(The camera was shipped to my parents' house, so I found some willing/not-so-willing models to practice on while we were there.)

Anyhoo, all that to say, we had a nice little New Year's (and a fantastic Christmas) and I'm optimistically looking forward to the year ahead. Now I need to add a few more resolutions to my list-of-one before the day is over (I've got approximately five minutes). Happy New Year to you all! I hope to see more of your lovely faces in 2011.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T09:42:00.000-05:00

Every Christmas we spent in (or around) Korea, we took cheesy Christmas pictures of ourselves to send home to our families. Last night we decided to do a 2010 Christmas photo-shoot for the sake of tradition (even though our families will be seeing our lovely faces in the flesh this year).

It didn't go well.

Things were a little out of focus...

A little too dark...

A little off-kilter...

Or a little awkward...

We gave up before throwing our darn camera out the window...

(The tradition has died in Korea.)

Regardless, merry merry Christmas from the McMundays!

Two Things

2010-12-19T13:15:00.002-05:00

One:
You must see the new Disney movie Tangled. It's really good. (I think Disney has gotten their groove back.)

Two:
I wish I had discovered these items on Etsy sooner than a week before Christmas, because they surely would have made it onto my Christmas list:

These soap whips.

This huge bag for my ever-growing pile of purse junk.

(Actually, I went ahead and ordered the bag today as a birthday present for myself.... I mean, really, it's important for a 21-year-old to have a good, sturdy bag.)

And if I had the nerve to wear such a thing, I would totally ask for this reinvention of the fanny-pack.

It is pretty ingenious, isn't it? But I don't have the guts to pull it off... yet.

This anti-aging goop.

(Because, let's face it.... I'm not really twenty-one. *sniff*)

This necklace, because it's purdy.

And this one, too.

OR I would happily forgo all of the above to receive a round-trip ticket to Indonesia and a full week at this place.

Please and thank you.

Some Christmasy Things....

2010-12-08T20:51:00.002-05:00

Waking up to this the other morning:

(Clearly not my picture, due to its obvious quality.)

Hosting a little Christmas baking party:

Listening to Bing Crosby nonstop:

Rearranging our living room (which has nothing to do with Christmas, but there is a Christmas tree involved):

And getting an early Christmas surprise from sweet ol' Ken:

It's a nativity scene that matches our marshmallow ornament! (Decidedly sacrilegious, but super cute nevertheless.)

(I think we might have a new yearly tradition on our hands.)

Living Room Puzzle

2010-11-30T22:50:00.003-05:00

Ken and I decided to buy an armchair as a little (or big) Christmas present for the both of us over the weekend. We've been wanting a comfy "reading" chair for awhile, so we decided to take advantage of the low American dollar and the low American IKEA prices while we were in Michigan for the Thanksgiving holiday. It should be noted that a few weeks ago some friends of ours bought an armchair both Ken and I absolutely fell in love with and decided, then and there, that that was the armchair for us (this was where the whole idea of getting an armchair began...). Of course, as soon as we spotted our new favorite armchair in IKEA during our little Michigan-shopping-spree, we hardly thought twice about buying it. I say hardly because we did have a fraction of a second-thought: It occurred to us as we were tearing apart the box in the IKEA parking lot to take the parts of the armchair out so we could actually fit the thing into our rental car that perhaps--if it's too big for the car--it might be too big for our itty-bitty apartment. But....

This is our new armchair in all of its comfy, squishy glory:

And, in case you were wondering, these are the measurements of our new comfy, squishy armchair:

41 and 3/4 inches wide, 43 and 1/4 inches deep.

And, just so you know, this is the size of our living room:

9 feet, 8 inches in width. (The length of it doesn't really matter in this situation....)

What. Were. We. Thinking.

Honestly, this wouldn't be such a huge problem if it weren't for all of the other furniture already located in our teeny tiny living room.

Yes, maybe I have a slight IKEA addiction that needs curbing, but that's beside the point at the moment.... Because it looks like a furniture store just vomited in my living room. All of the shifting and rearranging we've tried thus far hasn't helped the situation much and the feng shui in our whole apartment is all messed up. *Stress!*

I would consider taking this monstrosity of an armchair back to where we found it... but I'm all snuggled up in it right now feeling quite satisfied, in spite of the mayhem in front of me. It might not fit into any of the corners in our apartment, but it sure is cozy.

Update(s)

2010-11-21T23:00:00.035-05:00

My childhood-friend/college-roommate/fellow-understander-of-life-lived-in-Korea, Jessie (two blog shout-outs in one weekend!) has mentioned a number of times in recent months that my blog is boring and extraordinarily uninformative. (Well!) Although my instinctual reaction has been to deny such nonsense, I suppose she does have a point (I realized in mid-argument that my last real post was written a month and a half ago). So here I am, rectifying the sad little fact that my blog is half-dead, even though my life has been extraordinarily uneventful of late and I don't have a whole lot to babble on about. Nevertheless, here I go....

The only real update I have is on the job front: I have one! It's of the temporary variety, but it has kept me pretty busy for the past three months and will continue to do so indefinitely. (No, you didn't read that wrong: I'm working temporarily indefinitely.) The job is in insurance (in the claims department, no less) which is an entirely new venture for me and I'm continually confused by the complexity of it (my walks home at the end of the day are usually accompanied by a headache). It's the perfect little job for me right now, but I'm still looking for more permanent work, although probably not as thoroughly as I should be (a little scroll through Monster.com every other evening probably doesn't count as actual "job searching").

Moving on to not-so-informative but much-more-fun news, I'm excited for Christmas! So much so that I dragged Ken to Canadian Tire today to buy a Christmas tree. We were contemplating purchasing a real tree because they smell so nice and they look so... well... real. There were, however, a few obstacles standing in the way of our getting a real tree (namely the prospect of hauling the big ol' thing onto public transit) so we opted for the fake variety. I have to admit I was pretty appalled at the prices of fake trees these days when we finally got to the store. The one we originally wanted was $400! (Seriously? It probably cost the company a buck to make the darn thing.) We opted for the cheapest tree after a whole lot of hemming and hawing (I won't say how much it cost because I'm pretty sure we were ripped off and I would really rather remain unsure) and then we hauled it all the way home on foot--about 15 city blocks--(and by we I mean Ken), then started setting it up pretty much the second we walked in the door. And would you believe we actually documented the whole process in pictures? Who are we?

There we are, attaching the middle part to the bottom part. (Totally posed and oh so interesting.)

I have no idea how the above picture happened but, regardless, couldn't I have cleaned the floor a bit before taking pictures? (We're pigs.)

Now I'm going to tell a little side-story: Ken has always said that the profile of my face reminds him of Whistler's Mother, which I've always found slightly insulting. Even when he had me stand next to her at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris to prove his point, I vehemently disagreed with his opinion and with good reason.

Nothing against Whistler's Mother, of course, but I'm not sure many women my age would take such a comparison as a compliment.... Which is why I died a thousand deaths when I saw this picture of myself taken from tonight's photo-shoot:

WHISTLER'S MOTHER.

I don't know why the above picture confirmed it for me, but it did. *sigh, sigh, SIGH*

Moving on.... We got these cute little stockings to wrap around the tree and I've decided they're my favorite part about the whole kit and caboodle:

We don't actually have a lot of decorations on the tree yet, as we only own a few and couldn't be bothered to buy any tonight, so it's looking a tad naked. We do, however, have the sweet little ornament my parents sent to us last year hanging from one of the top branches:

It's cute in and of itself, but it's especially cute because it resembles the wedding cake topper our friends Meaghan and Andrea made for us out of marshmallows right after we got married:

And here's a blurry picture of our finished tree:

Yay for cheap, fake Christmas trees!

Now I'm going to end on a scary little note: We thought we had bed bugs! Ken discovered these icky things on his belly the other night, much to my horror:

Yipes! In case you haven't heard, Toronto seems to be swarming with bed bugs these days... for real. We panicked as soon as he noticed them (naturally) and decided maybe we should fumigate our apartment. True to form, however, apathy eventually replaced our panic and (thankfully) the little boogers decided not to attack again before vacating our apartment of their own accord. (Or maybe the "bites" were actually hives... but that doesn't sound nearly as exciting.)

Whew! That does it for now. Hopefully I'll find more things to blog about within the near(er) future but until then, good night!

My Dream House

2010-11-20T15:22:00.001-05:00

I've never had a bona fide dream house.... Until now.

(Click here for more pictures.)

Now excuse me while I go out and buy a lotto ticket.

P.S. JESSIE: I know this is a crap post. I'll write a better one later in the weekend to appease you.

Last Night...

2010-10-03T14:26:00.004-04:00

After sundown last night, we spent a few hours wandering around the streets of Toronto, checking out art exhibits scattered throughout the city for Nuit Blanche. I've been looking forward to Nuit Blanche for a few weeks now, and although we saw a few interesting exhibits last night (fire torches activated by movement, interpretive dancers in interpretive costumes, light shows, etc.) and had a good time out and about in the city with good friends, I was a little disappointed in the overall event. I heard that last year's Nuit Blanche was far more entertaining with far more exhibitions and that this year's seemed to be lacking in enthusiasm, so I guess we just hit it at a bad time. But! I'm already feeling hopeful for next year's event. (Come on, Toronto!)

Sadly, the one "exhibit" we were most excited about seeing--the ghost subway station that has been closed to the public for over 40 years (with the exception of last night)--had a line of a few thousand people trailing out of its entrance by the time we found it.

