more speed

Another episode of analysis-paralysis. My incompetent laptop doesn't respond fast enough. This prompted me to open up the internet and go searching for a solution. I can get so distracted sometimes...

For those few geeks out there that are interested - CNET has some registry cleaners and defragers that are "suppose" to increase performance.

CNET

damn interesting

Every now and then I stumble across interesting sites while surfing the net. Here's one that might raise your IQ. If nothing else - it might provide you something to say in those awkward have-to-be-social moments.

Damn Interesting
5 Minutes
Pick The Brain

OR 100 most useful sites on the web

getting smart

I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my phone. I'm the proud owner of a BlackBerry wanna-be! What is it? The HTC S640 smartphone. It's been a brutal battle with Telus and many empty threats from the both of us. :-) Haggling is not my forte.

I'm still getting use to using it. I enjoy the luxury of a battery that lasts longer than a day. Having the convenience of Windows Mobile 6 is exquisite. With my Outlook synching to the device - I do not have to manually manage contact information. :-) The phone is larger than your average cell phone but that's alright because I normally carry large purses. Plenty of room for the phone and other girlie-necessities.

May updates

It's been about a month since the last time I've written. What a long hiatus!

Here's what I've been up to in the last while:

My Wedding:

• the invitations were completed and international ones sent
  
• rental cars have been booked
  
• flowers have been selected and booked
• cake has been ordered
• bridesmaids dresses have been selected, booked and paid for
• hair stylist is booked - still debating about the services of the currently selected makeup artist

Tracey's Wedding:

• The bridal shower was wonderful - it was good to see so much family and friends sharing in Tracey's joy. It was hosted at Tracey's house. There was lots of delicious home-made food. The were fun games too!
• The bachelorette party was right after the shower. We went to Tantras for some pole and lap dancing lessons. PussyCat Dolls in the making. After that it was dinner downtown and back to the hotel for some girlie bonding time.
• The wedding day was spectacular. The weather turned out to be perfect - not too hot or cold. Tracey looked beautiful in her dress and Shawn wasn't too shabby in his outfit either. :-) The ceremony was in the garden at Westwood Golf & Country Club. There were some heartfelt speeches at dinner and the standard slideshow.
  
• I haven't had a chance to post any pictures from the wedding yet - but will do so soon.
  

House Hunting:

• this has been on hold while Chicky's parents were away for the month

2010

On Thursday we celebrated the first year anniversary of launching the 2010 license plates. I was preoccupied with work so I didn't get a chance to see the festivities. When a coworker came by to say that the mascots had just arrived - I made time to go down. :-) I was super excited about seeing them - so cute! The show was wrapping up so I got an opportunity to take some pictures with them. :-) Again - benefits of knowing the corporate photographers and being extroverted enough to push forward and ask for a picture. My 2 coworkers jumped into the picture as well but they felt a bit silly and didn't want to stand out so much. :-) Hopefully the picture with the camera that I'm looking at will turn out good! After that I was so hyper so I ran upstairs to tell everyone that I got to hug all the mascots. I'm such a kid! The Help Desk folks laughed and said I was so "asian". They asked if I made the victory sign in the pictures too. Of course! *wink*

the dress

This morning I woke up intending to take a day away from house hunting and concentrate on the wedding stuff. After a morning or running around doing errands, I picked up my mom after lunch and took her dress shopping. A spur of the moment thing.

We went down to Hastings street and viewed 3 stores down there. The smaller stores didn't have anything that I was interested in. I have an idea what type of wedding dress I want and basically needed to find a store that carried it.

The dress criteria was:

• had to be sold on the floor in my size (as I wasn't going to order a dress due to time constraints and a need for security - I want to hug "my" dress at the end of this venture)
• a-line design as I'm uninterested in the "Cinderella" looking dresses
  
• corsette back because they are much more forgiving then zipper backs
  
• detailing on top and bottom - simple is good but not TOO simple...

