Trudging back to Uni....

....to get my UPass and textbooks. In the middle of first-year orientation.

It really warms my heart to see them in the bookstore, HAPPILY buying EVERY single textbook on their list, and then proceeding out the doors with 2 large, bulging, incredibly heavy, yellow UoA bags. Just like me in my first year. And then like me, at the end of the year, you realize that half of those books are still in their original plastic wrapping, with nary a fingerprint on them, and the other half were opened because that's where the prof gets his/her homework questions from. Ahh.....

I ended up buying only one book.....

Anyways, on my way to CAB to get breakfast, I went through quad, and ironic enough, I got stuck in the middle of an engineering group. xD The one odd thing this year was....THERE WERE NO CHEERS! Whaaaa? Maybe I wasn't out long enough....but I didn't hear a single faculty cheer while I was on campus. Huh. I wanted to hear the nursing one. :(

Fixed the Router

You may have won the battles....

....but I won the war.

:D

"Sorry, it's sold out."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

That was yesterday night at Scotiabank Theatres....when I went to buy tickets for District 9. Gwarjgkhghjkf. Sigh. We have rescheduled to Sunday....at least there's a chance that Ameel and Viet will come now :D But yeah...major-ass bummer for me. Bleh. Second fail on my part? We should've watched G.I. Joe instead....but we went home and watched the Shawshank Redemption again. Damien's never seen it before though. Andy Dufresne = ownage.

So....has anyone seen the ads for a game called "Evony?" They usually go like this:

"Help! Save the Queen!" *insert boobage here*
"Start your journey now, my Lord" *insert image with more cleavage here*
"Save Your Lover!" *woman with eyes closed looking sexy*

Now, at first I found it slightly amusing. Ads aimed at male audiences obviously. But now it's getting annoying. Really annoying. It's everywhere! Ahh! This game used to be called Civony, and it wasn't difficult to find that they've recieved some thrashing for these ads. Apparently at one point the ads were seriously just a pair of breasts. Guwarhghhgh. Dx Go away ads~~~

Why am I on sites with these ads anyways? Actually it's failblog.

>>> failblog.org <<<

I've finally finished reading/watching the entire archive today. Now to sit back and read the daily updates.....and move onto todaysbigthing. Both sites are good if you want some laughs. Gogo!

Mmmmrrah?

Mmm, I'm not a good blogging person. Namely, because I get lazy, and because I usually don't have anything interesting to say. Oh, I suck at telling stories too. Dx

Anyways! I've been "away" for some time now...due to 3 things:

• Camping
  
• Britain mates
  
• Iphone <-- hell yeah

So first up, camping on the weekends. Not much to say, usual slacking around the campsite type business. The first weekend consisted mostly of me and sister painting our Warhammer figures for 7 hours straight...then taking a short break and resuming. Second weekend was me playing and finishing (yay!) Professor Layton and the Curious Village on the NDSL, lent to me by Ameel. I haven't finished the bonuses yet though, so I'll be hanging onto it for a little longer. Sorry! I've had it for like half a year now....

Britain friends! Gyn and Shen, wife and husband, have decided to move to Canada from London, England. They've been living with us for the last 2 weeks or so. They. Do. Not. Procrastinate. Not for one minute. It's been pretty hectic with them around, in a gogo! kinda way. Most of my time was spent talking to them and answering their questions about living here. Gyn is studying in Red Deer next term and they moved to their new place yesterday. Whew. I like their life attitude, but I need a breather every now and then.

Finally, IPHONE. Ahhhh sexy. Black sexy. Fortunately for me, one of the girls at the Fido kiosk was new, and in return for giving her an "A+" on her customer satisfaction survey, I got a free cover with my phone. It's blue! Plans for buying a cover online goes out the window here. I'm still thinking about getting a skin though....but yes. Apps apps. More specifically game apps. Haha, my sister plays more than me actually. Very happy with it though. :D *stroke stroke*

I can't find my camera....and sis has my iphone when I'm not using it, so no pics! Of anything!

Here's my plan for the week:

• Wed, 19th, watch District 9 @ 7:20 pm @ Scotiabank Theatres (wem)
• Fri, 21st, Viv's bday partay!
• Sat, 22nd, St. Albert Farmer's Market in the morning, then Fringe Festival after?

Oh, I want to visit Southgate some time too....must get drivers so I can go out without bothering people for rides....

Fondue...?

