Bellini-induced Brain Freeze

It was going to happen sooner or later. There was a time in my life when I was anti-diet. I was all for exercise; no problems with that. But tell me I am DENIED food and I will eat it right in front of you just to be defiant. What a miserable life it would be if I could not drink when I wanted, eat what I wanted, indulge how I wanted...I'm sure you catch my drift. A few years back I got to know an uber sweet guy who turned out to be an Atkins-diet success story. He showed me a picture of him back in high school which was a great lot different to the guy who I met in person. I was incredibly impressed and admired his insane dedication, but there was no way you could ever get me to give up my carbs. NO. WAY. Unfortunately, he has also become a cautionary tale of an example. I did not get to see him often but when I did he would be bigger than he was the time before. And the time before that. And the time before that. I have not seen him lately -- and I hope that he has not...

- a play on Muskrat Love. Whatever; I'm a dork. I decided recently to organize my purses. If you have known me for some time you ought to know I have a bazillion purses. I thought all women were like me. Apparently not, none of them have as many purses as me, for sure. Most of my friends only have maybe 5 or 10! It boggles my mind! Re-organizing my purses is a massive endeavor consisting of clearing them all out of my handbag closet, emptying them out, and rearranging them in some sort of system that makes sense (at the time). Unfortunately, my handbag closet cannot hold all of my handbags so now my collection is split amongst my two closets. This would be why I forget I own such-and-such a bag for years on end until I unearth it once again during one of my "reorgs." Emptying them out always takes the longest. I pore over every receipt as they spell out their own special page in my life of where I went, when, and what I bought. I peruse over little notes and rem...

Eeee, I hope my Spanish is still coherent. This past weekend was the very first Calgary International Salsa Congress ; a labor of love for our favorite dance studio and its instructors. T-Girl and I would have been remiss to skip on the event. Friday night was the pre-congress party held in the ballroom at the Hyatt downtown. I have not gone dancing in months so seeing all the fantastic dancing had me quite intimidated at first. I knew I would be able to hold my own if only I could find a partner who could lead. Unfortunately, the one partner I ended up getting -- a friend of T-Girl's who must have felt bad for me standing solo -- could not keep the beat. I did my best to be gracious and follow his lead and ignore the music, but it just killed the moment for me. My fave partner who is also a TA at the studio was busy getting ready for his performance so no luck there. We'll call him Salsa Boy. When I get the chance to dance with him I feel like the most amazing salsera...

Hot or not The Hotness is terminally ill. The Hotness being my favorite cell phone. I jumped on the chance to own The Hotness as soon as she was released in Canada. With all the research I did in my cell phone forums and such it was clear to me that I was destined to own a Sony Ericsson Z520a. We have had a wonderful life together and she has travelled with me to many lands. On my recent trip to the Philippines I bought a companion phone -- a Sony Ericsson Z610i which I christened Bebot -- to take some of the workload off of The Hotness. Don't get me wrong, Bebot is shiny, sleek, and sexy. I love whipping her out whenever I see lemming RAZR owners out on the street. But even with her hot exterior, her bells and whistles just cannot hold a candle to how The Hotness and I were a match made for the ages. Never wanting to be without her for a minute I kept putting off sending her away for a small software glitch, a minor inconvenience, until my extended warranty was (so I thought)...

All Good Boys Deserve Fudge. Good Boys Deserve Fudge Always One thing definitely hasn't changed in my blogging style: I always want to start my posts with some kind of musical reference. Another social network has basically taken over my life on the internet. I'm sure there are quite a few of you out there who can easily guess what I am talking about. It is just too convenient for a little snoopy voyeur like myself. It is like the Cliff's Notes of someone's life rather than having to click and read every single blog post. In a minute you can find out where your old high school friend is working now, what their academic achievements have been, whether or not they are seeing someone at the moment or if they have gone in a domestic way and did the whole married-with-2.5-kids thing. They are not kidding when they say this network is like an addiction. I find myself looking up people from my past, people who I don't really care much about, just to see who's d...

Old dog... If I looked back on the date of my very first post I would realize that I have owned this little anthology of my life's tidbits for almost 5 1/2 years now. I would also realize that it is such a shame that I have neglected it for so long. I missed my 20,000th visitor even...I used to be so keen on watching my site traffic. It is so nifty that a blogger whom I used to read has written one of the best movies I have seen in the past few years. Heh, I also realized that I still write my blog posts with all the little code of yesteryear even though Blogger has simplified things to the point where all my little codes can all be accomplished by a click of the mouse on the appropriate button. I'm so behind on the times. "Now Blogger saves your drafts automatically!" That would have saved me so much grief back in the day.

