Sailing the RS 500

Peter had been promising to take me sailing ever since I met him. We've had very many attempts to do it, but our plans kept getting foiled by weather/work/time restraints. Today I ended up getting home from work two hours earlier than planned, so he decided last minute to go home early and to take me sailing. It was the perfect day to do it. Light winds meant that he could teach me what I needed to do easily.

He originally planned on taking me on a catamaran, which is a more stable boat, but when I asked him what his favourite and most fun boat to sail was, he pointed at the RS500. He said it was fun but there was a very high chance of us capsizing, because it requires a lot of balance. I was all for it. I mean, I had a life vest and a wet suit anyway. I got to control the spinnaker and the jib, and constantly had to shift my weight as the boat tipped from one side to another. He freaked me out when he told me he had gotten the ropes crossed and needed to do an "emergency procedure". "You have to be in charge of steering now as I fix this. Make sure you steer it correctly, because if you don't, the sails will billow out and we will capsize," he warned me. So I tried steering, and we kept going the wrong way, and I heard him muttering, "This isn't a good idea. I don't think this will work." I was so tense as he fixed the ropes because I was so worried I would cause the boat to tip over! But it was alright in the end. He fixed it, and I had a ton of fun. Now I want to go out with high winds! Apparently it's much much more exciting when it's a windy day.

Making Animal Treats

I spent the past two days taking a vet compounding course. It was really fun. I got to make all sorts of pet treats! There were beef flavoured treats, peanut butter treats, raisin treats, sweet potato treats...

It was like cooking. This was a beef bouillion cube mixed with corn syrup and metronidazole.

Raisins are really hard to make a treat out of, because their skin is hard to crush. This one was tough!

Picnic at Spanish Banks

I biked down to Spanish Banks with Peter to have a very nice picnic on the beach. I was expecting it to be a quiet location but it turned out to be full of dogs who wanted to eat all our food. There was one psycho dog in particular who wouldn't leave my side even with its owner pulling at it. He just kept staring at me with his crazy eyes.

We did a lot of people watching and a lot of eating.  My favourite part was when this police officer rode down on his ATV and stopped to chat with the lifeguard. He was totally posing for my photo!

Bahamas on the Beach

Cat and I went to Shorefest at English Bay before the fireworks because we heard Bahamas was playing, and Joce had told us that Bahamas was one of the best out of the 30+ concerts she's been to this year. It was such a nice day - sunny, warm, gorgeous, and PACKED. Everyone was there early to stake out spots for the fireworks. We stayed for the show (which was perfect because it was very beachy music) but left before fireworks since I had to wake up at 6am the next day and didn't want to deal with the huge crowds going home. We used to spend so much time on the beach back when I was in university - I would study my biochem while Cat would read her Vogue. I don't spend enough time on the beach anymore!

Kayaking

At Deep Cove. Beautiful.

Chalkboard Designs

Cat came over and drew on my chalkboard wall. She is a much better artist than I am. I had started my barnyard and I think you can tell which were the ones I drew and which ones were hers!

Phantogram @ Venue

Cabbage Casserole

Noel has been my most frequent dinner guest so far, and he said this was the tastiest thing I have made yet! I was quite proud of this one. Healthy AND yummy! Ingredients: cabbage, ground turkey, onions, garlic, paprika, mozzarella.

An Attempt to Hike Norvan Falls (But a Failure)

It was an ugly, rainy day, but we had all booked time off to do a hike, so we still went ahead with it. We decided to do Norvan Falls, a hike in the Lynn Valley area, because we wanted to do something relatively flat due to the rain. First we realized we had parked an extra hour away from where we were supposed to start....

Then we realized that we had done the harder of the two parallel trails heading to Norvan Falls. It took us double the time it should have! Regretfully we had to turn around at the halfway mark, because otherwise we wouldn't have been able to get back to the car before dark. We decided to mark the barrel as our final destination.

It ended up being about a 12 km hike, which took us about 6 hours. By the end of the day we were all soaking wet. I had brought two extra pairs of socks with me, but when I took them out after the hike, I found that they were also very wet. Jenny resorted to changing socks and putting plastic bags over her dry socks because her shoes were soaked through.

It felt pretty cool in the beginning, because it felt like I was going on a real adventure. By the last hour I was wishing I was in a warm and dry room though.

Beef Stew

Chicken, arugula, brie, and avocado salad

Beef Stew

With wine of course. I'm going to turn into a wino.

Florence and the Machine @ Deer Lake Park

Model Time

My hairdresser has been asking me for the past year if I would participate in a photoshoot for him, so we finally did it. This is what I looked like after two hours of hair and makeup.  I ended up not having enough time to take the makeup off before going rock climbing, so I showed up at the climbing gym with this face, fake eyelashes and everything. Everyone stared. My friends said it looked like I was in a movie about rock climbing!

I don't think it looks like me at all!

Picnic

I'm lucky that Noel lives so close to me (about three blocks away), because we always end up having impromptu meetups and dinners together. We were planning on watching the outdoor showing of Spaceballs at Stanley Park, but we ended up deciding to walk over to Kits beach and having a picnic instead. I brought scrabble and he brought the paella salad and sangria. The sangria was so good because it tasted like juice. Oh man, it was not a good day at work the next day....

Cooking from my 5-ingredient cookbook

I was supposed to hike the Chief today, but the rain ruined all my plans and I decided to do some cooking instead. First my lunch: chicken with tomatoes, basil, and feta.

Then for dinner, Allen and Noel came over and I made chicken tagine on couscous, plus a beet, arugula, avocado, and boconcini salad. ALL BY MYSELF!