Hastings Street was unsuccessful so we headed to Brentwood Mall. Bryan's Bridal is there and is known to have a good selection of dresses for average prices. The stars must have been aligned because I found the perfect dress! What makes it even more perfect is that it requires minimal alterations - just have to hem the bottom up an inch or so. Very doable. I was even more estactic to find out that a brand new dress got shipped in 2 days ago in the style that I liked. So I said "sold!" The sales lady then asked me if I wanted to take a picture in the dress. I was dumb founded. Then I remembered that my camera was in the car. I normally don't carry the big camera with me but I guess it's fate. :-) I'm absolutely happy that I was able to find a dress and that I did so in one afternoon! Thank you to those that offered to go dress shopping with me. :-)

birthday surprises

Saturday was full of surprises. I got up intending to spend the day house hunting with Chicky's family. Instead he took me to Milestones in which I was greeted with good friends and family all wishing another year of success and happiness. I'm very fortunate to have such a caring group of people! Don't know what I'd do without you guys/girls!

After brunch was another wonderful surprise - a relaxing massage at the Syncopa Spa in Port Moody. I've been so tense the last month between work, wedding planning and house hunting that my muscles were aching for a rub down. Chicky has been absolutely sweet and supportive in the last couple of months. His enthusiam in all aspects of the wedding is endearing. :-) The idea of a massage is always alluring to him and I. We're suckers for pampering. Chicky filled out his essay length questionnaire and indulged in some massage therapy while I had my treatment.

Before I could fall asleep on the warm spa bed, it was time to go meet up with the real estate agents to view a couple of more homes. Feeling so limber and relaxed, I didn't want to go out looking at homes and get all bunched up in knots.

The homes we viewed were OK - nothing jumped out at us. I think the 4 of us are getting tired of looking and might need a break from this to rejuvenate our enthusiasm. Chicky and I even went up to Burke Mountain to check out the new development. All the show homes are stylishly build but the bedrooms aren't big enough for our needs.

The events didn't end there. For dinner we invited all of my family and Chicky's family out to eat at Jade Restaurant (where we'll be hosting our wedding reception). It was a good chance for everyone to meet each other and check out the venue. We got our own party room so it was easier for the kids to run around and for us not to worry. The food was delicious and the service was nice. From dinner we invited the whole gang over to my parents house for tea. Things went pretty well considering a minor language barrier. Ideally we'd like to be able to have both families over for more dinners, etc.

ones and twos

This weekend was a flux of birthday parties. Chicky and I got to celebrate Katarina's 2nd birthday Saturday afternoon and Nathan's first birthday in the evening. The food was wonderful and the company even better. Looking forward to seeing the kids grow up.

I've posted the pics into my album.

decade of memories

Are we not like two volumes of one book?

~Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

Yesterday Chicky and I celebrated a decade of knowing/being with each other. I'm happy to say that the journey has been worth it. Over the years we've shared love, laughter, heartache and tears. I've learned that our relationship is not perfect in the typical sense, but in it's own dysfunctional way - it's perfect for us. Our strong friendship is probably what kept us sane through all the trials and tribulations. ;-) In a way the drama kept the passion alive and crowds wondering what's going on with us.

No celebration is complete without food! We went to the Boathouse Restaurant in Port Moody after work. The atmosphere was romantic and we were just happy to take a break from our crazy schedules and enjoy a private moment for ourselves. We've been so engrossed in wedding planning and house buying that we haven't really had time to ourselves to just relax and enjoy the good things in life. Deciding that we deserved this wonderful break from the hectic world, we ordered the biggest thing on the menu. Chicky and I are big eaters. The 'surf & turf' meal for 2 was the best choice for us. I sure wished I had my camera as the meal was worthy of a kim-food-pic-moment. The platter had 2 sirloin steaks that were juicy and succulent. The fire grilled jumbo tiger prawn skewers, Alaskan king crab legs and whole lobster made my mouth water! Toping that off was wild rice and grilled vegetables. The warm butter dipping cream sauce was also oh-so-yummy as it had a hint of lime. Unfortunately while waiting for our meal and appetizer, I succumbed to the warm bread and ate like a whole loaf by myself. Warm crusty bread is my weakness. I was full before I could really enjoy the main course. We talked about the last 10 years and how we've grown as a couple. It was fun reminiscing about the early years and how much fun it was getting to know each other. We're at the "old-married-couple" stage in the relationship. I like this better as it's comforting to know that I don't have to entertain him and that we can have our own interests. Not that I didn't enjoy spending 24/7 with him in the beginning. :-)

The service at the Boathouse was spectacular. We had a very enthusiastic waiter named Natalie. She saw Chicky eying the dessert tray after we finished stuffing the last morsels of our food down our throats. I literally was feeling sick from being so full - so was Chicky. I couldn't fit in dessert even if I wanted to. Chicky was too full to eat one on his own so he reluctantly passed on the tray. Low and behold she comes back with the dessert that he was eying and gave us 2 forks. Apparently dessert was on her. Cool! :-) We also had our appetizer comped by the restaurant as it arrived late (same time as our meal). The good times just kept coming. After dinner we took a stroll down the pier to walk off some of the food and look at the lights reflecting off the water. It was sweet - minus the group of kids smoking weed at the pier entrance - and a perfect ending to a fun night.