*sigh* Ok, scratch that. I'm not doing the whole "blog reunion" thing. Well...I'll reunite with my blog...but without all the hype I was building up in my little imagination. I've made so many promises on this blog and have made little effort to keep any of them. I do appreciate those who continue to blog, as sporadic as some do. Most of them have better reasons for being unavailable to write compared to me but they still take the time to write. A fave blogger is now the proud papa of 2?! Wow, I've been seriously out of the loop! You would think that after all this time I would have volumes of stuff to write. So bizarre how I feel at a loss for words. It's like when you look forward to seeing a friend after a long week but then once you do get together you sort of forget everything you were going to share with him or her. Awkward.

Reunion Last month was our high school reunion. It was so nice to see so many people from way back when. I thought I had grown a lot since then, but thrown back into the mix I found I was more of the same: shy and reserved as always, and taking a (long) while to warm up. Thankfully, others were also the way they had always been. If not for them coming up to me and starting up some conversation I don't think I would have reunited with as many people as I did. When you say the words "10-year reunion" it feels like so much time has passed, or should have passed. I know 10 years ago I imagined that I would be in a much different place than I am now, and it felt like I had all the time in the world to get there. A common sentiment I heard from a lot of people is that they felt that nothing drastic has changed in 10 years. A lot of us spent most of those years in college, then finding jobs, some of us got married and had kids. But for the majority of those I spoke with...

She speaks! Hm, yeah. I suppose I am long overdue for a post on my beloved blog. *sheepish* My excuse is pure laziness. Quite simple. As some of you may know, another online community has all but consumed my life when I am not out and about...which makes my poor little blog a distant item on my list of priorities. There are days when I feel I'm ready to touch base and blog but then I sign on to that other site and well... Anyway, I'm here right now. Heaven knows I need some discipline in my life. :P I'll try to get you up to speed. I spent an emotionally charged two weeks "back home" in the Philippines in April and turned my back on my darling Calgary Flames as they started their playoff run. Sad to say, they lost, and I came home to a dejected Big Boi posse and no more hockey games for the season. However, I would not have traded those two weeks for anything. It is so easy to "forget" the family you have so far away...the lack of contact goes wi...

GO FLAMES GO! See you all in Round 2. I leave our boys in your capable hands. I've got a plane to catch. :)

Whodathunkit? The Big Flames Fanatics (AKA my siblings and our friends) got together to cheer our boys on against Tampa Bay. In fine form, we had our horns, our thunder sticks, and thanks to Daisy's dad we had COWBELLS! You can never have enough cowbell. It was also a marvelous day because it was our first day of temperatures in the high teens this year. (Weather which was quashed today by a ridiculous amount of snow....which then melted almost completely...but hey, that's Calgary for you!) In my excitement I spent the evening in capris and sans jacket. Thank goodness I never had to regret my clothing choices! So there we were, picture it, 14 of our bestest buds and blood cheering on our beloved hometown boys. There were some scary moments...stupid referees were driving us insane! But in the end we LOST! LOST! The Flames have never lost whenever we have attended a game. Never! It never even dawned me that they could possibly lose. And they lost. And we all sat there, ...

Boogie oogie oogie till I just can't boogie no more My dance instructors have started up a new salsa night in the city. We were lucky enough to come out and support their grand opening. As an added bonus, the venue was a recently renovated establishment I have wanted to check out for a couple of months. All I can say is that I hope they can keep this up. This evening was better than anything I have seen in Calgary thus far. No scuzzy guys, no sticky floors, everyone dressed like the sexy people they are. Better yet, everyone was there to dance , much like how SoHo started out, but since then SoHo has fallen down a couple of notches. The dancing was AMAZING! It was inspiring and incredible to watch. A lot of our fellow classmates were there, as were many of the students in levels ahead of us. If I could progress to their levels I'd be ecstatic. I would love to go every week, particularly since our classes will be ending again for the semester soon, and it will probabl...

Out of control Last week was my annual checkup at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre. Or rather, I guess I should specify that it was my fifth annual checkup. My five year anniversary, my supposed start date to buckle down, live my life, and move on as if I am just any other healthy girl on this planet. I didn't get to see my normal oncologist, which I thought was weird. Once a year and he can't even see me? Instead I got a guy in residence and the doctor he's been shadowing (is that right? I don't know how it really goes). I realize that every budding doctor has to start somewhere, but why with me? He doesn't know my history, other than what's written on my charts. Making the best of it he told me what my results were telling him, and I told him what had been bothering me as of late. Chest x-ray came out clear, MRI was a-ok. But THEN they decided to see me again next year. I don't know about them, but I thought this was my final checkup. After thinkin...