We had already walked a full 15 kilometers by this point (not even exaggerating), so the prospect of waiting in line on our feet in the icky, wet cold didn't seem like the most logical option at the time. So we opted to head home on the TTC, which in hindsight wasn't entirely logical either, as everyone in the city was feeling particularly festive last night and the number of overly intoxicated individuals on the subway far outweighed the number of non-intoxicated individuals (which isn't even remotely fun to deal with when you're stone cold sober).

Anyway, after bidding the Nuit Blanche madness adieu and upon returning safely to our cozy little abode, I flipped on my computer to search for some durable winter garb. That might seem entirely random, but I had my reasons: According to a digital thermometer on the sign of one of the banks we passed last night, it was 5 degrees celsius while we were traipsing around the city, and my flimsy Korean winter coat held up to its first weather challenge of the year like a champ. But it occurred to me somewhere between Spadina and Yonge streets that as soon as real winter strikes, I'll probably end up freezing to death if I don't do a winter-wardrobe-upgrade (because--hey--5 degrees celsius isn't that cold and Lord knows come January, 5 degrees is going to feel like August). So, naturally, I turned to Urban Outfitters' website as soon as I got home and instantly fell in love with this coat:

It's cute, eh? But after oohing and ahhing over it, I realized it probably has the same kind of lining as my current coat and will therefore be just as useless for my daily walks to and from work in the midst of a Canadian winter. I then came to the sad realization that something like this one might be more practical:

But I don't want this one. *sigh* Why can't cute and practical work together to keep me alive this winter? I'm open to coat suggestions from those who know rough winters, by the by, so please share your tips if you have them....

And now moving on to salsa (the condiment). We had a few friends over for dinner last night prior to the Nuit Blanche festivities, and since Ken was feeling ill and I was feeling lazy, we opted for an easy-to-prepare menu: chicken tacos and chips and salsa. I decided to make my own salsa, sans a recipe, and I was quite pleased with how it turned out. I'm feeling so confident about it, in fact, that I've decided to share it here!

Green Salsa Recipe

(the color was a bit of a surprise...)

4 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
one small yellow onion, peeled and quartered
one jalapeno pepper, seeded and sliced (if you prefer milder salsa, don't throw in the whole jalapeno)
one or two handfuls of fresh chopped cilantro (depending on your taste for cilantro)
the juice of half a lemon
three large tomatoes, quartered
salt to taste

Put garlic, onion, and jalapeno pepper into a food processor and pulse it a few times until everything is chopped up. Add the cilantro and lemon juice and pulse again until cilantro leaves are itty bitty. Add the tomatoes and pulse until you're satisfied with the texture (I prefer it a little chunky, but I overdid it and it came out a little runny.... Noted for next time!) Add salt to taste and eat that business! (With tortilla chips, preferably.)

And there you have it. I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, but--as you can see above--I took a picture of a few of the ingredients prior to making the salsa for whatever reason. (I just don't have the mind of a photographer... or even of someone who likes to take pictures, because clearly I don't.)

And that's all I've got! Enjoy this overcast (in Toronto) Sunday afternoon.

What I Want Right Now...

2010-09-25T14:11:00.001-04:00

To make (and subsequently eat) these:

To buy these in gray for a little less than the asking price:

(I'm not sure how open Urban Outfitters might be to price negotiation....)

To be in this water again:

(...while being happily unaware of the drool dripping from my chin.)

To never hear the name Lindsay Lohan ever again:

(Vanity Fair. Seriously??)

For these thrilling thrillers to never end....

(I'm on the last book and positively sitting on pins and needles!)

To feel like this:

(I'm currently snotting all over my keyboard and coughing up a lung.)

Montreal... and aprons!

2010-09-14T22:11:00.002-04:00

In celebration of our one year anniversary, we planned to rent a car and take a little road trip to Montreal over Labor Day weekend. Coincidentally, both "holidays" happened to be on the same weekend, so the plan worked out beautifully.

This was my first trip to Montreal and I absolutely fell in love with the city. It should be noted that Montreal (or perhaps Quebec in general) feels like an entirely different country from the rest of Canada; very European and, therefore, very quaint and lovable. And let's not forget to add, very French. Not only does the city of Montreal feel and look like a smaller version of Paris, the majority of its residents speak French. Ken, having been raised in Canada and forced to take French classes from a young age (against his will, or so he says), made it a point to speak what little French he could muster whenever the opportunity presented itself while we were there. I, on the other hand, just muttered the obligatory "bonjour", "merci", and the occasional "Je ne parle pas Français" in such opportune moments. (My French is embarrassingly non-existent.)

As per usual, I didn't take any photos of the entire trip (surprise, surprise). Unfortunately, Ken, who is usually our photographer, has apparently fallen under my bad influence.... He took only three photos of the whole trip. Here are two of them:

The view from our hotel window (it was actually much more impressive in real life), and...

...a really cool building we spotted while we were out and about and exploring the city. (What in the world is holding it together anyway?)

Here are the pictures we should have taken....

Old Montreal, in all of its Parisian glory:

There is even a Notre Dame in Montreal! See? Just like Paris (sans the Eiffel Tower):

(Apparently Pavarotti sang here on a number of occasions because apparently the acoustics inside the building are perfect.)

And here's what we should have eaten while we were there:

Montreal is famous for its bagels and its poutine...

...but every time we were hungry, we couldn't find a place that served either of these heart-stopping snacks and, of course, we always found such establishments after we had stuffed ourselves with croissants or something. Oh well, better luck next time!

On an entirely different note, my mom made two aprons for both Ken and me after she saw this picture in a previous blog post:

She gave them to us a couple of months ago when we were back in Michigan for a visit, but we just now got around to taking pictures of them tonight:

Aren't they cute? I think she should start a little apron-making business, or at least resurrect her blog with some pictures of her fun little creations. I'm sure if you want one, she'll make them to order! (Right, Mom?)

Bye!

One year ago today....

2010-09-02T19:05:00.003-04:00

Or at least one year ago today in Korea.... Tomorrow is September 3rd in North America, so we get two anniversaries whenever we're on the other side of the world from our original place of marriage! (And you'd better believe I'm going to milk it.)

Best. Year. Ever.

Harry Potter is Here!

2010-08-20T09:58:00.002-04:00

Or at least some of his stuff is here.

Our friends, Kevin, Meaghan and Meaghan's sister Lynae, came up to Toronto from Sarnia yesterday to see the Harry Potter exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre. They kindly invited us to join them in their little excursion and I happily tagged along in order to represent the McClintic-Mundays at Hogwarts (poor Ken had to work).

The exhibit was full of props from the Harry Potter movies--costumes, wands, Quidditch gear, even Hagrid's hut!--and I was so excited about all of it that I forgot Hogwarts only exists in the imaginations of its readers and I totally felt like a kid again (even though I was an adult when the first book was even published). The exhibit--although well displayed--was tragically short for its price, but it was still a great way to spend a Thursday afternoon.

The above costumes also happened to be on display at the exhibit but, sadly, Cedric Diggory (or Robert Pattinson) wasn't in either of them. Boooo....

In other news, the job-hunt continues! I'm still interviewing and temping and getting lots of days off, and I daresay I'm getting used to this business of being (technically) unemployed. A steady job will be welcomed with open arms, but losing some of my free time will take some getting used to. How will I be able to see exhibits such as the one above while I'm working? (Weekends.)

Speaking of weekends... have a great one! (I have a to-do list a mile long for today and blogging isn't on it. Ohh, procrastination.)

The Twindigs Take Toronto!

2010-08-03T16:21:00.003-04:00

Last week my dear friends from Nashville, Krista and Nicole, came to visit me in Toronto! It was a last-minute trip that wouldn't have happened had their original plans to travel to Israel and Egypt not been postponed until next year, which was undoubtedly very sad for them but incredibly fortunate for me. (I'm admittedly selfish.)

Anyhoo, the twins (yes, twins--both hot and single!) came last Monday evening and stayed until Friday morning for a few days of city-exploring, shopping and catching up. Thank God the weather was next to perfect during their stay, as I was told that Nashville has been nothing shy of a sauna all summer long. Yay for breaks from the heat! Too bad Toronto has turned back into a sauna this week. Yuck. But I've strayed off topic, haven't I?

Here are the highlights of Nicole and Krista's Toronto adventure!

* A trip up the CN Tower, which was a little scary, but everyone had fun while I spent a lot of time with my eyes closed. (It should be noted that part of the elevator and part of the observation deck have glass floors, which is nothing shy of uncomfortable when you're standing 1,122 feet above the ground.)

Here we are, gearing up to go to the top:

(Picture taken from Krista's camera.)

Here's a hazy view of the less-interesting side of the city from the observation deck:

(Picture taken from Ken's camera.)

Looking down into the Sky Dome while the Blue Jays played a baseball game (because that's what they do):

(Picture taken by Ken, through the glass floor that I refused to stand on.)

And here's the only proof that Ken was actually with us:

(Picture taken from Ken's camera, and boy do we look awkward.)

* A short trip through Kensington Market, followed by a really long walk to the Eaton Centre (because I, the ever-trusty tour guide, got hopelessly lost). We only spent enough time in Kensington Market to eat lunch, but spent a whole lot of time shopping at the H&M in the Eaton Centre once we found it. Priorities!

* A trip to St. Lawrence Market, followed once again by more important outings (like shopping a major clearance sale at Urban Outfitters).