Before the days of internet, I use to keep paper journals. The ones pictured above document Chicky and my life together. Every now and then we take a peek into one of the books to see how I was feeling or what we were doing at the time. I was pretty sentimental in the beginning and tried to keep everything that was given or said to me. As the years wore on - the scrapbook/journals became sparse and became more like documentaries. Thank goodness for the internet! It's made expressing my thoughts so much easier!

moving along

I'm falling behind in blogging. :-) The last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic. What have I been up to? Engrossed in home buying and wedding planning. My weekends are literally spent talking to vendors or viewing homes.

Wedding:

• We confirmed our reception location - Jade Restaurant in Richmond. This was the easiest part of planning as Chicky's parents scoped out the restaurant for us and helped us book it.
  
• The ceremony site had been a struggle as we debated about an outdoor vs indoor ceremony. Last week we decided to do it at a Church. Chicky and I spent Saturday morning talking to a few churches and have selected the Richmond Chinese United Church. We're finalizing the booking this week.
  
• I'm really relieved to have these 2 major milestones achieved as I was afraid that Chicky was losing focus with the wedding planning in lieu of the house hunting. Now that the ceremony site is booked. We can order the invitations this weekend! Yah..one more thing to check off the list. The invitations was actually the second thing that Chicky and I picked out (after the restaurant and before the ceremony site). There's a bit of a time crunch on it as we're expecting some international guests who have a stop over in Vancouver in the middle of April. We'd like to give them their invitations in person...which means the invitations need to be printed in the next week or so. :-)
• I went to the Vancouver Wedding Show on Sunday afternoon with my mom. I didn't have much time to spend walking around as Chicky and I had to visit the grave site with his family for All Souls Day in the morning and I had to be back in a few hours for an house viewing appointment. :-) My mom and I made good time though and was able to look at all the vendors and watch a bit of the fashion show. I saw Lisa (Nick's wife) and her mom there as well. They were helping Lisa's brother's fiance pick out stuff. Though I didn't win the Grand Prize (a $56,000 wedding package), I did book the tuxedo appointment for Chicky and his groomsmen. :-) I got lured into a "one time only deal".
  

Real Estate:

• If I haven't told you by now, Chicky and I have decided to buy a home with his parents. We had discussed our living arrangement for after the wedding and this option was the best for all of us in the long run. The 4 of us have been on the hunt for a home for the last 2 weekends straight.
• On the long weekend we spent every day out with the real estate agent looking at potential homes. Not many met our criteria.
• This weekend we were out viewing show homes again - some more possibilities but nothing definite.
• I think we've short listed 2 homes and will make an offer this weekend.
  

mascot mayhem

"Here comes Peter Cottontail...hopping down the bunny trail..."

Yesterday was the Social Club's annual Easter Egg Hunt. I took the girls (Angelina and Teresa) with me on the Hunt this year. It was a good turn out - 180 people showed up. I was very impressed with Jo's organizational skills, she always thinks about the little details like coloring contests for the really little kids. :-) Takes a type-A to appreciate another Type-A's detailed work! Jo is one of the other super-assertive event organizers in our Club. She's sometimes hard to handle (too aggressive for the introverts in the group) but always reliable/dependable to take on large or unpopular events.

So on Friday I picked up my bunny costume from the costume shop. I've been fighting a cold for a week or more now and thought that I would have to enlist the help of Chicky for Sunday as I could barely breathe. So he willingly got into the costume Friday night to see if it fit. :-) It was too snug for him. Plus he was a SCARY bunny. Nope - definately not cute! I tried to convince him to wear the costume to surprise his parents - he refused as he didn't want them to have a heart attack.