:D Apparently the Chiews enjoyed the fondue at Grizzly House enough to buy a fondue pot thing. Pretty sweet. I went over Wed (Aug 5th, '09) to try and recreate the mushroom fondue we had tried. Unfortunately, it was kinda fail xD The batter and the cooking oil we deep fried the mushrooms with were "probably" wrong. Probably as in we aren't really sure either.

Recipe you ask? Slightly non-existant xD The theory now is that the cooking oil probably should've been butter...seems explanatory. Our batter was coming out light yellow and it's supposed to be golden brown. Butter can make things....golden-brown! After thinking about it when I got home though, how do you deep fry things in....butter? Yes, yes, it's possible but slightly difficult depending on what butter you use since you need such a high temp for deep frying. You kinda need to take into consideration the smoke point of the butter (the temp at which a fat/oil breaks down and starts to smoke = unusable). At least, that's what I know....and I can't cook so I'm probably wrong Dx

The batter on the other hand was soaking in the oil like a sponge. Hey, that's fixable, just let it sit on some paper towels for a bit. Or so I thought. Once I poked my fork into one, a stream of oil would goOoOoosh out. Ahrhghghg. Oh well. It was fun experimenting with the batter. And the mushrooms were pretty yummy. It'll be better next time. CHOCOLATE FONDUE next time! Go go! :D

~
I. Hate. Routers.
Seriously.

A long time ago, someone set up the one I have now. It's unsecure (no pass to connect) and I can't seem to add other machines to it. That someone apparently gave us the wrong password to the router as well. Being an idiot with these things, I never thought of resetting the damn thing. Soooo I bought another one. D-Link. Problem? There was a DEFECT in the one I bought. So after learning that no, the D-Link wasn't working because I'm dumb, but because it's already messed up, I sent it back for a replacement. Problem? When they sent it back, they NEGLECTED to return the installation CD and manual. Oh. My. God. But that's okay, really, I just need to plug in these cables I have here and yay. But no. It still doesn't work. Called customer support and they sent me on a silly goosehunt on things I've done already, but I didn't really mind cuz it's difficult to trouble shoot if you can't see the problem in front of you. After hanging up and downloading what they told me to. It still doesn't work. I've half a mind to just reset the old one and try it but I'm afraid of screwing everything up. Plus the new router is much, much better. If it would only work. Bleh. Customer support, here I come again....tomorrow....maybe....

On another note...IPHONE. Arrhghghgh. I shall call Telus (yes ew) tomorrow to see what I can do with my current plan. So much calling! My bank also failed to send my documents to the Investment Line company so I had to call them too Dx Anyways, I'm going with Fido....plan will probably cost me $55 monthly. There's a sweet data plan offer right now: 1 Gb for $30 is now 6 Gb for $30. Ohhh mans, how do you not take that? I was working on laptops all day today, isolated from my coworkers because my workstation only had one working ethernet cable....which got me sent away elsewhere. Technically if I went nuts I can probably do 5+ laptops at once, so meh, I took this opportunity, and kept one laptop on the bench to browse whenever I had some downtime. I pretty much looked at iphone plans, covers, and skins all day. But....if I get a cover...skins are redundant....or should I just get a skin...hmm. Going to compile a list of the stuffs I want to pimp it out with. HELP ME DECIDE GUYS. :DDD

Yes, I really want this goddamn phone.

Round 2 = Destroyed Again

So. The me-sun relationship is not going very well. This time I got raped in the face. At Heritage Days. Blargh.

We did the Park & Ride thing this time from Calder. Got there around 12 noon, left at 5. We ended up buying 120 tickets....body count: Me, sis, mom, Connie, Gyn, Shen. The last 2 are friends from Britain who moved here. They're staying with us until they find a house they'd like to buy.

Guess we should've told them we're treating, lol, cuz Gyn bought 30 for her and her husband. 150 tickets! Plus everyone besides me and sis ate before they came! Durrrrrr. Lots of yummy stuffs though...I'll know what to FATTEN Damien up with next year! (He had to work today =/) Things were pretty expensive...but in the end like every other year, you kinda forget about it and just blow tickets on everything. In the end Connie found her family and left the party. Shen was constantly leaving the party and rejoining. And in the end it turns out he didn't have much to eat Dx Ai yah. I had already given my remaining 33 tickets to Andi and Gyn had 3 left. He bought a chocolate banana with that. lol. mmm.

