hmmm...

So apparently, I am part Supergirl. Well, at least I'm 85% Superman. I'm happy with that!!!

Which Superhero am I?

Your results: You are Superman

Superman 85% Green Lantern 70% Spider-Man 65% Supergirl 65% Robin 65% Wonder Woman 45% Batman 40% Iron Man 40% Catwoman 35% The Flash 25% Hulk 15%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Update #4273-2

This will be quick since I'm at work and shouldn't be doing this right now...

I'm at 188 points in my hockey pool. Naslund and the Sedins are doing well for me. In fact, the only players sucking right now are Alfredsson, Iginla, Tanguay, and Horcoff. The bad news is that Havlat and Sullivan are both out with injuries. Sullivan's is back spasms which I think is day to day, but Havlat suffered an ankle injury and will be out for 2-3 weeks. Boo-urns!!!

The Canucks meanwhile are 5-3-1 in their first 9 games. A couple of losses that should have been wins, but I think after this weekend of two straight come-from-behind OT nailbiters, they seem to have found a groove. Still not getting secondary scoring from Boulis and Morrison, but I like the idea of putting Taylor Pyatt in the Powerplay with the Ikea Line and Salo. Hmm... a big guy in front of the net on a Powerplay. Wonder who that reminds me of... =D

Otherwise, no news yet on the big decision awaiting Tanya and I. Big things for her today, but we'll not say anything until it happens...

Oh, and to the Seattle Shopping Roadtrip crew:

Our bet with regards to what sort of store Kohls is... looks like Dev and Tanya were right. Kohls is a clothing store similar in style to The Bay. They sell very similar products such as Dockers for men and other stuff for women. You can check out their website at http://www.kohls.com
Dev and Tanya both thought it was a clothing store in line with Winners, but I thought it was a hardware store similar to Home Depot. Dor thought it was a plumbing store because she saw the name on a toilet once... Actually she wasn't far off though. She might not have seen Kohls on the toilet, but Kohler which if you look it up at http://www.kohler.com is a plumbing/furniture/golf/engine company. A jack of all trades sort of company.

Anyways, that is about it for now. I'll be updating soon... hopefully with great news!!!

p.s. - Jerm, have a great trip to Singapore and Australia. Safe flight, enjoyable visits, and don't hit on too many flight attendants. Make sure you order a Foster's beer. They are big. Don't bring any frogs to Australia or you'll cause environmental havoc; don't get tricked into a game of knifey-spooney, don't insult the Australians otherwise you'll get a boot to the but; get me a didgereedoo, or a hat that says "Pobody's Nerfect"; Kangaroo pouches are slimey; make sure you complete your Yahoo Serious collection, and eat some bbq'd shrimp. Oh, and deep fried mars bars!!!

HNIC!!!

If you are reading this blog and you don’t know what those letters stand for, either you aren’t Canadian, or you should turn in your Canadian Citizenship card.

Hockey Season has begun and the Canucks are off to a luke-warm 2-1-1 record. While they are 2nd in the Northwest division, they are lagging behind Minnesota. This season promises to be a very different one for our Canucks as Todd Bertuzzi, Alex Auld, Bryan Allen, Anson Carter, Jarko Ruutu, Dan Cloutier, Ed Jovanovski, Richard Park, and Coach Marc Crawford are gone. The top line has been nicknamed the Ikea Line with Naslund and the Sedins. Line 2 includes Morrison, Bulis, and Cooke. A far cry from last season’s promising team that fizzled into a big bomb.

Hopefully this season will be different especially with “Bingo, Bango, Bongo, his name is Luongo” in net. Yes, you heard that correctly. It came out of Tom Larscheid’s mouth during the Canucks’ 3-2 win against Columbus this past Friday night.

What makes this season more special for me is the fact that I am participating in my first ever hockey pool courtesy the hockey fans in the Vancouver SEACOR office who decided to make it up. My players are listed below and so far have earned me 70 points.

Marc Savard --- Boston
Maxim Afinogenov --- Buffalo
Jarome Iginla --- Calgary
Alex Tanguay --- Calgary
Erik Cole --- Carolina
Eric Staal --- Carolina
Martin Havlat --- Chicago
Brenden Morrow --- Dallas
Nicklas Lidstrom --- Detroit
Shawn Horcoff --- Edmonton
Saku Koivu --- Montreal
Steve Sullivan --- Nashville
Jaromir Jagr --- NY Rangers
Brendan Shanahan --- NY Rangers
Daniel Alfredsson --- Ottawa
Simon Gagne --- Philadelphia
Mike Knuble --- Philadelphia
Shane Doan --- Phoenix
Sergei Gonchar --- Pittsburgh
Mark Bell --- San Jose
Joe Thornton --- San Jose
Markus Naslund --- Vancouver
Daniel Sedin --- Vancouver
Henrik Sedin --- Vancouver

Yeah, I know I’ve got the top Canucks line on there, but I have a feeling that they are going to do really well. Seriously though, it is hard to pick players for a pool, especially when you are limited to 2 per group and each group has 4 players you would definitely want to pick. Too bad I can’t travel into the future and see where the points are after game 75… oh well, we’ll have to wait and see.