If you've ever been a mascot then you can relate to the following. The bunny head was big and I couldn't see out of it. Knowing this well in advance - I enlisted a bunny-bodyguard. Her job was to keep the kids from stampeding me and keep me from killing myself as I "lead" the Hunt. The good thing about being a mascot is that you don't have to talk. Just wave in no particular direction, bob your head when told and try to look in the direction that your handler is telling you to. Some kids were freaked out by having a giant bunny staring down at them. Poor kids. I was having a really hard time with the head piece as it was too big and the apparatus underneath literally clamped my eyes shut. So I was bonking kids in the head as I have no spatial perception and tried my best not to molest them as I "felt around" for them. Half way through the gig I figured it's easier to just hold out my arms and hug whatever came between them. I think the worst part was that when I made my grand appearance - guess who happened to push their way to the front of the mob? The girls! And they were trying to pull on my costume to find out who was underneath. :-) I was unsuccessfully trying to kick them out of the way - hahhaha...what a bad auntie eh?

After 2 grueling (really hot) hours of picture taking, holding screaming kids, walking blindly around with baskets full of candy and trying not to knock over little kids or be beaten by the older ones (man...some big kids are just cruel to mascots!) - I was released from my bunny duties. It was a fun experience but I'm glad that I've put in my time and don't have to be the bunny next year! Hmmm...I might just pick up a larger bunny outfit for Chicky next year....

oh baby baby

I just wanted to extend my CONGRATULATIONS to:

Charlene and Scott who are expecting their first child this August. We wish them all the best and look forward to seeing the little one. Click here to read more about her pregnancy.

Art of Facilitation

I've spent the the last two days in a facilitation course. Basically learning how to lead meetings. :-) It was held at UBC downtown campus with the Sauder school of business. I enjoy "executive education" because it's POSH. For the price of the course (mucho mula), we got breakfast before class, a lounge with food all day long, a mini fridge in the room for drinks, lunches at the law court and great gifts. As you can see I'm all about the give-aways then the content of the course. Actually it was interesting as there were about 30 participants. Majority of which were managers, CEOs, team leads or some do some other type of leadership role. This course is part of a "leadership" series.

Day 1 of the course was centered around the Insights profiles. I've done a fair share of personality inventories in the past and it's always amusing to try the "newest" trend. There was nothing "new" about my personality revealed in this test. The results are consistent with those in the past - to summarize: I'm an extrovert, assertive and energetic. :-) The type to go-go-go-crash and repeat. I'm happy to have been able to learn, apply and challenge myself in terms of leading teams. The course taught me to be more aware of my leadership and facilitation style. With the tips and tricks provided by the instructors (we had a tag team of instructors) - I feel more comfortable with self managing my "red" energy. :-) The hands on learning was "Apprentice" style. One facilitator trying to manage a team. I volunteered to facilitate in Day 1 as normally with these courses - Day 2 tasks are usually harder! I got a team of people with personality types that were exact opposite of mine (greens!!!). That was the most challenging part - not the task itself - but the people management. There were many moments where I had to literally step back, be quiet and flip styles. I naturally want to be directive and push people to make snappy decisions. For some types of tasks/goals - this type of approach is all wrong. :-) Oh well - too bad for them! On a side note - a couple of the team building games were very familiar as I've done them in other management classes or have deployed them to my own department. So I found myself not volunteering for them as I know what the result should be and what the "lessons learned" are. Boohoo...itchying to be involved but standing on the sidelines watching. :-)

I'm hoping to be able to do more management/leadership courses to improve myself. Some day in the distant future - I'd like to play the role of a team lead or some other type of "official" leadership role. If your companies pay for training - I highly recommend this series of seminars.

workflow processes

Work has been quite busy in the last couple of weeks with projects coming up. There are days when I feel like 12 hours in the office is not enough. This feeling probably stems from the fact that I waste too much time in meetings. Aside from "real" work I've been trying to keep up with the Social Club event planning. I'm looking forward to being the Easter Bunny and the Dodgeball tournament. Lots of planning involved but as always - once the event happens - it's all worth while seeing the smiles on everyones faces. :-)

On the wedding front. Chicky and I haven't talked much about the wedding since the engagement last month. In the last couple of weeks we've been busy with family parties, etc. On the Sunday we went into Richmond so that he could go to work. Unfortunately his new office building was locked and we couldn't break in. So we took the opportunity to drive around Richmond and contemplate restaurant locations. We're going to do a Chinese restaurant reception so locating a venue is the top of our list of "to do" list. One thing we did decide upon was having the wedding this year. We made that decision last week after much discussion between a 2008 or 2009 wedding. Financially they would be equivalent. Seasonally - it's a whole other story. So we're aiming at a September/October wedding. I was hesitant about having a fall/winter wedding as the weather is unpredictable and frankly I like taking pictures in the park. A summer wedding would totally be out of the question for 2008. Too little time to plan. :-) I prefer to reduce "known" stressors when possible.

