Does Your English Cut the Mustard...

I suck...

Your English Skills:

Grammar: 80%

Punctuation: 80%

Spelling: 80%

Vocabulary: 40%

Does Your English Cut the Mustard?

Got this from The Teacher...

The Source of all Evil

You decide...

http://thesource.ofallevil.com/

I am coveting this right now...

No, not the bed frame, that's ugly! The mattress!

I was at the Relax the Back store over the weekend and decided to lay on their floor model. It was comfy. Extremely comfy. Insanely comfy. (I also sat in a Zero Gravity chair. Very comfy as well).

And only a mere $2400 for a Queen size. I will be dragging hubby there one day soon.

Hubby should be glad it's not the Porsche Carrea GT that I want to get, only a mere $550,000...

Treasure Hunters

So I stumbled on this show Treasure Hunters on Monday and found it a pretty interesting watch. There are a lot of similarities to The Amazing Race, as these people travel around the world doing different things.

The main thing about Treasure Hunters is that the whole entire game is a puzzle, and not just parts of it. It also seems that time and money are not factors in this (except the fact that each team is racing against each other). They're also given little laptops to carry around and use should they need to.

"Treasure Hunters is an exciting new adventure quest series featuring multi-player teams that will be sent off around the globe on a search for clues leading to the location of a hidden treasure. The first team to decipher all of the clues will be given the location of the treasure. The focus of the show will is not so much on the race to find clues, but on the actual solving of the puzzle instead."

Interesting premise. It certainly appeals to me at some level as I really love puzzles and rather take my time to figure something out properly than trying to race to figure something out quickly.

I'm surprised that NBC doesn't have a heck of a lot of information about this show on their website. They are looking for cast members, but it's uncertain if it's for the current season or the next one. I'm not too sure if they're somewhat ashamed of this show and don't want to showcase it too much on their website, or their webmaster is just incompetent and didn't plan out the site appropriately.

One group that's already annoyed me is the "Geniuses". Whether or not these three guys are really as geeky looking in real life as they portray themselves on the show, I don't know. But their theme was just lame. And they were annoying me.

But I guess I have another thing to watch on Monday nights for the next little while.

Pride & Prejudice Meets Harry Potter

I love both (although I still reject the idea of Keira Knightley playing Elizabeth Bennet), so I found this vastly amusing...

Arr, ye mateys!!

I went to go see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest last week. I give it 7 out of 10. Here's why:

• They put way too much plot in the storyline. Without seeing if there were a lot of ties between the second and third movies, I have to say that they crammed too much in. I was actually wondering when the movie was going to be over about 2/3 of the way through it. That's just not a good sign.
  
• I liked the first movie better because the plot was neat enough and the movie was fun! This movie was fun too, but it dragged too much, and took some of the fun away from it. I felt that the big fight scene with the water wheel was just too long. (Although a friend of mine liked this movie better than the first one cause there was more swashbuckling action).
  
• I don't understand Davy Jones's character, and unless they explain how he came about in the first place in the third movie, I will be vastly disappoint in the script.
  
• The voodoo lady was getting annoying.
  
• One question that I kept asking myself is "What happened 13 years ago to make Jack Sparrow promise his soul to Davy Jones?" If it's answered in the third movie, I'd wished they'd hint at it in the second. If they don't tie this up neatly, again I'll be disappointed.
  
• My other question is, "What the hell is Keria Knightley's character doing in this movie?" Really, if it weren't for the fact that they felt they had to include Keria Knightley in the movie, they definitely could have done without the character. Really. And I'm not just saying this because I thinks she's a mediocre actress at best.
  

What did I like?

• The way Jack Sparrow runs like a girl. (And Johnny Depp was excellent through the whole movie)
• Tom Hollander, who played the bad guy.
  
• Actually most of the acting was good. And Orlando Bloom, for all the over-acting that he did in Lord of the Rings, is getting a wee bit better. But I still don't like him. Or KK.
  

A word about Tom. I've seen him in Pride and Prejudice and Gosford Park. He played two completely different characters in both movies, and I really thought he did a wonderful job in both. I didn't know he was playing the baddie in Pirates until I watched the movie. I hated the bad guy, and that to me, made me respect Tom Hollander's skill as an actor more. I've also seen him in a couple of other productions, but those two movies stick out the most in my mind because I've only seem them about 50 times each. Heh.