* A day-long excursion to Toronto Island, which was by far the best part of their stay (for me, at least). The weather was warm, sunny and not humid, and aside from an hour-long wait in the ticket line for the ferry, the crowds were minimal. We spent our day there eating over-priced food, laying around on the beach, briefly sticking our toes in the frigid waters of Lake Ontario (and deciding anyone who swam in it must be crazy), walking around, having tea and expensive desserts at maybe the cutest cafe ever:

...and getting lost on a random trail that we thought would lead us back to the ferry. (We eventually found our way there, but not before being chased by bugs and traipsing through poison ivy.)

(Pictures taken from Nicole's camera.)

T'was a good day and week, and I was so happy to have the ladies here for a visit. Now it's back to the lonely job-hunt! *moan, groan, sob*

P.S. If you're wondering if I ever take any pictures of my own, the answer is: Yes, I do. I took this one of the city skyline from Toronto Island:

...and this one of my expensive dessert at the above-mentioned cafe:

Both from my very own camera! So there. Be proud of me.

Lately

2010-07-19T16:24:00.001-04:00

Oh me oh my. I have nothing to say here, and yet I still feel compelled to update this useless blog of mine. Maybe because it makes me feel like I'm being productive when, in all actuality, I'm just spewing verbal diarrhea for all to see. (How embarrassing.)

Life is still relatively uneventful in this corner of Lake Ontario. Ken is working full time and I'm looking for a job full time, albeit somewhat reluctantly. I'm quite frustrated with the job-search already and I've only officially been at it for approximately two weeks. I may be a tad impatient with these kinds of things, but honestly; why can't finding a job be easy? Moreover, why can't a job I actually want to have just fall into my lap? *sigh* Moving on....

I've been taking advantage of the summer weather by spending lots of time out and about in the city (in between bouts of boredom spent in front of the computer in my apartment), and I daresay my farmer's tan is coming along quite nicely. Here are some little things I've (we've) discovered on some recent outings:

Toronto has a castle. Why? I have no idea. It's called "Casa Loma," that much I know. I also know it costs $20 to enter its lavish gates, so my knowledge ends there.

Toronto has lots of money. We discovered an area called "Forest Hill" last weekend, and the homes through there are enormous and most definitely cost millions. Our curiosity got the best of us while we were walking up and down the neighborhood's (or neighbourhood's) streets last weekend and we began trying to discreetly peer in through the extravagant windows from the sidewalk. Aside from not successfully seeing much, we had been walking around for a few hours prior, wearing old shorts and t-shirts, sweating buckets in the heat, and undoubtedly looking poor and suspicious. I'm surprised we weren't arrested for "casing the joints", but aside from a few disgusted glances, no one gave us the time of day.

Toronto has a crap selection of breakfast joints. No Denny's or IHOPs or Pancake Pantries around these parts! (Oooh, how I miss the Pancake Pantry in Nashville.) But we did discover a great little breakfast place about a week ago that just opened its doors recently a mere two blocks away from our apartment. Yay! Unfortunately, it seems the rest of the city's population found out about Cora's this past weekend. When we eagerly walked over there for some blueberry pancakes on Saturday morning, we were met with a line trailing out the door, about a hundred people long. Sadness! I guess I'm going to have to start dragging my bum out of bed a little earlier on the weekends....

Hmm.... I thought I had more Toronto-based discoveries to blabber on about, but I've forgotten what they were.

I suppose in other news, Ken and I bought a "family pass" to the Art Gallery of Ontario a couple of months ago, which I think was a wise and useful investment.

I spent the afternoon there last Wednesday looking through their "Drama & Desire: Artists and the Theatre" exhibit that featured the above painting, Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (my favorite), along with other, perhaps more famous paintings. The exhibit was interesting, but not nearly as interesting as trying to find my way back out of the enormous building. This was my first time going there without Ken, who knows the place pretty well, so I ended up the most lost I've ever been indoors. The A.G.O. is like a giant maze and I plan to go back again this week for that very fun reason. (Plus, the family pass gets me a discount at the cafe.)

OK, that's enough spewing for now. And, just to err on the side of caution, I should state that none of the above photos are mine. I stole them from the web, like a good photographer.

Blazes

2010-07-06T00:03:00.003-04:00

Toronto just might be hell on earth. Seriously. Temperatures were in the upper 90s today, but felt like they were near the 1000s.

Ken and I, in an act of pure defiance, opted to ignore all heat advisories and chose to walk to all of our destinations today. We logged more than two hours of huffing and puffing up and down Toronto's smoldering streets before I nearly fainted and decided it might be a good idea to go back home. (No, I don't think I've ever sweated so many bullets in my life and, yes, now I feel positively ill.)

Speaking of smoldering, I shall admit with pride (and perhaps a tinge of embarrassment) that I saw Twilight: Eclipse this afternoon. And, yes, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner were indeed smoldering throughout the entire cringe-worthy film (although I feel a little weird saying that about Mr. Lautner, as I'm pretty sure he's only 17-ish and that makes me a creepy old woman). The movie? It was, as I said, definitely cringe-worthy on multiple occasions. But! I think the third installment of the Twilight series is far better than the first two, by leaps and bounds.

D-R-A-M-A! The movie was full of it! I'm sure tweens all over North America were torn between Team Edward and Team Jacob all weekend long. (I, myself, am an unwavering fan of Team Edward.)

Now, allow me to conclude this ridiculous post with a, "Noooooo!" I just read that tomorrow's weather is going to be as bad as, or maybe worse than today's. Where are the icy, cold vampires when you need one?

*Pictures stolen from unsuspecting websites located on Google Images.... I can't get sued for that, can I?

It's my blog and I'll vent if I want to...

2010-06-22T17:49:00.005-04:00

I might be a little bit ridiculous. I changed by blog background again, but I just couldn't help myself; the possibilities with Blogger's new design templates are endless. I think a background-change could occur every month if I don't get ahold of myself. (I don't love the one I have now, so give it a few weeks....)

OK, I'm obviously bored out of my skull and I need a job stat or I just might go crazy. Fortunately, I can officially begin my job-hunt next week, if my interview with Immigration Canada goes well this weekend (please, please, please). I've been able to keep myself productive and busy on nice days, but it seems like for every sunny day in Toronto, there's a rainy day that follows it. Note: I'm totally unmotivated and useless on rainy days. And, yes, I'm blaming the city for such wretched weather and its subsequent effects. (That's right: I said wretched.)

To add to my miserable feelings regarding Toronto, the G20 summit is coming to town this weekend and the city may as well be under lockdown. Roads have already been shut down, there are 9-foot fences lacing almost every street in our area, and herds of police officers are standing on every corner and everywhere in between. Did I mention the summit doesn't start until Saturday? The protestors have already begun their protesting, but this is Canada, so it will all be peaceful, right? (Which is why I'm sure the city felt the need to spend 1 billion dollars on security, but I'm not paying taxes yet, so I don't really care about that.) To make matters worse, over 4,000 troops will be filing into town over the next few days. Ugh. Why couldn't they have chosen Ottawa?

On a lighter note, Ken and I are leaving icky Toronto before anymore G20 madness strikes and driving down to Michigan tomorrow to spend a few days with my parents. I'm looking forward to visiting, shopping with only 6% sales tax, eating lots of The Parlour's ice cream (hopefully), and just having a break from my otherwise boring life.

There. A semi-public whining session always makes me feel a little better.

Forgotten Pictures

2010-06-16T14:53:00.002-04:00

Ken and I were going to go here today for a much-needed break from city life but, sadly, we woke up to pouring rain this morning. And, yes, it's still raining cats and dogs at 2:30 in the afternoon, with no signs of stopping. (The little picture to the left is Toronto's weather as predicted by Google... for the whole day. *sigh*)

As a result of the crappy weather, I've been forced to kill time inside all day; first making a heart-stopping breakfast of eggs and greasy bacon (so much for becoming vegetarian), then putting the finishing touches on my useless resume (it won't be useful until I can legally work in July), then cleaning already-clean parts of the apartment, and, finally, sorting through picture albums on my computer and organizing them simply for organization's sake.

Which leads me to this post, of course. I found some pictures I had neglected to post online before, so I've decided to rectify that sad little fact. (I'm bored and have little responsibility at the moment, so why the heck not?)

Here it goes!

1) Our Korean boss's daughter's wedding.

Yu-Jin's wedding occurred only a week or two before Ken and I bid Korea adieu at the beginning of March, so these pictures got lost in the mayhem of moving from one side of the planet to the other.

(Her dress was by none other than Vera Wang.)

The overall wedding was rumored to have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and this was the precise reason cited when we asked our boss why she hadn't paid us on time before our contracts were finished. (We were eventually paid in full, but not before putting up a huge, stinking fuss.)

The above picture (taken at the extravagant wedding reception) may have been posted during Facebook-days-gone-by, but I think it's cute enough to post again for posterity.

2) Our Centum Star apartment.

Our apartment in Busan may go down in history as my favorite. Of course, it didn't occur to either of us to take many pictures of it before we left, so I only have a few grainy shots I snapped a few moments before our couch and table were hauled away by their new owners.

Ugh, my heart hurts a little bit every time I think of that amazing window. I miss waking up to its view of Jangsan Mountain every morning. As it stands, we're waking up every morning to a view of everyone in the condo across from us waking up. (Money sure buys you a lot more in Korea.)

3) A weird wedding present.

Our sweet school principle in Ulsan made a little wedding present for Ken and me shortly after we were married:

Cute idea, but they wouldn't fit in either of our suitcases before we left, so they ended up in the recycling bin. *Guilty cringe*

4) My Valentine's Day present.

