not pizza again!!!

This afternoon I attended a seminar on team building hosted by the Help Desk Institute of BC. Title of the seminar? "Not Pizza Again!!! Having Fun with Your Team". As always I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to attend such seminars that are centered around this topic as it's dear to my corporate-heart. :-) I think my manager doesn't mind giving me the afternoon off for this type of seminar because I am actively involved in the social clubs. Beats going to tech seminars! The speaker was great and had interesting ideas on how to mold your team towards functionality. I quite enjoyed the ex cerises (such as drawing a giraffe at the start of the seminar). Hopefully we'll be able to incorporate these ideas into future events or integrate them into the subculture. I was quite pleased that our departmental social club had already accomplished many of the goals and on a corporate social club level we were pretty organized. I met other team leads and discovered that many support centers suffer from the same issues on stress, morale and attrition that we did.

At the end of the day I had a smile on my face and was pumped full of Gung Ho energy. Now to bring that same level of energy and enthusiasm back into the office to conquer those skeptics that stand in my way! I'll even try out some of the games we learned on you guys one day! :-) They make good party games.

Happy Mother's Day!

Sunday afternoon we celebrated Mother's Day with Chicky's family at Kirin Restaurant. Had some dim sum and enjoyed the company of Brandan and Nathan. I haven't seen Nathan since the hospital. He's growing up so quickly! Took a few new pics of him for my web album. His one-month party is this weekend so time is sure flying by!

In the evening my family and Betty's family had a Mother's Day bbq. My family LOVES to bbq and even though the weather was cloudy and gusty - it didn't stop them from standing outside next to the grill. Plus it's easier than trying to get a table for 15 people at any restaurant. It's so fun having a big family - get togethers are so loud and obnoxious. We had some great food, played with Nyah, painted nails, ate some more and played some poker. It was nice to have the whole family relaxing and doing their own things. We're all looking forward to the summer bbq season and are already scoping out potential sites for us to spend our weekends at. I think Cultus Lake will remain a family favorite though. Lots of great memories there and it's so convenient.

After dinner the women centered around the kitchen and did some manicures and pedicures. Betty painted her mom's nails and Carol's nails. I wasn't really interested in painting my nails as they always get chipped at work. Nyah is such a cutie and growing up very quickly too. She's very strong and wants to sit up at 3 months - we think she might be teething too! Hanif told us that he wants to pierce her ears. We all said to wait till she's at least 6 months old. She's at the age where she's starting to be interactive so it's fun to play with her and watch her react to us. I've loaded new pics of her to the album as well. Everyone was here till nearly 1am and I got barely any sleep as I had to work EARLY today. I think it was eating cake and dessert so late at night - we were still on a sugar kick. Only Angelina had to go to bed early as she has school the next day. Oh boy was I tired after having like 3 hours of sleep last night! Time for bed now!

bump - set - spike!

Today I played in a volleyball tournament with some coworkers at the Harry Gerome sports complex in Burnaby (the white dome on Barnet Hwy). The tournament was hosted by some other coworkers and is an event that the Social Club participates in. This is my second year playing and I suck just the same. It's a very casual event - which equates to people just showing up to play. The skill levels range from a couple of players that are international v-ball players to those that have never played before. Our team fell in the middle (or closer to the bottom) of the skill scale. Normally we like to have (social club) "executive member" participation at all events, so that means going to things that we normally wouldn't go to.

The game was from 9am - 3pm with an hour lunch in between. We weren't able to find that many girls to sub in this year (I think those that played last year had no interest in coming back this year). So Robyn and I groaned at the thought of having to play 6 hours straight. Luckily one of the guys brought his girlfriend and she sub in for us. Rules dictated that there has to be 2 girls on the court at all times. :-) Lets just say we're the weakest link in our team. We showed great sportmanship though. Many teams slaughtered us and we went from playing on the blue courts to being sent to the courts on the outside of the main arena. :-) At one point I took a spike in the face. Pro: I reacted fast enough to turn my head slightly and not get it straight in the face. Con: I thought my face had caved in and was crying opening from the shock and pain. That's right - pain over came any feelings of hesitation or dignity for not crying in public. The good thing was that the spike came off of one of our blocker's finger tips so it wasn't at FULL speed. Ah...silly me...thought for sure that it was blocked. In any event the guy who did it felt totally bad as everyone rushed over to see if I had broken my nose, etc. I tried to croak out an "I'm OK" but couldn't really get past the gasps and tears. Lol...I'm a wimp but it BURNED like hell and I couldn't open one eye. As I sat on the bench with my ice pack on my face, I wondered if I would have a black eye for Mother's Day. How lovely that would have been. On the bright side though...the other team felt bad so they restrained from spiking and resorted to tipping (which is equally hard to defend against). I sat out the rest of the game but was back on the court for the next round. Can't say I'm not a trooper!