Most notable performances we saw were the Japanese drumming, Kenjutsu, and Lion Dance....most notable cuz we're already biased to think that they're gonna be super awesome. And they were! Yayyy. Drumming was interesting. The beat is very simple and repetitive, but they have a lot more SEXY movements which makes it a nice balance. Kinda the direct opposite of ours. I love Japanese weaponry. Kenjustu was a pleasure to watch, but it's much too ritualistic for me to try out. VJ prefers European weaponry, so she enjoyed the Wales perfomance more, though it was more comedy than actual proper use of the weapons.

Lion Danceeeeee. White leopard skin lion with red eyesssss. *Drool* Must resist urge to....rejoin?! I don't know yet. Blarhggh. I had already suspected that 2 months off would be enough time to cool me down but mmm. Don't know.....

Anyways. Going backwards! Trip with Damien and family to Banff!

Went with all the little cousins, and grandpa came this time too =D Car ride there = sleep. Lots. I always feel sleepy in a vehicle, except when I'm driving of course. I need to untrain myself from doing that. Hmm lets see.....what did we do again.....?

Oh! River. I can't remember what it's called atm. haha. The one you always go see when you go to Banff....durr....someone help me out here :P Went on the trail there a little bit with 2 little ones in tow. After that we went to a garden....I'm really horrible with remembering places I've been to and what they're called Dx We didn't go very far though; only the front section that overlooks Banff. Everyone agreed that in the resulting picture, the background looked very fake. Very odd. Haha.

After that was town shopping! One of my coworkers had recommended the "Grizzly House" in Banff for fondue. VJ, me, Damien, Ameel, and their mom came with for eats, while the kids wanted McDonalds. Since we didn't want the fast food crew to wait too long, we ordered appetizers only.

• Ameel - escargot and cheese fondue


• Damien - french onion soup and escargot


• EJ - mushroom fondue


• VJ - caesar salad (she wanted my fondue but felt bad for not ordering something)

VJ and I had tried cheese fondue already in a tavern in Switzerland during our Europe trip. This one had a stronger taste of wine. The mushroom fondue was awesome though. Man! I'm definitely going back just to try every dish. They're pretty expensive but come on: alligator, shark, eel, dog, cat, gerbil, ostrich....a ton of exotic stuff. The only complaint I have is this- they have a phone by every table, and they wouldn't stop calling us!! Let us eat! The only important detail was where the washroom was and the free dog/gerbil fondue tasters. Except those never came cuz VJ got confused and told the person it was already on the table.

After that was just shopping through the town....not much, same old tourist things in most shops. We went to check in at our "cottage" after that. Not sure what it's called. Written tour! Right after walking in the door is a bedroom with a double-sized bed, then in the room after is the kitchen stuff on the right, bathroom with shower on the left. Next room is the living room with a fireplace, balcony, tv, and stairs. Up the stairs is one large room with another tv a King-sized bed (it fits 3....is that right?) and a washroom. No shower =( The kids family had another building to themselves.

Now the plan is obviously, parents in the front room, 3 chicks upstairs, and Damien on the couch in the living room. Then we found out that the couch was a sofa-bed! Hmm. Surprisingly, and I really say surprisingly, Ameel's mom kept saying, "you guys figure out the sleeping thing yourselves." She spoke in Chinese of course, and that's my crappy translation, but yeah! The new obviously now is...parents same, Ameel and sis upstairs, me and Damien on couch. Really. Surprising.

Anyways, after that we were just chilling and waiting on dinner @ 7. Damien decided to do a quick rinse....*insert hilarious moment here* lmao =) I won't post it. Dinner was at Bumpers. Their slogan was, "If you haven't been to Bumpers, you haven't been to Banff!" Remember that guys! Salad bar style restaurant. Soooo goooood. I managed to survive to dessert too =D I'm getting so fat. No LD, hap, lots of vacationing and food.

Kids were tired after so they headed home to sleep. The rest of us went to check out Spring Hotel. It's nice up there, but so high-class. Eep. They just ended a conference when we got there and there were guys in suits and ladies wearing formal wear everywhere....while we were in t-shirts, shorts/capris, and sneakers. Kinda awkward haha. We couldn't get to most areas because it was late and cuz of the conference I assume. It was dark when we left. And we were kinda lost for a bit. But we finally made it alive back to our accomodations for the night. We all took turns for showering and crashed. Not sure what time it was....11? 12?

Best. Night. Ever. I kept waking up during the night but I wasn't tired in the morning. We left the glass, balcony door opened a bit and everytime I woke up I could hear the wind coming through it. I just watched "The Happening" the weekend before, and it sounds EXACTLY the same, but the sun was rising and we had a view of the Rockies so it wasn't freaking me out. Pretty calming actually. Plus everytime, Damien was there :D ahhh. At one point he woke up, turned to hug me, then mumbled, "I dreamed that there's a moose in the lawn." and fell asleep again. lol.