(My sweet tooth was over the moon.)

5) The picture from Hawaii that didn't make the Flickr cut...

...for perhaps obvious reasons. But I'm posting it because you can't help but smile a little bit when you look at it, right?

And that's all for now, folks. I'm off to go read the most boring book I've read in awhile:
I'm determined to finish it, if for no other reason than principle. (It was a winner of the Nobel Prize, so I figure it has to get interesting at some point, right?)

A full fridge and a new TV!

2010-06-13T15:41:00.002-04:00

I overdid it.

When we had people over for Friday night's birthday gathering, I thought it would be fun to make some snacks to go along with the pizza and cupcakes. After some consideration, I finally decided on guacamole and hummus served with veggies and chips. It should be noted, however, that I've never been a good judge of how much food to make for how many people, so we ended up with a lot of guacamole and hummus. We only had seven people over for the party, but I made enough to feed about a hundred. Of course, quite a bit of it was consumed at the party, but we still have enough guacamole/hummus/cupcake leftovers to feed an army.

In addition to Friday's haps, Ken's brothers, Craig and Dan, came over last night for dinner. We decided to order Indian food and, in our seemingly desperate hunger, ordered way, way, way too much. We had only made a tiny dent when all of us decided we were too stuffed to even look at the copious amounts of curries and samosas spread out in front of us. Naturally, it all ended up in the fridge.

When I opened the fridge this morning to fetch some cream for my coffee, this is what I was met with:

These are all leftovers from this weekend alone. (Except the Omega 3 tablets.... Those have been in there for awhile, completely untouched.) I'm pretty sure most of this stuff has an expiry date that will be arriving long before we can even consider consuming any of it. Sweet Moses. What to do?

To go along with our overflowing fridge, we now have an overflowing living room (in a totally good way). Ken's family generously gave him a new TV for his birthday, and its 32" fits our living room beautifully.

(I'm pretty sure this is the model we ended up with.)

I haven't had a TV in nearly two years, so this is definitely noteworthy news. I'm excited to start watching movies on a proper screen, instead of our little 13" computer screens (even though they did their jobs well).

And that's all. Have a lovely Sunday afternoon!

More Pics on Flickr!

2010-06-13T10:00:00.001-04:00

I've slowly started moving all of my old Facebook photo albums over to Flickr.com.

I finished the Malaysia set a couple of weeks ago, but I just uploaded pictures from Indonesia today. In case anyone is interested....

Click here for Malaysia:

Click here for Indonesia:

Tidbits

2010-06-12T14:46:00.002-04:00

I stealthily threw a birthday party for Ken last night. It was small, fun, and there was hardly any mention of 30 being the new 20.

We started the night at our apartment with a pizza party (courtesy of Domino's), followed by an intense game of Catchphrase, and, of course, it all ended at the noraebang where three hours of some serious tune-belting transpired. T'was a great night and I think Ken enjoyed it thoroughly, in spite of himself. Of course, I forgot to take any pictures, so the night went completely undocumented.

I did, however, follow through with my plan to make cupcakes for Ken's party and I remembered to take a picture of the finished product before tossing my camera back to its forgotten corner.

Here's the recipe:

Here's the outcome:

They aren't the most beautiful cupcakes in the world, but they just might be the tastiest! They're definitely the best cupcakes I've ever made and I plan on making them again for any occasion I deem worthy of cupcakes. (Mondays? Fridays? Two-month anniversary of living in Toronto?)

In today's news, I've decided I want to start learning to play the guitar again (I've been learning off and on for about 16 years and sure haven't accomplished much). Of course, I totally forgot to bring my guitar to Toronto with me and it's currently sitting in a closet in my parents' house... in Michigan. But thank goodness for friends who have guitars to spare! My friend, Jared, lent me his little blue guitar that he got for only $20 in Beijing a few years back. (Why didn't I see any $20 guitars when I was there?) It's a cute little thing, but it was in desperate need of a string-change, so I took it upon myself to do the job today. It's now leaning against the bookshelf in our living room with all new strings, two of which I put on backwards and another one I strung too tight (I'm waiting for it to go boinging off the guitar any second now).

Needless to say, I won't be playing it any time soon. And, yes, I'm incredibly annoyed with myself. At least it looks artsy sitting in our living room, right? *groan*

That's all for now. Ken will be arriving shortly with his brothers and a new TV in tow! Here's to more time-wasting!

Ken's Birthday is on Monday...

2010-06-09T14:11:00.004-04:00

...and I've been strictly forbidden to do anything too birthday-ish for him. Whereas I've always basked in any limelight that may be given to me on my birthday, Ken just doesn't enjoy birthday shenanigans of any kind. Which I'm slowly learning to accept (even though I love planning birthday surprises).

It should be noted, however, that Ken's anti-birthday sentiment does not mean some noraebang madness won't ensue on or around his birthday this year. No, no. The noraebang is a must for anyone's birthday. (I think Ken agrees... deep down in his heart.)

I figured a birthday cake would be completely out of the question, as it likely falls under the "birthday-ish" category, but I'm thinking maybe birthday cupcakes could be an exception? They're a little more subtle, right? He's reluctantly agreed to indulge me there (but I don't think he will approve of me hauling them to the noraebang--candles and all--for his not birthday-ish outing). So, I'm going with it.

In pursuit of the perfect birthday cupcake recipe, I stumbled upon this gem of a website. I don't know who Ming is, but I think her cupcake ideas might be brilliant (I haven't tried them yet, so I can't say for sure). This is the one I think I've decided on:

But I really can't make up my mind. There are just too many to choose from, and my sweet tooth is telling me I should try all of them. You know... because it is Ken's birthday, after all.

Pictures of the final outcome will follow (if they aren't too hideous), and maybe I can sneak some birthday noraebang pictures in while I'm at it. And happy, early birthday to Ken!

Flowers!

2010-06-08T18:55:00.002-04:00

I love summertime and all the flowers that come with it. The markets are stacked with them around Toronto these days, and they always make me feel a little happier whenever I'm out walking around the city (usually aimlessly).

Ken got these flowers for me the other day and I love them**:

(Does the my-husband-got-me-flowers thing count if I'm in the store with him and say, "Hey, let's get these"?)

I've decided that these little guys have replaced Gerbera Daisies as my favorite flower. The only problem is, I have no idea what they're called. Can anyone give me a clue? (Mom?) I tried to Google them, but it's hard to use a search engine if you don't already have the name down. I typed in "big, spidery-looking flower" which basically took me nowhere (my internet skills are apparently a bit subpar).

Here's a close-up:

Aren't they happy-looking? (And, no, "big, happy-looking flower" won't yield any useful Google results, either. I already tried.)

**Note the pukey walls in the picture.

It's raining and I can't even have a cup of coffee.

2010-06-02T14:24:00.001-04:00

I'm currently sitting at home on a cloudy, drizzly day in Toronto, while Ken is off meeting with an accountant to figure out his 2007/2008/2009 tax situation (oh, the things we forget to think about while living abroad...). I'm going a little stir crazy sitting here all alone, as I've been holed-up in this apartment for nearly 48-hours with a stomach bug of some sort. My diet currently consists of soda crackers and ginger ale, which is only adding to my misery, but I can't eat or drink anything else without it flying out one end or the other. (Too graphic? Let's move on....)

In two-week-old news, I've been approved for permanent residency in Canada! Hurray! I thought it would take ages and ages for me to become "legal," but Immigration Canada has pleasantly surprised me with their promptness (I'll be thanking them with my tax dollars all too soon). Now I'm just waiting for my passport to be returned to me from the Canadian Consulate General in Seattle (of all places), then I'll be able to legally find a job! Booooo!

Aside from becoming legal and being disgustingly sick, I haven't been up to a whole lot lately. Ken has been working temp jobs here and there and I've become a master at couch potato-ness. We did venture out to the zoo last week, which was a whole lot of fun. Zoo-Visiting-Tip: We've found that if you go to the zoo toward the end of the day and stay until closing time, you get to see the animals at their most active. They apparently know when it's time to go back inside and be fed, as most of them start pacing and getting agitated around the time the zoo closes its doors.

The rule doesn't apply to this particular giraffe, however. I'm pretty sure he stole that crate of hay, as the zookeepers walking by seemed perplexed as to how it had gotten in there. (I'm assuming this was a habit for him, though, as he appeared to be significantly chunkier than the other giraffes.)

In other, more recent news, we painted our apartment! We were getting sick of waking up every morning to blindingly-white walls, so we decided to give our place a little boost of color. Unfortunately, the "bark mulch" shade of paint we chose in the store turned out to be a purply, pinky, browny combination that neither of us is too fond of. We spent nearly ten hours on Saturday painting like mad, only to wake up the next morning to an atrocious color that had dried in streaks. We were quite dismayed when we realized a second coat would be needed, but we were hopeful that it would make the color a little less pukey.

Five additional hours later, we had streak-free walls, but the color had only improved slightly.

(Ken's face here adequately expresses the despair we felt when we realized all our labor had yielded icky results.) But what's done is done. I may not have much to do these days, but choosing a new paint color and spending another 15+ hours re-painting is simply out of the question. I don't mind saying that both Ken and I have our moments of creative-genius, so I'm sure we'll find a creative way to make our apartment presentable enough to start inviting people over again one of these days.... I just hope the creative-genius in one of us strikes sooner than later, as I'm pretty sure the color of our walls is contributing to my current nausea.