We were happy to have played against really good players though as it was cool how they did some of their moves and many of them astonished me with their vertical reach (for shorter people). I'm quite impressed with those players that can rush forward for a power spike and at the last second turn their arm and send the ball cross court to the other side. :-) We anticipate cross court spikes but are always surprised by tips or ones where they change the direction of ball as they hit it. I think I'll let Chicky play the competitive volleyball. I'm alright with messing around with beach v-ball with friends.

Here we are watching the top 2 teams in the tournament battling it out. Their teams consisted mostly of league players. I'm proud to say that one of my coworkers in my department plays on this team. He's like 5'2 but can jump straight up (in dress shoes and work clothes) and reach a bit over a foot more than his height. He attributes it to isometric training. It was great watching those games (the teams on the blue courts) as the score is so much closer and the games are more intense. We had time to kill in between games because the really good teams would play 2 games against us in like 10-15 minutes. Kill us swiftly instead of dragging out the pain. Oh well...more time to watch and recuperate between games.

radical expressions

"log 8 in base 2 is 3...cause 2 cubed is 8 you see..."
(only Tanya will find this funny)

Tonight was the first day of class. It's been a long day. I left the house at 5:45am enroute to work (normal time) and didn't come back home till 10pm (after school). Business mathematics...hmm...what can I say...boring content! :-) I groaned to myself when the instructor walked in as I recognized her cheery "good evening everyone" sing-song-voice. I've had her before - she's flaky. She didn't get the response that she wanted so we had to practice saying "good evening" to her until she felt that we were "enthusiastic" enough. Thus begins the first hour of introductions. We went over the usual course schedule, plagiarism rules and exam schedule. To make things interesting - she decides that in order to help us understand if we should be in her class or not - she wants to "pretest" us. She does realize that this course is a prerequisite for all Business students - so they have no choice about attendance.

Yikes...I didn't bring a calculator. She pipes in that it's multiple choice and that you shouldn't need a calculator. I shake my head and wonder how I'd do at multiple-guess. Don't get me wrong - Laurel is a good teacher but she's more suited for the elementary school level. She speaks to us as if we're kids - and some of us in the class were - but there are still others (like myself) who are probably as old (if not older) than she is. Trying to stay positive I turn to the exam and blink a couple of times. :-) It's an array of algebra, trig and calculus questions. No calculator needed eh?! I couldn't do it - had to pull out my cell phone and try to fumble with the calculator on it. Argh those tiny keys are so annoying when you're in a rush. In the end I didn't do to badly and scored high enough to not have to question my mathematical abilities.

Later on in the night when the memories of trig equations set to bible songs started flowing from my memories - I enjoyed the class and remembered that at one time (long time ago in a galaxy far far away) I actually LOVED math and even took it up to division 3 courses at SFU. I even met some of my now long-time friends through math/calculus courses at SFU. :-) How far I've wandered away from math and the sciences to end up back where I started.

On another note - I ran into Anna on the way out of class tonight. She was one of the students renting from us. Both Anna and Crystal moved out at the end of April. So the suite downstairs is empty. It's weird not having them around and the basement is so scary now! The house is too big and empty during the day and when the family is out. At least there will always be Muimui around to make noise.

chicago

Yesterday afternoon Chicky took me to see Chicago (the musical). It was playing at the The Centre. He was really sweet and surprised me with the tickets Friday night. :-) A late birthday present.

