stuck inside

It's such a gorgeous day out and I'm stuck in the office. Came into work as one of the weekend shifters is on holidays. Ahhh...this bites! Oh well...I can work on Social Club stuff or just surf the net during the slow periods.

Last night I met up with Tanya, Shannan, Tracey and Nicole for dinner at My Greek Restaurant in Coquitlam. The food was filling, the conversations funny and the restaurant was packed so it made hearing difficult. Thank goodness Shannan had called in earlier to make reservations otherwise we would have been waiting a long time for a table. It was nice to see the girls and chit chat. Everyone's lives are so busy now that we're loosing touch with who's doing what. We all came straight from work so everyone was dazed. After finishing as much as we could on our plates we all started to lose focus and were getting sleepy. :-) Signs of age...

falling for nature

Early Sunday morning Ian, Mike and I headed towards Squamish for a refreshing hike. We wanted to be up and down the mountain by noon. Giving us 3-4 hours of wandering time. We didn't make it out to The Chief but stopped by Shannon Falls. The boys brought all their camera equipment and just wanted to wander around and take pictures of nature. :-) I was ok with not going up the Chief as I packed too much into my backpack and it was SUPER heavy. The hip/waist straps weren't helping. Chicky said I looked like I was going camping instead of a 4 hour hike. Mental note to self - bring the fanny pack next time. I think I've climbed down plenty of slippery slopes in the pursuit of a "better angle" this weekend. On Sunday, I stepped on a rock that looked stable to find out that it wasn't. As I screeched and clutched the camera - the boys looked up and didn't do anything. They were climbing tentatively down the river bank as well and didn't want to risk their gear to save me. Duh! Luckily my foot went through the rocks so I didn't fall down the embankment. I did have cuts and scrapes though. Should have worn pants but it was too freaking hot. That's the problem with hikes - when you're in the dense trees, it's freezing cold. When you're in the fields - it's freaking hot. So I kept putting on and taking off my layers. It was nice walking through the fields and looking for eagles. The boys had super long lenses so they were taking pictures of mountain tops. I focused on the closer stuff.

Here are some pics from Shannon Falls.

paddling strong

On Saturday morning I went out to Richmond with Chicky to see his dragonboat team compete. It was a small race on the dike. Chicky's not officially on the team this year due to other commitments (such as the wedding). But he paddles when there's not enough people to do so.

The weather was spectacular and the crowds excited. We stayed till 1pm then had to take off so that we could clean up and go to some open houses back in Coquitlam. I spent the morning climbing up and down the dike trying to take pictures of the paddlers. Ugh...these are the days when I wish I still had my longer lens. :-)

Here are some pics from the race: Richmond Dragonboat Race

doctors without borders

I attended an outdoor yoga class for the first time today. My Yoga Online hosts these classes to raise money for different charities. One of my coworkers thought it would be cool to check it out. The donations benefit Doctors Without Borders, which is one of the few charities that I like.

It's been such a long time since I've done yoga and it felt great being down by the water with the wind blowing in your face and the sun beating down on your skin. Because the location was infront of the IMAX theater at Canada Place, it was not as serene as a yoga studio that I'm so use to. Plus there were 2 cruise ships docked at Canada Place today. There were about 40 of us in the class and we provided quite the show for the cruise ship patrons. Many took pictures of us while we did our poses. I don't blame them as the image was unique. A mass of colorful yoga mats strewed on concrete with people in awkward poses against a background of a setting sun and stunning mountains. If I had my camera I'd probably be on the upper deck taking pictures instead of doing yoga!

The best part is that because the class is "by donation" - they do draws at the end for gifts. Whoohoo!! Amazingly I won a new yoga mat from HalfMoon yoga products (Granville Island). This must have been karma as I've misplaced one of my yoga mats and the one I brought today is normally used for hot yoga so it's pretty thin. I could feel every rock of the gravel ground today which made some poses almost painful. I'm cursed with not enough bum-padding and bony ankles. I think I'll have to double up the mats next week in order to make things more comfortable. Bummer part is that the class is so late and the seabus only runs every half hour. So it was nearly 9pm when I got home today, haven't even had dinner yet. Blah...hobbies hog up so much precious eating-time!

here fishy fishy fishy...

In another moment of spontaneous purchases - Chicky and I got a fish tank! How did this come about? Well - instead of enjoying the Canada Day celebrations we went to the mall in search of a honeymoon package. Feeling disappointed about not finding somewhere to travel to - we headed out to Petcetera to look at pets that we can't have. :-)

Walking around the store we figured if we ever get a pet - it'd have to be fish because Chicky's parents don't like animals. There goes the doggie dreams if we live with the parents. Walking back and forth for 1/2 hour, we talked about getting a tank and setting it up in Chicky's room. Both of us were hesitant but finally we said "let's just do it!" So we did. We got home with our purchases and Chicky's mom said that she knows a friend who could give us a tank for free. Chaching! That's perfect. So at 8pm we head out to Richmond to pick up the tank. Kay - free isn't always "free". The tank was used for salt water fish in the past and was heavily calcified. Chicky and I spent most of the night washing and scraping it. We finally gave up and put our stuff in. We're in it for the instant gratification. We had wanted to buy fish at Petcetera but they wouldn't let us. They wanted us to have the tank functional for 3 days before introducing fish. Boo to them! We got an underwater plant instead. :-) It's no fun having an empty tank. I think we'll go to a pet store during the week to get something. We want it to be a freshwater tank so maybe goldfish or koi?! There are still not enough supplies though. We had originally boughten a 10 gallon tank from Petcetera but was given a 20 gallon tank from the friend. So we don't have enough gravel or the correct gravel for live plants on top of that. I just hope we don't end up killing everything in the tank at the end of this little experiment.