Daily Life

Yesterday I had my eyebrows done- had them threaded actually. First time I ever had them threaded. I am cautious about going to new places to have them done as I have had some not so great experiences before- even at higher price spas. One time I got burnt- like really burnt. The temperature of the wax was way too high and damn did it hurt! The skin above my eyebrows and in between my brows was bright red- scorched- for days afterward and it HURT like mad.

So since moving to Vancouver I hadn’t ventured out to find a new eyebrow place yet. A couple of my friends recommended this place so since I was in the area yesterday I stopped in. I drove up to the salon and saw huge signs all over the windows that said “LADIES ONLY. NO MEN ALLOWED TO ENTER”. Hmmm… interesting. I briefly wondered how a business with the opposite signage would fare. (MEN ONLY- NO WOMEN ALLOWED TO ENTER). I’m thinking- not very well.

So I decide to go in and ask the girl at the counter if I need to make an appointment to get my eyebrows done. She says I just have to have a seat. I waited not even a minute before I got called. Not bad. The place was busy too. It was like I had stepped into
India. All the women working there were from India- as well as all the other customers except for me. And they had the Indian music playing quite loudly throughout. So I sat in the chair, the girl reclined it, and here I was about to have my first threading experience. It was different- wow, was it ever. It felt so odd!!! She was so quick and yeah it hurt. My friends warned me that it hurt more than waxing. But the pain was over instantly- it didn’t linger like the pain from waxing does. I was done in about 2 miuntes. Ok, maybe not that quick- maybe 3 minutes. And the best part- it was only $2.50!!!!!!!!!! How is it possible to find anything that cheap these days??? I used to pay $15-20 to get my eyebrows waxed at other places and they didn’t do as good a job as this threading girl did. I paid, then rushed out to the car to look in the mirrow. Amazingly, my skin was not all red and sore like it always is after I have my brows waxed. This was great!!! I will be back here for sure!

Originally posted on September 25, 2006

Ok, its super late, but I am loving this blog thing and I just had to come write something today! I realized I haven’t finished writing about our glorious camping trip from last week. Ok, where was I?

The first night: we stayed in the middle of nowhere. I may have already mentioned this once or twice, but this was a BIG deal! 30 minutes down a logging road to the nearest town- Likey, population 300. Remember the photo of the Hilton? Yep, I know. And then Likely was an hour away from the nearest city, or what I would call a city up North. It was still tiny, but they had grocery stores, a tiny mall, but NO Walmart. So I guess that really does show they are a small town. lol

So our campground- really beautiful- right on Cariboo Lake. Like RIGHT on the Lake- you took a few steps out of our campsite and you were on the beach. There were about 5 campsites in total, one of which there was another couple staying at – in their camper. Oh, I was so envious. They left the next morning though so we really had the place to ourselves basically. We were roughing it though. Pit toilets, no showers, no running water. Ugh.

It got SOOOO cold the first night. And to think I actually brought shorts with me- HA!!! What an idiot. I was wearing 2 shirts and 2 fleeces to bed each night, and when I wasn’t wrapped tightly in my sleeping bag with 3 blankets piled on top, I had my winter coat on OVER the two fleeces. And gloves and scarf too. I lost one of my gloves for a few hours and geez was I pissed.

We have this great tent- it’s high quality, light weight and meant for when you’re backpack camping, but its tiny. It is supposed to be a 3 person tent but I don’t see how the hell you could fit 3 people in there, its tight enough with us two. We can barely sit up inside it let alone stand. We have these mattress pads called Thermorests for when we hike cause they don’t take up much room and they’re light. Thats cause they are like half an inch thick!!! You can still feel every rock underneath the tent when sleeping on those things. So last time we car camped we went and bought a blow up air mattress to make things more comfortable. It does help somewhat. Must remember to inflate the mattress INSIDE the tent. Yep, made that mistake once. lol! The door to the tent is so small, we couldn’t fit the mattress inside it once it was inflated. It’s a double size mattress and it barely fits in the tent. It really is more like a twin size, seriously. So we get our stuff set up in the tent and it was really cold, so so cold. And to think the day before at home, it was still scorching hot. I went from sleeping under a thin sheet at home cause it was so stifling, to sleeping under 10 layers in the friggin arctic the next night.