We had lunch at Tan Popo on Denman before going over the theatre. I really like musicals, plays, etc so that was a sweet surprise. I thought the musical was good and with each scene, I couldn't help but remember the movie that came out of this play. :-) After 3 hours of song and dance, both Chicky and I were tired. Chicky has strep throat so he's been on drugs for a week now and I had another long week of sleep deprivation. It was quite a feat for him to stay conscious throughout the musical. After the play we headed back to his place. I passed out for 3 hours then woke up to find out it was dark. Chicky wanted to watch Spiderman so we went to the theatre to try to catch a late showing. Only one left was an 11:15pm show. So late! But we saw it anyways. Chicky had to work on Sunday so he must have been tired. Spiderman 3 was a disappointment - maybe there was so much hype about it that I expected more. Oh well...there's still the "summer block busters" like Transformers to look forward to!

another face

So I've joined yet another online network (FaceBook). I said I'd stay away but succumbed to peer pressure. :-) Actually - I partly joined because Shannon intrigued me with the idea and because Kinisky posts all his images to this site. I like to look at what friends are taking pictures of. Now that I've got a profile created, I'm starting to peruse the other features on the site. I went to check out the various groups that my FaceBook buddies have joined. Some are serious while others are just for fun. Tanya belongs to the "It's called a BunnyHug and always will be!!!" group. After seeing some pictures and reading some of the discussions - it warmed my heart to know that prairie folk are still weird as ever. Ah - I miss seeing blue skies, fields of wheat, meteor showers, Northern Lights and tornado funnels. :-) Well...not necessarily the tornadoes...

TGIF

After a long week of work and going to the gym with Tracey a couple of times - it was nice to have dinner with the girls tonight. I like the fact that we're pretty flexible and can pull together a dinner meeting with only a half day's notice. :-)

We went back to Green Basil near Metrotown. The girls and I like the location as the food is great and the service is outstanding (also helps that I know the some of the staff). It was Tracey, Shannon and I tonight. Tracey and I indulged in a bit of retail therapy at Metrotown before having dinner. :-) Tracey is looking for the perfect pair of shoes to go with her wedding dress. I cringe when I see how high she wants the heels to be. Yikes! At dinner we giggled, sighed and groaned about the things that are going on in our lives. It was nice to touch bases with them in a more intimate environment. The food was wonderful as usual. I was a bit thrown off when one of the waitresses asked me if we wanted to order dessert. The 3 of us looked at each other awkwardly. :-) Thank goodness my buddy came over with 3 bowls of ice cream (on the house). It's funny, the icecream is always a "nice" gesture but I'm so use to it now that I EXPECT it with every meal! Lol...till next time!

running out of time

The last 2 days KA has been talking about running the Scotiabank Half Marathon and encouraging me to do it as well. It sparked my interest to the point that I had to spam some of the girls to see if they could be peer pressured into doing it as well. You see...I'm a lemming...I may not look like one at times but I am one. I need others to run off the cliff with me.

Truthfully - now that I've had a full day to think about it - the idea scares the crap out of me! I haven't run a real race in my life. The closest I come to exercising is doing the MS Bike Tour each year. Shannon has been pondering the idea as well. So much so that she even wrote about it in her own blog! :-) Josie suggested that we try a 10km run first before committing to a 21km one. She's interested in the Pacific Spirit Run. But that one is in a couple of weeks - no time to train (or pretend to train). It's just a "get-there-and-run" event.

There are so many pros to doing this. Pros included increased overall fitness, a sense of accomplishment and being able to say "I ran a half marathon ONCE". One of those things that you can check off of your "to-do" lists. I love lists. So why hesitate? I'm plagued by cons such as time commitment required for training, lack of enthusiasm as time passes (I tend to adopt hobbies in phases), possibility of injury and fear of failure. :-) Maybe I'll roll it around in my mind for a few more days....

give life

So I got my new drivers license in the mail today. The picture didn't turn out as bad as I thought it would. :-) Yah! Included in the package was a form to become an organ donor. I'm pretty sure I registered to be one a long time ago but I filled out this new card anyways (just in case). I'm all for giving others what I don't need when I pass away. Plus they make it so convenient for you...easy to fill in card, prepaid envelope...how much simpler can it get?!