Chaucer' Blog

One thing that had really bugged me was that people had always called Shakespeare "Old English". It's not Old English people! It's Modern English. The colloquialism is different, that's all. It's no different than if you went to Australia or England and you heard phases or terms that you don't understand. Their terms of references are different from North America, yet, they are still speaking English!

Case in point, Shakespeare's Sonnet 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date

Now here's Middle English (Intro to Canterbury Tales):

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Old English (Intro to Beowulf):

Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,

So you can see what the difference is!

Anyways, I was chuffed to see that Chaucer has a blog. Check it out!

iPod Accessories

You too can have a toilet paper holder with a built in iPod player stand. More here.

Disco Darcy

I never liked Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice.

But I have to say that this Disco Darcy grew on me...


[Source]

Back to Lotusland

Well, I'm finally back in Lotusland after 11 lovely hours on Highway 1. The trip should have taken 10 hours, but we ran into traffic going through Surrey for no apparent reason. I think the Port Mann Bridge is a huge bottleneck, hence the reason why they're going to twin the bridge. Trust me, sitting on a highway with the sun beating down on the car, at a dead stop in a 100 km/hr zone is not my idea of fun.

Some points of notice about my trip to Cow Town (in no particular order):

• I saw lots of moo-cows, and mooed at them. They didn't respond.
• Who is crazy enough to bike up the Coquahalla highway? That highway going north is pretty steep. Well, I saw three crazy people.
  
• Calgary can get pretty windy
• Calgary has mosquitoes. I was bitten three times
• RVs are spawns of Satan.
  
• No amount of talking will convince me that cowboy boots, cowboy hats, plaid shirts and string ties are a fashion statement.
  
• We had a lot of bug guts splattered over our windshield while driving on the highway. One particular insect splatter is bright yellow. I wonder what sort of insect it is? (There were some red splatters as well. We figured them to be mosquitoes who had a feeding frenzy on some humans. Imagine that, another person's bodily fluids on my windshield).

I also saw a lot of really bad driving while on the highway. Some didn't understand the concept of a fast lane. Here are some tips:

• If there are people passing you, get out of the fast lane!
• If there is more than one car tailgating you, get out of the fast lane!

Savvy?

Cow Town Day 3 - One sick hubby!

Well, we were suppose to have gone hiking in Banff today (Saturday), but hubby was still not feeling well. So I left him at home while I hung out with my friend "L" and her hubby "R".

L also bought a electronic piano the same time I did, and I was playing with it a little bit. I'm not as rusty as I though I was, but my piano-playing skill has really degraded with many years of non-practice.

The highlight of the day was going to Smuggler's Inn for dinner. Prime rib, yum! I'm still trying to figure out how big their biggest cut is. 21oz?

Cow Town Day 2 - Stampede

Today we went to the Stampede. I actually have pictures on my cell, but I won't be able to download them until I get home.

First off, we went and had free Stampede Pancake breakfast. After all the horror stories that I've heard about half cooked food, it was surprisingly not too bad. I can understand that they end up making food for several hundreds of people, so that may happen.

As we were taking the C-Train to the Stampede grounds, hubby was decidedly not feeling well, so ended up going home. I continued on with a couple of hubby's friends.

I had a pretty good time, but I hate to say it, the Calgary Stampede is somewhat similar to the PNE. Sure, the PNE doesn't have chuckwagon races or rodeos, but there is a separate rodeo in Lotusland that has similar stuff.

One of hubby's friends kept on trying to get me to buy a cowboy hat and trying to convince me that cowboy wear (cowboy hat, cowboy boots, string ties, large belt buckles and plaid shirts) were the in thing for fashion. Uh, no thanks. There were a lot of people around wearing various combinations of the above, which was odd for me to see.

Cow Town Day 1

After an 11 hour drive from Lotusland to Cow Town, we were pretty tired. We had to contend with drivers that drove in the fast lane that should have been in the other lane, RVs, road construction... Fortunately, no dead deer, although we saw mountain goats.

So today, shopping at Market Mall, Gravity Pope, and I picked up this sweet thing. Now we have to figure out where to put it...