The last 2 days I've been in a Workflow Process Modeling course for work - should have taken this course when I first started my job last month...would totally have helped then! The material is dry so to keep myself from falling asleep, I would sometimes mentally visualize mapping out my wedding on a Visio drawing (with all the decision diamonds, swimlanes, etc). :-) Yes - I know...geeky!! My instructor loves post-it notes...makes me want to go crazy with post-it notes too. So many colors and sizes! Kay - back to my first thought.

Being unsuccessful at thinking of a restaurant to "pop into" while in Richmond. I convince Chicky that we should do something more productive - so we head down to Chinatown to look at invitations. :-) I'm not making my own. The one thing I learned from past experience with event planning is the "keep it simple & buy when possible" moto. If I have a September wedding - that leaves me 6 months to get all activities aligned. This is possible if I don't introduce any manual processes into the plan. :-) Ah...still in workflow process modeling mode...where's the critical path?! Anyhow we look went to 2 stores. One was run by a super old chinese couple - we weren't too impressed with their stuff. The other store had more potential. After 1/2 hour of sitting there we put together a design, selected various paper, layout, caligraphy, artwork and color scheme of the invitation we wanted created. After that we got the quote for the order of invitations - a bit more then what I budgeted for but still within scope. Because Chicky and I have a tendency to be "spontaneous" purchasers and often suffer from "buyers remorse" - we left our information and the design specs with the company and told them that we will confirm the order later. They only need a month to produce the product so we still have plenty of time to change our minds if need be. Plus we need a venue and date first! I'd prefer not to change our minds about the invitations as it's such a good feeling thinking that one thing has been "completed" for the wedding. :-)

Lily's shower

On Saturday we had Lily's baby shower at my house. Kim Anh did the majority of the planning - thank you!! I got the easy job of decorating, goodie bags, etc. My mom was in charge of coordinating the food. KA is pretty creative with her games. She even made Carol a cake of DIAPERS! :-) Here's a picture of it. I liked it - very creative.

It was fun having the kids and family over. The party started at noon but didn't end till 10:30pm. Wow - we weren't quite prepared (food wise) for guests to stay that long! It was mostly family left by that time at night so we played some RockBand and poker. What's a weekend without the family game of poker eh?

Next weekend is another opportunity to show everyone my kareoke skills! Lol...should be interesting. Here are the pics from the shower.

in mediation

Tis another unhappy purchase for Kimmi. I've been dealing with a stubborn and incompetent Ebay company (TriState Cameras) for the last 2 weeks. Due to some miscommunication and accounting errors on their side, I was charged twice for a flash that I ordered. I didn't find this out till I saw my credit card statement. From there it's been non-stop emails and threats of "legal action" on my part. Being an unhappy client I filed complaints against TriState with my credit card company and with Ebay. The manager of TriState Cameras has been in contact with me for 3 days now trying to resolve the issue, before that I had to deal with their "customer relations department". I was not happy with his pushy attitude and he was equally not happy with my inability to just withdraw the paperwork and deal with this on "our own". :-) I've learned through many experiences that you get faster results when things suddenly become "official". Unfortunately Michelle and her family had to witness one of my outburst to the manager at Brandon's birthday party last night. I was getting ready to go home when he called. The manager was not happy that I didn't return his calls as there is a 3 hour time difference between us so he was calling off hours. I'm not about to call New York everyday to fight about charges that they've made to my credit card so I let them call me. So when I finally did speak to him, he was trying to give me a "resolution" to our "little" problem. I was fuming mad at his version of a resolution and was not using my "inside voice". :-) Luckily the kids were not in the room. You see - the issue here was that he wasn't going to refund me the money because the second flash has not reached their company yet. I was furious at being held financially responsible for a product that has been in "transit" for over 2 weeks now. He had tried to convince me it was my problem because should the flash get damaged or go missing during transit, who would pay for it?! I think that's B/S as it's UPS problem if a shipment is damaged or missing. Technically I never received the second flash therefore they should have refunded the money right away. It was their accounting department's mistake in the first place! Anyhow he was trying to get me to sign a document that said all was hunky-dory and we're best buds now (to counter my documents to them that said all was NOT hunky-dory and we're mortal enemies). :-) Ah...he thinks I'm new to this legal game...