birthday bashes

On Thursday last week I celebrated my 30th birthday. To my surprise and amusement, Robyn had decorated my cubicle so that everyone walking by knew it was my birthday and how old I was turning. :-) She's such a sweetie! We went out for lunch with some coworkers to celebrate. That night was pretty quiet. I had dinner with my parents then rushed to the mall to get my drivers license renewed. My 5 years was up and it was time for another picture. Thank goodness the Expressways are open till 8pm - otherwise it would have been the WestCoast Express for me the next day. I still have a paper interim license - waiting for the real card to be mailed out.

On Friday the celebrations continue. Robyn organized a dinner/drinking affair down at the Keg downtown. I had a delicious meal and drank way too much. Each of my coworkers bought me a drink. I'm a cheap drunk so just sniffing liquour gets me all red and blotchy. :-) Needless to say I wasn't able to drive home and had to call Chicky to my rescue. By that time I had emptied my tummy into the toilet and was feeling much better. We went back to Chicky's place where I filled up on some delicious KFC and watched this strange Japanese movie (Shinobi). I wasn't able to stay up for the second movie and crashed till the next morning.

Saturday was the big bbq. Chicky and I got up as early as I could manage (luckily there wasn't a hangover involved). Went out to Costco and filled up on groceries. I went home, cleaned the house and prepared some food for the guests. It was so nice seeing everyone as I missed the girls. Haven't seen you guys in such a long time! The hockey game was on and everyone seemed to have a good time mingling and munching on food. Nyah, Logan, Katarina and Joshua came to the party as well. They were the big hits! It was fun BBQing and I'm hoping to do more of it when the weather gets better. I've posted some of the pictures to my album.

07109

Kim's blog, Julian date 07109. As I leave the comforts of being 20-something and embark on the dirty thirties, I find time to reflect on what I have accomplished. I'm happy to say that I've done many different things, had good and bad experiences that made me grow as a person and cultivated friendships that will last a lifetime. My continuing mission: To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before.

On this day: Aisumasen (I'm Sorry) Day created as a day of reconciliation in 2005 for all who want atone and seek forgiveness; allowing us to put "the past in the past" and rather than letting them fester and effect the future. It was inspired by John Lennon's song by the same title.

The Syringa Tree

"The deeply evocative story of an abiding love between two families, one black and one white, and the two children that are born into their shared household in the early 1960s South Africa.."

On Wednesday night Tanya invited me to see The Syringa Tree at the Vancouver Playhouse. The show was intense and spectacular. I was surprised to find out that there was only one actress playing many characters. I was hesitant about what the performance would be like. When I saw the simple set (a swing) I was even more worried. I was blown away by her performance though. The character transitions were very smooth and the pace of the story was great. KA says I enjoyed it because I love audiobooks and this was in a sense an elaborate audiobook! Thank you Tanya for sharing the experience with me!

little boys

What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails
That's what little boys are made of!

Congratulations to Mary & Peter who are the proud parents of Nathan. Born April 17th at 5:57am. Weighing in at 6lbs 6ozs. Both mom and baby are doing well and are expected to be released from the hospital tomorrow.

first birthdays

First steps, first words, first birthdays - these are just some of the milestones that new parents get to look forward to. On the weekend we were invited to celebrate Katarina's 1st birthday. It was a wonderful party - in good old Lozada tradition (LOTS of food and family). I think I stuffed myself on all of Josie's mom's homemade dishes. Mmm...spring rolls!

Toshiki took many good pictures so you can view them here.

consolidating

For a while I didn't blog and now I'm posting like crazy tonight! Lol...must be a full moon.