To make things all the more lovely for my fabulous sleep, we had put the tent on a bit of a slope, a downwards slope, which happened to be on my side of the tent. All night long, I kept rolling off so I was awake trying to hold myself on this silly air mattress. It was so uncomfortable. Having to sleep on the double (I still swear it is a twin size) mattress was a pain too. We are used to sleeping in a King size bed at home, and with 2 dogs joining us, the King size feels too small sometimes. Yeah, they’re small dogs, but we all like to spread out. Oh and did I mention the dogs were sleeping in the tent with us? On the mattress with us? In the sleeping bags with us? All the more cozier. Actually they were like little hot water bottles for us. We both fought over who got the dogs, since there were two, we compromised and each took one. The poor dogs were cold too, when we got up the next morning, they got out of the tent long enough to go to the bathroom, then they climbed back into the tent and snuggled up under the blankets. Ah, such city dogs.

We spent that whole day in the campsite, not leaving once for the ENTIRE day. I think it was the longest day of my life. Brent had some fun fishing though, although he only caught a few small trout. I tried to read but didn’t get much done. We only had a certain amount of food with us, so we ended up having Kraft Dinner for lunch, and Pork and Beans, Instant Mashed potatoes and Chef Boyardee Ravioli for dinner. Oh yeah, it started raining too, right as we were making dinner. Then it poured. So we made a mad dash for the tent with our bowls of food. That was funny- all 4 of us sitting in the tent (practically on each others laps it was such close quarters), eating crap food out of our superior bullet proof dishes. At least if anything happens- the dishes will be safe! I don’t think we’ll ever eat instant mashed potatoes again. The highlight of our meal was the Ravioli.

So we ate then we sat there cause there wasn’t anything to do. It was either sit in the tent or go sit in the pouring rain. I chose the tent. We all did actually. So we sat there and played Uno. After 2 games of that, total boredom set in and we decided just to go to sleep.

Oh yeah, I forget to mention poor Brent’s lowlight of the day. While he was fishing, the hook got caught on a log underwater. The end of his fishing pole broke off and then the line broke and he lost his favorite hook. Or is it called a lure? Whatever. He was so upset. Well mad. No, upset. Ok, both. He stormed back to the campsite and had a bit of a pout. He was ok like an hour later.

We went back to the store in Williams Lake the next day – where he bought the fishing rod- and they exchanged it for another one. Then he was really happy again!

We continued further north to Quesnel. (Pronounced Quennel by the way. I kept saying Queznel and thoroughly embarrassed myself a couple times). But really, if its supposed to be pronounced like Quennel, why don’t they spell it that way? Why spell it with an S. Who uses a silent S?? A silent T or a silent P, but a silent S???? So we continue on to Barkerville- the old Gold Rush town that is now a tourist attraction. I had been looking forward to coming here. We made it 1 week before they were closing for the season so there weren’t many people there. Some, but not many. A bit disappointing in that some of the stores and businesses that were supposed to be open were closed. Oh well, we had fun anyway. We stayed about 3 hours then we went to this small hole in the wall town called Wells – to get something to eat cause we had a long logging road drive ahead of us. There was only 1 restuarant open in Wells, there were only 2 that we saw. It was like a roadhouse family restaurant, where all the locals hang out. Too funny. Totally old decor- it was stepping back in time. But the food was actually really good. The next journey was our drive back to the campground- this time all on a loggin road- 2 hours of logging road. Oh yeah, and in the pitch black. I thought Brent was driving quite quickly and it was freaking me out cause I was so worried some animal was going to jump in front of us and a) we’d hurt the animal and b) we’d probably get in a huge accident and kill ourselves. So it was a bit of a terrifying ride back. The road was very bad in some areas and really bumpy. Of course we got a flat tire. Wouldn’t you be surprised if I had said we made it without a flat tire? Brent didn’t discover it until we got back to the campsite so we’re not even sure how long we were driving on it like that.