Mas caliente que tu "Let's go!" And with that we left our friends with the ever-entertaining French pirate and headed back to our rooms to freshen up. What a group! Some sassy cougars (C and S), a darling small-town wide-eyed girl (J), a good girl (yours truly...or that's how I pictured myself), and a friendly glamazon (L). We were staying at the Occidental Grand Flamenco in Puerto Plata, right in the Playa Dorada complex. Just down the street was Mangu at the old Jack Tar village. The night was young and Mangu was just opening (11pm) and it would not be Puerto Plata if we did not check this place out. The only bar that let locals mix with the tourists within the complex. Enough of the French pirates and the other Europeans. Bring on the Dominicans! Personally, I was uber excited. I was already on a music high ever since we landed, merengue and bachata all around me! Seeing the locals living in the music was an incredible experience. Now I would get to see ...

You can't have it your way here! So somehow I have lucked out and been to Falafel King twice AND I had my favorite calamari caesar at the gas station in the past couple of weeks. I do love me some Mediterranean cuisine. We lucked out on our first trip to Falafel King as they were about to close in 15 minutes. I was not all that hungry, but I had not had a falafel in months and everyone knows I am horrible at denying myself something I want. So there you had it. The prices at the gas station have gone up a dollar across the board. Who cares? I'll gladly pay it for the yummy yummy food. (I would tell you the name of the place, but it is a hidden city gem after all. If you haven't heard about it by now through newspaper articles and such through the years then it sucks to be you! Haha. Besides, we can't have you all rushing over and ruining a great thing. I hate it when that happens.) So good! And yes, my calamari was not in little heart shapes but I couldn...

"Talk at you later" No, folks, I do not actually talk like that. No need to correct me. On Valentine's Day a handful of singletons and I went to -- drumroll please -- a singles event. Yes, I know, great googly moogly, what was I thinking! It was a party put together by one of my favorite clubs. Though their advertising was a little vague I had jumped to conclusions and assumed that it was one of those nifty fetes were they loan you Blackberries to text message potential lurve interests. Not so! Instead, they gave us stickers with a number to slap onto our bods somehow, somewhere. And during the night you could come to the booth and leave handwritten messages for those you were interested in. Yeah, I never bothered seeing if anyone had left me a message. Nor did I leave any messages for others. We were a varied crew. Some were excited about the potential for the evening, some were excited about the assumed Blackberry-ness of it all (oh, the trouble one could get int...

"I said I wasn't gonna lose my head but then 'PoP!' goes my heart" I had to put that there. Music and Lyrics is not a monumental flick by any means but that song has been in my head alllllll weekend. I even went so far as to buy the ringtone for my phone. Man, I'm acting bizarre. :) In other movie news I noticed that John Travolta is starring in a movie alongside Martin Lawrence and Tim Allen. What is THAT all about? *sob* Thanks to Civic I was able to catch the Flames game on Saturday against the Avalanche. And since I was there, of course we won. :) When he was driving me home, however, we had a bit of nervousness as we were being tailed by a drunk driver. Or at least we assumed he was a drunk driver. He was all over the road, and Civic had to take a detour past my house (guy still following!) until we lost him and he could finally drop me off. And after that as I was turning off the lights in the house for the evening a car parked itself perpendic...

Pandora's Box Blogs are a dangerous thing. I spent hours and hours poring over the new blogs he recommended. It probably was not his intention for me to dive so deep into the thick of it all, but curiosity gets the best of me. It's just like how my parents tease me: for a girl with such a flat nose, I can totally stick it in places it does not belong. The more I read the more I recognized the similarities with my experience. I nodded my head in agreement with some posts. At other times I shook my head in disbelief over the immaturity of it all. Aside: I've been observing A LOT of immature behaviour between couples as of late. Is it good that I am recognizing these ahead of time or would I not see it myself when placed in the same situation? Anyway, I digress... He wants me to see his side of the story. I know that's why he had me read all those things. Do I tell him what he wants to hear or what I think he ought to hear? He needs to know the truth. I deserve ...

Happy Valentines Day! I hope that you all have an uber fabulous day with those you love. It's like Christmas all over again, but I love the color scheme so much more :) And who can say no to chocolates, champagne, and flowers? Not I! Love you all!

Double dutch I think tag team dating would be a very good idea some days. But then again, it didn't work out the one time I tried it out. A long time ago, in a neighborhood not so far away, I met this guy. I thought he was great and we had lots to talk about...almost like a really good friend. That should've been a clue right there. So finally we decided to meet up and go to a nearby mall (we were both going to the university at the time). We'd seen pictures of one another before, so I can't say that I was surprised. Unfortunately, something just wasn't there. At least for me it wasn't there. And thusly we remained friends. But what struck me as incredible was that a lot of his travel experiences and musical tastes reminded me of another good friend of mine. A female friend. So, you know, a light bulb went off over my head. I think I went about it the right way. I asked them both if they wouldn't mind me introducing them to one another. Neither obj...