Anyhow he's filed with a mediation company and I was contacted by them today. I filed counter paperwork. No biggie to me as last week I was in a vendictive mood and wanted to blast out horrible messages on the photography forums. I let my mood pass and didn't do it incase I would regret it later (in the event that my own reputation - and chances at winning this - is wrecked by emotionally charged comments on the web). :-) TriState is suppose to be a reputable company. They're classified as a Platinum Seller on Ebay - meaning they have processed over 3000 transactions and have a 100% satisfaction rate. I'm sure they mean well but just because they're reputable doesn't mean they can make mistakes, expect me to say "oh well" and sit back and wait for when it's an ideal time for them to give me my money back. Anyhow we back to playing the waiting game. The manager is also refunding my shipping fee for the first flash as a sign of good faith. I'm willing to retract everything once I see a refund on my credit card. I'm aggressive/assertive but not totally unreasonable...

planning

I've been in planning mode today. For the last couple of weeks I've been burning out at work participating in this corporate project. We're in product design mode right now so it's weeks of 8-10 hour days sitting in a meeting room and hashing out interfaces and definitions. I'm literally wiped by the end of week and feel like I can't bear anymore hours with the programmers. Being on the core project team has given me some good experiences in the world of project management but as of the end of last week I spoke to a couple of my managers and requested to be taken out of the design sessions. I feel that my time there is wasted as I'm not an SME and can't actively contribute. It's getting to the point where I feel like it's endless hours of sitting in a dark room watching the vendor go over fields on a screen and listening to people debate. Sometimes the debates are ridiculous as people get trapped with tunnel vision and circular thinking. This equates to multiple instances where I've fallen asleep or have to duck out for bio-breaks just so that I can splash some water on my face to wakeup. Programming is a VERY dry topic. Deeming this as not very good use of my time, the project manager agreed to relieve me of the next series of sessions. Getting out of the sessions, I was given the opportunity to do some mini-projects. Happily I accepted a BCIT Computing Career Fair event from the Education Department. :-) Finally...Social Club type of work in my "real" day-to-day job. :-) Excited to be doing something that I truly enjoy, I happily met with 4 managers on Friday and was given some information on what they wanted out of this event. The good thing is that I got to build my own "team" (with some guidelines) and can control content, presentation, etc. The team is now complete (thinking of people to be on the team was fun as I wanted to represent all "looks" of IT). I'm excited about getting to hang out at the BCIT to promote our company and work with an outgoing and diverse team.

Feeling like it was going to be a productive morning. I took a break from the BCIT stuff and did some Social Club stuff. I finished confirming with the Burnaby School Board for booking the dodgeball tournament for April 6th. I find the process for booking gyms at an elementary school or highschool to be cumbersome. The system is inefficient. The next couple of months will be busy as I'll be hosting a couple of events for the Social Club. :-) Lol - I've always wanted to be a bunny...now my mascot dreams will be realized! Hahaa...just kidding...it's my turn put on a hot/furry animal outfit for the Children's Easter Egg Hunt in March. In the midst of setting up these events and talking to vendors, I'm also focused on rebranding the Club so that it aligns to the new corporate marketing strategy. Lol - I've got ideas but not enough hours in the day to look into them, so some of the Social Club board of executives have a been delegated tasks. I think I'm just going to run for the President position in the Club this year as I already manage 80% of operations/events.

As the most visible Director for the Club, I'm sent/forwarded A LOT of vendor pamphlets/packages...aka junk. Most of the time I look at the stuff once and hand it over to Karen who is good with keeping track of our vendor information. I was staring at the stack of lower mainland golf course packages I got this month when I thought about my own wedding planning. I picked up one of the folders (for Redwoods Golf Course in Langley) because it had a bride on the cover so it sparked my interest. I looked at the maps, menus, pricing, etc and pondered about where I'd want to have my wedding. Getting distracted from "real" work, I went to my MS Outlook program and exported my contact list to an Excel format so that I can later on import it into Excel to populate the guest list. As you can see I'm easily distracted if I don't focus myself. After that it was back to doing "real" work and not playing around with planning.