I'm lazy. So have fun with reading the text spam. No pictures! Ameel was the camera-woman. I'm not competing with her. Too crazy and much more pro than me. :P Oh! I did take one of me and Snookie, a gift from Damien. :D Ameel! Let me know when the pics are up! Must STEAL 8D

Owned by the Sun

Ameel couldn't come! D'= Maybe some other time...there's still this weekend!

Friday: Got home from work @ 16:00-ish, ate a bit then packed and we were off to pick up Damien at 17:15. Drove to Calgary. Slept. Nothing really interesting.

Saturday: Woke up at 7:00, ate breakfast, out at 8:00-ish on the way to Lake Louise. During the last 30 min stretch my dad asked if I wanted to try highway driving for a bit; 'course I said yes. Unfortunately, 20 mins in road construction started for the next 28 km. It was 25 km to Lake Louise. Arghghg! Took an extra 45 mins to get there.

Once there, hike start! 5.5 km to the Teahouse! The first rocky, uphill stretch was pretty brutal, but once you get past that initial exhaustion feeling it's pretty smooth going. My dad owned us all in speed and endurance. Next was VJ, then me, then Damien. Although Damien and I only took 2 breaks while the other 2 were constantly waiting for us. I kept going to Beaumaris Lake after dinner for walks before this trip, so it wasn't too bad on my legs.

They added steel cord railings on the one-way cliff part! So much better, since the path there is practically made of large slabs of smooth rock. We didn't see any animals this time though....probably because it was mid-afternoon and blazing hot out. Other than that....there were mini-avalanches on the glaciers! It was on the mountain in front of us and happened about 4 times while we were up there. Unfortunately I didn't catch sight of any of it, but it was loud. Everyone was hoping that there would be a huge one so we could take videos hahaha.


Hurray for Damien for surviving his first major hiking trip! He was already exhausted earlier on but kept going. ^^ I'm very proud of you! It seemed like you were about to give up at the very end, but you were only about 10 meters from the Teahouse. =D We had some peachades there (lemonade but...with peaches?). Damien went for a cheese sandwich and I tried a scone with honey. Again. It still tasted bland. REDWALL YOUR DESCRIPTION OF SCONES ARE OVERRATED. The people who worked there were all very young women. I was surprised because they don't actually leave and live there for some time. I can't remember how long though, we had asked a waitress last time we were here. But yes, there's no internet or signal for phones so hmm.

After the refreshment, dad noticed another path that leads to "The 6 glacier vantage point." Or something like that. 1.3 km. Alright sure. The path keeps going uphill, but at a very slight incline so it wasn't very difficult. After about 1 km though, it turns to straight shale and was very difficult to climb. About 100 meters from the end of the trail we turned around; it was very, very steep at this point, and full of loose rocks, so it wasn't worth it. We were able to get a telephone signal up there though.

Damage count? Sore legs: VJ and Damien. Sunburns: EJ, VJ, Dad. Where's my mom in all this? She can't walk long distances in rocky terrain anymore, so she was browsing at the hotel and generally just chilling out. On the way back we stopped at a town called Cochrane. The icecream store Mackay's there is famous apparently. I went for strawberry and jagerbomb. Mmm.

That's about it. Went home on Sunday. Then I went over to Damien's after unpacking to watch a movie. He rented all the "apocalyptic" ones. "Knowing", "The Happening", "The Day After Tomorrow", and "I am Legend." My shoulders were killing me though. I wore a tanktop...so I have a tanktop tan line....gurhghg.

I'll upload pics later on. We stopped taking them early on though. Not really picture-taking people. :P

Public Enemies!

Went to watch Public Enemies Sunday (July 19th) with VJ and the bf. Kinda funny actually cuz Viet was the inviter but he didn't have a ride and it was a dreary rainy day, so he opted out, and Ameel was busy; so our 5-man party turned to a 3-man, but it's all good! I think he did want to watch it though so =/ Movie wasn't too bad, I didn't quite like the ending and thought there were some loopholes, but it was entertaining at least. Shootouts are always good, and the character John Dillinger (played by Johnny Depp) was great.

In other news...I cancelled my WoW subscription today. Just now actually :P Think I've moved to Starcraft Dx Thanks to the co-workers, haha. I'm really itching for a shiny, cool, new desktop too. One of the work mates recently custom built one for gaming and whoo. /drool. Dual screens would be kick ass. A larger screen, at least 19'' or above, for the games, and a 15'', maybe 17'' for hw and reading. Big white blanks on the side of bigger screens hurt. I've been spending a lot lately though...and going to spend a lot more. Guess the plan for now is to look for parts and once I've saved enough, I'll get the system. Or just have my template and upgrade/update it till I decide to get it. Meh.