Since it started raining once again, we left it until the next morning, when Brent put the little spare on. Then we drove all around with that silly tire on the car, hoping we wouldn’t get another flat cause then we’d really be hooped. We spent all morning trying to find a good spot on Quesnel
River (there’s that stupid silent S again) for Brent to fish. No luck. So we drove down another very long logging road to Quesnel Forks. It turns out this spot was our favorite of our whole trip. So secluded and so beautiful. It is an old ghost town so there are actually buildings still there. Small houses and stuff. Brent went fishing in the river and caught lots of fish! He releashed them all back into the water.

Ok, so that was our trip. It is super late here, so I gotta get to bed. I will post more pictures of our trip later.

posted by Jess @ 1:17 AM originally written September 26, 2006

Pictures from our trip!

 

 

This was a rest stop we stopped at on our way up North. It was a beautiful area and they had a hydro dam right there.

 

 

Angus and Zoey posing for a picture at the same rest stop.

 

Some scenery along the way

 

 

Beautiful
British Columbia. I feel so lucky to live here 🙂

 

Our campsite atCariboo
Lake – in the middle of no where (well it sure felt like it)

Our campsite again – yes that was thelake
RIGHT behind it! 😮

 

 

Here is the lake…so peaceful…

…so beautiful…

 

…so cold! 😆

 

Two little dogs sitting on the beach…

 

Here is Brent fishing on a little pier we made. This is also the spot where he broke his fishing rod. 😯 So this pier was never used again after that happened….

 

Brent trying to “make fire out of nothing”. Answer to the question you’re probably thinking: No, it didn’t work. But that was probably because it started to pour with rain only minutes after this photo was taken.

 

I found this cool little rock statue someone had made and left on the beach. There were several of them around.

 

Candyland!!! This store was on the way to Barkerville – so of course because of my love for anything made of sugar – we had to stop! 😆

 

The Historic town of
Barkerville.

Here is a skit that took place in the middle of the town while we were walking through. All the people who work at Barkerville are actors, so they are always in character. It really felt like we had stepped back in time 😀

 

Here I am trying to touch one of the horses in the Barkerville stable.

 

We wanted so badly to see a real wild moose while we were up north but sadly, this was the only one we saw – and he was mounted on the wall inside the Barkerville Hotel. So you know, somehow it just wasn’t the same….. 😕

 

The Ghost Town of Quesnel Forks.

 

Brent fishing atQuesnel
River

 

My Zoey sitting on the beach

Here is Angus asleep in the car leaning against Zoey.

The car at the start of our trip. See Angus peeking out the window at us? He was wondering why we had gotten out of the car and left them in it. We had just stopped quick to get out to take some pictures of the mountains.

Wow, look at this filty car!!! This was the day after our long ride back along the logging road – and after the flat tire – take note of our lovely little temporary wheel on the back there – stylish isn’t it?

 

Blog Challenges

I haven’t done any of the blog challenges yet so I thought I better start on some.

What are 5 places you’d like to see/visit in your lifetime and why?

1. Definetly I want to see all of Canada. One day I’d love to drive all the way across it – all the way to
PEI and Newfoundland. I want to see everything!

2. Europe: Italy, France, Spain, and Hungary – where my roots are. My dad was born there but I have never been yet.

3. Australia: Always wanted to go. I want to see the koalas and kangaroos

4. Africa: Another place I’ve always wanted to visit. Seeing all the wild animals such as elephants, giraffes, lions, etc in their natural habitats would be amazing.