Cool and Addictive

So I was checking out James' blog. James was an instructor at GEERingUp! in 2002 and he happens to have a blog as I and Jerm do. He mentioned an online game that I checked out that is very addictive.

James' blog: link is to the right under the other blog links.

Game: http://www.funny-city.com/jokes/unfolding.shtml

The other neat thing is the Pandora Project. You type the name of a song or artist and it provides you with streaming music from that artist and other music of the same or similar genre or style. You can try it out yourself here: http://www.pandora.com/

enjoy!!!!

THANKSGIVING WEEKEND ROAD TRIP

There I was, sitting at work at my computer, typing up some reports and I get an email from D&D in Richmond asking if we (Tanya and I) were coming back for the long weekend. I replied we were but were only staying until Sunday as Tanya wanted to spend Monday prepping for her week of TOCing. D&D replied saying they were going to the U.S. shopping near Seattle on Saturday and wanted to know if we could join them. I suggested they ask Tanya so Dev called Tanya right away and all she really had to mention was Seattle, shopping, and Forever 21 and Tanya was hooked.

Saturday morning came up and we all met at my parents' place to head down to the States. We decided to document our before and after with some photos...

Dor & Dev & Tanya & Me on our way to the States.

So, after listening to CKWX News 1130 and finding out that it was a 2.5 hour wait at Peace Arch and a 1.5 hour wait at the Truck Crossing, Dev told us about her sneaky route using 0 ave. to get to the Aldergrove crossing. The lineup wasn't as bad, but it took a while as 0 ave has to merge with the main road to get into the border line-up. After chatting for over an hour and watching a guy pee behind a telephone pole (yes, he thought the telephone pole would obscure him from everyone around), we made it to the border. I chatted it up with the US Customs officer mentioning we were heading down to do some shopping. Well, the girls were. I volunteered to drive and he asked why and I said my wife was with us and so he said "then you really didn't volunteer did you". =D Yeah, I'm pretty good at chatting it up with the DHS!!

So we headed down Meridian Road to Bellingham then caught the I-5 to Lynnwood to go shopping at Alderwood Mall. The girls made a bee-line to Forever 21, and I took a meander around the mall, buying a DX t-shirt and a belt.

5 hours later and the girls having rung up their credit cards to over $400, we headed back up the I-5 to the Seattle Premium Outlet Mall to do some more shopping. I ended up with a couple Nike toques for the upcoming cold winter of field work. The girls bought some shoes and Tanya found LeSportsac outlet which sells their purses 50% off retail prices. She bought 2!

We eventually made our way back to Cascade to grab some Jack-In-The-Box and back up to Canada which by that time was already 10:30pm. We got to the Peace Arch crossing and the Canada Customs officer lady asked us where we were from to which I replied Richmond/Nanaimo. She then asked if we were all Canadian citizens and I replied yes. Finally, she asked the total value of goods being brought over and I said about $550 (yes, we told the truth, it never pays to lie and get caught) at which point we were all prepared to be pulled over to pay duty/taxes, but she waived us on and that was it!! Wow, amazing!!!

All in all, a great day of a mini-road trip, fun, friends, food, and shopping.

Tanya & Dev & Dor & Me with our loot!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Holiday Meals

ROSH HASHANAH

So a few weeks ago was the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah. To celebrate, Tanya and I decided to make a traditional Jewish meal which consisted of really yummy foods each having their own meaning, but the theme for Jewish New Year is that of eating sweet foods to bring forth a sweet year. The above photo shows our dinner consisting of fishballs cooked in a tomato sauce, chickpeas cooked with leeks and onions, and carrot tzimmes which is a sweet carrot dish with apples and cinnamon. Oh, and of course the red wine!!! =)

THANKSGIVING

There we were, Tanya and I, in Save-On Foods a week and a half ago, attempting to buy some fish for our dinner when we passed by all the produce on sale for Thanksgiving. Yams, brussel sprouts, mushrooms, carrots, celery, cranberries, etc. The light shone in our heads and we decided to see how much Turkeys were. A far cry from fish, but we had never made a Thanksgiving meal together and decided to see what we could do. In the end, we bought a 5kg fresh turkey (and saved $10 with a coupon!!), yams, brussel sprouts, cranberries, carrots, mushrooms, stove-top stuffing, onions, celery, and marshmallows.

We stuffed our turkey very simply. Mushrooms, celery, onions. Put it in the oven at 450 F for 25 minutes to brown the skin and then lowered to 325 for 2.5 hours breast side down. This ensures the breasts cook in the turkey juices staying moist and juicy!! We cooked some yams and candied them in the oven with the marshmallows, steamed the brussel sprouts, made home-made cranberry sauce with the cranberries, and tried out Stove-Top rice stuffing. Then once the turkey was done, we saved the juices and made a very lean gravy by straining out the oil/fat. Tanya and I celebrated our first ever Thanksgiving together as husband and wife with a huge week-before-thanksgiving feast!!! =) Our leftovers? Turkey barley soup and turkey sandwiches. Yummy!!!!!