And that's all for now, folks. It's time for me to force down some more crackers and Canada Dry. Yum!

The Results of Boredom

2010-05-17T22:22:00.005-04:00

Being unemployed is great on so many levels, but it can be pretty awful on just as many other levels. I waste a whole lot of time sleeping (my alarm is set for 10a.m.), poking around on the internet (hence the reason Facebook had to go), totally disregarding calories and/or food allergies (i.e. I'm eating a lot of crap), and overhauling blog layouts that were perfectly functional before I started changing pictures, fonts, and colors. But let's talk about how much fun I'm having in the meantime!

I've been cooking and baking up a storm over the past couple of weeks and I daresay domesticity is growing on me (you'll be able to see it in my waistline all too soon). I've yielded some repulsive results, some good results, and some amazing results--hence the above I'm-eating-a-lot-of-crap statement. My favorite kitchen adventures thus far? I'm glad you asked! Let's start with these oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that I've made twice already:

These cookies have been a smash hit at parties (or, should I say, a party), and I've proudly taken credit for their deliciousness... even though I didn't take any part in inventing them.

Number two on the favorite-kitchen-adventure list is this salsa fresca recipe that accompanies a pretty yummy huevos rancheros recipe (not pictured because it was too ugly):

We had the above-mentioned combo in celebration of Cinco de Mayo, along with Ken's homemade margaritas that would have been tasty had part of the faulty-tequila cork not fallen into the blender and into the mix....

Other favorite goods of late include this coconut red lentil soup we made tonight for dinner (highly recommended):

And, finally, this banana bread recipe that I forgot to take a picture of before demolishing it.

Ken has enjoyed cooking lately, too, and it appears he's finally warming up to my apron that he so hated when I first modeled it for him a few weeks ago:

In other news, Toronto has noraebangs! Remember the private karaoke rooms in Korea I was always raving about? Well, Toronto boasts a fairly large selection of noraebangs in Korea Town. Of course, Ken and I have already paid one of these fine establishments a visit (twice). We went last Friday night with our good friends, Kevin and Meaghan--who also just returned from Korea, and sang our hearts out to the tunes of Mika, Bon Jovi, Lady Gaga, The Beatles, and just about any other artist we recognized in the song books (actually recognizing the songs was of little importance).

(We were really excited to be there.)

When we were finished singing and could no longer speak, we headed out and noticed a sign on the noraebang's door that read: "Unlimited singing time for the price of one hour, Monday--Wednesday before 9p.m." Seriously? To an unemployed Ken and Liz, there couldn't be better news! (Unless they actually offered us jobs.) I think it goes without saying that, from here on out, we'll be living at the noraebang.

Hawaii

2010-05-14T12:41:00.011-04:00

I've just finished uploading our photos from Hawaii onto Flickr. You can view them here.

A synopsis of our Hawaiian adventure:

We spent two lovely weeks on the island of Kauai. (This much-needed vacation came right after a couple incredibly stressful months of working and packing up our lives in Korea, and right before our much-anticipated return to North America.)

The weather on Kauai was iffy, at best, but we enjoyed our lazy days there and would go back again in a heartbeat.

We spent most of our time taking road trips around the amazingly beautiful island (no exaggeration), hiking in between rain showers, watching the biggest ocean waves we've ever seen (while remaining safely perched on the beach), rafting and getting pukey in said ocean waves, watching whales swim lazily near the pier by the airport, building our muscles by kayaking in fiercely strong rivers (perhaps a bit of an exaggeration), and, finally, getting re-accustomed to the taste of good ol', fast American food.

Mostly, we were lazy and slept off a lot of jet-lag while on Kauai. Call it a waste, but it was our vacation, after all.

Goodbye Facebook!

2010-05-12T23:55:00.007-04:00

Hello... time and productivity.

I've done the unthinkable: I've deleted my Facebook account.

How does it feel? It feels terrible. (Facebook went out of its way to make me feel terrible as I was deleting it. All the more reason to quit!) But I also feel slightly liberated and extremely proud of myself, as if I've just quit eating chocolate forever or something (not that I would ever do such a thing).

Why did I quit Facebook? Because I was wasting too much time on it. And because I felt like I was keeping in touch with people when all I really did was stalk them... and that's just a little bit creepy and weird, right? So, Facebook is no more.

Of course, we'll see if I've caved and rejoined within a week from now. (Be on the lookout for my friendship request.)

Toronto!

2010-05-02T22:08:00.003-04:00

Korea is history and Toronto is the present and future, ladies and gents. After weeks of scouring the city for a place to live, we finally landed an apartment in this building, in this unit, in the very heart of Toronto (or downtown, if you want to take the un-romantic approach). We moved into our new home last Monday, but not before going on a major shopping-spree at IKEA! We bought this couch:

This bed:

And these chairs with this table:

They look far more impressive and far less drab in real life, but pictures of the apartment will come later. I'm feeling far too lazy to take any at the moment, plus I didn't actually log into my blog with the intention of showing off my apartment or posting pictures of my IKEA purchases... but there you have them!

First, let me just say that Toronto is a new city for me entirely. Before making her my home, I had really only spent a few weeks here during the summer of 2008 while visiting Ken between our stints in Korea. I don't know anything about Toronto, to be perfectly honest. So, during my days of unemployment (which will last awhile longer, as I still can't work legally in good ol' Canada) I've been meandering around the city, trying to learn her ways. Ken has been my tour guide (an excellent one at that, since he is a genuine Torontonian), and I've been slowly getting to know the city and slowly warming up to her.

Today was one of my touristy days. I wanted to see St. Lawrence Market (someone on the internet said it was one of the greatest markets in the world... he/she has the propensity to exaggerate), so we meandered in that direction after finally getting our lazy bums out of our pajamas at around noon. After looking at a map of Toronto, I assumed the market would only be about a 20-minute walk from our apartment and I was--Wrong! I think it was more like 45 minutes, but I didn't actually time it. It just definitely felt like 45 minutes.

When we finally got there, we were disappointed to find the food section of the market was closed for the day. Boooo! So we moseyed on over to the antiques section of the market instead and it appeared to be open and booming with business. It was kind of fun to wander through the mounds of junk and/or treasures stacked all over the place (I think I was feeling a bit pessimistic this afternoon, however, as there seemed to be more junk). When we went back outside, we found a fun little table stacked with old toys that I recognized from the days of my childhood... and, once again, this was an antique market. *sigh*

After about an hour or so at St. Lawrence, we decided to walk another 15 minutes to the distillery district. I think it used to be an old whiskey distillery, but it has been transformed into trendy/shopping central.

Not that you can tell from my fabulous photography skills, but there are lots of cute, little, expensive-as-all-get-out shops and restaurants within these old brick walls (where I'm assuming whiskey once flowed). It was a fun place to poke around, while abiding by the "just look, don't touch" rule. Of course, I fell in love with a hundreds-possibly-thousands-of-dollars painting and a little $70 tree (I sometimes have expensive taste without even meaning to). The painting was easily passed up due to the dwindling numbers in my bank account, but the tree....

It is a pretty little tree, isn't it? Not that it would have survived the week in my plant-killing hands. I pried myself away and left it where I found it before meandering back to my dull, plant-less, tree-less abode. Anyhoo, I thought the distillery was a great little area for a Sunday afternoon stroll and I definitely plan to make a habit of it.... I just have to leave my wallet at home to avoid further temptation.

Hopefully I can discipline myself to take more pictures of Toronto while I'm exploring, and blog a little more now that I'm all settled in (...and jobless and bored out of my skull). But for now, at this very moment, I'm going to explore my freezer for some ice cream. Yay!

Sad Times...

2010-02-07T01:46:00.003-05:00

I'm sick of moving. Because I hate it. I'm especially sick of moving from one continent to another, picking and choosing which of my possessions to keep and which to get rid of, loading up box after box only to realize I have too many boxes and therefore need to get rid of more things due to the unsightly costs of global shipping. The hardest things to part with? Our furniture. I love our furniture, but we have now sold each item on our furniture-to-sell-list. I've never been one to get too attached to any of my possessions, but this time around I'm finding it harder to part with some things. These things in particular:

Our couch. I love our couch. It's so comfortable, and the best part? We bought it brand new for an insanely cheap price (if only furniture in North America were so cheap...). As of February 24th, this cozy, lovely thing will no longer be ours:

An Unimportant Note: This was the picture taken for the classified ad; this isn't how our living room is actually set up.

See the bookshelves and lamps there in the picture? Those are also some of my faves and those, too, are gone. *sigh*

Our table. I love our little table. As of February 27th, it too will no longer be ours.

I know it's small, but it's the perfect size for dinner and games and whatever else we might use a table for (insert questionable joke...heehee).

Our futon and our other table. These two are long gone and now we have a useless, empty room in our apartment.

OK, maybe the room isn't entirely empty now. We may have started to use the floor space for our dirty clothes in lieu of a laundry hamper....

Our food processor. I know these things are a dime a dozen in North America, but this baby was hard to find in Korea and I have cherished it every day since we discovered it.

(This is also a picture we used for the classifieds.... It isn't usually set up so nicely on the floor in display-fashion with all of its attachments.)

There are lots of things I'm going to miss and lots of things I'm going to have to buy all over again when we move to Toronto (Canadian government willing). We hardly have long-term plans for our stint in Canada, so who knows how long it will be before we do this all over again (I fear not long). But I suppose for a girl (or woman, depending) who doesn't care much for stability, I shouldn't be complaining, as I'm usually chomping at the bit to move on. It's just the process of moving on that I hate so much. However, I am looking forward to the new things awaiting us in the Great White North (sans the cold and snow), I just wish I could fast-forward through the transitional, starting-all-over-again part of it.