5. Cook Islands – I read an article once on this place and ever since I’ve really wanted to go – it looks beautiful from the pictures I’ve seen.

Next Blog Challenge:

Blog about something you are looking forward to. It can be something tomorrow, next week, next year…..

I’m always looking forward to stuff, you sort of have to or life just isn’t much fun is it? How sad it would be to never have anything to look forward to.

I look forward to things on a daily basis. From little things like when I wake up in the morning I look forward to breakfast (cause I love eating!:lol::lol: ) and eating in front of the tv while I watch one of my shows that I PVR’d the night before.

I look forward to seeing my family and friends when they come for visits or if I go there.

I look forward to sales at my LSS!:lol::lol:

Things that are a bit further down the road that I’m looking forward to:

– Christmas of course and being able to decorate my house.

– The next time I will get to see my sister and her family (they live inToronto)

– one day having kids of my own

1. Where has your best ever vacation been at? What made it the best?

~There have so many actually. We went on a lot of fun vacations when I was a kid and they were all really great. Since then the only real vacation I have been on was last May when we went to Hawaii – that was a lot of fun too.

2. Do you have a yearly vacation that is always at the same place? If so, where?

~Nope. But we did go to DisneyLand and Disney World a lot when I was younger.Those were awesome trips!

3. Did you and your family take a “family vacation” every year when you were growing up? If so, where was it?

~Yes but they were usually to different places. Like I mentioned in the above answer, we did do a lot of Disney trips but we also went to other places in between – and sometimes we went to other places on the same trip- either on our way to Disney or on our way home.:DSome trips that really stand out were ones to YellowStone National Park, Mexico, and once we did a road trip through the Eastern US States – New York, Massechusettes, Vermont, Pennsylvania (and we went to Amish Country!!), etc. I have a lot of wonderful memories from that trip – and some funny ones too:lol::lol:

4. Do you remember any vacation disasters?

~There were some, like my dad getting severly sick in Mexico while we were there. And once when we were in Florida, the airlines lost my luggage. I was 12 at the time and all I had were the clothes on my back. They did find my bag but not until 4 days later!

Recently though, I think the biggest “disaster” of our trip to Hawaii was when Brent got sunburned real bad. We went snorkling all day and he went way off for hours just bobbing along in the water and he had FORGOTTEN to put sunscreen on his back.

Later when we got back to our condo, he wasn’t feeling so great – I had noticed he wasn’t quite himself on the car ride back – he was acting strange – like giddy almost.:bounce: He said he wanted to lie down and I left to get a pedicure. When I got back he looked terrible! He got up and said “I think I got a sunburn” and he turned around and his back was BRIGHT RED!!! As in LOBSTER red! I rushed to the drug store to get some aloe vera skin recovery lotion. We had plans that night to go to a nice restaurant for dinner but we didn’t make it. Brent had sunstroke as well and was sick to his stomach all night. I ended up going to pizza hut of all places and getting a pizza and spent the night watching tv by myself while Brent was passed out on the couch. His sunburn was so bad though, that the next day he couldn’t even wear his backpack cause it hurt so much to have it on his back. Even having a shirt on was painful for him.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

Everywhere. Magazines, books, tv commercials, people, songs on the radio. Sometimes just watching my dogs play even!

What memory do you treasure most?

There isn’t just one memory. There are lots of memories that really stand out from my childhood. I had a really happy childhood, I thank my parents for that. They worked very hard to give us what we needed and more. I think they probably sacrificed a lot for us. I remember going on fun family trips, having great birthday parties, and happy times at Christmas together. And then all the in between everyday stuff – like my dad and I building cages and outdoor heated structures for my menagerie of guinea pigs and rabbits.:D

And my mum and I making frequent trips back and forth between Victoria and Whistler while my parents owned a restaurant there.There are lots and lots of great memories, thanks Mum & Dad:)

Here is a rather sad memory that I also hold quite close to my heart. Almost 8 years ago now my Grandpa died – we knew it was coming but it was still difficult. The year leading up to his death I was still in college and for several months I was taking some day classes and some night classes and one day a weekI hada 2 or 3 hour break around dinner time between classes.I went over to my grandparents house for dinner every single week during that break between classes. It was just me and them and I loved it. I remember them being so good together – such a great couple – and very loving towards each other. They would joke back and forth and they made me laugh but I could tell how much they loved one another.