Tonight I started my first "planning" type activity for the wedding. I went downstairs and dragged up a box of wedding magazines from the basement (my house had become a reservoir for wedding magazines, etc from all the weddings Kim Anh and I have been a part of over the years). I flipped through a couple of magazines, surfed on the web to see when the next wedding show would be, pondered about booking tickets but couldn't make the commitment so set the information in my daily planner for later. I also created my budget spreadsheet. I think I got more enjoyment from creating the pivot tables and formulas then thinking about what the spreadsheet will be used for. Lol - I'm such a geek! There are a couple of planners in the box but I prefer electronic versions of things (much easier to transport the info on my USB stick). I'm debating if I want to go to a wedding exhibit as they're all the same and we haven't really decided if we're getting married in 2008 or 2009. Oh well - doesn't hurt to have things planned/prepared early.

more birthday parties

Today Chicky and I celebrated Logan's 1st birthday. How time flies!! Andy and Michelle did a superb job of hosting the party. I love how Martha-Stewart-like they are. :-) The home was decorated with balloons, streamers and an impressive gallery of pictures taken throughout the year of Logan. Being a photo-enthusiast, I was especially interested in this wall display. Michelle created a Nemo birthday cake made of cupcakes. I would post a picture but didn't bring my camera to the party as Andy would be taking all the pictures with his pro-camera. :-) The cake was impressive and delicious. Kudos to Michelle's baking and imagination. At the end of the night everyone got to go through the gallery of pictures and select 2 pics to take home. Chicky and I had put dibs on a couple really cute images but they were snatched up by the elders. The ones we ended up picking were still adorable. I did notice that a lot of people aimed for the 6-12 month old version of Logan. I guess when you're a newborn - it's hard to portray your personality. :-) Most of his 1-6 month pics are of him sleeping.

On Tuesday night we'll be celebrating Brandon's second birthday with the family. He's growing up to be a very independent boy. :-) It's good to see that Mary's boys have their own very different personalities. It makes life more interesting when you've got a mix.

red egg & ginger

Lily's one-month party was on Saturday. We went to Pelican Restaurant on Hastings Street for the celebration. This is the same restaurant that they used for Angelina's one-month party 8 years ago. I haven't been to it in awhile so I was very pleased with the renovations and new menu. It's gone from a run-down-dim-sum location to a swanky all-about-presentation location. There was some mix up with the restaurant location and times but in the end everything worked out and we had a spectacular meal. Yummy - I was so full. After dinner we invited Minh's family to come over to our house to hang out. We ended up playing poker with the lot of them till 5am. There's been very little sleep as the main family had partied till 4am the night before and everyone was running on very little sleep. :-) Typical behaviour for our 'late night" family...

new beginnings

"The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination."

On Wednesday Chicky and I got engaged! It was a total surprise and very sweet. He wanted to celebrate Valentine's Day early so we met up at his place after work and he cooked dinner. After dinner I gave him his V-day gift (the Planet Earth DVD set) and he went upstairs to get me mine. He came down with a big bouquet of flowers. I was so happy as it's been like a decade since he's boughten me flowers. :-) They were so fragrant as "our" flower is the Star Gazer lily, also mixed in the bouquet was roses and baby's breath. He also handed me a midsize box. I opened it up and was confused by the car parts. I didn't know what to say as Chicky has given me car parts as a present in the past and I wasn't sure if this was my real gift or if there was another gift hidden inside (which he also likes to do). So I gingerly ask what it is and keep poking around for the possibly of a hidden gift. He said it was some kind of coolant thing for your car. I came across an envelope under some of the wires and a wave of relief washed over me. Whew! It wasn't a car part after all - maybe a gift certificate. I had been hinting that I've been overworked and in desperate need of a massage package. I opened the envelope and see a picture of a ring inside. I didn't clue in and looked over to ask Chicky what it was. He was down on one knee and held out a ring box. I was in shock and didn't say anything at first. Lol - it was awkward, romantic and amusing all at once.

We wanted to tell our family right away but his were out of the country and mine weren't home. It wasn't till last night that my family finally found out. I didn't really want to tell anyone till our family knew but I was bubbling with excitement so I told some coworkers the next day. Now it's time to let the rest of the gang know.

Thank you for all the well wishes! I haven't had a chance to talk to most of you in person and feel bad about that. I'm sure we can touch bases soon.