(Yamaha P140)

Off to Cow Town!

Tomorrow hubby and I will be heading off to Calgary to visit the family and friends out there, so I may not be blogging for the next few days. Hopefully we'll get there in one piece. PST-free shopping here I come!

Other news:
Said application (SharePoint) that I had to demo, my director at the last moment pull in our PM/Consultant, who knew the application better than I did. Which was a good thing as there were people there who asked questions that I couldn't answer, but he could. I hardly said a thing. Stress over! Thanks for the good thoughts guys!

However, the day I go back to work, I have three back-to-back meetings in a row in the afternoon. The morning will be spent to wade through email. (Okay, maybe not. I'm lugging the laptop to Cow Town, so I may check before then =P No nagging, DC!)

I need to keep my big mouth shut...

I just let my director (my boss's boss) talk me into doing a demo tomorrow on an application that I know very little about. However, I'm deemed as one of the "experts" in the group, as I have played around with the application more than most others, and I do certainly am more familiar with it than she is.

I have no idea who my audience is. I will need to get plenty of sleep tonight so I don't look like a walking zombie like I normally do. And I will need to dress up a bit and put on makeup. And write up an outline. Bah.

This post is sponsored by IT Plumber/Janitor

Hubby, a new word for you to use in regards to the idiots who served you at Vera's Burger Shack: himbo.

(Note that one of the owners had actually responded to hubby's comment. Good times!)

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

"SKOOKUM"

Okay, I've now hear this used word used by three different people, all who are at work, and twice alone this week. It seems that it has various meaning, but it's definitely regional jargon that's becoming mainstram (locally anyways). You should see if you can incorporate it into your conversation once a day.

"Skookum."

There's my effort for today.

[Wikipedia]
[InfoPlease]
[Encarta]
[Grandiloquent Dictionary]

N's birthday pic

This is a picture from Sunday, when we took N out for his birthday. He and hubby had the feast for two.

Happy Birthday!

Happy July the 4th!

Today happens to be my best buddy, "N"'s birthday. We took him out for dinner on Sunday, and I made him choose a restaurant, so he goes and chooses Liliget Feast House. I never knew that we had a Native Indian cuisine restaurant until now.

I had the venison. It was okay, it tasted a bit like steak, but was tougher and chewier, but still moist (ie, not dry). It was not as gamey tasting than I thought it would be. Hubby and N shared the Liliget Feast Platter for Two.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10.

Afterwards, we went to La Casa Gelato for dessert. N had Durian & Jackfruit and persimmon. I could smell the durian.

Venison:

Some pics from English Bay:
Inukashuk (N and hubby are standing on the left in the shadow):

New fan! (Finally)

So thanks to our friend and all around fixer-upper guru "E", we had our fan installed last week. Yay!

Why were there sparks when hubby did it? Well, he screwed a screw into a wire. Way to go hubby. But really, it's a good thing that he didn't electrocute himself when that happened.

It took me a couple of days to get used to the fan blowing air down instead of from the corner of the room, but it does the job more or less. Now let's hope it doesn't get any hotter...

KOOKY: Can you spot the difference?

(Boy, I haven't done a KOOKY posting in a while...)

Can you spot the difference?

gynecology
gynaecology

And more importantly, do you really care?

Well someone does care, because they got really upset about it, and they want them all changed.

Welcome to my world.

(They wanted the one with the "a" in it, British spelling and all. And it seems that Blogger spell check is an equal opportunist, it recognizes neither).

Weed's guide to the Grouse Grind

So today hubby and I did the Grouse Grind. I wanted to do something a little different from my regular Saturday morning step class at the gym, and since it was such a nice day, I figured, why not?

Today's time: 1hr 9 mins.

I'm really pleased with this time as it's the best time I've done since university. I guess all the cardio I've been doing has helped.

Weed's rules when doing the Grouse Grind:

• Never stop for more than 30 seconds
• Never sit down, except if you need to remove a pebble from your shoe, otherwise, you'll never get back up again

However, we did get there at 8.50 am, waaaay too late as there were a lot of people on the trail, too many for my taste. We're going to try getting there at 8 am next time.

Afterwards, hubby and I went to IHOP for brunch. Yum!