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Monday 18 November 2013

Aaaargh, where did Fall go?

OK so I've been mega relaxed about blogging lately, and I suddenly find that Fall/Autumn/whatever you like to call it is on it's way out and winter is swiftly creeping up on us. The last 6 weeks or so have been mega busy for me, and blogging has slipped down the priority list in favor of eating/sleeping/doing fun stuff, but today I find myself with a quiet afternoon to sit back, sip green tea and write a little.

So. What have we been up to?

Well.

At the end of September we discovered the delights of Storm Crow Tavern, an awesome restaurant/pub type establishment that caters to the geekier side of Vancouver. The place has a huge statue of Cthulu, a ridiculously big stack of boardgames, posters and signed pictures scattered on the walls, with various memorabilia from pretty much any geek tv show/film/game you can think of. We got particularly excited at the signed photo of the cast of Firefly.

October was a bit hectic.


We discovered Sherlock's British Store in New Westminster, where we excitedly got meat pies in the cafe and then spent ages wandering round the shop attempting to buy something small that reminded us of home. In the end we opted for a drink each (Ribena for me and Ginger Ale for Ian) then a packet of Pickled Onion crisps each and a sachet of Angel Delight. (We only recently ate the Angel Delight, and oh my, childhood memories.)

Fall/Autumn started setting in, and the city started looking beautiful. This was taken just down the street from my apartment... I can't quite believe I live here sometimes.


In mid-October we visited Dunbar Haunted House with some friends of mine from work, and I've never been so terrified. We queued for abut 45mins outside, while characters in creepy costumes wandered around and posed with people waiting. I must say the costumes were amazing and pretty disturbing, they definitely got you worried for the main event. As we got to the front door and told staff we'd not been to anything like this before, they all gave us looks as if to say 'Good luck!' We headed in with the 2 girls in the middle and the 2 guys at the front and back, but that really didn't help. As we moved from room to room, characters jumped out at us from anywhere, and no matter where you were in the line they could get you. The theme was History of Terror, so each room was something historic, for example Egyptian, of a Black Plague Room. For me the most terrifying room was the last one, where a creature in a cage rattling bars and a character in an weird orange jump suit jumped out at me, and then it was finished with us being chased out by a guy with a chain saw. Ive never been so relieved to leave a building. Sadly this was the last year for Dunbar Haunted House, so I'm really glad we got to experience it, and hats off to all involved.

On our next day off together, Ian and I did the Grouse Grind. The Grind is a climb up Grouse mountain, and I'm not lying when I say it's one of the more exhausting things I've done. We underestimated how much of a hike it was going to be I think, but we enjoyed the day nevertheless and we definitely want to return to the mountain at some point soon. The hike up the mountain takes around an hour and a half, and then you pay $10 to get back down, or you can take the Skyride up the side of the mountain at an extra cost. At the top there a few places to eat, drink and take stunning photos (see below) as well as having extra entertainment in the summer. We were there off season so the only real entertainment left was the 2 Grizzly bears that they look after. We really enjoyed watching them as we happened to be around while they were quite active, and feeding on salmon, so we got great views of them. It made for a long and tiring day, but very memorable.





















Images of our Grouse Mountain trip - October 23rd 2013

Next on the agenda was Halloween! I was scheduled to work, so had to dress up. I opted to go as a bloody surgeon so I got some doctor scrubs and a mask and sprayed them with fake blood. Working on Halloween was great fun, we had trick or treaters and creepy music, then wandering home in costume with all the other people dressed up. Some people go all out on Halloween, we spotted some great costumes, here's mine! (By this time the blood had soaked into the fabric so you couldn't see it as well :( )



More recently, we've visited Vancouver Aquarium in Stanley Park, which I loved as they have a jelly fish exhibition at the moment, and I love jelly fish! (I'm considering a Jelly Fish tattoo!)

At work things got really busy in November. (On the 5th Martin Sheen came into the store and everyone got really exhited!) But besides the celebrity thing, the store is quiet in November so some members of staff were asked to do some hours in our Head Office in Burnaby, where we would either be in production or packaging. I took the extra hours for Christmas monies and did some overtime as well, so I had a few weeks where I was working like a mad woman. Production was kinda fun, you got to make chocolate, I made some chocolate dipped candy canes which we recently got in our store, so I've nabbed myself a bag. Its pretty cool to sell things to people and be able to say, I made these! Packaging was mostly box folding or wrapping, hard work and longer hours made for a very tiring few weeks, hence the lack of online presence.

We also spotted a film set one evening, we think it was for the TV show Arrow - but we're not quite sure...
Ian in front of the film set!

This week we said goodbye to a colleague and her partner who were moving to Calgary, so we had a lovely evening out in Chinatown, where another colleague showed us around the area a little, told us a bit about it, and then took us for a lovely Chinese! (Even the weird bean/seaweed soup for pudding, which was...interesting.)

Now winter is soon upon us. I just bought myself some snazzy new winter boots, which I'm stoked about, and stomping around Vancouver like a lunatic.

And I found out a few days ago that my Dad is going to visit after Christmas for a few weeks, so I'm mega excited, as well as the fact its only like 5 weeks till Christmas!