2007 has been a year full of new babies. Many of the new mommies have asked me for photos of the other kids in the group. I've decided to create a shared album in which we can all enjoy images of the kids. You'll find the new album under my new link on the left hand side. This will consolidate all the pictures I have of the kids and give you a one-stop-glance of them (instead of visiting each blog site to see pics). Plus it's helpful for those that don't blog but want to share their beautiful babes with us.

picture this

I know everyone has been asking to see some pictures from the trip and I really want to show you guys too. But the primary reason I haven't been able to is that I wasn't able to upload the pictures into Blogger as they are way too big and too many. I've encountered some difficulty finding a photo sharing site that will allow me to load 3GB+ worth of images. That's a lot of pics. On top of that each time I see a button that says "sign up now" - I want to turn the other way. :-) I have too many sign in ids and passwords. So far I've only signed up for the Google photo sharing site as it makes sense (Blogger is managed by Google and so is my Calendar). I've linked the photo album to my photo blog as well. It only has 1GB of space so I've only chosen a few images to load - not that many of food.

Check out the pics from Malaysia here.

number crunchers

Did you guys ever play that game in school? It was a dorky computer game where a pacman like creature went around and ate fractions. Why am I talking about this? Oh - I just committed myself to another semester at Douglas College. Back to school time again. I feel like I'm a perpetual student. Realistically I never stop feeling like it. The schooling goes on and on without any light at the end of this academic tunnel. So what have we committed ourselves to for the next 3 months? Business Mathmatics. What does that have to do with anything I'm doing at work? ZIP. Why in the world would I take it? Because I have to (part of my program). In other academic news - I've been peer pressured into signing up for programming courses through work. I had my Performance Review last month. Once a year we get to "discuss" with our managers and supervisors on our work performance for the whole year, write a pretty little report and plan for my goals and expectations for the coming year. The underlying emphasis I've been getting is that they want me to UP my technical abilities. Unfortunately I don't score as well in that area. Boohoo...lol...just kidding - doesn't hurt my feelings as it's not shocking news. As you move up the ranks of being an analyst - the expectation is that you'll also be more technical than the junior staff (duh!). So 2007/2008 is dedicated to "training". Which equates to numerous programming and technical courses. I'm kind of looking forward to it (operative word here is "kind of"). I like to learn new things and if they're willing to pay for it then it's just topping on my cake!

Herman the German Giant

So my sister sent me an Happy Easter email the other day about Herman the German Giant. I'm intrigued by the picture and follow the link. Turns out it's about a giant breed of bunnies. That's right folks - that picture has not been digitally enhanced! Isn't he so cuddly looking? I'm sure I'd throw out my back trying to hug him - that or have him bite me - but he's so interesting looking that I want to touch him!

Right about now you're probably thinking to yourself: "I don't really care". :-) But I do! Lol - I'm always interested in naturally oddities. Which includes but is not limited to: medical miracles, new things discovered in space, people who have unique gifts, new inventions or gadgets (of course!) and anything else that has a "cool" or "gross" factor. As you can tell I was one of those little kids who pulled bugs limbs apart because I wanted to see what color their blood. Poor bugs - they were my favorite test subjects. :-) That's one thing we had lots of in Saskatoon - bugs. That and there wasn't that many things to do while growing up on the Prairies except for torturing insects - or maybe that was just me...

I'm a BIG fan of the Discovery Channel though. It's right up there with YTV and the Cartoon Network. :-) Can't live without my cartoons either. What is your favorite TV channel? Or do you even watch TV at all?

happy Easter

My family is doing Easter dinner today. Since it's Monday and everyone had to go back to work - except for me - I was in charge of cooking the big meal. So early this morning I went out to Save On Foods, pick up a butterball turkey (my favorite kind) and some other food. Came home and started thinking about what to make. The turkey was still frozen so that was a pain in the ass - had to run hot water over it for awhile for it to thaw out enough so that I could remove the innards. After some thought I started making garlic mash potatoes (which took some time as the potatoes had to boil), fried rice (mostly for lunch tomorrow), snow peas, garlic bread and a dip. Carol and them came over near dinner time and brought some food - so now we're ready to feast! Mmmm...so good. Now it's just a matter of waiting for KA/Mike to come home from the states so that we can eat. Where are those guys?!

changed the look

I was bored tonight so I changed the look of the blog. It's been a year since I've made any major changes to the layout. The new interface is much easier to navigate through - thus making the change seamless. I must say - these blog sites are making it easier and easier for the computer-unsavy-types to maintain blogs as well.