Who's Going to Hawaii?

2010-01-31T02:29:00.000-05:00

I am! (Ken is, too.) Thanks to my lovely friends, Jessie and Ryan, we were given an excellent idea to find a flight back to North America from Korea that would include a layover in Hawaii. Success! Not only did we find a flight from Seoul to Honolulu for $500, we also found another flight departing from Honolulu to Toronto--ten days later--for only $300! The combined total cost of the flights came out to less than a direct flight from Seoul to Toronto. I still haven't figured out how it works out that way, but I'm most definitely not complaining, especially considering Ken and I aren't paying a dime for those tickets. (Our employment contracts state that our employer must pay for our flights back home. Yay!)

First, it should be noted that the most ridiculous part of my excitement regarding Hawaii stems from the fact that our wretched flight from Korea to North America will be broken up quite nicely. Getting from Korea to home is the longest, most painful flight I've ever endured and I've been dreading it all year (I've already done it five times). But this way, I'm only facing 8-hour increments on a plane, which is far more tolerable than the usual 14+.

Back to Hawaii: After our tickets were selected and paid for, both Ken and I were kind of at a loss as to where in Hawaii we should go. We've been to some pretty amazing islands and beaches around Southeast Asia and we were a little worried that some of the Hawaiian islands just wouldn't compare. (We're such travel snobs.) But after asking for some advice on Facebook and poking around on the internet for a few hours/days, we were finally sold on Kauai. It has been cited by a number of websites (and some of our friends have heartily agreed) as "the most amazing place in the world." Well, I guess we'll just have to see about that.

According to Google Images, this is what Kauai has the potential to look like:

I know it's foolish to get my hopes up, but... they're up. And, Kauai? You'd better provide the sunshine required for a nice tan.

Birthday & Beef

2010-01-09T22:05:00.017-05:00

Story #1: My Birthday Adventures

My birthday this year (January 2nd!) was spent in a freezing cold airport in northern China--waiting for a flight to Seoul--for most of its entirety. It was an exhausting day but, thankfully, I have some dear friends who surprised me with a birthday cake while we were sitting in a Chinese KFC in Dalian, China (a city that turned out to be surprisingly huge, considering I had never even heard of it before... but I suppose it is China).

The cake and surprise were great but, needless to say, my 22nd birthday (ahem!) won't go down in history as my best birthday ever. My most unusual birthday? Perhaps.

Ken, however, redeemed the last birthday of my twenties this past Friday evening. He very kindly called together a group of ten people to have a little belated-birthday party for me, in all of my mopey, nobody-loves-me glory. (I'm a master at feeling sorry for myself!) It started out at my favorite Thai restaurant in Korea for some yummy green curry and ended in my favorite noraebang in Haeundae (my favorite because it comes complete with a view of Haeundae beach, allowing us to serenade the unaware-people going for a stroll along the shoreline). It was the perfect little birthday outing and I wouldn't have wanted to celebrate it any other way! And without further ado, here are some photos of the evening's highlights:

Here is Mel at the Thai restaurant, trying to take apart her "shrimp" plate that she had ordered (she had no idea it would look like this):

Does anyone else find this entree a little terrifying? Kudos to Mel for eating the whole thing (except the legs and eyeballs)!

Now, from here on out, the photos are about to get blurry and grainy. The reason for this being that, once again, we only took video and forgot to take actual pictures that night. Since I've found uploading videos on this blog to be next to impossible, I decided to take a few still-shots from the birthday videos. As I've mentioned before, I'm either really bad at doing this, or getting a clear shot from Ken's video camera is simply impossible (I have a feeling it's probably the former, though). Here we go....

Here are the ladies singing "Mama Mia" at the noraebang:

If we're looking a little too serious about this business, it's because most of us only really knew the chorus of the song.

Here are some of the boys singing "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" (a song they take very seriously, as indicated by Ken's delicate grip on the microphone and Kevin's emphatic hand-motions):

Here's my birthday cheese cake, courtesy of Costco, complete with ten candles (very gracious, considering I'm practically old enough to be a 10-year-old's mother--eek!):

An evil-looking picture, no doubt! Here's the only other still-image I could grab of the cake-event, taken while Mel and Gino sang the Korean-version of the "Happy Birthday Song":

Hello, crazy eyes!

And, last but not least, a picture of our impromptu dance party that took place while Ken bellowed out the notes to "The Twist":

Just a teeny bit embarrassing, I'd say! But a whole lot of fun, nevertheless.

And now moving on to our 2nd story: The Bulgogi Adventure

For my birthday, Mel and Gino generously gave me a gift certificate to a new, fancy bulgogi restaurant in Haeundae. Now, bulgogi is a Korean food I like because--hey!--you can't go too wrong with beef, right? Unless, of course, it's raw. Well, last night Ken and I decided to take advantage of my birthday gift, so we meandered on over to Bulgogi Brothers (the name of said restaurant) for an early dinner (which also happened to be the first meal of our pathetically lazy day). After arriving at the restaurant and being seated in a cozy booth in our own little corner, we were surprised to find the entire menu was in Korean! (Duh, we live in Korea, but usually popular restaurants include an English menu around here, so we were ignorantly surprised, nevertheless.) We can both read Korean, but we understand very little, so we decided it would be a safe option to simply order the standard "couple set" and see where that would take us. Guess what? It took us to an enormous tray of raw beef! Some of the beef was meant to be cooked on the grill in front of us, but a fairly large portion of it was not meant to be cooked at all. That's right: We accidentally ordered beef that was meant to be eaten in its raw form! Eww. Now, if I hadn't known the meat was supposed to be eaten like this, I would have given the restaurant some points for presentation:

...but it was meant to be eaten like this, so they lost some points (even though it was our own fault for not learning enough Korean to understand the menu).

Anyway, to make a long story short, we both ignored our gag-reflexes and tried to pretend like eating a raw, freshly-killed-cow was great. Ken ate his entire share of it and I put a large dent in mine (I was quite proud of myself). Truthfully? It didn't taste too bad. It tasted like... beef that happened to be raw. The texture, on the other hand, was a bit repulsive. I was proud of myself for eating as much as I did because I'm extremely sensitive to texture, which makes me a bad candidate for mushroom-eating of any kind. Raw meat? I would rather eat my toenails, thank you very much. But I did it! And here's what I looked like while doing it:

The look of terror on my face isn't even remotely fake. Coincidentally, the sign in the background resembles the exact thought in my head at that very moment.

And here's Ken, not handling it much better than I did:

To be fair to Bulgogi Brothers, the rest of the meat was pretty good (the cooked meat). It was definitely high-quality meat (or maybe I'm just assuming it was, since it was pretty pricey). Here's a not-so-flattering photo of some of our other entrees:

And there you have it. Our bulgogi adventure. To top it all off, it gave us both diarrhea just a few short hours after eating it. Of course, it may have been more psychologically-induced than raw-beef-induced. Regardless, my new New Year's resolution? Become a vegetarian!

Shanghai

2010-01-03T01:47:00.016-05:00

We are back from Shanghai, after 19 hours spent in crappy Chinese airports and traveling by plane and by car in what should have been a 2-hour journey. It should be noted that cheap tickets are not always the way to go when traveling, especially when the amount of money you're saving falls under the hundred-dollar mark due to the extra time spent traveling. And, yes, I'm still tired and grumpy from yesterday's ridiculousness. Why am I updating my blog in such a mood? Because I made a New Year's resolution to blog more, just for the sake of blogging more. So, here I go....

Shanghai is a lovely city with lots of people, lots of culture, lots of great architecture, lots of great shopping, and lots of amazing food. I think it's fair to say that if one were to set foot in only Shanghai, they would never believe China is a Communist country. (Of course, China's ban on Facebook was a bit of a reminder of where I was all week.) After this trip in particular, I've resolved to learn more about Communism, as Shanghai seems to be bustling with Capitalism these days (seemingly even more so than when I was there a few years ago) and I've failed to see how the two can go hand-in-hand. Anyway, I've strayed off topic a bit. Let's talk about the highlights of Shanghai, shall we?

The food:

We found some little hole-in-the-wall places in Shanghai that were dingy and gross-looking but that had some of the best Chinese food I've ever eaten. The best part? Each meal came out to around $2 for each person! Exhibits A and B:

The places that weren't considered all that cheap still came out to less than $8 a person and therefore couldn't be passed up. We found a Vietnamese/Chinese fusion restaurant that fell into this category and the food was am.a.zing. Here's a picture of Ken eating his share of that particular meal:

Note: My part of the meal is the little dish in the lefthand corner. I would say Ken's eyes are bigger than his stomach, but dude ate his entire share (and, yes, he almost threw up when he was finished).

The street food in Shanghai was also really good. The steamed dumplings and the fried flat bread in particular were so good and they were only a few cents for each! Unfortunately, they didn't make it onto the camera before they made it into our stomachs.

The hidden nooks and crannies:

One area I fell in love with in Shanghai was a little area called Taikang Road in the French Concession. The road itself looked pretty dull, but when we turned down a little alleyway, a hidden little town was unlocked! It was an old-school Chinese area that has become tourist-friendly with its art galleries and cafes without losing its authenticity (for the time being, anyway). Ken and I wandered around the maze-like area for hours, finding new little alleys and shops that seemed to get cuter the further in we went.