Then my Grandpa started going downhill pretty fast. I remember the exact days that I last saw and spoke with him before he fell into a coma which led to him dying only days after that. The thing is, I know he was very sick and in a lot of pain, but whenever he saw me, he would smile and be happy and he’d never let on he was in any pain around me.He’d hold my hand and tell me he loved me. A couple days later I got a new job that I really wanted and I went over to my grandparents right after I found out. I was so excited – I went right into the kitchen where my grandpa was sitting at the table and I blurted out “Grandpa! I got the job!”. I remember his whole face lit up and he said “Did you sweetie! That’s wonderful!”. I don’t even think he knew what job I was talking about but he wanted to be happy for me cause he saw that I was happy.

That was the last time I got to speak with my Grandpa, he fell into a coma the next day. He died on Valentine’s Day. I really miss him a lot and I’m sad that we lost him so soon. I think about him often and treasure the memories of him that I have.

Ok, now for the last Blog Challenge I’m going to do tonight.

Think back to 5 years ago….was your life very different than it is now? Did you think then you would be where you are today? If you could do anything over again to do it differently – would you?

5 years ago my life was VERY different than it is now.There isn’t much actually that is the same.Back then I would never have thought I’d be where I am today – for many reasons. First of all, I never would have even imagined living anywhere but my hometown where I lived my whole entire life.

5 years ago I was living with my parents still. Since then I have owned a house, a condo and now a townhouse and I have moved to another city.

If I could do anything over again would I? Probably not. And I say that because I believe that things happen for a reason. For a few years I had some very difficult times, times that I wouldn’t wish on anyone and there is no way you could pay me to re-live some of them. Those are times and memories that I try hard to bury away but they still haunt me occasionally. But I keep thinking to myself that there must be reasons that I went through them – obviously I have learned from them. And if I hadn’t lived my life the way it happened, and gone through the things I went through, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I might not have met Brent or moved to Vancouver, or lots of things. I am happy with where I am in my life, so I’ve just gotta leave the past as the past.:wink:

 

What a day!! We have gotten majorly dumped on with snow over here on the West Coast. I just had the dogs out in it and I tried to take some pictures but it was dark, snowing still, and I was getting pulled in 2 different directions by the dogs so it was difficult. I managed to get a few but they aren’t very good.

Angus and Zoey LOVE this snow – it surprises me actually cause they hate the rain and getting wet. They love bounding around in the snow bluffs but then as soon as we come in, they try to dry themselves off on the towel and then they are right in front of the fire on their big pillow. Lol!

Here are a few pics:

Me and my best friend.

Brent took this one a couple nights ago: I fell asleep on the couch with Angus.

Angus and Zoey wearing their fleece hoodies

 

One of the trees next to our house

 

More trees

 

Angus happy to be back inside – warming up by the Fire

 

We just got back from taking the dogs down the street to the park – in the dark!! 9:30 at night and we are playing at the park running through snow that is halfway to our knees! We have realized that Zoey is in fact a Snow Dog! She LOVES the snow! She was jumping around, digging, tunneling, and making little dog snow angels! LOL! Angus liked it at times, but he wanted to be carried through the really deep snow. He is happy to be home again! 😀

 

Look how deep this snow is!!!

 

Angus is not so sure he likes the snow

 

Covered in snow!

 

Such a baby – he’d much rather be carried [smilie=baby02.gif]

 

Brent making some snowballs

 

The snow dogs

 

Zoey rolling – making some snow angels

 

Now she is digging some tunnels

Such a cutie!