Money spending! Shopping, events, CAMPING and HIKING. Campground costs? Every weekend starting now till the end of August. Sweet. The last 2 weeks are unplanned for now.....a fishing trip would be awesome for that, but fishing = licenses and paperwork crap.

Up for this weekend, Lake Louise hiking trip with the family + bf + Ameel. No one has an idea of just how much me and sis have been wanting this. Except maybe Damien. Sorry if we've annoyed you! Haha. But you'll see why, you'll see why :P Hopefully sis won't have another dangerous incident this time.

Man....we were heading back after reaching the Teahouse at the top of the trail. It took us 3+ hours? for the entire trail. Anyways, we were on this very small dirt path on the side of a cliff. Right below us was Lake Louise. No railing. Apparently though, you can go on the trail on a horse. Our group ran right into the horse group. And some retarded lady was sitting on her horse laughing, clapping her hands <-- NOT holding the reins. So her horse was just roaming and doing it's own thing, and when we rounded the corner into them, it panicked a lil and starting weaving and hesitating and all that.

Unfotunately, there's only enough space for hiking traffic going single file both ways. That lady's horse got between 2 people; someone was inching by with their stomach flat on the cliff wall, and my sis was lucky enough to be on the other side of the horse, where the cliff drops to the lake below. With no railing. Kinda a freaky moment but good thing VJ's thin, agile, and athletic. She somehow squeezed past without falling or getting stepped on. Yikes.

Lets hope that doesn't happen a second time. I do wish, however, that we see wild mountain goats again! :D

EJ = really excited.

Tick. Tock.

Lonnnnnggg day at work today. Laptop, laptop, laptop. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Plenty of downtime too, just to make the seconds tick by slower. Gah.

The spoiler my dad bought for our white Lexus was painted and ready for pickup today. Spent a good hour and a half putting it on since it had to be perfect :P My sister and I used 1/3 of that time practising our hapkido while my dad drilled holes and remeasured. Yay for unwasted downtime! That's the way to go. Now all we need are roof racks...mmm.

Hrmm. WoW is getting boring. To the point where I've started playing my warrior again. Not sure how long I'll be going with that. No one to play with, takes ages to do something.....hm. New game? Maybe. Currently I'm half playing RS2 as well, while working on "Professor Layton and the Curious Village" on the NDS and replaying FFX on the PS3....I know, I game too much. Should probably read....I keep buying books I plan on reading but I haven't touched any of them....plus Ameel has suggested a ton for me.

I guess there's also Warhammer. That doesn't count as playing another game right? I only plan on collecting some figures for the fun of it. They look so awesome. I spent an entire day looking through the Games Workshop products and ended up with a 2 page list of potential figures to buy. I'm a nerd. But seriously. Look at >> this <<. Sooo good looking. Damien bought it, can't wait to see how it turns out once he paints it! Thanks for getting me sucked into this! ^^ Ameel bought some too, and it caught my sister's attention as well......but models = $$$. Lots. Lots lots.

Mmm what to buy though....the Warhammer figures? Clothes? New phone? I've wanted a PSP for some time now too. That counts towards gaming though so no no I guess. Maybe ;D Oh, and then there's the Fringe Festival, Heritage Days, Animethon, and K-days. Yes, K-days. Correct me and I punch you in the face :D And yes I might go for once....it's been....7....8 years since I last went...? A little disappointed that I won't be able to make it to Heritage Days or Animethon though. Hello camping trips! But maybe I can convince my parents to sneak back on Sundays early and catch the last hours of those events.

We shall see!

Creation!

Alright, so Vivian finally convinced me to start up this "blogging" thing. As an incentive, she set up the entire page for me; all I had to do was pick a template...of which she had samples already chosen as well, haha. I suppose I shall try to twiddle with the layout and whatnot sometime and learn a few things. So! That being said, if anything gets ugly, that's me screwing it up :P
Thanks so much Viv! :D <3

Now that intro stuff's done....Andi comes home today! 9 pm and still nothing though =/ Where are you?! I'm waiting for my new BRA....

....and I just realized that there is no underline here. What is this?! Bold, italics, UNDERLINE.

Test test underline dammit. There we go. Silly for not having a button for it though. Off to mess around some more with this...