The shopping:

I didn't actually do a lot of shopping while in Shanghai, but it's a great place to at least window shop. (I could only afford to look!) I think the name of their main shopping district is Nanjing Road and it is exceptionally pricey and exceptionally busy. Ken said he read somewhere that Nanjing Road is one of the busiest shopping districts in the world and I definitely believe it. We were there on a Monday afternoon (a non-busy time), and this is what we saw:

Our friends went down there again on Friday night and this is what they saw:

(Picture stolen without permission from Kevin Smith's Facebook.)

Yikes! Anyway, there are lots of not-so-expensive markets around Shanghai that were entertaining to go through, and the shops in the afore-mentioned Taikang Road area had so many fun little gadgets. (Some of my family members scored in belated Christmas presents from around there, but I'm giving no hints!)

The city skyline:

The Bund area was under construction for the upcoming World Expo all week, so our view of the city skyline was a bit skewed. We did find a bridge that offered some good picture-taking opportunities, though:

(Our couple-shot was ugly, so you get to see the individual photos.)

The smog was unbelievably thick all week and even our extensive photo-doctoring couldn't get rid of it. Regardless, the Shanghai skyline (or this part of it, anyway) is pretty impressive.

There are a few more pictures and a few more stories from our Shanghai excursion, but I have to unpack now and do a bazillion loads of laundry before tomorrow. I'll conclude this little post of mine by saying that, all in all, our trip was a good one. Maybe I'll post a few more pictures later. Maybe not.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-24T05:09:00.006-05:00

It's Christmas Eve here in Korea. It's Christmas Eve eve back home, in the Western Hemisphere. I love Christmastime and this year is no exception, but I'm feeling particularly homesick at the moment. The song "I'll Be Home for Christmas" just took its turn on my iPod's Christmas playlist, and now I'm feeling mopey and nostalgic (but mostly mopey). Regardless, Christmas is a time for remembering old traditions while making new ones, right? This year just happens to be leaning toward the new way of celebrating the holidays and, hopefully, some of the old traditions will be reinstated next year when we're (hopefully) home.

Our little Christmas tree now looks downright itty bitty, thanks to my lovely parents. They sent an enormous Christmas package last week loaded with a heap of wrapped Christmas gifts for Ken and me. You'd better believe I've had in incredibly hard time not tearing into any of them before Christmas morning, but I've refrained! Those tempting Christmas presents, combined with Ken's and my stockings--our new Christmas tradition (it's amazing how much stuff (and how much money) can fit into one stocking!)--make it feel more like Christmas at home, instead of Christmas in Korea. So, tomorrow will be filled with presents, friends, Christmas parties and Skype dates with family, all of which will distract us from the 10,000 miles that separate us from where we'd rather be. It will be good. I still miss seeing my family, though. And snow. And safe eggnog (it's a miracle I didn't die of salmonella poisoning from the eggnog I attempted to make last year).

Here's a picture of our teeny tree:

OK, a few gifts are missing here. Our tree looks more loaded now than it did earlier when I took this photo. But taking another picture is just too much work when the battery in your camera is dead and you can't find the charger....

Anyway, without further ado: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the McMunday's! (Ha!) Hopefully we'll be seeing your lovely faces in 2010!

The "Wedding": Four Months After the Fact

2009-12-21T00:20:00.004-05:00

Note: This post is probably only of interest to my mother.

I borrowed Ken's camera last week to take pictures of the furniture we're trying to sell off before leaving Korea, and I found a bunch of pictures and video from our "wedding" trip to Seoul still on the camera! That fateful trip was way back in September and I had apparently forgotten the photos even existed. Ken said he is going to put them together in one presentable movie but, impatient as I am, I decided to jump the gun and post a few of them here. (Note: This is only a preview of what might take years to finish.)

Pictures first. Here we are on the KTX train heading to Seoul, clearly feeling a little apprehensive about practically eloping:

And here are the mountains of paperwork we had to fill out for both of our embassies:

The number at the City Ward's Office that terminated our single-hood (dun dun dun!):

And this:

which resulted in this:

Now time for some exceptionally boring video. It should be noted that I have a bad habit of muttering, so don't even bother trying to understand what I'm saying (even I can't decipher what's coming out of my own mouth). It should also be noted that when the camera is turned on, we both suddenly feel like we have an audience and things immediately become awkward. So with that little disclaimer, here we go....

Wandering the streets of Seoul, trying to find the City Ward's Office:

Our impromptu attempt at the wedding march:

[Awkwardness Level: High]

*So embarrassing!*

Here we are, signing our lives away (this video is unnecessarily long, so feel free to skip it all together):

Oh my gosh, my fingernails are disgusting! Moving on....

Here is our comfortably modern W Hotel room, where our official honeymoon took place:

And I apparently wasn't paying attention to the fact that Ken was recording.

Here is a picture of the fridge in our room:

Please excuse my cheap side for just a moment: Do you see the blue bottles of water in the door? $14 a piece! And do you see the tiny bottles of mango juice above the water? $12! The small bottle of champagne was $85, and the Cafri beer (one of Korea's own) was something like $20 a bottle. Thank goodness I happened to look at the price list before thirstily opening one of the water bottles, otherwise we would have been in for a sore surprise upon receiving our final bill.

And last, but not least, a picture of our first wedding present ever, given to us by one of our least favorite students:

(Not sure why Ken is topless....)

And that's all for now, folks. Geez Louise, I don't think I'll ever put videos on my blog again, as it literally took 20 minutes for each one to upload. Did I do it the wrong way, or does it always take so long??

He's got looks that books take pages to tell....

2009-12-06T05:55:00.006-05:00

Last Saturday was a big night: Ken and I, along with a few friends, made the long drive to Seoul to see my new (second) love live. Mika.

Mika is so weird, so fun, and so talented (and I definitely have a crush) so you can imagine how excited I was when I found out he would be performing in South Korea of all places.

!!!

The venue in Seoul was surprisingly small, considering how popular Mika seems to be these days (unbeknownst to me until this past summer when some friends introduced me to his first album.... I'm extremely out of touch with pop culture these days). I was glad it was such a small place, however, because Ken and I didn't feel enthusiastic enough to fight our way to the front of the crowd and subsequently got shoved to the back of the venue. Still, we were able to see Mika and his band clearly and managed to grab some pretty awesome video (Ken did all of the videoing, so I really shouldn't pretend to take credit). We didn't, however, think to take actual pictures, so I had to grab a few stills from said videos and--believe me!--they don't look good. (I should have let Ken do it since it's his camera, but I was getting impatient.) Regardless of the disasters I created, I'm posting a couple of stills that didn't turn out too bad:

The man in all his fantastically weird glory....

The show was a.ma.zing. Quite possibly the best show I've ever seen. Those of you who have heard Mika's music know how crazy-high this guy can sing (per Wikipedia: rumored a five-octave vocal range; he apparently claims it's only three and a half), and hearing him live didn't even remotely disappoint. He was jumping all over the place and still managed to hit all of those ridiculous notes. I would even venture to say he sounds better singing in real life than he does through my iPod! And, really, you can't say that about every musician, can you? And for some added fun, the show was full of lots of golden confetti (I found some in my underwear after the show, and I'm still not sure how that happened...), black lights, and huge balloons for the crowd's bouncing pleasure. T'was a good night indeed.

And I will conclude my Mika-promotional-post with a terrible still-image I grabbed of Ken and me while we were waiting in line before the show:

(Most unnecessary blog picture ever.)

Moley Christmas

2009-11-14T02:14:00.008-05:00

In Korea, planning for Christmas proves to be a disaster nearly every year. My first Christmas in Korea wasn't a big deal, as I was due to return to North America a mere two weeks after Christmas anyway. Nevertheless, it wasn't really the same not having family around, not having a Christmas tree, and eating kimchi chigae in lieu of Christmas dinner.

My second year in Korea, I had a Scrooge of a boss who didn't feel the need to grant me any time off for Christmas. I was allowed one week of vacation at the beginning of December (he purposefully chose that week because it wasn't the two weeks I had requested) and since I didn't consider that enough time to go back to North America (24-hours of travel both ways isn't much incentive to go back for a short time), I went to the Philippines instead and celebrated Christmas day with a group of other stranded expats when I returned to Korea.

My third Christmas in Korea was actually spent in Indonesia, although it was almost cancelled one week prior in a moment of nostalgia and homesickness (a look at my bank account and the thought of jet-lag prevailed, however). My Indonesian Christmas turned out to be a good one, as it was the day Ken proposed, so I really can't complain.

This year I solemnly vowed to come home for Christmas, no matter what stood in my way. I've been looking forward to a traditional Christmas all year, as I haven't had one with my family in three years. I didn't take into account, however, that airfare might shoot up to about $2,500 for a ticket to Detroit. That, on top of the promise of being jet-lagged the entire holiday, caused me to rethink my previous vow. Then I started the application process for residency in Canada and realized I wouldn't be able to legally work in Canada for awhile after my arrival, thus creating a greater need to penny-pinch. Needless to say, Christmas this year was starting to look like a bleak, two-week vacation of sitting in gloomy Korea, missing my family and feeling sorry for myself. That is, until some friends of mine found super cheap tickets to Shanghai!

Now, I've already been to Shanghai some years ago (the above picture is legitimately mine). I really loved the city, plus it's far better than sitting around here doing a whole lot of nothing for two weeks, right? Right! Ken hasn't been to Shanghai, either, so it will be fun for him to see it. The other bonus included in this little excursion is a connection we have in Shanghai who is allowing us to stay in his apartment for free for a full week! The whole trip should cost about 1/5 of the price of one ticket home. It certainly won't be as nice as Christmas with the family, but it's something to look forward to at the very least. Especially the food!

Yum! (This picture is not legitimately mine.)

Now it's time to completely change topics. Let's talk about the moles on my face.

They have been a cause of vanity-related grief and annoyance my whole life, but never to the point of caring enough to have them removed. Within the last couple of years, however, they've started to grow (much to my dismay). Now, I'm quite vain and there is no denying it. My laziness, however, prevails over my vanity more often than not (hence my bad showering habits), even if my vanity turns into a legitimate health concern. After months (even years) of making excuses for why I couldn't have those pesky moles removed, I finally decided to make an appointment last week with a cosmetic dermatologist here in Korea... and last night was the big night! The doctor used a laser to remove all three moles from my face and I'm happy to report that I was in and out in only ten minutes, pain free! My face, on the other hand, is a huge mess at the moment. Since a couple of my moles were obnoxiously perched on top of a couple of veins, they bled quite a bit and now my face is covered in bandages. And this is how I will look for the next six weeks:

Lord only knows how I'll look once these things are taken off. Ironically, my number one concern has nothing to do with appearance at the moment. I'm too preoccupied with the reaction my face seems to be having to the bandage tape. It itches so badly that I kind of want to scratch my face off. And I can't touch it. Argh.

It's going to be a long six weeks, and I think I'm more excited about having my bandages taken off than I am about Christmas in Shanghai (but I'm still pretty excited about Shanghai).

And again....

2009-11-02T08:23:00.011-05:00

I'm a liar. I didn't make apple cider with my friends on Sunday and I celebrated Halloween again, despite my earlier anti-Halloween declaration. So, let's start with Halloween, shall we?

First, it should be noted that I can't always withstand peer-pressure. There were Halloween parties going on all over town on Saturday night, but Ken and I (acting like a couple of old fogies) decided to sit at home in protest while sipping on tea and teaching ourselves how to do the moonwalk (we're weird old fogies). However, a couple of texts and a phone call later (from peers who were pressuring), I found myself running around the house trying to throw together a costume with only ten minutes to spare. Now, I would like to think that I'm a creative individual in times of crises but, alas, I'm not. The best no-prep-time costume idea I could come up with was "white trash" [insert sheepish wince]. Aside from probably being a snobby and/or politically incorrect costume, I'll be the first to admit that it was lame. But, as mentioned before, I only had ten minutes and a limited wardrobe to work with (keep your "What's so different about you dressing as white trash?" comments to yourself, thank you). The costume kept getting more elaborate as the night progressed and I'm pretty sure I just looked like a gangster wanna-be idiot by the time I went home. Regardless, it was a fun night. My friend's (Mel) boyfriend's (Gino) band (got that?) was playing at a local venue that night and they were really good. They looked good, too, as all of the band members were dressed up as ajummas. Anyway, without further ado, here are some Halloween pictures that you've all probably seen on Facebook already:

Gino and his ajumma band (picture stolen from Mel's Facebook):

Andrea, Mel, Meaghan (great costumes) and me (boooo!):

Looking a little bit scary:

OK, now moving on to the apple cider thing. It didn't happen. We (Meaghan, Andrea, and I) made chocolate cupcakes instead (from this chocolate cake recipe and this coconut frosting recipe; I highly recommend both!). The apple cider thing might have happened if we wouldn't have had a couple of disasters with the cupcakes....

First it was this:

(Some of the cupcakes caved in.)

Then it was this:

(The icing turned into a mucus-y goo.)

(And here we are being unnecessarily dramatic about it.)

Anyway, with some quick thinking and some tweaking here and there, we finally managed to salvage the whole kit and caboodle, but we were left with no time for the apple cider adventure. Maybe next weekend? Here are the cupcakes:

I realize they don't look very appetizing, but they tasted really, really good (especially considering they're relatively healthy).

And off to bed I go.

Happy-ish Halloween

2009-10-31T01:29:00.010-04:00

Today is technically Halloween, but yesterday was it for me. And I shall never celebrate it again if I have a choice. We had an enormous Halloween party at our school for the kiddies, and let's just say that I was pretty much ready to shoot myself by the end of the day. I've come to the conclusion that when you put 4 and 5 year-olds in costumes, they are suddenly filled with pure evil and they become irrevocably uncontrollable. Their only redemption yesterday was the fact that they looked super cute all dressed up in their Halloween garb. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of the kindergarten students (or myself; I went as a witch--a scary one, apparently, as I made two kids cry) but I did, however, get some pictures of the elementary kids who come to our school in the afternoon. They were by far the worst behaved of the day; repeatedly stealing my witch's hat, stabbing me with their swords, pitchforks, wands, etc. and screaming and running just for the sake of screaming and running. But I know come Monday I'll love them a little bit again... maybe.

You will notice the store tags still attached to the monster's head.

These two were clearly unimpressed by any of our attempts at entertaining them.

And this one was doing an impression of one of our former foreign teachers. The little guy can't be accused of having a poor sense of humor.

In other news, I think a couple of my friends and I are going to attempt making homemade apple cider tomorrow. I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared. I hate wasting food but, most of the time, my cooking experiments leave me with edible yet repulsive results. I will give a full report when we're finished.

Quit staring! And other ramblings.

2009-10-17T03:54:00.017-04:00

I'm currently sitting in Starbucks in Haeundae; the usual spot where I plunk myself down whenever Ken and I decide to have a healthy break from each other. He's usually a lot more creative with his Liz-less outings (exploring new parts of the city, going to the movies, etc.), whereas I usually make a beeline straight for Starbucks as soon as we part ways. I hate donating any of my paycheck to this place, but they're one of the few coffee establishments around here that supports my internet addiction--on top of my coffee addiction--by providing free wifi. (I have some issues.) Anyway, I noticed a woman sitting behind me a few minutes ago who won't stop staring at my computer screen. She's failed to realize that I can see her reflection clearly in my screen and can therefore see the way she keeps craning her neck to see over my shoulder. (I hope she understands English so she'll stop once she reads this.)

In some notable news, I've started my application process to obtain permanent residency in Canada (the plan is to move there come March when we're finished teaching in Korea). Honestly? The process makes me want to jump out the window... which is precisely why I'm updating my blog right now and ignoring the stack of application forms currently sitting next to me, waiting to be filled out. I have made some progress, however. I had the required medical exam done last week by a designated doctor (designated by the Canadian government, apparently) to prove that I'm healthy enough to depend upon Canada's health care system. The exam went relatively smoothly, but the blood test rendered my arm bruised and bloodied for a couple of days after. Ah yes, let me whine about that little story for just a moment....

It should be noted that I hate having my blood taken and I'm usually a pretty big baby about it, whether or not the situation warrants it. This time, however, it was slightly warranted (slightly). First, I was a little horrified to find out that I would be having my blood taken at a small table in the corner of the busy waiting area of the hospital. Much to my dismay, I was the only foreigner in the hospital and thus gained quite the audience for my blood-taking procedure. I was pleased, however, when the needle went into my right arm and the whole process went on without incident (read: without me fainting), and I couldn't help but look around the room proudly while mentally saying, "See? I'm a big girl. I can handle needles!" But (there's always a "but") when the nurse pulled the needle out of my arm, you would have thought she had just removed the cork from a champagne bottle. A stream of red went shooting out of my arm and all over the table in front of me. First of all, I had no idea my blood was capable of gaining such height. Secondly, it was quite embarrassing when the nurse let out a horrified shriek the moment it occurred and recoiled from my arm with a look of total disgust on her face. Needless to say, it drew a whole lot of unwanted attention. People were pointing and staring, and I wasn't just imagining it. The worst part? They couldn't find any band aids or tape to get my angry blood under control. Which led me to question: What kind of a hospital doesn't have band aids? Anyway, I was left holding a wad of tissue over my arm for half an hour before my vein finally saw it fit to stop overreacting.

Once I was finished with the above ordeal and I was declared perfectly healthy by the doctor, Ken and I decided to spend the rest of our afternoon at my favorite temple in Busan (Beomosa), which was conveniently located only one subway stop away from the hospital. Sadly, we realized upon our arrival that most of the temple was being renovated, so it wasn't nearly as charming as it usually is. Regardless, we took a couple of pictures before we meandered away.

(The green tarp provides a lovely background for this picture....)

(A big bell.)

In other news, Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving and since most of my friends here (plus the husband) are all Canadian, we made a huge dinner on Sunday to celebrate. I've never seen a turkey in this country, so we settled on roast chicken for the occasion and it was the next best thing. The menu was complete with vegetarian gravy, mashed potatoes, a broccoli and cauliflower casserole, carrots, and rice flour rolls. It was the best meal I've had in ages. The dessert, as always, was by far my favorite part. There was pumpkin pie (thank you, Costco!), butterscotch pie, and apple crisp... and I ate an obscene amount of all three. Needless to say, I had a Thanksgiving-dinner-hangover the next day.

(Here's my plate on the first round... I think I had three in total--yikes!)

And here's a picture of Ken smoking our new hookah pipe that our friend Kevin brought back from Thailand for us:

It's small, but it works perfectly. It's great for cool autumn evenings like tonight. Yay for blackening our lungs!

OK, enough of this blogging business. I really should attack this pile of application papers.... Ugh. Oh, and the nosey lady who I previously mentioned no longer seems to find my computer screen very interesting. She just up and left.